I was mind-boggled to find this video over at the always interesting Old Salt Blog. NPR reports: “Noah’s Violin” is the most recent creation of Venetian artist Livio De Marchi. He’s sent plenty of other wooden works out to sea, including a giant shoe and an origami hat. This large-scale replica is made from… Continue reading If it had sails, it’d be gon-dola with the wind!
Tag: Ships
Saturday Snippet: Running the Union blockade of Confederate ports
During the American Civil War (1861-1865), the primary task of the Union Navy was to blockade the coast and ports of the Confederate States of America. The CSA had to import almost all its munitions of war, and to pay for them, had to export cotton and other commodities. Because of the immense need,… Continue reading Saturday Snippet: Running the Union blockade of Confederate ports
An inside view of a hurricane at sea
GCaptain reports: Saildrone Inc. and NOAA have released what they claim is the world’s first video footage captured by an uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) from inside a major hurricane barreling across the Atlantic Ocean. NOAA and Saildrone are working together on collecting scientific data from inside Hurricane Sam, currently located some 645 miles south-southeast… Continue reading An inside view of a hurricane at sea
“Titanic’s unsinkable stoker”
That’s the title of a 2012 BBC article that I came across while researching information for a book I’m writing. John Priest was either the unluckiest stoker afloat, or the luckiest – I’m not sure which! Here’s an excerpt. Priest was one of the lucky few to find a job on Titanic as it… Continue reading “Titanic’s unsinkable stoker”
“The ship that broke global trade”
That’s part of the headline of a long in-depth report at Bloomberg about the Ever Given, the ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal a few months ago and caused a major disruption to already-disrupted global trade. Transiting the Suez Canal is sometimes nerve-racking. The channel saves a three-week detour around Africa, but… Continue reading “The ship that broke global trade”
The numbers boggle the mind
Regular readers will recall that last year, I put up several articles about the collapse in freight shipping across the Pacific from Asia to America. This year, the story has been all about the sudden, overwhelming reversal of that situation, to the point that costs have increased many times over and there’s a desperate… Continue reading The numbers boggle the mind
Saturday Snippet: State of the author, and book plans
I figured it was time to give my readers an update on how my new books are progressing, and let you read an example of what I’m doing. A few years ago, I conducted an experiment by writing all three volumes of my “Cochrane’s Company” trilogy before I released any of them. I then… Continue reading Saturday Snippet: State of the author, and book plans
HMS Victory is “safely berthed” at last
For the past several years, an immense engineering project has been under way in Portsmouth, England, to prop up HMS Victory, Nelson‘s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Victory was permanently dry-docked in 1922, as her timbers had deteriorated so much due to long neglect that she could no longer remain afloat. … Continue reading HMS Victory is “safely berthed” at last
“We’re looking for a hole in the water”
A couple of years ago, two ballistic missile submarines, one French, one British, collided underwater without being aware of each other’s presence. The French initially ascribed the damage to “an immersed object (probably a container)”. Only after Britain informed France that one of her submarines had also suffered damage did the two nations put… Continue reading “We’re looking for a hole in the water”
The costly aftermath of the Suez Canal blockage
The other day, talking about our supply chain and its current problems, I said, “the one word that describes our supply lines is ‘fragile’.” That’s been illustrated by the complications flowing from the recent blockage of the Suez Canal – a blockage that lasted for less than a week, but is having huge international… Continue reading The costly aftermath of the Suez Canal blockage