In August 2001 the Bulk Carrier Windoc was lined up on the Welland Canal’s Bridge 11 in Ontario Canada. After receiving the flashing amber approach light indicating that the bridge...

A 1:65 scale model of the Emma Maersk under tow at SMG Ijmond ship model harbor in the Netherlands on September 20, 2015.

Researchers at UCL Energy Institute together with London-based data visualization and digital journalism studio Kiln have released this amazing interactive map that plots 250 million data points to show the movements of...

by Colin D. Dewey  In Nantucket, on Aug 5, 1819, the ship Essex: 87 feet at waterline, 238 tons, sailed.  The Essex, an old, tired, ship, began what was planned...

Even well trained professionals make big, simple, stupid mistakes. The dolphin coast of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa is an area with near perfect weather, incredible SCUBA diving and some of...

While not the first person to strip naked for whales, Natalia Avseenko may be the first to do it in near freezing Arctic waters. Natalia Avseenko, 36, a Russian scientist...

Everyone knows the U.S. Navy has a killer marching band but did you know they also have a vocal ensemble nicknamed the Navy Sideboys? Neither did we until this video found its way into...

  We recently decided to get to work on some maritime visualizations. Above is a bubble graph I created representing the number of ships registered to each flag state.   This graph...

Sometimes it's difficult to wrap our brains around large numbers generated by Big Data... like the relative size of shipping companies based on their total cargo capacity. Data visualizations (interactive charts) can help.

What is the “Eastland Phenomena”? by Dave Lochbaum (AllThingsNuclear) The sinking of the Titanic on her maiden voyage has been immortalized in countless books, articles, movies, and documentaries. Billions of people across the...

by Dean Burnett (TheGuardian) A lot of people, when they travel by car, ship, plane or whatever, end up feeling sick. They’re fine before they get into the vehicle, they’re...

One year ago today the 19,224 TEU MV MSC Zoe, one of the world’s biggest containerships, was docking at the Port of Hamburg for its christening and maiden call at...

The 200-foot tall ship Oliver Hazard Perry is ready to take on its first class of trainees as America’s newest Tall Ship and Rhode Island’s official Sailing Education Vessel. The...

By Colin Dewey, In the first part of this essay, I talked about craft: Joseph Conrad’s somewhat mysterious term describing the ability good mariners have to dip into a common...

By Colin Dewey, The maritime industry, perhaps more than any other industrial profession, respects tradition.  Sometimes though, seafarers seem to revere tradition to the point of rejecting useful innovation.  Worse,...

Scan a large collection of 18th- and 19th-century ships’ logs (1), plot them on a blank digital canvas canvas, and you get this extraordinary world map.  This map was featureless to begin with, yet...

Hundreds of years ago when the trading of dead animal furs was kind of a big deal in the area surrounding the St. Lawrence Seaway, the second oldest Canadian sport...

Ever since people tried to navigate the seaways, the prevailing weather has always been very crucial to the success of expeditions. To steer away from trouble like storms and hurricanes,...