Just off River Street, behind the New Heritage Diner, it looms like something out of the Battle of Midway: the U.S.S. Ling, a World War II-era submarine, squatting in a shallow stretch in the upper reaches of the Hackensack River.
This 312-foot hulk of gray steel has been berthed along the river’s shoreline since the early 1970s, when the Navy offered it to a group of local veterans. They were looking to use it as the theme of a new naval museum with the help of the owners of The Record of Bergen County, whose headquarters long stood on this riverside property.
But the Ling has become a 2,500-ton problem, on course to be torpedoed by a luxury development project…
A Submarine Is Stuck in the Muck in Hackensack
USS Ling (SS/AGSS/IXSS-297) is a Balao-class submarine of the United States Navy; laid down 2 November 1942 by Cramp Shipbuilding Company of Philadelphia; launched 15 August 1943, commissioned on 8 June 1945; based at Naval Submarine Base in New London, Connecticut.
In March 1960, Ling was towed to Brooklyn, New York, where she was converted into a training ship at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Redesignated “Miscellaneous Unclassified Submarine” (IXSS-297), and struck from the Naval Register on 1 December, 1971. She arrived at her present home in New Jersey in January 1973, where she was restored to near-mint condition—scrubbed, painted, and polished for public tours—through the efforts of the Submarine Memorial Association; dedicated “…to perpetuate the memory of our shipmates who gave their lives in the pursuit of their duties while serving their country”.
In the American-produced Russian language film Katya shot in 2010, the Ling was used for a set to depict the Soviet K-129 diesel-electric powered submarine which sank on 8 March 1968 northwest of Oahu. more on wikipedia
Atlas Obscura – It was around 1830, soon after the end of the devastating Napoleonic Wars, and the Swedish Crown sent out a delegation to search for ideal spots to plant for future ship production. Three of those emissaries came to a small croft on Visingsö, a narrow island in the middle of Vättern (Sweden’s second largest lake). Here they spied three magnificent oaks just outside of an old woman’s farmhouse. They took one with them back to Stockholm, and it didn’t take much to convince the Royal Navy that Visingsö had nearly perfect conditions for lumber production. Over the next ten years, 300 000 oak trees were planted.
Visingsö Oak Forest – Jönköping N, Sweden
5 Terrible Accidents in the USSR Which the Soviet Leadership Tried Their Best to Suppress:
The tragedy of the cruise ship “Alexander Suvorov”
The Aleksandr Suvorov is a former Soviet/now Russian river cruise ship, cruising in the Volga–Don basin. On 5 June 1983 Aleksandr Suvorov crashed into a girder of the Ulyanovsk railway bridge. The catastrophe led to 177 deaths yet the ship stayed afloat, was restored and still navigates. Aleksandr Suvorov (ship) on wikipedia
Hung I-chen, Guo Yi-hui, and Cheng Yu-ti, three students at the National Taiwan University of Arts, collected sewage water from all over Taiwan and and turned them into 1:1 poly models all wrapped in beautiful packaging, assigning each one with a number and “flavor” named after the source where the waste was collected. The team has made 100 popsicles in total. They recently put their collection on display at an art exhibition in Taipei.
Frozen Popsicles Made From 100 Different Polluted Water Sources
Like his mentor Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857) and John Constable, Balke believed that the sky was as important as the subject below, perhaps more so, given how it takes up more space than the sea or land in his (and most other) works.
In “Northern Lights” (1870s), a series of vertical scraped areas (from lines to bands) stretch across much of the sky to evoke the Aurora Borealis. In the world below, horizontal striations embody a calm, waveless sea.
Peder Balke: Painter of Northern Light continues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side, Manhattan) through July 9.
Peder Balke 1804 — 1887 (more images)
Nella Dan was a legend among polar ships. Her track record of 85 trips and half a million nautical miles in Antarctica – or 24 times around the Earth – made her, among other things, the ship in Australian service with the most miles and the longest period beset in the ice.
Throughout history, many ships have been lost in the early attempts to explore polar regions or in risky attempts to come to the aid of other expeditions. In modern history, too, pack and pressure ice have so impeded passage that crews had to be abandoned on the ice.
In the vast nothingness of ice, from a distance the scene may look almost serene, but for those on board, the experience of the ice closing in around the hull, causing it to shriek and creak, can be nerve-racking and unbearable. Like a fingernail on a blackboard.
And Here’s One for the Laaaaaaadies….
Tom Hardy has been tipped to play polar explorer Ernest Shackleton for an upcoming Antarctic biopic. Peter Straughan – known for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Our Brand Is Crisis – is said to be writing the as-yet untitled polar-themed film. It’s not known when filming for the Antarctic biopic will start and no release date has been set. keep reading
Ernest Shackleton is one of the great explorers of the world, a giant of the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” and leader of three epic expeditions to the Antarctic. His final attempt – the Imperial Trans-Atlantic Expedition – proved the most grueling and is one of the greatest tales of human endurance, bravery and adventure.
The story of the ill-fated journey of the Endurance has been told on screen before, most famously by Kenneth Branagh in a TV film for Channel 4 in a production the Guardian described as “inadvertently hilarious”. (full story on The Guardian)
While we think Tom Hardy will be an excellent Shackleton, there are other hugely important roles that need to be filled, specifically the five members of the incredible voyage of the James Caird. We’ve put together our dream cast of who could do justice to these legendary heroes…
The ship’s carpenter and master shipwright. He was an animal lover and brought along a cat called Mrs Chippy as a companion. The cat was extremely affectionate followed McNeish where ever he went. Mcneish was headstrong and often clashed with Shackleton challenging him on his decisions. keep reading on Coast Monkey; the best of the beautiful Irish coast
The Night Manager’s Tom Hiddleston as Chippy? OH HELLYEAH. Here kitty, kitty, kitty!
Britain’s Rights Maintained, 1755 on British Tars 1740-1790
One aspect of the tragedy doesn’t get as much attention as it perhaps should: its particular and enduring effect on the emerging suffrage movement and first-wave feminism in Europe and the US. The disaster’s occurrence in 1912 hit smack-bang at the high point of suffrage and anti-suffrage movements on both sides of the Atlantic. The most famous is the “unsinkable” Molly Brown, immortalized both in the (1997) Titanic film and in one of her own; Brown ran for office in the US Senate years before the voyage and would use her fame afterward to discuss women’s rights on an international platform.
Several other important feminist figures were also aboard. Journalist Helen Churchill Candee, who had authored the working woman’s rallying cry How Women May Earn A Living in 1900, was in the same lifeboat as Brown and would man the oars with her. (She was also an explorer and a nurse who would treat Ernest Hemingway in World War I) Her survival made the world a more interesting place… keep reading on Cruising the Past
Glorious Early 20th-Century Japanese Ads for Beer, Smokes & Sake (1902-1954)
