The story so far: ships occasionally lose containers at sea – there are explanations although we could make comparisons to a ‘runaway train’ situation, ie., it’s out of control and it happens very quickly. In 2020 the Japanese-flagged ONE Apus lost approximately 1,816 containers in heavy seas north-west of Hawaii. Theories over the loss range from a rogue wave snapping the securing pins to the fact that…
Boswash? BosWHERE! – the name produces a baffling reaction to a place not officially in the atlas. But as the above map illustrates, what were formerly separate cities and entities are getting bigger and bigger. So now it’s a megalopolis: a series of huge independent cities linked by suburban zones to form interconnectivity, geographers describing this fast-growing area of 400 miles long as Boswash – that’s Boston down to Washington DC. It’s…
Those of us in Liverpool who subscribe to the National Geographic (global readership estimates: 9.5 mn), may have read the November 2021 edition: How centuries of immigration has changed culture and communities of Liverpool. It sounds like a dissertation title for a humanities degree, but the magazine’s write-up of Liverpool’s claim to be a world city – a city in which culture and communities have influenced hospitality accords well with…
Well, I wasn’t in the Royal Navy, but if their conditions were as bad as for Merchant Navy crew, it must have been rough. On my first trip (1972) I must have been lucky in assuming that all the ship’s company including the skipper were working class. After all, only the shipowners – prosperous as far as I could tell in pin-stripe suits with…
Story by James Hart. Statues on Dublin quayside commemorate the victims of the 1847 Famine. The appalling conditions of coffin ships was documented by one Robert Whyte, a passenger and journalist who, in his book ‘The Journey of an Irish Coffin Ship’ (1847) wrote of the desperation: of emigres denied food, clean water and medical attention – indeed, typhus, dysentery and starvation were part of the sometimes…
Fantastic 80th Anniversary events in Liverpool last weekend. James O’Hanlon captured the spirit of the weekend with these two fantastic videos.
Landed in Dover, but some aren’t so lucky.Yep, it was me. I was the one who discovered an illegal migrant hiding on the car deck at five am whilst just 40 minutes from Dover. It’s not such a rare occurrence as expected, but contrary to standing orders which states we should immediately call a security officer – security? – that’s a joke…
Surely NOT again! Would be a first thought for Iranians of a certain age.Those, for example, who lived through the previous civil unrest of forty years ago. For then it was protests against the secular leadership of the Shah Reza Pahlavi which crushed his leadership and brought in the religious theocracy of the Islamic clerics.The Shah eventually fled Iran, but not…
This talk is to the memory of 2 young men, Robert Prescot & Maxwell Biggam who died at sea in what could be described as incompletely explained circumstances aboard the Liverpool Bridge.
Footage from the Pier Head today.
Battered by the pandemic (haven’t we all been?), cruise ship industry owners with no immediate passengers have filed for bankruptcy, while others reduced operating costs by retiring ships early. More than two dozen vessels have been scrapped since and whilst some companies have recycled in an environmentally responsible way, others have not, allowing their ships to be broken up in India enabling high profits, but ignoring…