Photo:Elizabeth Dinan/www.seacoastonline.com

Crew responded to a fire on the nuclear submarine, USS Miami,  at around 5:40 PM last night at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.  This morning, the Navy reports that the fire has been put put. Three shipyard firefighters, two civ/… Read full post »

The fleet began to appear from the harbor haze around 9 AM and headed north up the inner harbor and the Hudson River. They were a mix of full rigged ships, barques, barquentines, topsail schooners and schooners.  Most were naval vessels, but without guns or missiles. (The only gunfire was a salut… Read full post »

A portrait of a naval ensign, in a heavy gilt frame, hung in a lonely corridor in the labyrinth that is the Pentagon.   The plaque on the portrait read:

ENS CHUCK HORD, USNA,
CIRCA 1898, LOST AT SEA 1908

Fortunately for Ensign Hord, he was not lost at sea in 1908. He was, in fact,… Read full post »

Last night I went out to see some of the participating OpSail tall ships in New York’s Outer Harbor.  The trip was organized by the Working Harbor Committee with commentary provided by Richard Taylor and Captain Richard Dorfman.  Click on the thumbnails for a larger image.

Many visitors think of New York as the island of Manhattan.  The City of New York is in fact five boroughs, only one of which is connected to the mainland.  If Brooklyn, the largest borough, had remained an independent city, as it was until 1898, it would now be the 4th largest… Read full post »

USCG Barque Eagle Photo: Joyce Naltchayan/AFP/Getty Images

The visiting tall ships have started arriving in New York’s outer harbor.  Tomorrow morning at just after 8 in the morning, the “Parade of Sail” will form up at the Verazano Narrows Bridge and stand north into the… Read full post »

Enrica Lexie

Two Italian marines, Latorre Massimiliano and Salvatore Girone, are in an Indian jail awaiting trial for the alleged murder of two Indian fisherman. They are at the center of a legal & diplomatic fight over the use of armed guards on merchant ships to combat pirates. On Februa… Read full post »

A local boater first spotted the bales floating 15 miles offshore near Point Dana, California.  When law enforcement went out to investigate, they found between 160-180 bales of marijuana (depending on the news report), weighing close to four tons and worth around $4 million dollars, bobbing in… Read full post »

On Wednesday, Philadelphia’s tall ship, the 112+ year old barquentine Gazela, will be among the seventeen tall ships in the “Parade of Sail” on the Hudson River. Once again, however, the Gazela will bringing more than just history and grace to the harbor when she ties up alongsid… Read full post »

Charles Spencer, writing for the Telegraph, had a hunch. After reviewing the Royal Shakespeare Company’s trilogy of Shakespeare’s “shipwreck†plays last month,  he  found himself wondering whether the Bard spent his so-called “lost years†before his arrival in London, as sailor.… Read full post »

Last Friday we posted about a presentation made by the Titan-Micoperi consortium detailing their plans to salvage the Costa Concordia from the where she sank on January 13th off the island of Giglio, Italy.  The plan is to build an underwater platform onto which the ship can be rolled. Caisso… Read full post »

The Dragon Harald Fairhair is the largest Viking longship to be built in modern times. (See our previous post: Building the Viking Longboat Dragon Harald Fairhair)  Built of oak, in the town of Haugesund in Western Norway, the ship is hundred and fourteen feet, twenty-seven feet wide, disp… Read full post »

We consider AMVER to be one of the true “unsung heroes” of the maritime world.  AMVER is the “Automated Mutual Assistance Vessel Rescue” system run by the US Coast Guard.  Established in 1958, it is a computer-based voluntary global ship reporting system used worldwide b… Read full post »

ID Integrity Photo: AMSA

High drama on the high seas.  The ID Integrity, a 46,000 DWT bulk carrier, had an engine failure on Friday night while about 325km north-east of Cairns, Australia, on a voyage in ballast, from Shanghai to Townsville.  The ship drifted toward Shark Reef, but the crew/… Read full post »

The intheboatshed.net blog recently featured a wonderful short video, The Little Ships of England, produced in 1943, highlighting wooden boat building in England during  World War II.

The Little Ships of England

Seu browser não suporta iframes. Read full post »

Representatives of Titan-Micoperi presented their plans to raise the Costa Concordia from where she sank after running aground off the island of Gilgio last January.  Titan-Micoperi is the consortium of Titan Salvage, the Crowley-owned specialist marine salvage company, and Italian marine… Read full post »

Next Wednesday, May 23rd, OpSail 2012 and New York Fleet Week kick off with two parades of ships in the harbor and up the Hudson River.   This year’s OpSail is organized to mark the bicentennial of the War of 1812 and the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.â€

At 8:10 AM,… Read full post »

Aftermath of the Stena Spirit hitting a container gantry crane in the port of Gdynia

It has been a busy couple of days for ship collisions and allisions.  Yesterday, the USS Essex, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, collided with the USNS Yukon, a Navy Oiler, during underway replenishme/… Read full post »

Aargh. Once again, the junk food of maritime events, another “pirate” festival.  This one is being sponsored by one of my favorite museums, the Maritime Museum of San Diego – home to the 1863 iron windjammer, Star of India, the world’s oldest active sailing ship; th… Read full post »

In March, the European Union Naval Force was authorized to attack Somali pirates in coastal waters and ashore. On Tuesday, EU naval forces and attack helicopters launched their first onshore raid on a suspected pirate supply center in Handulle village, about 18 kilometers (11 miles) north… Read full post »

We recently posted “Beware the Supermoon! Wonder What They Will Blame on it This Time?”   We noted that previous perigean full moons, when the moon is closest in its orbit to the earth, have been blamed for ship groundings and even the sinking of the Titanic.  Both claims are mo… Read full post »

On an overcast Tuesday morning, the Barque Picton Castle sailed into New York harbor and tied up at Pier 25 just before the rain set in.  under the watchful eye of Captain Daniel Moreland, the crew of mostly young men and women brought the 179′ steel barque gracefully alongside.  A short v… Read full post »

The museum ship SS American Victory will host the FBI, Transportation Security Administration and a half-dozen other law enforcement agencies in bomb detection and disposal training exercises later this month in preparation for the Republican National Convention to be held in Tampa the week… Read full post »

One hundred and fifty years ago today, Robert Smalls, a 23 year old mulatto slave, who served as the pilot of the Confederate armed transport, CSS Planter,  led eight fellow slaves in an audacious flight to freedom.  They seized the CSS Planter, steamed it out past the batteries and fort… Read full post »

Photo: Reuters / Molly Riley

The USCGC Stratton is the Coast Guard’s newest cutter.  Built at  Ingalls Shipbuilding of Pascagoula, Miss., she was acquired by the Coast Guard on September 2, 2011 and officially commissioned on  March 31, 2012.  Roughly a month after the 418′ fo/… Read full post »