Third-class tea cup china used by passengers and the crew, is shown as part of the artifacts
collection at a warehouse in Atlanta, in this Aug 15, 2008 file photo. (AP Photo/Stanley Leary, File)

Just As The Ship Went Down
Words by Edith Maida Lessing ; Music by Bernie Adler & Sidney Gibson

A cold dark night, a sea of ice… (sheet  music viewable here)

Lead Belly – The Titanic

Edited version of a song by Huddy Ledbetter aka Leadbelly. Recorded by Alan Lomax in 1948.
(“Aint haulin no coal…” reference to race laws prohibiting black folk passage on the great boat)

- click link above please; embedding has been disabled -

- The Titanic under construction -

RMS stands for Royal Mail Ship, indicating that the Titanic was contracted to carry mail. The Titanic had a Post Office and Mail Room deep in the ship on decks F and G, the blue prints of which are held by the BPMA. The five postal workers were tasked with sorting much of the mail which had been brought on board the ship, 3,364 bags in total, as well as dealing with any letters which were posted on the ship by passengers and crew.

When the ship struck the iceberg, the postal workers were celebrating (an employee’s) 44th birthday. However, they soon realised that the Mail Room was flooding and so attempted to move 200 sacks of registered mail to the upper decks in the hope of saving them. They press-ganged several stewards into helping them, one of whom later recalled:

“I urged them to leave their work. They shook their heads and continued at their work. It might have been an inrush of water later that cut off their escape, or it may have been the explosion. I saw them no more…”

- The Post Office aboard the Titanic on Cruising the Past -
- image: The Royal Mail (1935) -

- RMS Titanic running the vessel SS New York off her moorings and almost colliding with her -

- Rotterdam Maritiem Museum; Titanic Tableware -

- see also: dinner plate – porcelein

‘Titanic’: ‘Downton Abbey’ Creator Julian Fellowes Brings The Titanic To Life In New ABC Special

7 to 10 p.m. Saturday and 8 to 9 p.m. Sunday on ABC

“Titanic,” a four-part miniseries written by “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes, will attempt to tell the whole story of what really happened on that fateful night in 1912 like you’ve never seen it done before.

“This is a portrait of a ship in a way that other versions haven’t been,” Fellowes told The Daily Mail at the press launch of the miniseries at the London Film Museum. “’A Night to Remember’ is a wonderful film but its mainly about the officers. James Cameron’s was another wonderful film, but that is a love story set against the sinking of the Titanic… We, right from the start, set out to tell the story of the whole ship.”

• keep reading on Huffington Post (slideshow)
• View Gallery
• Julian Fellowes Titanic Promo 2012 – YouTube

a week of titanica
on transpress nz

Titanic Wreck Site Gets UNESCO Protection

The wreck of the Titanic will come under UNESCO protection as the 100th anniversary of its sinking passes on 15 April, the United Nations cultural body said.

Since the British liner sank in international waters, “no State has exclusive jurisdiction over the wreckage area,” the Paris-based Unesco said in a statement.

For this reason, the wreck, as well as other vessels that sank in international waters at least 100 years ago, will fall under the cover of the 2001 UNESCO convention on the protection of underwater cultural heritage.

- more on Discovery News -

Asleep in the Deep
Words by A.J. Lamb ; Music by H.W. Petrie

Loudly the bell in the old tower rings, biding us list to the warning it brings…

As sung with success by Harry Tanner (inset photo)
On a stormy night, the lighthouse bell can be heard; on a ship are two lovers, unaware of the danger they face; the following day the sun shines, the wreckage lies on the shore, and the two lovers now rest in peace.

- Sheet music, 1897; The New York Public Library -

The Titanic is Doomed and Sinking
- Words by Owen Lynch, Music by Wm. H. Farrell (1912) -

Neil deGrasse Tyson Should Get an Editor’s Credit on the Titanic Re-Release

Seeing a popular motion picture reappear in theaters years after its initial release is not a new thing. However, as technical advances continue to speed exponentially forward, a film’s re-issue gives a filmmaker the opportunity to make strategic changes to the content of the film – alter digital effects, add new scenes, swap out one object for another.

Typically, if a director makes a change, it’s something that can be readily noticed and, hopefully, adds something new to the film.
Sometimes, though, you make a change just because a really cool astrophysicist asks you to do so – such as is the case with the re-release of James Cameron’s film Titanic. While Cameron went to notorious lengths to recreate the Titanic itself, he forgot to recreate everything else above it.

The Telegraph has revealed that while viewing the epic film, the brilliant Neil deGrasse Tyson was so bothered by the portrayal of the night sky on the evening of the Titanic’s sinking, he badgered Cameron to correct the mistake…

- keep reading on Mental Floss -

Duncan’s Cigarette cards; Evolution of the Steamship; SS Titanic
(see entire set)

How did Titanic really break up?
By Richard Woytowich | April 9, 2012

I’m a member of the Marine Forensics Committee, and author or co-author of three peer-reviewed papers on the “Titanic”. My most recent paper, “The Breakup Of Titanic – A Re-Examination of Survivor Accounts”, was presented at the First International Marine Forensics Symposium on April 4.

Working with Roy Mengot (with whom I co-authored one paper), I’ve been gathering evidence to support a reconstruction of the breakup of the “Titanic” that differs somewhat from the one you may have seen in movies or in other publications. The most important stages in our reconstruction are illustrated here

In our reconstruction, the failure began in the ship’s bottom structure, when the ship was at an angle of about 17 degrees. The failure spread across the breadth of the ship, then upward; it also spread forward and aft, probably along lightly riveted longitudinal seams, forming two separate pieces of the double bottom…

According to an article on the History Channel website, our work will be challenged in a documentary to be aired on the anniversary of the sinking.

- keep reading on Scientific American -

- Titanic Museum is situated in COBH near Cork, Ireland, the last port visited by the Titanic -

- White Star Tenders; vintage postcard -

Two of the tenders that ferried passengers out to the Titanic when she stopped at Queenstown

A Titanic Timeline, 1909-2012

From the great ocean liner’s construction to its sinking to its discovery on the ocean floor, the key moments in the Titanic‘s history. See our full centenary coverage here

For more on the Titanic, read our In-Depth Report:
The Titanic: 100 Years Later
A look back at one of the biggest moments in steamship history, including how Scientific American covered it.

For her maiden voyage, Titanic carried a total of 20 lifeboats of three different varieties:

• Lifeboats 1 and 2: emergency wooden cutters: 25 ft (7.62 m) 2 in long by 7 ft (2.13 m) 2 in wide by 3 ft (0.91 m) 2 in deep; capacity 326.6 cubic feet (9.25 m3) or 40 people.
• Lifeboats 3 to 16: wooden lifeboats: 30′ long by 9’1″ wide by 4′ deep; capacity 655.2 cubic feet (18.55 m3) or 65 people.
• Lifeboats A, B, C and D: Englehardt collapsible lifeboats: 27’5″ long by 8′ wide by 3′ deep; capacity 376.6 cubic feet (10.66 m3) or 47 people.

Boats on the starboard side were odd-numbered 1–15 from bow to stern, while those on the port side were even-numbered 2–16 from bow to stern. Lifeboats 1 and 2, the “emergency cutters”, were kept swung out, hanging from the davits, ready for immediate use while collapsible lifeboats C and D were stowed on the boat deck immediately in-board of boats 1 and 2 respectively.

Collapsible lifeboats A and B were stored on the roof of the officers’ quarters, on either side of number 1 funnel. However there were no davits mounted on the officers’ quarters to lower collapsibles A and B, and they weighed a considerable amount empty.

During the sinking, lowering collapsibles A and B proved difficult as it was first necessary to slide the boats on timbers and/or oars down to the boat deck. During this procedure, collapsible B capsized and subsequently floated off the ship upside down.

- more on Rare Titanic photos and letters -

The cry of “women and children first” during ship disasters
turns out to be more of a myth than reality.

Women More Likely to Die in Ship Disasters than Men

Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson of Uppsala University studied 18 passenger ship disasters that took place between 1852 and 2011, and the fate of more than 15,000 passengers and crew on the ships. 

Their study began with the 1852 sinking of the HMS Birkenhead because it is considered to be the source of the expression “women and children first.” The last known example of a captain actually giving the order that women and children should go first was the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915.

In the case of the Titanic, 73% of women were saved, but only 21% of men. However, the Birkenhead and the Titanic turn out to be the only two of the 18 disasters in which women really did have a survival advantage. In 11 cases, men were more likely to survive and in five cases there was no gender difference…

- image source -

- keep reading -

Titanic (1943) on I Shoot The Pictures

This is a version of Titanic done by Nazi Germany that was completed in 1943. By the late 1930?s films in Nazi Germany became nasty and very anti-Semitic… However, this movie is a breed apart from those films and that’s why Turner Classic Movies showed it and I recorded it.
Before I talk about the film there is a little back story. The film was originally being directed by Herbert Selpin until he made some comments that he shouldn’t have. He was taken away and later found dead in a prison cell. Werner Klingler was brought in to finish the film, which he did.

Goebbels, the head of propaganda in Nazi Germany, realized that maybe it wasn’t the smartest idea to release a film about a bunch of people dying considering this was Nazi Germany and it was 1943. I mean it’s not exactly a morale booster. So the film was shelved and presumed lost until it was found fairly recently…

keep reading

see also: Titanic (1943 film) – Wikipedia

_ _ _

In a recent lecture, Norman Brouwer said it is easy to tell the difference between the Olympic and the Titanic: the 1st class passenger promenade is open in Olympic, in the Titanic, it was closed off.

Also, fewer lifeboats (namely, twenty for 1,178 people) were on the Titanic as “the seagoing public unquestionably thoroughly appreciates the advantage presented by clear deck space as well as unrestricted view.” This quote was found by Conrad Milster in an 1910 engineering journal…

- keep reading on Bowsprite -

New Images Released By “National Geographic” Magazine

In a tricked-out trailer on a back lot of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), William Lange stands over a blown-up sonar survey map of the Titanic site—a meticulously stitched-together mosaic that has taken months to construct. At first look the ghostly image resembles the surface of the moon, with innumerable striations in the seabed, as well as craters caused by boulders dropped over millennia from melting icebergs.

On closer inspection, though, the site appears to be littered with man-made detritus—a Jackson Pollock-like scattering of lines and spheres, scraps and shards. Lange turns to his computer and points to a portion of the map that has been brought to life by layering optical data onto the sonar image. He zooms in, and in, and in again. Now we can see the Titanic’s bow in gritty clarity, a gaping black hole where its forward funnel once sprouted, an ejected hatch cover resting in the mud a few hundred feet to the north. The image is rich in detail: In one frame we can even make out a white crab clawing at a railing…

- keep reading -

left: members of the Titanic orchestra — right: Titanic Crew Memorial

• Surviving Titanic crew members at Terminus Station on the 29th April, after travelling back from New York
• Surviving Titanic crew members In Plymouth after travelling back from New York
• More surviving Titanic crew members In Plymouth after travelling back from New York

In 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote Futility, a novella that tells the rise and the fall of the Titan, the greatest man-made boat of all time.

It was touted as unsinkable, and launched from northern England across to the United States. The ship sinks after crashing head-on into an iceberg, and several thousand people perish because of woefully inadequate life boats. Are you seeing the similarities?

The book was intended to be a scathing social criticism of the selfish goals of industrialization, lambasting the fatcat tycoons who championed “progress” while overlooking human suffering. But it’s not remembered that way at all. It is instead forever known as the book that preceded the sinking of the Titanic, with countless, eerie similarities.

The Titan was 800 feet, Titanic was 882. Titan had 24 lifeboats (less than half necessary) and lost 2500 passengers, Titanic had 16 lifeboats (also less than half) and lost 2207 passengers. They both crashed into icebergs in April about 400 miles from Newfoundland, traveling too fast at over 22 knots.

- keep reading on Scuttlefish -

The Wreck of the Titanic: A descriptive Piano Composition by Jeannette Forrest
- instrumental sheet music -

Gavin Bryars – Opening Part I
The Sinking of The Titanic

(click link above to listen) Richard Gavin Bryars (born 16 January 1943) is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in, or has produced works in, a variety of styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism.

Bryars’s first works as a composer owe much to the New York School of John Cage (with whom he briefly studied), Morton Feldman, Earle Brown and minimalism. One of his earliest pieces, The Sinking of the Titanic (1969), is an indeterminist work which allows the performers to take a number of sound sources related to the sinking of the RMS Titanic and make them into a piece of music.  The first recording of this piece appeared on Brian Eno‘s Obscure Records in 1975. The 1994 recording of this piece was remixed by Aphex Twin as Raising the Titanic (later collected on the 26 Mixes for Cash album).

- more -

* Go log into itunes or Amazon or whatever musical teet-from-which-you-suck and download this.  It’s cool and will impress the chicks.

- The Titanic sinking by Ken Marschall; mini gallery here -

Marine Artist Ken Marschall Sails the Titanic into “Household-Namedom”

Ken Marschall (born October 28, 1950) is best known as the world’s foremost creator of Titanic artwork. Accomplished in photo-realistic rendering of anything from architecture to nature, it is Ken’s splendid, evocative Titanic paintings that are his legacy.

His minutely detailed portrayals of famous liners, naval vessels, airships and shipwrecks are admired for their realism, drama, historical accuracy, use of light and color, subtlety of detail and smoothness of line… they go where a camera cannot.

Renowned for bringing Titanic back to life with his paintbrush, Ken’s haunting portraits of the celebrated liner, often copied by others, are iconic images that have become part of Titanic’s history itself.

“… his paintings almost seemed to be stills from a movie that hadn’t yet been made. And I thought to myself… I can make these paintings live. It became my goal to accomplish on film what Ken had done on canvas, to will the Titanic back to life.”
James Cameron

• The Art of Ken Marschall; official website
• Trans-Atlantic Designs, Inc.;
  exclusive source for the largest collection of Titanic prints and posters by Ken Marschall
• Favorite/Least Favorite Ken Marschall Titanic Painting?;
  on encyclopedia titanica discussion board

- Meet the Titanic Experts on National Geographic -

see also: Titanic Art by Ken Marschall

Titanic Trivia:
After the sinking, J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, was so vilified for taking a seat in a lifeboat that the towns of Ismay, Texas, and Ismay, Montana, wanted to change their names.

- Sur les traces du RMS TITANIC -

Book publishers are releasing Titanic titles by the score. John Williams, of the New York Times, “Art Beat” recently wrote:

“The centennial anniversary of the Titanic disaster is April 14, and publishers appear to be hoping that readers maintain an almost infinite appetite for it. Viewed as a group, the number of Titanic-related books that have crossed my desk in recent weeks borders on the comical. But to dip into almost any one of them in particular is to be riveted by a story that remains deeply eerie, dramatic and heartbreaking…”

According to Williams, Titanic, First Accounts is “the loveliest of the bunch” and I trust him because he’s read them all, or so it seems. He also offers a short, but sweet analysis of the Titanic ”cottage industry.”

- Titanic — T-minus 24 on Ships on the Shore -

March 6, 1912:
Titanic (right) had to be moved out of drydock so her sister Olympic, which had lost a propeller, could have it replaced – see full size

The emergency signals were so strong from Titanic’s radio room, that they
reached the mainland United States and Greenland’s base station.

Wireless Could Have Saved Lives on Titanic

“Come at once. We have struck a berg.” The Titanic’s radio engineers sent this emergency message and many like it in Morse code, wirelessly, to anyone listening.

Two employees of Marconi, the company that made the system, operated the radio. It was the most powerful system of its kind, and the clear night helped the signal go far.

Many ships did receive the call. So did land-based stations in the United States and Greenland. Radio operators at the time were also skilled at transmitting messages quickly in code — 80 to 100 words per minute. With such capabilities, what went wrong?

For starters, Titanic’s communications system had its limits…

• keep reading on Discovery News
• History of Marconi House
• Marconi Company on wikipedia
• MarconiGraph’s Titanic Pages

Passengers on the deck of the Titanic taking a stroll. The price of a ticket was $4,400
USD in 1912, which is $80,000 dollars, at today’s rate of inflation

A uniform button belonging to William Murdoch, the bridge officer aboard the Titanic, is seen on
display before an exhibition opens to the public Tuesday, April 3, 2012, in Atlanta.

From the pitch-black depths 2½ miles beneath the North Atlantic, salvagers of the Titanic made a notable discovery when they located the personal effects of Murdoch, the bridge officer who tried in vain to keep the doomed ship from colliding with an iceberg.

The artifacts, including a shoe brush, straight razor and pipe, are the first (that belonged) specifically to Murdoch, a central figure in the disaster who gained added notoriety after James Cameron’s polemical portrayal of him in the 1997 blockbuster movie “Titanic.” (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Photo Galleries » RMS Titanic

see also: Recovered Items From the Famed Shipwreck on ABC News

LAS VEGAS (FOX5 VIDEO) - A candlelight vigil at Las Vegas’ Titanic exhibit commemorated
the 100 year anniversary of the ship’s maiden voyage Wednesday.

In new exhibit, ‘Titanic’ artifacts are still telling stories on accessATLANTA

- The gymnasium: Father Browne’s Titanic Album –
HOW TO BE A RETRONAUT

Newsreel that ran after the Titanic sank in 1912

To commemorate the one-hundredth anniversary of the Titanic’s sinking, British Pathe has released the original newsreel that ran following the maritime disaster (the music is a new addition). Witness survivors arriving in New York City and long-distance radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi receiving accolades for inventing such a life-saving device.

You can find further footage from the aftermath at the British Pathe’s archives.

Seven Famous People Who Missed the Titanic

Theodore Dreiser

The novelist, then 40, considered returning from his first European holiday aboard the Titanic; an English publisher talked him out of the plan, persuading the writer that taking another ship would be less expensive.

Dreiser was at sea aboard the liner Kroonland when he heard the news. He recalled his reaction the following year in his memoir, A Traveler at Forty: “To think of a ship as immense as the Titanic, new and bright, sinking in endless fathoms of water. And the two thousand passengers routed like rats from their berths only to float helplessly in miles of water, praying and crying!”

Guglielmo Marconi

The Italian inventor, wireless telegraphy pioneer and winner of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics was offered free passage on Titanic but had taken the Lusitania three days earlier.

Although Marconi was later grilled by a Senate committee over allegations that his company’s wireless operators had withheld news from the public in order to sell information to the New York Times, he emerged from the disaster as one of its heroes, his invention credited with saving more than 700 lives.
Three years later, Marconi would narrowly escape another famous maritime disaster. He was on board the Lusitania in April 1915 on the voyage immediately before it was sunk by a German U-boat in May.

- See full article on Smithsonian -

Der naser keiver oder Churbon Titanic (The Titanic’s disaster)
Sheet Music; c. 1912 – Arrangement for Piano

The Kosher Deli Born of a Shipwreck – J.A.Hyman (Titanics) Ltd of Manchester

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Rick Spilman

This story is so unlikely that it must be true…

When the Collapsible Lifeboat C from the RMS Titanic was picked up by the Carpathia, of the 41 aboard, there were two very different men, though their names, by virtue of alphabetization are adjacent to each other on the list of survivors –  Joseph Abraham Hyman, 34, a third class passenger, and Joseph Bruce Ismay, the chairman of the White Star Line, traveling in first class.  Despite their difference in social standing, both reportedly help row the lifeboat.

The sinking of the Titanic ruined Ismay.  Joseph Hyman did somewhat better. He was traveling to visit his brother in in New Jersey to start a new life.

After arriving in America, however, Joseph Hyman decided to return to Britain. (It is said, understandably, that he required a sizable quantity of alcohol before he could bring himself to board another ship.)  On his return, he decided to set up a kosher delicatessen like the ones that he had seen in New York.  And that is exactly what he did. In 1913 he established J.A.Hyman – Kosher Butcher and Deli in Manchester, England.

Of course, it was never known as J.A.Hyman’s.  It was always called by its customers, Titanics…

- Keep reading on Old Salt Blog -

A photograph released by Henry Aldridge & Son/Ho Auction House in Wiltshire, Britain, 18 April 2008, shows an extremely rare Titanic passenger ticket. They were the auctioneers handling the complete collection of the last American Titanic Survivor Miss Lillian Asplund. The collection was comprised of a number of significant items including a pocket watch, one of only a handful of remaining tickets for the Titanic’s maiden voyage and the only example of a forward emigration order for the Titanic thought to exist. Lillian Asplund was a very private person and because of the terrible events she witnessed that cold April night in 1912 rarely spoke about the tragedy which claimed the lives of her father and three brothers. (Henry Aldridge & Son/Ho) #

Titanic at 100 years: The Big Picture on Boston.com

- TITANIC Belfast museum -

Titanic Belfast is a visitor attraction and a monument to Belfast’s maritime heritage on the site of the former Harland and Wolff shipyard in the city’s Titanic Quarter.

• Inside Titanic Belfast, BBC News 14 March 2012
• Titanic Belfast website

Brian Handwerk
for National Geographic News
Published April 6, 2012

Titanic at 100: Be Among the Last to Dive to Wreck Site?

With increased access, ship’s survival is in jeopardy, advocates warn.

“I think one thing that captures people is a direct link to this almost mythological maritime character, the Titanic,” said Rob McCallum of Deep Ocean Expeditions, which holds exclusive charter for Titanic dives.

But summer 2012 is the first season since 2005 that Deep Ocean Expeditions has taken people to the Titanic—and it could be the last.

“For a variety of reasons, these are the last dives that the Deep Ocean Expeditions is going to do on Titanic,” said McCallum, whose company began diving to the Titanic in 1998. The outfitter also takes tourists to the Bismarck shipwreck, the North Pole, deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and other extreme sites.

“Our support ship is going into retirement soon, and the submersibles are going to go back into government work.”

keep reading

The Big Picture — Titanic’s port bow rail, chains and an auxiliary anchor boom. Dr. Robert Ballard, the man who found the remains of the Titanic nearly two decades ago, returned to the site and lamented damage done by visitors and souvenir hunters. (Institute for Archaeological Oceanography & Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island Grad. School of Oceanography) #

The Band Played “Nearer My God to Thee” As the Ship Went Down
Words by Mark Beam; Music by Harold Jones
for voice and piano, 1912

A few months ago, my girlfriend and I sat down to watch the best movie ever made about the Titanic – and no, I’m not referring to the one rereleased this past weekend in 3D.

I think the world is divided into two camps: those who love James Cameron’s Hollywood epic, and those who never want to hear the word Titanic again because of it…

• keep reading
• A Night to Remember (1958) on IMDb
• The TITANIC Movies – Complete List – From the Cinema to TV

Danish passenger liner SS Norge (wikipedia)

Leith Built Ships: April 2012; Titanic 100 years on

The ship was a converted livestock carrier carrying mostly Scandinavian’s but no famous or wealthy people on this vessel. The bit that really got to me about this story was the fact that after the disaster, J.B.Ismay, (chairman of the White Star Line) sent the owners of the Norge a telegraph to commiserate with them on the loss of the ship –  one ship owner to another — with no mention at all made of the huge loss of life…

Before the Titanic, this was the deadliest civilian maritime disaster on record. Danish passenger ship Norge (built 1891) left Copenhagen for New York City, but crashed into a reef near Rockall, an uninhabited island northwest of Scotland. Because its lifeboats could hold only a fraction of the nearly 800 passengers on board, more than 600 died. The 160 who did make it into lifeboats were afloat for a week before being rescued. (text source)

Titanic Museum; Pigeon Forge, Sevier County, TN

The Titanic Pigeon Forge is the world’s largest permanent Titanic Museum Attraction. There are over 400 personal and private artifacts on display that can be viewed during the 2 hour self-guided tour. The collection is valued at over four and a half million dollars.

Each visitor is given a boarding pass with the name of an actual Titanic passenger or crew member. At the end of the tour you will learn of your passenger’s fate.

- official web site -
- photo by Jerry Jaynes –

Titanic life vest fetches £43,000

One of the Titanic’s few remaining lifejackets has been sold to a private collector for £43,000 ($80,000).

The auction at Devizes in Wiltshire also featured dozens of letters sent by some of the 1,500 people who died when the ship sank in the Atlantic in 1912.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said most items sold for more than expected to collectors from around the world.

One letter, in which passenger Edward Colley wrote of an earlier near-miss with a liner, made £18,000, he said.

The Irish aristocrat who died on his 37th birthday, had poked fun at the service on board the ship in the letter.

The company did not want souvenir hunters, so a lot of things, including clothing, were put in big piles and burned…
Alan Aldridge, auctioneer

“He mentioned, for instance, that the ordinary grub in first class was quite good – but if you wanted anything better you had to pay for it,” said Mr Aldridge, who conducted the sale in south-west England…

- keep reading on encyclopedia titanica –
- image via pinterest -

Margaret Brown (right) giving Captain Arthur Henry Rostron an
award for his service in the rescue of the Titanic‘s survivors

The 13,564 ton RMS Carpathia was three days out of New York, heading for Gibraltar and a Mediterranean cruise when her radio operator picked up the Titanic’s distress calls.

The sinking liner’s position was fifty-eight miles to the north west of the Carpathia. With a top speed of fourteen knots, it would take the Carpathia four hours to reach the scene. Captain Arthur H. Rostron guided his ship at night through ice and reached the Titanic’s last reported position at 4.00 am. It had taken three-and-a-half hours – thirty minutes quicker than estimated.

As day broke, he saw the Titanic’s lifeboats scattered over a four-mile area of sea. The Carpathia returned to New York on 18th April with all the survivors.

Tributes were heaped on Captain Rostron – scrolls, loving cups, testimonial dinners – and a medal honouring him was struck by the U. S. Congress. But the strangest ‘thank you’ gift of all came from Margaret Brown; an item that remained in the possession of Captain Rostron until his death in 1940.

- Servant of the Deep: The mystery of the Titanic Shabti -

Jaime Brockett & The Legend Of The Titanic

An interesting piece from 1968. Bizarre, humorous, almost psychotic at times…

Jaime Brockett (pronounced “Jamie”) is a memorable and uniquely stylish New England folksinger. As the Boston Globe described him, Jaime is a “hard-core, unregenerated folkie.”

His popularity soared, as a recording artist and performer, starting in the 1960s, when his version of Legend of the USS Titanic became an overnight classic.

Despite the song’s length — over three minutes, an extraordinarily long recording for that era — radio stations made time to play it anyway…

read more

You Tube: 1970 Capitol reissue of the Oracle Records release

- “Damn, I knew we forgot something” -

- House flag, White Star Line; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London -

Some more misc. stuff:

• Crane at Harland and Wolf
• Souvenir image of the launching of the RMS Titanic
• titanicrecounts’s Blog
• http://www.titanicuniverse.com/

Monkey Fist

Monkey Fist is a smack-talking, potty mouthed, Yankee hating, Red Sox fan in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to compiling Maritime Monday, she blogs about nautical art, history, and marine science on Adventures of the Blackgang.

Submit story ideas, news links, photographs, or items of interest to her at MM@gcaptain.com. She can also out-belch any man.

In an agreement for the financing, archaeological survey, excavation, conservation, and finally exhibition of HMS Victory (1744) and artifacts from the shipwreck site, the Maritime Heritage Foundation agreed yesterday to allow Odyssey to conduct the salvage operation.

HMS Victory was a British First Rate Warship that sank during a storm in 1744 while under the command of Admiral Sir John Balchin. Odyssey discovered her in 2008 and is the legal “salvor-in-possession” of the wreck. After a period of joint consultation between the UK Ministry of Defence and the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and a public consultation period, the remains of HMS Victory were transferred to the Maritime Heritage Foundation in January 2012. The Foundation, a charity established to locate shipwrecks, investigate, recover and preserve artifacts to the highest archaeological standards and to promote knowledge and understanding of Britain’s maritime heritage, has now assumed responsibility for the future management of the wreck site.

Maritime Heritage Foundation Chairman Sir Robert Balchin

“We are honored to work with the Maritime Heritage Foundation on the Victory project, an important piece of British naval heritage. Since our discovery of HMS Victory, we’ve continued to monitor the site and have sadly noted significant changes to the site including four ton cannon that have been dragged and damaged, as well as the illicit recovery of a cannon by another salvor, signs that the idea of preserving the site in situ is clearly not practical,” said Greg Stemm, Odyssey CEO. “We plan a phased approach which will include an initial non-disturbance survey and expect to begin the archaeological excavation as soon as practical.”

“We hope that this site will give us a unique insight into the world of the mid-eighteenth century Royal Navy,” stated Sir Robert Balchin, the Chairman of the Maritime Heritage Foundation. “We are very concerned that natural erosion, damage from fishing vessels and illegal looting may endanger the wreck and therefore we have planned an archaeological survey that will record the site before it deteriorates further. Odyssey Marine Exploration has proved its expertise and we are looking forward to working with them to protect the maritime heritage associated with Balchin’s Victory.”

Pursuant to the executed agreement Odyssey has produced an extensive project design for the archaeological excavation of the site, including a complete plan for recording, documentation, conservation, publication and public education. Once the project plan is approved by the Foundation, fieldwork is expected to begin in early 2012, depending on weather conditions and equipment availability.

The agreement calls for Odyssey’s project costs to be reimbursed and for Odyssey to be paid a percentage of the recovered artifacts’ fair value. The preferred option is for Odyssey to be compensated in cash. However, if the Foundation determines, based on the principles adopted for its own collection management and curation policy, that it is in its best interest to de-accession certain artifacts, the Foundation may choose to compensate Odyssey with artifacts in lieu of cash.
Odyssey will receive the equivalent of 80% of the fair value of artifacts which were primarily used in trade or commerce or were private property and bear no direct connection to the construction, navigation, defense or crew of the ship, such as coins or other cargo.

Odyssey will receive the equivalent of 50% of the fair value of all other objects typically associated with the construction, crewing and sailing of ships including, but not limited to, the ship’s hull, fittings, fasteners, construction elements, clothing, organic remains, foodstuffs, cooking utensils, pottery, weapons, ammunition, ground tackle and navigational equipment.

For any private property including coins or other cargo administered through the Receiver of Wreck, the Foundation has agreed that Odyssey shall receive 80% of the value.

A Private Curatorship Program will be established by the Foundation for certain artifacts from the site considered to be suitable for de-accession to prevent their irretrievable dispersal and to allow ongoing scientific study.

original: Kommissar X / Heft-Reihe

Twelfth body found, divers retrieve captain’s papers

Divers yesterday found a woman’s body on the sunken Costa Concordia, bringing the death toll to 12. The woman was found wearing a ­life jacket in a corridor on an underwater section of the ship’s fourth deck. By late yesterday she had still not been named.

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Seafarers outraged that captain jumped ship

STOCKHOLM

Seafaring tradition holds that the captain should be last to leave a sinking ship. But is it realistic to expect skippers to suppress their survival instinct amid the horror of a maritime disaster? To ask them to stare down death from the bridge, as the lights go out and the water rises, until everyone else has made it to safety?

From mariners on ships plying the world’s oceans, the answer is loud and clear: Yes.

“It’s a matter of honor that the master is the last to leave,’’ said Jorgen Loren, captain of a passenger ferry operating between Sweden and Denmark and chairman of the Swedish Maritime Officer’s Association. “Nothing less will do in this profession.’’

more on The Boston Globe

A Short History of The COSTA CONCORDIA on Maritime Matters

BBC; Jan 20th: Costa Concordia disaster; What happened?

USAtoday: Cruise ship might have had unregistered passengers

Christian Science Monitor: Stowaways the latest uncertainty

MirrorUK: Captain: I wouldn’t have wanted to be in charge of the Titanic

msnbc: Cruise ship captain says he was told to perform fatal maneuver — Video: Robots monitor beached ship

TelegraphUK: cruise ship captain ‘cried like a baby’

Father Raffaele Malena said he was among the last to leave the ship at around 1.30am local time on Saturday and then stayed “close to the injured” in the tiny harbour of Giglio.

“I descended on the rope ladder. I was picked up by a little lifeboat,” he said.

Around an hour later, the captain, Franceso Schettino, appeared.

“I spoke to the captain. He embraced me for about a quarter of an hour and cried like a baby,” Father Malena told French magazine Famille Chrétienne…

more

TelegraphUK: Costa Concordia: stricken cruise ship becomes tourist spectacle

Hundreds of visitors travel from all over Italy to see the half submerged vessel for themselves. ‘Disaster day-trippers’ have flocked from all over Italy, many driving for hours, to see the 1,000ft-long, 14-storey luxury liner wedged at an angle of 90 degrees…

Cruise liner served as a self-conscious metaphor for western capital ploughing through choppy waters in Film Socialisme

Anyone who sat through Film Socialisme may have suspected that the Costa Concordia was heading for trouble. The cruise liner was the setting for the first “movement” of Jean-Luc Godard’s ambitious, infuriating 2010 picture, serving as a self-conscious metaphor for western capital ploughing through choppy waters.

In Godard’s film, the Concordia plays the role of a decadent limbo where the tourists drift listlessly amid the ritzy interiors. The passengers include a UN official and an elderly war criminal. The onboard entertainment comes courtesy of an unsmiling Patti Smith… (Xan Brooks – guardian.co.uk)

Costa Concordia provided setting for a 2010 Jean-Luc Godard film

Jan. 20, 2012 -  As investigators try to figure out exactly what went wrong with the capsized cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Italian coast, maritime experts look back at historic maritime disasters so horrific they prompted new rules.

“I like to say the laws and regulations are written in blood,” said Kevin Gilheany, a consultant based in New Orleans who specializes in maritime safety compliance and spent 20 years in the U.S. Coast Guard.

The past is full of tragedy at sea. Gilheany and other maritime experts highlighted these five deadly maritime disasters involving passenger vessels as ones that particularly shocked the public.

Here, the MV Princess of the Stars is seen capsized off the coast of San Fernando, Romblon. The ship capsized at the height of Typhoon Fengshen on June 21, 2008. More than 800 people died in the accident.

Five Maritime Disasters That Shocked the World on Discovery News

Tissot (French, 1836–1902) is best known for his depictions of fashionable Parisian women – HMAS Culcutta, painted in 1877;  A Peaceful Christmas – see also The Hull of a Ship

Fog At Sea – Back to work. Pilot boat pulls away after getting pilot off at the seabuoy. Ran in thick fog across Galveston Bay. LARGE – photo by OneEighteen

The German maritime artist Zeno Diemer (who died in 1939) was not afraid to use strong contrasts. His paintings have that typical German precision but are in no way lacking in energy.

The use of a warm colour (red in the ships) acts as a foil to the the cool colours in the waves. Golden yellow in the sky contrasts with the Prussian or Cobalt Blue waves.

Michael Zeno-Diemer (more images)

BBC: Mapping Earth’s surface in 3D

The German satellite radar twins – TanDEM-X and TerraSAR-X – are a year through their quest to make the most precise, seamless map of varying height on Earth.

They’ve now acquired data across the entire globe at least once. However, some tricky sampling areas, such as tall mountains and thick forests, will require several passes and so we don’t expect to see a fully finished product before 2014.

The Digital Elevation Model, or DEM, has become one of those must-have technical tools…

keep reading

Vintage Postcard: Il disasiro di Messina

This rather disturbing postcard was sent home to Llyn on the 9th of January 1912, and the message on the back reads; “SS Harrovian, Messina. Arrived here this morning for coal (bunkers) we will be sailing tonight for Constantinople. This is the place where they had the earthquake three years ago, All the Best, Evan.”

On December 28, 1908, at approximately 5:20am, Europe’s most powerful earthquake shook southern Italy. Cantered in the Messina Strait, the quake’s magnitude equaled a 7.5 by today’s Richter scale. Moments after the quake’s first jolt, a devastating Tsunami formed, causing forty-foot waves to crash down on dozens of coastal cities. Messina’s population of 150,000 was reduced to only hundreds, and the total death toll throughout Italy was estimated at nearly 200,000. The uniformed men in the photograph were from a Russian Naval warship, who helped with the rescue.

• a collection of postcards sent home to Llyn, by seafarers on their travels

Messina: The once beautiful Water-front after the earthquake – Underwood & Underwood

News of the disaster was carried by Italian torpedo boats to Nicotera, where the telegraph lines were still working, but that was not accomplished until midnight at the end of the day. Rail lines in the area had been destroyed, often along with the railway stations.

The Italian navy and army responded and began searching, treating the injured, and evacuating refugees (as did every ship). Looters soon had to be shot. The disaster made headlines worldwide and international relief efforts were launched. With the help of the Red Cross and sailors of the Russian and British fleets, search and cleanup were expedited.

Recently it has been proposed that the concurrent tsunami was not generated by the earthquake, but rather by a large undersea landslide it triggered.

In the midst of reconstruction many of the Italian residents were relocated to various parts of Italy. Others were forced to emigrate to America. In 1909 the cargo ship RMS Republic (1903) carried 850 such passengers away from Naples. Lost in a dense fog, the Florida collided with the Republic, a luxury passenger liner. Three people aboard the Florida were killed instantly.

Within minutes, pandemonium broke out on the ship. The captain of the Florida, Angelo Ruspini, used extreme measures to regain control of the desperate passengers, including firing gunshots into the air. Eventually the survivors were rescued at sea and brought into the New York harbor where they would start a new life.

• source
• inset image of SS Florida source: RMS Republic (1903) on wiki

vintage postcard of White Star liner R.M.S. Republic

The morning of January 23rd was a foggy one in the busy shipping lanes off the eastern coast of America. White Star liner R.M.S. Republic was 50 miles into her journey from New York to the Mediterranean and was proceeding with caution due to the poor visibility. Suddenly, at 5.30 am, Republic was rocked by an enormous collision – she had been hit by another liner!

“Rammed by unknown steamship…Badly in need of assistance”

keep reading

Wreck of the RMS Republic

In the summer of 1986, 37 men sailed from NYC aboard the salvage vessel Twin-drill to the last known location of the RMS Republic which had sunk in 1909 following a collision with the vessel SS Florida.  Sixty miles south of the Nantucket lightship this team of explorers put 4 men in helium/oxygen saturation and spent 12 to 16 hours bottom time per day diving on the wreck.

The crew also used submarines and robot vehicles to probe the wreck and document thousands of rare artifacts including a working Edison light bulb.  The Republic was the first ship to use the Marconi radio in an emergency and the first ship to be electrified with Edison lights.

The ship carried some of the world’s leading businessmen and their families, some of whom would later be killed on the Titanic.  The entire 2nd class quarters were filled with provisions for the US Navy’s “Great White Fleet”.

Three people were killed in the initial collision; and more than 1600 were transferred first to the Florida and then to the Baltic, which had been summoned by radio.  All came ashore safely.

• source (text)
• See also Treasure of the RMS Republic
• image: Republic Starboard from The RMS Republic image gallery

SS Florida in Drydock (see full image)

Floating Dock arrives in Bermuda 1869

In 1854, a 600-foot slip was proposed at a cost of 35,000 pounds sterling but considered too costly. Three years later there was a plan for a dry-dock and yet another slip in 1862. Then it was decided Bermuda should have a floating dock. It was built by English floating dock engineers Campbell & Johnstone at Blackwall on the River Thames and completed on June 23, 1869.

from Bermuda’s Royal Navy base at Ireland Island from 1815 to the 1960s

see also: Location of the Bermuda Floating Dock

Ogden’s Cigarettes “Records of the World” (series of 25 issued in 1908)
#22 “Great Western” ~ the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, 1838 – #13 R.M.S. Mauretania ~ “the largest steamship afloat”

The wreck of the Peter Iredale on the Oregon coast in 1906. Thanks to the lighthouse Terrible Tilly, all 27 members of her crew survived.(via crueltyandgrandeur)

Amphicar (1961): equally bad on the road and in the water

There was a certain sinking feeling about this bizarre concept car, seemingly thought up by a drunk car designer who had watched far too many Bond films.

Able to drive on land and ride on water, the Amphicar wasn’t watertight and therefore only floated for as long as a pump held out or passengers could bucket the rising flood overboard.

With a top speed of 7 mph when on water, consumers decided to keep their cars and boats as separate vehicles.

The World’s Worst (and Ugliest) Cars

Gibraltar; vintage postcards on  RMS Republic – above: Bird’s eye view of the Harbour

Gibraltar; Bird’s Eye View, panorama photo.  see full size: 2374 by 515 px

The SR.N4 (Saunders-Roe Nautical 4) hovercraft (also known as the Mountbatten class hovercraft)  Built by the British Hovercraft Corporation (BHC). BHC was formed by the merger of Saunders-Roe and Vickers Supermarine in 1966.

The first design was 40 metres (131 ft) long, weighed 190 long tons (193 t), was capable of 83 knots (154 km/h) and could cruise at over 60 knots (111 km/h). The SR.N4s operated services across the English Channel between 1968 and 2000, until the abolition of duty free made their service unprofitable.

more on wiki

“Established over 40 years ago as a fast, efficient and futuristic means of crossing to France, the service was seen as the future of sea travel. The Princess Margaret went on its first trip in 1968 (this photo was taken in 1997), but in 2005 the service was cancelled and the giant SR.N4s now sit at the Hovercraft museum at Lee-On-Solent.”  (image source)

The Costa Contadora voyage was a one-way trip to ignominy. But the USCG Cutter Healy made a voyage to cheer: breaking 300 miles of ice to escort a tanker bringing desperately needed fuel to Nome, Alaska.

The Healy voyage in pictures. (via captainrande)

Fier’s Ship House Gigantic water vessel, permanently grounded in Southern Albania

A good distance inland from the blue-green Adriatic Sea, and with no harbor in sight for miles, this strange house that looks like a ship rises out of the flatlands of inner Albania.

Although much of Albania’s architecture often strays from the boring, this humongous ship house towers seven stories over the landscape on the road between Fier and Berat, Albania. Complete with multiple layers, giant portholes and a massive front deck, the ship house is a unique, white-washed tribute to Albania’s nautical history.

Atlas Obscura

• see also: Nazino Island; Social outcasts and cannibalism in Stalin’s Soviet Union

• Vozrozhdeniye Island – Former island in the Aral Sea used to be a top-secret Russian bio-weapons facility

• The First Sea-Punk Mural – Art from the latest counter-culture; kids who dye their hair blue and believe the future will be a post-apocalyptic water world

fuckyeahtattoos

Source: hollow-anchors – via theladyfish

Maori children onboard HMS Penguin; between 1902 and 1905

SS City of Columbus – See the image gallery

This Day In Wrecks (via fuckyeahwrecks)

01-18-1884: The City of Columbus runs aground on Devil’s Bridge Reef near Gay Head, MA, drowning 103 of her 132 passengers and crew.

• Historical Perspective: City of Columbus wrecked 128 years ago on The Martha’s Vineyard Times
• DISASTER ON DEVILS BRIDGE S.S. City of Columbus on Quest Marine Services

Olympics terror drill on the Thames

Edgar Allan Poe ‘toaster’ tradition is no more

By Maura Judkis; 01/19/2012

For the final time on Jan. 19, fans of Edgar Allan Poe conducted a graveside vigil waiting for a mysterious Poe fan to leave a late-night tribute. The tradition of the “Poe Toaster” — an anonymous man who, for more than 60 years, appeared at Poe’s Baltimore grave on the author’s birthday in a wide-brimmed hat and white scarf, leaving three roses and a half-empty bottle of French cognac — is nevermore.

more on The Washington Post

Panama Canal expansion workers strike over pay

Several thousand workers at a major project to widen the Panama Canal are on indefinite strike over pay. The strikers are demanding higher wages, as well as back pay. The consortium behind the $5.25bn (£3.4bn) project says its salaries are above average but acknowledged there had been payroll problems.

The Panama Canal, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, handles some 5% of world trade with about 14,000 ships passing through each year. Workers at the site downed tools on Monday.

They are demanding an increase in the basic pay from $2.90 to $4.90 an hour, with skilled workers getting a rise from $3.52 to $7.10. They also say they are due overtime payments and are calling for an improvement in safety.

• more on BBC
• Panama Canal expansion halted amid labour dispute; Dredging News Online

Cargo ship Aztec Maiden runs aground off Netherlands

A cargo ship has run aground on the Dutch coast 20km (12 miles) west of Amsterdam after its anchor slipped in an overnight storm. The empty vessel appeared to be stable after drifting towards the coast and rescue services said there was no sign of any fuel leak. It was named as the 155-metre (500-foot) Aztec Maiden, a Philippine-registered freighter with a crew of 21.

There were no reports of injuries after the ship broke free and drifted, coming to rest on sand about 200m (yds) offshore, near the North Sea coastal town of Wijk aan Zee.

more on BBC

Cargo ship damaged off Istanbul after brushing against 2 other vessels

ANKARA, Turkey — A cargo ship brushed against two anchored vessels during severe weather off the coast of Istanbul on Friday and was left tilted to one side and taking on water, officials said. A senior maritime official said the disabled ship is not in danger of sinking, but most of its crew members were evacuated.

• more on The Washington Post
• Ships Collide in Bosporus — Wall Street Journal
• Ship sinking after collision in Bosphorus: agent — Reuters Canada

Chew Trading Co. of Singapore – trade card, 1950s – Chinese fancy goods – including reptile skin hand bags and Bali heads. – posted by mikeyashworth

Monkey Fist

Monkey Fist is a smack-talking, potty mouthed, Yankee hating, Red Sox fan in Baltimore, Maryland.  In addition to compiling Maritime Monday, she blogs about nautical art, history, and marine science on Adventures of the Blackgang.

Submit story ideas, news links, photographs, or items of interest to her at MM@gcaptain.com.  She can also out-belch any man.

Graysby, Epinephelus cruentatus, Key Biscayne, FL, USA – (photo: Evan D’Alessandro, MBF) (via rhamphotheca)

]]> http://gcaptain.com/maritime-monday-january-twentythree-twentytwelve/?38073/feed/ 0 http://gcaptain.com/dead-cruise-ship-world-discoverer/?31514 http://gcaptain.com/dead-cruise-ship-world-discoverer/?31514#comments Tue, 27 Sep 2011 17:25:08 +0000 John Konrad http://gcaptain.com/?p=31514

Photo By David Krakowski

Built as the BEWA Discoverer in 1976, the vessel was sold to Adventure Cruises Inc. and renamed the World Discoverer. The ship was then put on a long term charter to Society Expeditions Cruises. With a double hull construction, the vessel was classed for periodic voyages to Antarctic Peninsula region and carried a fleet of inflatable dinghies allowing passenger to move closer to ice floes for observation. During the period from November through February, the ship conducted cruises in the Southern Hemisphere and visited places like Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, Chile, Ushuaia, Argentina.  While on a South Pacific cruise through the Soloman Islands’ Sandfly Passage in April 2000,  she quickly, and unexpectedly, developed a 20 degree list.

Captain Oliver Kruess sent a distress signal to the Solomon Islands capital Honiara and passenger ferry was dispatched to the ship to transport the passengers to safety.  All escaped without injury. The captain then brought the ship into Roderick Bay after the ship began to list 20 degrees and grounded it to avoid sinking. After an underwater survey of the ship, the World Discoverer was declared a “constructive loss” and has remained in Roderick Bay ever since. There were no reports of any oil, petroleum or other pollutant spills as a result of the impact and no reports on how much pollutant remains in her hull.

Salvage Attempt

An Australian salvage company was the first to survey the scene and, quite understandbly, found the ship ransacked by the locals and other factions. The Solomon Islands were undergoing civil war and locals had salvaged all items of potential value. Now with a 46 degree list, tidal activity further damaged the ship and the salvage company backed away from the recovery leaving the ship to rust in Roderick Bay. The ship has since became a tourist attraction with the locals of the island giving unauthorized tours and cruise ships passing by for tourists to gawk at her remains.

The ship can still be seen today on Google Maps.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Via Gizmodo

1.  USCGC White Alder (1968):

Longtime residents of New Orleans still discuss the plight of the White Alder, a former Navy YF-257-class lighter assigned to tend river aids-to-navigation and various other Coast Guard duties. The ship met its demise in the early evening of December, when it collided with a 455-foot Taiwanese freighter in the Mississippi River near White Castle, Louisiana, killing 17 of the 20 crew members. Just three of the dead were recovered due to the thick river sediment that quickly buried the cutter. More than 40 years later, 14 crewmen remain at the bottom of the Mississippi.

2.  SS Edmund Fitzgerald (1977):

Perhaps America’s most famous modern shipwreck, the Edmund Fitzgeraldis still a fresh wound for the families of the 29 crew members who perished that night. When it was launched, it was the biggest ship on the Great Lakes, and its large hauls made it extremely valuable during its 17-year run. En route to a steel mill near Detroit from Superior, Wisconsin, the freighter encountered a winter storm with hurricane-force winds that created 35-foot waves. With a bad list, broken radars and water engulfing the deck, it sank 17 miles from Whitefish Bay. No distress signals were sent out, and Captain Ernest McSorley, who planned to retire at the end of shipping season, last reported “We are holding our own.”

3.  Rainbow Warrior (1985):

A former UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food trawler, the Rainbow Warrior was operated by Greenpeace to curtail whaling, seal hunting and nuclear testing, most notably evacuating 300 Marshall Islanders from Rongelap Atoll, a former US nuclear testing area. Docked in a harbor in New Zealand, it suffered two large, crippling explosions that sent it under water — photographer Fernando Pereira was killed when he returned to the ship to collect his equipment as the second explosion occurred. Two French secret service agents were arrested, and the nation denied involvement until a British newspaper revealed French President Francois Mitterrand authorized the plan. The scandal resulted in several high-profile resignations in the French government.

4.  MS Herald of Free Enterprise (1987):

During the early stages of its trip across the English Channel from Dover, South East England to the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, the Herald of Free Enterprise began taking on water, listing and then capsizing in just 90 seconds. The sudden turn of events ended with the deaths of 193 people, many of whom were overcome by hypothermia in the 3-degree Celsius waters. One man disappeared after he made himself into a human bridge to save his wife, daughter, and other passengers. Failure to close the bow doors resulted in the worst peacetime maritime disaster for a British-registered ship since the Titanic disaster 75 years earlier.

5.  MV Dona Paz (1987):

Never before has there been a worse ferry disaster. The Dona Paz, en route from Tacloban City to Manila in the Philippines amid choppy seas, collided with the MT Vector, an oil tanker carrying 8,800 barrels of gasoline. Most of the passengers were asleep, so few had time to react as a fire aboard the Vector spread rapidly to the Dona Paz. With life jackets locked away and a confused crew, the passengers’ chances of survival were slim. Philippine maritime authorities heard about the accident eight hours later, taking an additional eight hours to conduct search and rescue operations. Just 26 survived from both ships; the estimated number of passengers who died varies, ranging from just more than 1,500 to 4,000.

6.  MS Estonia (1994):

As the largest ship belonging to the recently liberated Estonia, the MS Estonia served as an object of pride for the nation. It also caused horrible despair. Destined for Stockholm from Estonia, it struggled through a storm with 35 to 45 mph winds and 10-to 13-foot waves, weather typical for the Baltic Sea in the fall. When water flooded the vehicle deck, the ship rolled to 90 degrees, prompting the ship’s crew to communicate a mayday. Ferries and helicopters arrived at the scene during the next couple hours, rescuing 138 people — including one who died at the hospital. Drowning and hypothermia caused 852 deaths, the largest peacetime shipwreck disaster in the history of the Baltic Sea.

7.  New Carissa (1999):

Fortunately, no lives were lost during the grounding of the New Carissa, but it did have an adverse impact on Oregon’s coastline. Approaching Port of Coos Bay, it was forced to anchor due to poor weather conditions and thus delay its arrival. A short chain and high winds, however, dragged the ship toward the shore, and by the time the crew had figured it out, it was too late. The vessel ran aground and two of its fuel tanks spilled 70,000 gallons of fuel oil and diesel, eventually killing 3,000 shorebirds and seabirds. Attempts to burn off the oil caused the ship to break into two, and it was later dismantled in 2008 despite becoming somewhat of a tourist attraction.

8.  World Discoverer (2000):

The German-based cruise ship was constructed with a double hull to prevent damage from minor collisions around the Antarctic Peninsula, a feature that made it seem perfectly safe. Even still, it wasn’t strong enough to withstand a large rock or reef in Sandfly Passage, Solomon Islands. After the passengers were successfully evacuated and the ship began to list, the captain was forced to ground it in Roderick Bay, where it has since remained with a 46-degree list. Like the New Carissa during its prolonged grounding, the World Discoverer serves as an offbeat attraction for tourists.

9.  MV Joola (2002):

Only the Dona Paz disaster is considered to have been more costly than the Joola disaster, which ended with 1,863 deaths. Owned by the Senegalese government, the ship made frequent trips from Southern Senegal to Dakar with more passengers than its intended 580. As it embarked on the usual journey prior to its sinking, it held about 2,000 passengers, enough to make the ship vulnerable to a storm off the coast of Gambia. Designed only to navigate coastal waters, it quickly succumbed to the strong winds and heavy waves, sinking in fewer than five minutes. Overcrowding and a long history of technical problems were primary factors leading to its demise. Only 64 passengers survived, including only one woman who was pregnant

10.  MV Levina 1 (2007):

Tragedy struck twice aboard the Levina 1. Just six hours after the ferry departed from Jakarta, it caught fire, forcing hundreds of passengers to jump into the Java Sea. At least 51 people were killed and more than 290 were rescued, many of whom were picked up by the Levina II, the ferry’s sister ship. Remarkably, 60 passengers were able to swim to a nearby island to wait for help. The next day, four investigators and 12 journalists were transported to the ship, where several boarded without lifevests. Not long after, it listed and quickly began to sink, causing a panic among the party aboard. Two police forensic officers and a cameraman went missing, and another cameraman died in the hospital.

This post originally appeard on the E-Advisor Blog, a leading resource for higher education offered online.

Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback‘s Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction, and helped define and launch a new genre of pulp fiction.

By the end of the 19th century, stories centered on scientific inventions, and stories set in the future, were appearing regularly in popular fiction magazines. The market for short stories lent itself to tales of invention in the tradition of Jules Verne…

See Amazing Stories, In Pulp on The Scuttlefish

original image: Amazing Stories on illustrateurs.blogspot.com

Dec. 1929 – Feb. 1927 – Nov. 1930 — from Amazing Stories issue checklist

4 sailors survive 10 days adrift at sea

6 other crew members missing after their vessel, Ocean Star, sank on June 26. The Korean flagged Ocean Star, owned by a Dubai-based trading company, was carrying rice from Pakistan to Somalia.

Sunday, July 17, 2011 – Six crew members from a cargo ship Ocean Star sailing from Pakistan to Somalia have been missing for the past 20 days after the ship sank on June 26. In a tragic, yet amazing story, four crew members were picked up alive from the sea and brought to the UAE by a Sharjah ship after they spent 10 days adrift.

more

Kingston Harbour, Jamaica c1933 – see Vintage Jamaica, postcards from c 1933-34

Fyffes Line was the name given to the fleet of passenger-carrying banana boats owned and operated by the UK banana importer Elders & Fyffes Limited.

“With the formation of Elders & Fyffes Ltd in 1901 it was necessary to procure suitable ships on which to transport their bananas from the West Indies to the UK. Therefore, in 1902 when the Furness Line was anxious to sell three steamships each of 2,875 gross tonnage, the new company raised the necessary funds to buy them. Named SS Appomattox, Chickahominy and Greenbriar, they were all refitted in Newcastle upon Tyne and a special cooling system installed to keep the fruit firm during the crossing.

“By the start of World War I, the Fyffes fleet had grown to 18 ships, but almost all were then requisitioned by the government for war work. During the next four years ten ships were sunk by torpedoes or mines. The company recovered quickly and less than five years after the war had achieved an even stronger position than it occupied in 1914…”

more »

Amazing posts of Vintage US Navy Tattoos on Rivet Head – via kari-young

marlinspike instruction via climbing-down-bokor

beach sand yacht surfing, way back in 1917 – Extreme Sports & Weird Stunts, Part 1

China Opens World’s Longest Sea Bridge

The Qingdao Haiwan Bridge, which was featured on Amusing Planet early this year, is open for business. State-run news channel CCTV says the bridge passed construction appraisals on Monday and the bridge and an undersea tunnel opened to traffic on Thursday.

The Qingdao Haiwan Bridge, connecting the city of Qingdao in Eastern China’s Shandong province with the suburban Huangdao District across the waters of the northern part of Jiaozhou Bay, is the longest bridge over water. The 42.5 kilometer bridge is more than 4 kilometers longer than its previous record holder – a bridge over water is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in Louisiana. The six-lane bridge is expected to carry over 30,000 cars a day and will cut the commute between the city of Qingdao and the sprawling suburb of Huangdao by between 20 and 30 minutes.

more »

Get a fish’s eye view of Shark Week on Deep Sea News:

Discovery Channel’s  Shark Week is an immensely popular block of programming that focuses on our toothy buddies, the elasmobranchs.  This year Georgia Aquarium will play a central role in the theming for Shark Week, and that’s already started in the form of a new UStream feed of a special camera that’s been added to the Ocean Voyager exhibit to give people a fish’s eye view of the tank’s inhabitants…

• keep reading »

The Tragedy On The Volga River

above: Tourist boat “Bulgaria” floats along the Volga river outside Russian city of Samara in this August 24, 2010 file photo. Built in Czechoslovakia in 1955, the Bulgaria is one of about 100 Russian riverboats with more than 55 years of service. REUTERS/Andrey Kuzmichev – (source)

below: The Bulgaria cruise ship sank on the Volga river on July, 10. The ship carried 188 passengers including the personnel. It took the ship some minutes to sink. The tragedy occurred in Tatarstan. July 12 is announced the day of mourning. Rescue operations continue till now.

• more on EnglishRussia
• Graphic video: Divers pull bodies from sunken Bulgaria cruiser on Volga river
• Russia prepares to raise sunken Volga boat; 2011-07-17
• Russia’s Perfect Storm…of Human Error – July 16, 2011

Burma’s Nude Nymph Commandos – Espionage & Action Art Gallery (via x-ray delta one)

Chris Leavens; The Moon Has Pull - chrisleavens.com

citrussucker via sailorjunkers

Georges Lacombe (1868-1916) – Marine bleue, Effet de vagues, 1893, tempera on toile, 49 x 65 cm
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes

architecturalarbiter: “He took nature and shaped it with his brushes as deliberately as he carved it in wood.Marine bleu – Effet de vagues models shapeliness on canvas as well as any sculptor could chisel from marble. From the three primary colors, Lacombe created waves fringed with peacock feathered turbulence, flying up in pink mist, as though pointing toward their source in the clouds.

The high horizon may be borrowed from the Japanese prints that Lacombe loved, but it suits Lacombe’s intentions. This, like Lacombe’s other paintings, is the coast of Finistere as he experienced it. To be sure, the drama was there in Camaret-sur-mer. The colors were Lacombe’s invention but the ocean crashing against jagged rocks was an unceasing natural drama.”  –VIA

full size (click image) – Georges Lacombe Works Online; Artcyclopedia

HMS Endeavour off the coast of New Holland, by Samuel Atkins – via mowie

This 1794 painting shows the crew of HMB Endeavour in longboats attempting to pull the ship free from a reef. Courtesy: National Library of Australia

HMS Endeavour, also known as HM Bark Endeavour, was a British Royal Navy research vessel commanded by Lieutenant James Cook on his first voyage of discovery, to Australia and New Zealand from 1769 to 1771.

Launched in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, she was purchased by the Navy in 1768 for a scientific mission to the Pacific Ocean, and to explore the seas for the surmised Terra Australis Incognita or “unknown southern land”. Renamed and commissioned as His Majesty’s Bark the Endeavour, she departed Plymouth in August 1768, rounded Cape Horn, and reached Tahiti in time to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun.

She then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, stopping at the Pacific islands of Huahine, Borabora, and Raiatea to allow Cook to claim them for Great Britain. In September 1769, she anchored off New Zealand, the first European vessel to reach the islands since Abel Tasman‘s Heemskerck 127 years earlier. In April 1770, Endeavour became the first seagoing vessel to reach the east coast of Australia, when Cook went ashore at what is now known as Botany Bay.

keep reading

see also: Captain Cook’s Journal During the First Voyage Round the World at Project Gutenberg

Endeavour runs aground, Pictures and information about the discovery of Endeavour’s ballast and cannons on the ocean floor off Queensland, Australia, in 1969

The Last Victorian Leviathan Steam Ship

Jewish refugees 1951 by Ruth Orkin – via hoodoothatvoodoo

lysergicandfriends

L: Riders of the Sea by Anne Hepple; paperback edition (1960). First published 1939. – RT: Captain Rebel by Frank Yerby; Cover art by Marchant. Four Square Books paperback (1960). First published 1957. More in Non-Mystery Covers

CNTR: The Sailcloth Shroud by Charles Williams; Cover art by Bradley Clark; design by One Plus One Studio. A Perennial Library paperback from Harper & Row (1983). First published 1960. Crime & Mystery Covers (Set: 142)

 Giant Pacific Octopus Loves His Mr Potato Head Toy

octopoda: A giant Pacific octopus living in a Cornish aquarium has formed an unlikely bond with a child’s plastic toy. Louis regularly plays with the Mr Potato Head figure which was given to him as part of an enrichment project at Newquay’s Blue Reef Aquarium.

more »

Rope & Ferry, Portland, Maine by coreytempleton

Old Orchard Beach arcade novelty photo souvenir -  burritobreath via kari-young

one of 850 officers and men on board USS New Hampshire – via kari-young

The second United States Navy New Hampshire (BB-25) was a Connecticut-class battleship. New Hampshire was the last American pre-dreadnought battleship, though she was commissioned two years after HMS Dreadnought.

New Hampshire trained United States Naval Academy midshipmen off New England in the next two summers, and patrolled off strife-torn Hispaniola in December 1912. From 14 June-29 December 1913, she similarly protected United States’ interests along the Mexican coast, to which she returned on 15 April 1914 to support the occupation of Veracruz. New Hampshire sailed north on 21 June and was overhauled at Norfolk.

more: Maritimequest USS New Hampshire BB-25 Photo Gallery

The USS New Hampshire (1905-1921) off New York City – full size

Willem van de Velde Sketching a Sea Battle

Rachel L. Carson – The Sea Around Us; 1954 – Great Murder Stories (Anthology) 1948
from Robert Jonas (1907-1997) American Artist and Illustrator set

Sackler Gallery postpones controversial “Shipwreck” show

fuckyeahwrecks: After months of discussion, the Sackler Gallery announced Tuesday it was postponing an exhibition of artifacts from the Tang Dynasty that were recovered in a shipwreck.

The exhibition was due to open in March 2012.

“Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds” drew strong criticism from experts in underwater archeology and cultural heritage groups who argued that the excavation of the boat had not meet the field’s standards. They also contended that a show at the Sackler, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution, would seem to give approval to what they considered objectionable methods…  MORE

Atomic Surgery: Devils of The Deep (1940) – Blue Ribbon Comics #3, Jan. 1940 (MLJ) – Script: George Nagle, Art: Edd Ashe

Researchers Find Rare Earths in Pacific Ocean Mud

Discover Magazine: Researchers have found high concentrations of rare earth metals, essential materials for making nearly all high-tech electronics, in mud on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, according to study published online earlier this week in Nature Geoscience. These huge deposits could help satisfy ever-increasing demand for rare earth metals, but there are major questions about the economic viability and ecological effects of mining the sea

keep reading

grottu

NPR: U.N. Panel Sets Emissions Standards For Cargo Ships

(July 15, 2011) – About 50,000 cargo ships carry 90 percent of world trade; most of the ships are powered by heavily polluting oil known as bunker fuels. The new rules, from a powerful committee of the International Maritime Organization, attack a growing source of greenhouse gases. The new regulations say it will be up to the ship builders to decide how they would meet the new standards…

keep reading

also: EU proposes to slash sulphur emissions from ships

Friday, 15 July 2011 – The proposal would cut the maximum permissible sulphur content of fuels to 0.1 percent from 1.5 percent from 2015 in sensitive areas such as the Baltic Sea and the Channel, and to 0.5 percent from 4.5 percent from 2020 in all other areas.

“This proposal is an important step forward in reducing emissions from the fast-growing maritime transport sector,” EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik said in a statement.

As well as slashing sulphur dioxide emissions, the proposal would cut fine particle emissions from ships by up to 80 percent, the Commission said.

more

fuckyeahcartography: Takamitsu Shimomura, 1879, Yokohama-shi, Japan – full size

Sebago Lake, Maine – 1830 hrs; 12 July 2011 (full size) – photo by Monkey Fist

Shipwrecked sailors attacked by man-eating sharks; Sea and Land by J. W. Buel, 1889

Beth Van Hoesen; Bay Boats, 1988 – Aquatint, etching, dry point tinted with watercolor – link

Pictorial exhibition introduces Hong Kong’s shipbuilding and ship repair industry

Thanks to the favourable anchorage conditions of Hong Kong, the city quickly developed into a shipping hub in the mid-19th century, and the related shipbuilding and ship repair industry boomed as well. After decades of social and economic development, those dockyards, which had once sprung up along the coasts of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, are now located at the western part of Victoria Harbour, where they continue to serve the city’s shipping industry and economy.

People who are interested in revisiting the glorious history of major dockyards should not miss the exhibition “Dockyards of Hong Kong: Pictorial Exhibition on Hong Kong’s Shipbuilding and Repair Industry”, currently on show at the Hong Kong Museum of History until October 17.

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Bohumil Stepan’s illustrations for Gulliverovy Cesty (Gulliver’s Travels), Prague 1968 on 50watts

Alexander Kohn’s cover for the March 1949 issue. Phallic spaceships were common on science fiction magazine covers, but here a submarine plays that role. Fantastic Adventures was an American pulp science fiction magazine, published from 1939 to 1953 by Ziff-Davis

the giant squid project by P H L E G M

Hydrothermal Worm marine organism imaged on a Quanta SEM – via Link Latte 161

Deep Sea Diver GI Joe by trisha_too_too on Flickr. – via kari-young

Génie bricoleur – Photo trouvée aux puces

 PORTLAND, OREGON: Birdseye Map, 1890 on Big Map Blog

Admiral Lord Nelson: “My ships have passed away, but the spirit of my men remains.” - full size

Mizzen Topman: My name’s Katherine. I’m a member of the Maintenance and Sail Crew at the Maritime Museum of San Diego, where I get to work on and help sail the lovely ships there, including the Star of India, Californian, and HMS Surprise. This blog contains an array of nautical things that I enjoy, and hopefully you do too! – see my blog on spiffingsailor.tumblr.com

The ‘Duke of Wellington’ at Castle’s Yard, Charleton by National Maritime Museum on Flickr – v moewie

egon schiele via sailorjunkers

HMS Minotaur – British Broadside Ironclad, 1868 (more photos)

Closeup photograph of the ship’s bow, taken in port after 1875, showing crewmen, anchor and mooring chains, bowsprit rigging and bow decorations.  U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph – via architecturalarbiter

HMS Minotaur was the lead ship of the Minotaur class armoured frigates built for the Royal Navy during the 1860s. They were the longest single-screw warships ever built. Minotaur took nearly four years between her launching and commissioning because she was used for evaluations of her armament and different sailing rigs. The ship spent the bulk of her active career as flagship of the Channel Fleet, including during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee Fleet Review in 1887. She became a training ship in 1893 and was then hulked in 1905 when she became part of the training school at Harwich. Minotaur was renamed several times before being sold for scrap in 1922 and broken up the following year.

more on wiki

“Over-Weighted”

Punch cartoon on the subject of ironclads from 1876. Left, Neptune; Right, Britannia – see full size

Barbette of the French ironclad Vauban (1882-1905)

French National Museum of the Marine of Toulon – painting by Paul Jazet (1848-1918) see full size

HMS Inflexible (1876)

(with the pole masts fitted in 1885, replacing the original full sailing rig)

HMS Inflexible was a Victorian ironclad battleship carrying her main armament in centrally placed turrets. The ship was constructed in the 1870s for the Royal Navy to oppose the perceived growing threat from the Italian Regia Marina in the Mediterranean.

Packed with innovations, Inflexible mounted larger guns than those of any previous British warship and had the thickest armour ever to be fitted to a Royal Navy ship. Controversially, she was designed so that if her un-armoured ends should be seriously damaged in action and become water-logged, the buoyancy of the armoured centre section of the ship would keep her afloat and upright.

The ship was the first major warship to depend in part for the protection of her buoyancy by a horizontal armoured deck below the water-line rather than armoured sides along the waterline.

more on wiki

Hindhead, Surrey; Sailor’s Grave postcard c 1910

The Unknown Sailor was an anonymous seafarer murdered in September 1786 at Hindhead in Surrey, England. His murderers were hanged in chains on Gibbet Hill, Hindhead the following year.  MORE

SEE ALSO: Gibbert Hill – The Arrest – The Deed – The “Red Lion” – Hindhead, Gibbert Cross

bestposterart  – by way of dirtyriver airlines

Amazing Stories, June, 1945 on The Gilded Century

Richard Müller, Teasing, 1912 – Emotions of Dependency on Weimer

Pluto’s Playmate (1941) – via mudwerks

Maritime Monday is compiled every week by Monkey Fist

Monkey Fist is a smack-talking, potty mouthed, Yankee hating, Red Sox fan in Portland, Maine.  In addition to compiling Maritime Monday, she blogs about nautical art, history, and marine science on Adventures of the Blackgang and The Scuttlefish

Submit story ideas, news links, photographs, or items of interest to her at MM@gcaptain.com.  She can also out-belch any man.

The Maritime Monday Archives

narwal by Lisa Frank
submitted by Capt. Richard Rodriguez

Maritime Monday is brought to you as a public service by the fine folks at gcaptain.

Photo of the tanker Ormidale, later renamed Bluefields, which was torpedoed and sunk in 1942 by German submarine U-576. (Credit: Historical Collections of the Great Lakes, Bowling Green State University)

NOAA will lead a summer research expedition to locate and study World War II shipwrecks sunk in 1942 off North Carolina during the Battle of the Atlantic, specifically the Battle of Convoy KS-520. The shipwrecks are located in an area known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” which includes sunken vessels from U.S. and British naval fleets, merchant ships and German U-boats.

“This summer will be the most ambitious of our Battle of the Atlantic research expeditions, and potentially the most exciting,” said David W. Alberg, superintendent, USS Monitor National Marine Sanctuary. “This expedition is all about partnerships, collaboration and using cutting edge technology to search for and document historically significant shipwrecks tragically lost during World War II.”

On July 14, 1942, a merchant convoy of 19 ships and five military escorts left Hampton Roads, Va., sailing south to Key West, Fla., to deliver cargo to aid the war effort. The next day, off Cape Hatteras, N.C., Convoy KS-520 was attacked by German submarine U-576. The convoy fought back with an American warship ramming the U-boat while U.S. Navy aircraft dropped depth charges that sunk the submarine.

Alberg said NOAA’s expedition, taking place in several phases beginning on June 1, will build on work conducted by NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries (ONMS) during the past three summers to document and preserve an important part of North Carolina’s history. The 2011 Battle of the Atlantic expedition survey will be conducted in four phases aboard the ONMS Research Vessel 8501.

• Phase one of the expedition will include a wide area survey in water depths of 100 to 1,500 feet. Advanced remote sensing technologies, including an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and multiple sonar systems, will be used to attempt to locate undiscovered wreck sites, including the U-576 and the Bluefields, a Nicaraguan tanker the U-576 sunk in a torpedo strike.
• A more targeted survey will be conducted during the second phase, relying on an AUV and multibeam sonar systems to produce 3-D images of wreck sites.  Scientists also will be investigating potential fuel leaks at the sites.
• During phase three, scientists will return to selected targets identified in the wide area survey and use a 3-D scanner to create highly detailed models of the wrecks.
• In the final phase, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) system and high definition 3-D video cameras will be used to create photomosaics of shipwreck sites for research, education and outreach purposes.

Many of the World War II wrecks off North Carolina, some lying as shallow as 100 feet, serve as popular recreational dive sites and are visited by thousands of divers each year. Unfortunately, some of these wrecks have been severely damaged over the years by human activity. Both NOAA and the recreational diving community promote open access to the shipwrecks and encourage responsible dive behavior and preservation of underwater resources for future generations to enjoy.

ONMS is leading the 2011 Battle of the Atlantic expedition survey with support and technical expertise from its Maritime Heritage Program, NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement, and the National Park Service. Additional partners include East Carolina University, the University of North Carolina Coastal Studies Institute, the state of North Carolina, the Renaissance Computing Institute, the Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research, and Technology, the North Carolina Department of Transportation Ferry Division, and Dare County GovEd TV.

Via NOAA

In October 2009 the RNLN hydrographic survey vessel HNLMS Snellius located an unidentified object while charting shipping lanes. This was followed two months later by an inspection by a MCMV, the HNLMS Maassluis. A wire-guided Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) designed to locate mines, detected the shape of the vessel. The discovery prompted a series of research missions, which employed the Hydroid Inc. (a subsidiary of Kongsberg Maritime) manufactured REMUS 100 AUV, as well as divers from the Royal Netherlands Navy’s Diving and Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group (EOD).

The REMUS vehicle and the EOD divers descended 40 meters in order to explore the area, where a brass plate bearing the serial number of the submarine was eventually discovered. After further exploration as well as confirmations from the German Ministry of Defense and the families of crew members, the submarine was positively identified as the German U-106, which perished during the First World War.

“These findings always happen by chance,” said expedition leader Captain-lieutenant Jouke Spoelstra. “Twelve years ago, a hydrographic survey ship passed the same spot of our discovery, but the German vessel must have still been under a layer of sand. We were lucky to be at the right place at the right time.”

The German SM U-106 was one of the 329 submarines serving in the Imperial German Navy in World War I. It was commissioned on July 28, 1917 under the command of Captain-Lieutenant Hans Hufnagel. The SM U-106 is noted for sinking the HMS Contest during the First Battle of the Atlantic on September 18, 1917, and also for damaging the “City of Lincoln” a 5,867 ton steamer. The U-106 was lost off of the coast of Terschelling after striking a mine on October 7, 1917.

“The ship left behind is an official war grave,” added Spoelstra. “A memorial ceremony may take place at sea but will only occur at the initiative of the relatives.”

Via Kongsberg

Pictured: German submarine U-106, which perished during the First World War. Courtesy Kongsburg

STOCKHOLM – A gas company building an underwater pipeline in the Baltic Sea has found a dozen centuries-old shipwrecks – some of them unusually well preserved.

The oldest wreck probably dates to medieval times and could be up to 800 years old, while the others may be from the 17th to 19th centuries, Peter Norman of Sweden’s National Heritage Board said yesterday.

“They could be interesting, but we have only seen pictures of their exterior. Many of them are considered to be fully intact. They look very well preserved,’’ Norman said.

Thousands of wrecks – from medieval ships to warships sunk during the world wars of the 20th century – have been found in the Baltic Sea, which doesn’t have the ship worm that destroys wooden wrecks in saltier oceans.

The latest discovery was made during a search east of the Swedish island of Gotland by the Nord Stream consortium, which is building a 750-mile pipeline between Russia and Germany.

The 12 wrecks were found in a 30-mile-long, 1.2-mile-wide corridor, according to a Nord Stream spokeswoman.

The Heritage Board said three have intact hulls and are upside down at a depth of 430 feet.

It’s unclear whether any of them will be salvaged, but the board said it hopes divers will explore them.

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company. (source)

Photo – Associated Press

Peter A Mello of Seafever.org points us to 10 shipwrecks that capture our imaginations… well MSNBC’s imaginations anyway.  As Peter put’s it, “not sure that these shipwrecks will capture your imagination, but they captured MSNBC’s, plus it’s been Dugg a bunch.” Here’s the list:

1. The Titanic
2. Ancient Greek oil ship
3. 16th Century Portuguese ship off Namibian coast
4. Santa Margarita
5. Captan Kidd’s Quedagh Merchant
6. Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge
7. HMS Victory
8. Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes
9. S.S. Cyprus
10. Graf Zeppelin

You can also see MSNBC’s slideshow with a little information about the each wreck HERE.  If there are any you feel that are worth a mention and not listed, let us know in the comments.

PS: Sorry for the photo, but at least there’s no Celin Dion playing in the background;)