88 posts tagged with ship.
Displaying 1 through 50 of 88. Subscribe:
Small ship stuck
The Humber estuary is a challenging place to navigate. At high tide, its wide expanse of open water conceals a constantly-shifting network of mudflats, through which ships must follow a uniquely twisting, meandering path marked by a series of floats, to avoid running aground. The mud shifts so rapidly that new charts are published every two weeks. The crew of the H&S Wisdom apparently got it wrong, and must now spend the next month sitting on one of those mudbanks. They were assisted by Humber Rescue, one of the UK's independent local lifeboats.
Rock the Ship, Baby
"The famous king of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar II was lately enthroned when a group of Phoenician sailors watched their boat sink in shallow water off the coast of Spain ... The sailors would have been beside themselves watching the boat go down in just 7 feet of water, but before they could recover it and bring it to the shore around 65 yards away, a storm suddenly descended on La Playa de la Isla in the town of Mazarron, southeastern Spain": Divers Recover Ancient Shipwreck Amazingly Preserved for 2,600 Years Beneath Spanish Waters. [more inside]
The World's Largest Cruise Ship: Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas
Building the World's Largest Cruise Ship. What's it like on the world's largest cruise ship? Walkthrough
Sunken Ships of the Second World War
"Resurfacing the Past": "More than 20,000 ships sank during World War II. One man is on a mission to map them all - and is uncovering untold stories along the way." Day by day animation. Dashboard. Stories of the sunken ships. WWII shipwrecks in the news. On the Solarpunk Presents podcast: "Protecting the Environment With GIS: Mapping WWII's Sunken Ships with Paul Heersink." An article on the oil the ships may contain. Stories of sunken ships previously.
The Model Ship
Link is episode 1. As of 4 February 2024, he's up to episode 1887. Ron Calverley is a retired bus worker in Winnipeg who, after the death of his wife, decided to build a model ship like he had in his younger days. Actual model-making? Discussions of model-making infrastructure? LONG digressions about videography and computing? Classic old-man musings on life? ALL PROVIDED IN ABUNDANCE! [more inside]
Big Boat Stuck III
Last month, the Panama Maritime Authority published its final report [pdf] into the 2021 grounding of the Ever Given (MeFi previously). Mike Schuler summarised the findings at gCaptain, noting that:
The report was highly critical of navigation decisions made by the SCA pilots. According to the report, they did not take bad weather conditions into account, gave improper instructions to the helmsman, and did not communicate effectively with the bridge team due to language difficulties. The vessel was also traveling faster than the maximum speed, which the report noted is common.Some lessons clearly remain to be learned though, because today, the 300m LNG carrier BW Lesmes also got itself jammed sideways in the canal, and the Cayman Islands tanker Burri ran into it. This time however, both ships were freed within a few hours.
Big boat stuck
the scan now freezes the wreck in time before more is lost to the sea
The world's most famous shipwreck has been revealed as never seen before. [BBC] The first full-sized digital scan of the Titanic, which lies 3,800m (12,500ft) down in the Atlantic, has been created using deep-sea mapping. It provides a unique 3D view of the entire ship, enabling it to be seen as if the water has been drained away. The hope is that this will shed new light on exactly what happened to the liner, which sank in 1912. The visualization was pieced together from a staggering 700,000 images collected by remote controlled submersibles. Over the course of 200 hours, a crew of engineers directed the robotic explorers to scan the length and breadth of the colossal ship as it rested at a crushing depth 3,800m below the ocean surface. Scan images and footage are from @AtlanticProds and Magellan.
Sailing boat rescued by the Götheborg
Sailing boat rescued by the Götheborg. Imagine losing your rudder out at sea and sending out a distress call. And then the largest ocean-going wooden sailing ship in the world comes to your rescue. Or in the words of the sailors on the sailing boat: "This moment was very strange, and we wondered if we were dreaming. Where were we? What time period was it?"
The Undying Dream of Sail Freight
In the oil crisis of the '70s, "hardhead" former English teacher Ned Ackerman decided that the future of cargo transport was in its past: under sail. In 1976 he began building the schooner John F. Leavitt, the first cargo vessel built without an engine since 1938. The Leavitt foundered on its very first voyage, to Haiti - a dramatic failure chronicled in the documentary film Coaster (check out the poster). Since then, people continue to try to make the dream work: some efforts have gone by the wayside, like the Vermont Sail Freight Project of 2013-14 and the Salish Sea Trading Cooperative of 2010-15; meanwhile, a new generation even more motivated to engineer climate solutions is giving it a go: the Schooner Appollonia; SailCargo Inc., Timbercoast, and Grain de Sel. [more inside]
Big boat free!
Big Boat Stuck Again
This is not a Doubles Jubilee post, they really have done it again. Almost a year to the day since the EVER GIVEN wedged herself across the Suez canal, another Evergreen ship - the deliciously inaptly named EVER FORWARD - is hard aground in Chesapeake Bay. AIS tracking suggests she may have missed the turn into the Craighill Channel on her way out of Baltimore, putting the 43ft deep ship - all 120,000 tons of her - firmly aground on a shoal in only 24ft of water. Refloating her will be a major operation. Strap yourselves in folks, for another exciting round of maritime salvage rubbernecking.
Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Sunken Ship Endurance Found 10,000 Feet Down
Endurance: Shackleton's lost ship is found in Antarctic – 107 years after it sank, the Endurance, the lost vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, was found at the weekend at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. The ship was crushed by sea-ice and sank in 1915, forcing Shackleton and his men to make an astonishing escape on foot and in small boats. Video of the remains show Endurance to be in remarkable condition. Even though it has been sitting in 3km (10,000ft) of water for over a century, it looks just like it did on the November day it went down. Its timbers, although disrupted, are still very much together, and the name - Endurance - is clearly visible on the stern. BBC, March 9, 2022.
"In such vast ocean of matter and tumult strange"
Christine Riding, "Shipwreck, Self-preservation and the Sublime": Being "a subject that encourages the spectator to imagine 'pain and danger' and 'self-preservation,' 'without being actually in such circumstances' may well be why shipwreck ... was suited to the sublime." Hans Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator [PDF; chapter summaries: 1 + 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]: "Humans live their lives and build their institutions on dry land. Nevertheless, they seek to grasp the movement of their existence above all through a metaphorics of the perilous sea voyage." Supplementing many previouslies, a number of shipwreck narratives offer further occasions for reflection. [more inside]
Ever Given: Cargo ship that blocked Suez Canal arrives in Felixstowe
It's stuck
A 200,000 ton container ship is jammed sideways in the Suez Canal. A crew member on the ship behind has posted the view on Instagram of the MV Ever Given, one of the largest container ships in existence, stuck firmly across the canal. An excavator can be seen trying to dig the colossal bow of the 400m ship out of the east bank. Every available tug has been scrambled to assist, but it's now been several hours and the ship remains firmly stuck. AIS tracking data shows a traffic jam is forming at both ends of the Suez canal. Unless the stricken vessel can be freed, millions of tonnes of shipping will face a 5,500 mile diversion around the entire African continent.
“Who in their right mind would...” covid cruise ship edition
The number of passengers who have tested positive on the Caribbean cruise ship ("while enjoying a safe environment onboard") has increased to five. The sailing, with 53 passengers and 66 crew, was the first in the Caribbean by any cruise vessel since the coronavirus crisis was declared a pandemic in March. There were a few minor changes in onboard facilities and passengers socially distanced, with several tests before the ship set sail. Passengers are currently confined to cabins, with menus slid under their doors. (title)
Nobody was hurt.
“He’s Shiro the hero and he always will be.”
Voltron: Legendary Defender Had a Gay Character All Along [Vulture] [SPOILERS] “For those who grew up on the classic ’80s cartoon Voltron, Netflix’s remake, Voltron: Legendary Defender, will seem quite different. Yes, five mechanical lions still combine to form a giant robot that kicks ass in space, but the show has been modernized in ways large and small.” [more inside]
Pox across the water
As the 1800s dawned, 22 orphans boarded a Spanish ship, under the care of their orphanage director and a team of doctors and nurses. As they set sail across the Atlantic, the plan was set in motion: they infected one of the children with cowpox. Over the following months, they passed the virus from one child to the other, in carefully spaced succession, to create a living transmission chain that would reach the Americas. They thus carried the smallpox vaccine to the new world in what became known as the Balmis Expedition.
My lumps, my lumps, my Anglo-Saxon lumps
"Scientific analysis reveals origins of odd 'lumps' in Anglo-Saxon grave. How did bitumen from Syria wind up in a buried Anglo-Saxon boat?" [more inside]
In the autumn they issued a sack of potatoes per person
Frozen Dreams: Russia's Arctic obsession (16 min.) is a Financial Times video feature about Russian Federation preparations to take advantage of the Northern Sea Route opening up along its Arctic coast, which may at some point offer a preferable path for global shipping between the Atlantic region and East Asia, in comparison with the conventional route through the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, and Indian Ocean. [more inside]
Semi-Submersible Heavy Transport Vessels
The USNS Harvey Milk
The US Navy will name a new ship for assassinated San Francisco Supervisor, LGBT and civil rights leader, and Navy veteran Harvey Milk. [more inside]
Where ships go to die
"I think when the guests meet me they're pleasantly surprised"
Last survivors of the Indianapolis
Ballast
For the first time, "the wreckage of a slaving ship that went down with slaves aboard has been recovered." The recovery of artifacts from the 1794 shipwreck is a milestone for the African Slave Wrecks Project, a collaboration by six partner groups (including the National Museum of African-American Art and Culture and the National Parks Service) to find, document, and preserve archaeological remnants of the slave trade. Some of the objects will be included in exhibits in the NMAAHC.
BIG ANALOG
Tim Heffernan is a freelance writer interested in heavy industry and the natural world. [more inside]
The ship is the best lifeboat
SS Pieter Schelte
The "world's largest ship" is named after a Nazi war criminal. Unsurprisingly a few people have a problem with that.
"Whatever the orientation, fans are passionate about their ships"
"Perhaps shipping also reflects the yearning for a small moment of control in a chaotic world. Children often react to their inherent powerlessness by retreating to the wide-open spaces of their imagination. They make their dolls kiss (or fight), and feel a sense of control that they lack in the real world. As fans, people may not be the author of the fictional worlds they love to inhabit, but when they ship, they can momentarily grab the wheel in the most exhilarating of ways — envisioning and championing relationships that demonstrate their own mastery of a created universe, and their true feelings about how love should exist in that world, if not indeed in their own." [via mefi projects; single-page format]
Salvage, Without the Punk
“but are we not all wreckers contriving that some treasure may be washed up on our beach, that we may secure it [...]?” - Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod | A beginning: beating the meteorological odds. Fernand Braudel writes, in his famous study of the Mediterranean in the Age of Phillip, of the “Mediterranean victory over bad weather” – i.e. the advent of year-round shipping. Prior to this win over the seasons, risk could be countered only by physical division: many small ships, so that when things went bad, there was less to be lost. Yet the “victory,” emerging with the Genoese consolidation of maritime dominance and “fairs of exchange” prior to being surpassed by the Dutch, had less to do with new naval technologies than the substantiation and spread of robust insurance underwriting. This both backed riskier ventures (and therefore opened up the chance of larger-scale wrecks) and gave underwriters the rights to that wreckage, to lay “claim to any salvage.” [more inside]
A Supposedly Fun Thing You'll Maybe Click Around Once
Whale Ho
The Charles W. Morgan is the world's last remaining wooden whaleship. Her unusually long career included 37 whaling voyages between 1841 and 1921. Over the past few years, she's received a full restoration by the skilled shipwrights at the Mystic Seaport Museum Shipyard, and is in the final stages of outfitting for her 38th voyage, an ambituous plan to make her seaworthy enough to sail her one final time and visit her original homeport of New Bedford, MA, along with many of the ports she frequented in her working days, before she returns to her permanent berth. Among the crew will be one stowaway, a crew member chosen via a selective process including a video application, who'll use video and social media to tell the stories of the voyage, the crew, the accompanying scholars and artists, and what it's like to make amends with whales.
Cru[uuu]ise ship
Cruise ship not long enough? Want that "limousine" feel to your ocean-going craft? Why not cut it in half and stick an extra 99 feet of ship in the middle? (Skip to 1:16 for a great cross-section shot) [more inside]
A Sea Story
A Sea Story: One of the worst maritime disasters in European history [....]
Another gripping account by William Langewiesche. (Previously: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
Another gripping account by William Langewiesche. (Previously: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)
First, we must dispose of any obstacles
Rory and Paris: The Real Gilmore Girls
I am going to make you want something that you may or may not have already known that you wanted. I am going to make you realize that the real love story at the heart of Gilmore Girls took place between two tightly-wound, highly-strung, overachieving rivals-turned-roommates who wore matching ties and skirts and engaged in sexually charged fencing sessions. The mutual respect, admiration, and trust that sprang up between Rory Gilmore and Paris Gellar was hard-fought and slowly earned; theirs was a friendship forged and refined slowly over the years. They grew into the shape of one another. Put aside your dreams of Jess, that human sneeze; let Logan sail away on his yacht of indifference into the sunset: Rory/Paris are endgame.Femslash Friday is a series on The Toast ... [more inside]
Unsteady As She Goes, Mate
Containership’s Structure Visually Flexing in Heavy Seas — Underdeck time lapse video (16x normal speed) of the 294 meter MOL Excellence as she rolls, pitches, and yaws during a voyage from Tokyo to Los Angeles. Large ships are designed to flex while underway, but when seas get rough they can break like the MOL Comfort on June 17, 2013.
No, no, no---the other custom of the sea
You know what they say… When in Africa, create a mimed rendition music video of the 1983 smash hit “Africa” by Toto and post it on Youtube? I actually don’t know anyone who says that, but that’s just what the crew of a Subsea 7 contracted OSV did and their video is making the rounds this week on the internets. (slytp via gCaptain) [more inside]
It would have been cheaper to lower the Mediterranean
The cruise liner Costa Concordia is finally being raised (live footage) at a cost of more than $500m, in a delicate refloating procedure. Grounded since the 13th January 2012, when it ran aground at the Island of Giglio at the cost of 32 lives, the Costa Concordia will take 10-12 hours to be refloated, several more months to be prepared for towing and then taken off for scrap. [more inside]
Slowly but surely
It seems eco-friendly cargo ships are slowly on the rise.
Today i learned there is a full length documentary on Vimeo about one of these sailing vessels, the Tres Hombres; a bittersweet account of a voyage to transport supplies and aid to Haiti after the devastating earthquake: How Captain Longhair saved the World (HD, 42 min.).
Too Big to Fail Will Sail
Today, Danish shipping line Maersk took delivery of the new World's Largest Ship from Korean shipbuilder Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering. The M/V Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, a 165,000 metric ton container vessel, that is too big (particularly with her 48 foot loaded draft) to call on most North American ports, employs novel design and operating strategies to radically lower shipping costs. First in the new "Triple E" class of 20 similar ships on order by Maersk, the Mc-Kinney Møller will initially support container trade between Asian and European markets. [more inside]
An Account Of War At Sea
Samuel Leech, R.N., fought in the battle between the 38 gun HMS Macedonian, commanded by Captain John Surman Carden, and the 44 gun USS United States, Commodore Stephen Decatur on October 25th 1812.
A strange noise, such as I had never heard before, next arrested my attention; it sounded like the tearing of sails, just over our heads. This I soon ascertained to be the wind of the enemy's shot. The firing, after a few minutes' cessation, recommenced. The roaring of cannon could now be heard from all parts of our trembling ship, and, mingling as it did with that of our foes, it made a most hideous noise. By-and-by I heard the shot strike the sides of our ship; the whole scene grew indescribably confused and horrible; it was like some awfully tremendous thunder-storm, whose deafening roar is attended by incessant streaks of lightning, carrying death in every flash and strewing the ground with the victims of its wrath: only, in our case, the scene was rendered more horrible than that, by the presence of torrents of blood which dyed our decks.
"The reason they joined the Navy was because Starfleet Command wasn't hiring."
Aircraft Carriers in Space: Naval analyst Chris Weuve talks to Foreign Policy about what Battlestar Galactica gets right about space warfare.
Terra Nova, formerly Incognito
In a twist worthy of a bestseller or blockbuster, the remains of the shipwrecked Terra Nova have been identified just off the coast of Greenland, just in time to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Scott's ill-fated attempt to become the first man to reach the south pole.
On 6 June 1911 Robert Falcon Scott, who was born in Plymouth, celebrated his 43rd birthday at the south pole expedition base camp at Cape Evans. On 29 March 1912 he and his companions finally starved and froze to death in their tent, 11 miles from a supply cache, on the march back from discovering that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them to the pole.
First there was Flash Friday, and now . . .
Maritime Monday. (No NSFW images in this link, but some weeks there will be a random picture or two of a topless mer-person or sailor.)
Could the SHIELD Hellicarrier actually fly?
Could the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier from The Avengers movie actually fly? Last link does the math and has homework.
"If you believe in a principle, never damage it with a poor impression. You must go all the way." Charles Parsons
Unusual marketing technique: an inventor offered a demonstration of his custom-built speedboat design by speeding past security and crashing the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. [more inside]
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale...
In 1984, The Voyage of the Mimi set sail on PBS, exploring the ocean off the coast of Massachusetts to study humpback whales. The educational series was made up of thirteen episodes intended to teach middle schoolers about science and math. The first fifteen minutes of each episode were a fictional adventure starring a young Ben Affleck. The second 15 minutes were an "expedition documentary" that would explore the scientific concepts behind the show's plot points. A sequel with the same format, The Second Voyage of the Mimi aired in 1988, and featured the crew of the Mimi exploring Mayan ruins in Mexico. [more inside]
Page:
1 2