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…
A futuristic sight to greet seafarer and tourist alike: Merlion Park, at One Fullerton,Singapore – with few suspecting that this was a malarial swamp a century ago. It’s part of the city-state and during independence from the British in 1965, Singapore faced massive unemployment and declining trade. With its back to the wall, nonetheless, the country demonstrated to the world how to modernise and progress. Singapore’s transition from a backwater economy…
Approaching Lagos’ shoreline from twenty-five km, there are fishing boats. Way out at sea, before the shipping channels, buoys and city lights emerge, basic small craft little more than dug-outs with modest outboard engines and outriggers drift around. You wonder why they are so far out and also wonder how they navigate back in darkness, In answer to why the boats fish so distantly is because sheer…
Wise words, but actually joining a ship these days isn’t smooth seas and takes skill just to get through the paperwork. The 1970’s were different: you’d casually sling your bag in the cabin, walk to the bridge and sign on followed by a visit to the crew bar to meet shipmates – no strangers, just friends you’ve never met. Or if there wasn’t a crew bar, instead you’d go to…
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.
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.
Surely not another preserved WW2 warship? We’ve got plenty in the U.K. already (yawn!). Maybe, but from hundreds built as sturdy dependable escort craft, the Sackville is the only Flower-class corvette left in the world. She’s in Halifax, Nova Scotia as Canada’s Naval Memorial, a WW2 combat veteran and latterly a museum ship open to the public. And the top of the gangway has a mural of Disney’s sailor-suited Donald Duck, broom in his…
When the German heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee came to her end in December 1939, one of the main factors that led to her demise could be blamed on part of her shipboard equipment. The British knew all about their enemy’s woeful blundering, and with their own superior design ensured that it wasn’t going to happen to them. Indeed, that weakness in…