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Take a tour of the most photogenic sunken ships all over the world -or at least the part that’s underwater. It’s whole lot easier than diving down all those places yourself! Shown is a close-up of Tugboat Rozi, sunk off the coast of Malta. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user DiveKarma)
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader.
Here at the BRI, we’re huge fans of Richard Zak’s books. They’re great bathroom reading. He has a new book coming out: The Pirate Hunter-The True Story of Captain Kidd. Here’s a teaser from his masterpiece, An Underground Education.
WORKIN’ FOR THE MAN
While the popular image of buccaneers is peg-legged, eye-patched rascals, the ultimate anti-authority free agents, roving the seas, plundering ships, raping women, and brawling, the reality is much worse. They did all that and worked for the government.
Prior to 1856, it was standard operating procedure for western nations either to commission privateers directly or to wink at the actions of freelance pirates, so long as those thieves were preying on the commerce of other nations. Piracy was often state-supported economic terrorism. Captain Kidd, for example, was no Joan of Arc, but he was no “Captain Kidd,” either.
MEET CAPTAIN KIDD
William Kidd
William Kidd (c. 1645-1701) was a plain-speaking, high-tempered Scotsman who had made his fortune as captain and ship owner, trading goods in the colonies. In 1696, the 51-year-old Kidd was a prosperous New York businessman, comfortably settled with his wife and family. That year, Kidd and his friend Robert Livingston connived with the newly-appointed governor of New England, Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamount, the King of England’s cousin, to receive an unusual privateering commission.
In times of war, wealthy investors routinely funded privateering vessels to attack the enemy’s merchant ships and divvy the plunder. This was an English naval tradition dating back to Sir Francis Drake. But what was extraordinary about this commission was that it also entitled Kidd to attack pirate ships of all nationalities and keep their booty -no questions asked. It was an amazing financial opportunity.
SMART INVESTMENT
Kidd’s royal commission -secured by Bellamount- did, in fact,
give and grant full Power and Authority to Captain William Kidd, Commander of the ship Adventure Galley …to apprehend, seize and take into Custody the said Thomas Too, John Ireland, Tho Wake, and William Maze, and all other Pirates, Free-booters and Sea-rovers, of what Nation whatsoever, whom he should find or meet with, upon the said Coasts or Seas of America, or in any other Seas or Parts, with their Ships and Vessels, and all such Merchandise, Money, Goods, and Wares as should be found on board of them.
The mission began as an attempt by Britain to crack down on four colonial pirates, but was cunningly expanded so that Kidd would have maximum leeway to capture “prizes” -non-English ships.
In addition to Livingston and Lord Richard, four of the most powerful men in England secretly invested the £6,000 it would cost to outfit the ship. The prospect of profit from this legal larceny was dizzying. If Kidd captured two large ships, the backers could easily received a hundredfold return on their investment in a year. In the official contract with Kidd, four obscure merchants were listed as the investors, but they were shills. The real backers were John Somers, Lord Chancellor of England; Sire Robert Wadpole, Earl of Orford, First Lord of the Admiralty; and two secretaries of state, the Earl of Romney and the Duke of Shrewsbury. The king was to receive 10% of the booty as well, “chiefly to show that he was a partner in the undertaking,” according to The Real Captain Kidd- A Vindication, by Sir Cornelius Dalton. Kidd and Livingston stood to receive 7.5% each, while if the haul totaled more than £100,000, Kidd was to be allowed to keep the ship.
more …
The Mothball Fleet is the group of decommissioned Navy ships stored at Suisun Bay, just north of San Francisco. These ships served in conflicts going back to World War II, and now they are gradually being scrapped. Photographer Scott Haefner and friends managed to spend several days exploring and photographing these ships, despite security guards. Read about how they pulled off the caper, and see the collection of photos at Scott’s website. Link -via the Presurfer
Julia Morley has built a tiny Lego ship in a bottle and made a time lapse video of the process. I admire the meticulous effort taken to create this modern twist on a traditional craft but even Morley herself concedes that the soundtrack is a bit annoying.
In May of 2009, the missile-tracking ship General Hoyt S. Vandenberg was hauled out in the Gulf of Mexico. Planted explosives blew holes in the ship’s hull, and she sank to the bottom in just a couple of minutes. You can see the process in a time-lapse video. Deliberately sinking a ship sounds like an environmental crime on the surface, but the Vandenberg was carefully prepared: ten tons of asbestos and over 800,000 feet of electrical wiring was removed before she was sunk. The sinking was part of an environmental program to create artificial reefs where sea life -from coral and plankton to game fish- can live and reproduce.
The Vandenberg is certainly not the first ship to be deliberately sunk to create an artificial reef. The waters off the Florida Keys have become the grave site of the Coast Guard cutters Duane and Bibb and the U.S. Navy landing ship Spiegel Grove, and on the sandy bottom 20 or so miles out to sea from Pensacola lies an entire aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Oriskany—the largest ship in the world intentionally sunk as an artificial reef. Dozens of World War II cargo vessels known as Liberty ships have been submerged, or to use the proper jargon, deployed, all along the Gulf, Atlantic, and Pacific coasts.
National Geographic tells us the history of artificial reef programs and how they are used to encourage marine life to flourish. Link
(Image credit: David Doubilet/National Geographic)
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The cargo ship M.V. Altavia began to offload cargo in the U.S. territory of Guam when thousands of spiders of different species emerged from the cargo! Stevedores immediately refused to bring anything else off the ship. The offloaded cargo was returned to the ship, which was ordered out of dock.
Agriculture officials said they didn’t know what type of spiders were on the ship. But they said it’s a type that is not normally found on Guam and there was concern the spiders could damage the island’s environment.
“It’s not on Guam,” Torres said. “We don’t want it here.”
The ship was carrying housing units and accessories that were to be used at a work force village expected to house up to 18,000 temporary workers.
The M.V. Altavia had most recently ported in South Korea. The ship was told not to return to Guam. Link
(Image credit: Flickr user Jason A. Samfield)
On Tuesday, workers digging a new level for a vehicle security center at the World Trade Center site ran into a set of evenly-spaced wooden beams. Had someone been building a boat in a basement?
“They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship,” said A. Michael Pappalardo, an archaeologist with the firm AKRF, which is working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to document historical material uncovered during construction.
By Wednesday, the outlines made it plain: a 30-foot length of a wood-hulled vessel had been discovered about 20 to 30 feet below street level on the World Trade Center site, the first such large-scale archaeological find along the Manhattan waterfront since 1982, when an 18th-century cargo ship came to light at 175 Water Street.
The ground where the boat was found had been undisturbed for 200 years. Back then, the site was much nearer the Hudson River. Link -via reddit
(Image credit: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)
Pink Tentacle has larger versions of 14 beautiful travel posters produced by Japanese steamship companies. These were from the early 20th century, when travel itself was supposed to be as luxurious as the destination. Link
A Japanese shipbuilding company named IHI Marine United is developing a ship that can be powered entirely by rechargeable lithium batteries. It will be able to travel 80 km while carrying 800 passengers:
Its Zero Emission Electric Propulsion Ship will use batteries that can be recharged at charging stations in ports it visits. The plug-in ship powered by lithium-ion batteries would run without a diesel engine, thus cutting its carbon dioxide or nitrogen oxide emissions to zero.
The company hopes to have a commercial vehicle available in 2015.
Link via technabob | Photo: Far East Gizmos
The Viking Lady, owned by the Norwegian shipping firm Eidesvik, has a 320-kilowatt molten carbonate fuel cell that powers the 9,500 ton vessel. It’s the first ship to ever use fuel cell technology:
But in the case of the 5,900 metric ton Viking Lady, Norwegian shipping company Eidesvik and its partners have gone further, installing a 320-kilowatt molten carbonate fuel cell that operates on liquefied natural gas (and can be reconfigured, if necessary, to run on methanol). Storage tanks for the hydrogen and carbon dioxide that gets the fuel cell started press up against the stern of the 92.2 meter-long ship (in case of explosion) as do the machines to regasify the fuel. The fuel cell operates at 650 degrees Celsius and is warm to the touch, even on a blustery, frigid day in Copenhagen’s harbor.[...]
The investment was made, in part, to get an understanding of fuel cell technology and how it might be applied to shipping, according to DNV’s Viking Lady project head Tomas Heber Tronstad. Initial estimates are that such fuel cells would cut CO2 emissions from an individual ship by 50 percent. But the investment was also made because Norway has a tax on nitrogen oxide emissions that paid an immediate return for installing gas rather than diesel engines, says Eidesvik CEO Jan Fredrik Meling. Compared to a traditional ship, even without using the fuel cell, the Viking Lady reduces nitrogen oxide emissions by 90 percent, CO2 emissions by 20 percent and eliminates sulfur dioxide and soot emissions.
Link | Photo: Fellowship
The term ghost ship can refer to a mysterious apparition of a ship when a ship is not really there, or it can refer to an abandoned ship found with no crew or passengers, usually under mysterious circumstances. Both kinds are listed in these ten stories spooky enough to share with anyone to whom you want to give nightmares. Pictured is the Baychimo, used in Arctic waters until it became trapped in ice in 1931. The crew was airlifted and the ship abandoned. However, the boat survived to mysteriously float on its own for decades. It was last seen in 1969. Link -via Unique Daily
Wanna-be pilots have Flight Simulator, Microsoft’s iconic computer game, but what about those who want to steer a cargo ship? Enter PlanetInAction’s "Ships", an online simulation that uses Google Earth to let you get in touch with your inner helmsman and steer your own fleet of ships from barges to the cruise ship Queen Mary 2.
Link | YouTube Clip – via Kris Abel’s Tech Life
