The Misunderstood Mariner

Cell Phones

2012-01-28T00:01:00.000-08:00

It was my first time as a full-time captain of a ship, and we were only a couple of hours into the voyage. As I came on to the bridge from below, I saw the second mate, standing his first watch on board, with the wheel in one hand and his cell phone in the other. He seemed surprised later when I told him to stay off his phone while on the conn; apparently it was an accepted practice on previous vessels he’d worked on. As time went on, I saw more and more cell use by watch standers, including myself. On one vessel I captained, conducting the business the company expected me to only while someone else was on watch would have been virtually impossible. I suspect my experience is typical.

In the last few years, several incidents have led the US Coast Guard and others to believe that maybe mariners have become a bit too comfortable talking on a cell phone or texting while operating a vessel:

In December 2009, a Coast Guard vessel collided with a tour boat near Charleston, South Carolina, injuring several people.
Later that month, a Coast Guard patrol boat collided with a recreational vessel in San Diego Bay, killing an 8-year-boy.
In July 2010, the tug Caribbean Sea, pushing a 250-ft barge, collided with a duck tour boat on the Delaware River in Philadelphia, killing two of the tour boat’s passengers.

In each case, the operator on the vessel found responsible for the collision was using a cell phone.

A year after the Coast Guard incidents, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) recommended the agency adopt rules governing the use of cell phones and other electronic devices, and also that it urge civilian shipping companies “develop and implement effective operational policies outlining when the use of cellular telephones and other devices is appropriate or prohibited.” The Coast Guard also agreed to work with recreational boating organizations to develop guidelines for boaters.

It will be an uphill battle. Clear evidence shows that cell use distracts automobile drivers and slows reaction time. In response to a multi-vehicle accident in Missouri – including 2 school buses – in which texting was found to be a factor, the NTSB recommended that states “ban the nonemergency use of portable electronic devices (other than those designed to support the driving task) for all drivers.” But as someone who lives in a state where such a ban is already in place, I can tell you that I still see drivers talking or texting nearly every time I go out on the road.

Will restricting cell use on the bridge reduce the likelihood of collisions like those mentioned above? Maybe. As has been noted elsewhere, a mariner who has no problem riding six feet off your rear bumper at 70mph on the interstate may start getting nervous when another vessel going 20 knots gets within 12 miles in open water. On the other hand, autopilots, alarms, and neat electronics that calculate CPAs (closest point of approach) for us can lead to a false sense of security.

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Queen Mary 2: A Village At Sea

2012-01-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

The Queen Mary 2 in San Francisco Bay. Photo by Mila Zinkova.

This month marks eight years since the christening of the Queen Mary 2, the flagship of the Cunard fleet and the first true ocean liner built since 1969. In the aftermath of the Costa Concordia tragedy, many are asking whether large passenger ships can ever be considered inherently safe. But these large passenger ships are huge engineering projects bringing together thousands of people. As one of the responders to the Costa Concordia grounding has noted, they are are really floating villages, and every village has illness, deaths, and environmental impact. Even the QM2, built to ocean liner standards and thus arguably one of the safest passenger vessels in the world, has had its share of human tragedy.

Some illness and even death is to be anticipated when you get this many people together. The QM2 carries a complete small hospital, with surgeries (operating rooms), guest wards, and x-ray capabilities. Like most large cruise ships, the she is even equipped with a small morgue.

Before construction of the ship was even completed, sixteen people were killed and 32 injured when a gangway collapsed during an event for shipyard workers in November 2003. After her launch, the ship experienced engineering problems in 2004 and 2006 that caused her to be late for, or miss entirely, several ports. To this day Cunard and Rolls Royce, builder of the ships propulsion pods, disagree as to whether the propulsion design has “inherent deficiencies.”

In more recent years:

A partial power loss occurred in September 2010.
In June of last year, the vessel failed a US Center for Disease Control Inspection, the first time in three years a vessel from a major cruise line had done so.
Also in mid-2011, British authorities opened in investigation into allegations a crewmember was sexually molesting children on the QM2 and other Cunard vessels.
An engine room fire in October 2011 was extinguished by the crew without any injuries.

Like any village, the Queen Mary 2 has its problems, but marriage is also a part of village life. Late last year, Cunard announced it would re-flag its ships in Bermuda so marriages could be performed on board, something British law currently forbids.

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Monday Morning Mariner: TWIC Changes & Compensation Survey

2012-01-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

On watch with an iced coffee. Photo by Lindsey Erdody, SHFWire.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a Monday Morning Mariner. While the Misunderstood Mariner blog is aimed mainly at the general public and journalists, these occasional Monday posts are for my fellow mariners, and usually address regulatory, labor relations, or technological issues affecting the maritime field. A couple of issues that have come up since my last Monday Morning Mariner post:

Changes to TWIC. In December, the US Coast Guard issued a policy letter that will, it is hoped, ease the burden imposed by the oft-reviled Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC). The revised regs would exempt crew on vessels not required to have Vessel Security Plans. The bad news, if you ever plan on working on a vessel with a required Vessel Security Plan, you’re still going to need a TWIC. At least, for now. In May, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) published a report saying the program had significant security and administrative problems.

Get a copy of the Coast Guard’s Policy Letter here.

Get a copy of the GAO report here.

WorkBoat Compensation Survey. WorkBoat magazine has published a survey of 400 commercial mariners with an eye toward looking at the state of the industry from a payroll standpoint. They get into some other demographic areas as well, and it’s interesting if not all that surprising: an overwhelming majority of commercial mariners are men, the top of the bell curve for both pay and age come in one’s early 50s, and about a third of mariners have a military background. The bad news for the vets is that this doesn’t seem to help a lot pay-wise. One thing I wonder about is whether this survey just consists of just WorkBoat readers or is meant to represent all US mariners. According to the WorkBoat web site, more than half of US mariners are based between Corpus Christie and Pensacola: are half of us really working in to oil patch, or does this just indicate the magazine’s GOM focus?

The full survey is available from WorkBoat here for $195. For a free slide show of selected results, click here.

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"Heave! Ho!" To Misused Nautical Terms

2012-01-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

Capt. Franceso Schettino being arrested, but not for abandoning ship.
Photo by Enzo Russo/Reuters/ANSA

Once again, a maritime tragedy leads the news cycle. And once again, I am reminded of why I started this blog in the first place. I don't expect every general assignment reporter covering the Costa Concordia disaster to be an expert in nautical terminology, but I think sometimes terms are tossed around because they sound "nautical," and not because they're accurate. Maybe I'm being a curmudgeon, or a nitpicker. But to any reporter who's been frustrated when someone incorrectly used "off the record" when they meant "not for attribution," or had to explain that yes, things have changed since The Front Page came out in 1931 (and maybe the movie wasn't all that accurate even then), I ask you to put yourself in my shoes. Then, I offer my short list of top misused nautical terms in the Costa Concordia coverage:

Charged with abandoning ship. Many news reports, including those on the major US television networks, used this phrase, but “abandoning ship” is not a crime. Capt. Francesco Schettino may have abandoned his post, or be guilty of desertion, dereliction or many other crimes. Abandon ship is an order, almost always reserved to the captain, given when remaining on board ship becomes more hazardous, or is threatening to become that way, than getting into life rafts, life boats, or even the water itself. The process of abandoning ship can itself be risky, which is why such an order is not given lightly. Schettino has been criticized for delaying too long to give that order, but there are cases where ships were abandoned too early as well, leaving the ship relatively safe and afloat while the crew and passengers vanished. The Mary Celeste is the most famous example of this.

Off course. The Costa Concordia was off its planned trackline, but this was apparently the captain’s intention. Even the everyday definition of off course takes into account this lack of intention, but in a maritime environment a course is the direction a ship is intentionally steered.

Keeled over. There is no doubt this term comes from the nautical world, but its meaning in everyday language has changed. According to the Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms, keel over refers to something a human being does when sick or dead. A ship may be keeled over, but in that case it is upside down, what is commonly referred to as capsized. The Costa Concordia, as I write this, is heeled over, or listing.

The captain goes down with the ship. A “tradition” that, if it were ever actually true, is certainly not true now. The captain does have ultimate responsibility for every life on his ship, but that also includes his own. In an emergency, every crewmember has a job and the captain’s is usually to be the “situation commander,” overseeing all aspects of the response. In an abandon ship situation, the captain will oversee the evacuation of crew and passengers while coordinating with search and rescue units ashore or on scene. The station bill, the document that describes each crewmember’s job in an emergency, will often specify which life boat or life raft each crewmember is supposed to board in an abandon ship. The captain’s lifeboat or raft will often be the last one to depart the ship, and may include other senior crewmembers like the chief engineer and chief mate. But every situation is different: ideally, the captain will be, if not the last one off, a least one of the last. He is not required to sacrifice himself, either for form’s sake or for others in situations beyond his capacity to help.

Women and children first. Another myth, a holdover from Victorian attitudes still in place in the days of the Titanic incident (and thus firmly fixed in popular culture). Like the crew, a ship’s passengers have a job to do in an emergency, a job that should be explained to them and rehearsed early in a voyage. In an abandon ship, that job is to follow the instructions of the crew and to board lifeboats or rafts in the manner directed by the crew. On a large ship like the Costa Concordia, each passenger should be assigned a lifeboat ahead of time and know how to get there. Usually, families will be kept together, regardless of the gender of any given family member. One exception to this may be passengers with disabilities; many ships have separate evacuation procedures for these folks.

Black box. A term many reporters are using for the bridge data recorder, or BDR, similar to the flight data recorders (FDRs) found on aircraft. Pilots who first flew with these devices called them “black boxes” because they were the one piece of equipment whose inner workings the crew was not privy to. Since then, the term has been used as a lazy analogy for a recording device used in post-accident investigations. I’m not saying I’ve never heard a mariner describe a BDR as a “black box,” but more often a more colorful term is used.

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The Captain's Code

2012-01-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

Photo by Roberto Vongher. http://www.veganavi.it/

The Costa Concordia disaster this week has called into question the actions of the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino. Two issues stand out: the fact that the ship was off its designated trackline, and Schettino's actions in ordering and overseeing the abandoning the vessel. Monday night, I was interviewed on these topics on CBC's Connect with Mark Kelly. A transcript follows. For the complete report, see the Connect with Mark Kelly website.

KELLY: Yes, the seas can be unpredictable, but human nature can be worse. So, how can you protect a ship from that? Capt. Rob Earle has been in the merchant marine for 15 years, he joins us tonight from Seattle. Thanks for coming on to talk to us tonight. Let me get your read on this story here, because everyone’s pointing the finger at the captain here tonight for a massive screw up at least that’s what it certainly appears to be. What are the failsafe technology that is in here to prevent this kind of thing happening?

EARLE: Well, there's technology and there’s procedures. You have all sorts of equipment on the bridge and these days it’s all integrated. And you can set alarms on the GPS, on the radar, on the depth finder, on the electronic charts and there's also how you use your human resources, what’s called bridge resource management. You have one person looking out and one person steering, maybe one person taking a fix on the chart, that varies depending on whether you’re in the open ocean, or going up a wide river or something like that, the amount of attention that’s paid and the number of people you have. But al the procedures in the world and all the wonderful equipment in the world are useless if you don’t follow those procedures or you don’t use that equipment properly.

KELLY: So when you hear of something like this on this scale and this size of a ship like this, with a cargo of 4000-plus passengers, how does that strike you from your vantage point from a guy with your experience?

EARLE: Well, the first, to be honest, whether you're on s small fishing boat or a cruise ship like this if you work in this kind of environment, you get this sick feeling in your stomach, that’s the first thing when you hear something like this has happened. But unfortunately it happens too often, like last year, late last year, down in New Zealand you had the container ship Rena go aground on a reef there, and the Shen Neng 1 the year before that hit the Great Barrier reef. So all this equipment all these procedures, even the most experienced mariner; you feel like it could happen to you, so you try not to judge too harshly until all the facts are in.

KELLY: Yeah, I guess you also don’t want to walk a mile in those moccasins, but I'm curious to know because so many people are also focusing on this idea that here was one of the first guys to get off that ship and one of the things he has been charges with by police down there is abandoning ship. What is the code? We were making fun of it earlier with the Titanic but we do have this sort of thing in our mind that the captain always goes down with the ship. Obviously, he's not going down with it, but should he be the last one on board to ensure there is at least a safe evacuation?

EARLE: Well, if he’s not the last one he should certainly be one of the last ones off. If you’re putting people into the lifeboats, it’s my experience it’s the captain’s job to be in the last boat. You want to get everybody off; you don’t want to go down with the ship if you don’t have to. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out this way, you talked about this incident off South Africa in 1991, and it was the entertainers on board – the last two crew members on board were entertainers – because they were the ones to get the more than 500 people off that ship.

KELLY: Unbelievable, This guy is trying to say he could coordinate better from a beach bar close by. I think people are having a hard time swallowing that one.

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Strait of Hormuz

2012-01-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

The Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Indian Ocean, and thus the rest of the world, is once again a source of conflict. The United States and the West struggle to keep this oil route open while Iran threatens to close it down in retaliation for the West’s interference with its nuclear program. One Iranian official said last week that closing the Strait would be “as easy as drinking a glass of water,” but in thirty years of tensions in the area, the oil has kept flowing.

Strait of Hormuz traffic scheme.

The Strait is only 21 miles wide at its narrowest. It falls well within the exclusive economic zones of Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran. Under a provision of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, called the transit provision, ships of all nations may pass through the Strait, as long they adhere to the regulations governing the traffic separation scheme (TSS) laid out on charts of the area. The TSS consists of an inbound and outbound lane, each a mile wide, with a two-mile buffer zone on either side. Ship traffic is supervised by Oman.

More than a third of the world’s seaborne oil supply– more than a fifth of the total world’s oil traffic – passes through the Strait. An average of 14 tankers up to 150,000 tons each pass through the Strait in each direction every day. Forty-percent of the world’s tanker traffic passes through the Strait.

The countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE have no sea routes that don’t pass through the Strait, and Oman, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran itself all rely heavily on traffic passing through the Strait.

Conflicts. Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Strait has been the site of conflict between Iran and several other countries

Iran first threatened to close the Strait in 1984 after Iraq attacked several Iranian ships in the area.
The US and Iran came to blows there in April 1988 after an Iranian mine damaged an American frigate. Several Iranian ships were sunk and damaged in retaliation. In July that year, an American ship shot down an Iranian airliner, killing 290 people.
Iran and UAE have both claimed possession of the islands of Abu Musa – said to contain large deposits of oil – Greater Tunb, and Lesser Tunb. Iran occupies the islands militarily at the moment.
The US and Iran again ratcheted up tension in 2007-2008, when several armed Iranian speedboats had close encounters with ships from the American Fifth Fleet.

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The Good Samaritan Requirement

2012-01-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

The USS Kidd comes to the rescue of the fishing boat Al Molai. US Navy photo.

Twice in the last week, US Navy ships have rescued crewmembers from Iranian fishing vessels in the Persian Gulf. In the latest incident, 13 Iranian fishermen who had been attacked by pirates were rescued in what Iran called a “humanitarian gesture,” this despite the rising tensions between the US and Iran in the area.

There is a long tradition of one ship going to the rescue of another in distress. In more recent times, this tradition has been codified. Under Regulation 33 in of the International Convention for the Safety of Life At Sea (SOLAS) Chapter V:

The master of a ship at sea which is in a position to be able to provide assistance on receiving a signal from any source that persons are in distress at sea, is bound to proceed with all speed to their assistance, if possible informing them or the search and rescue service that the ship is doing so. If the ship receiving the distress alert is unable or, in the special circumstances of the case, considers it unreasonable or unnecessary to proceed to their assistance, the master must enter in the log-book the reason for failing to proceed to the assistance of the persons in distress [and] to inform the appropriate search and rescue service accordingly.

A captain who fails to respond to a distress call can face fines and even jail time. The Moscow Times recently reported an incident in which a captain faced two years in prison for failure to give aid:

The captain of a vessel that passed by the sinking Bulgaria cruise ship without stopping to help rescue drowning passengers was fined, but avoided jail time, Interfax reported.
A district court in Tatarstan ruled that Yury Tuchin failed to provide help to victims of the July disaster on the Volga River, in which 122 people died when the 55-year-old Bulgaria foundered in a storm.
Tuchin, skipper of the Arbat dry cargo ship, pleaded guilty to not stopping to collect survivors, but said he had only done so because his ship risked crushing the lifeboats.
The prosecution asked to jail the 60-year-old sailor for 14 months and ban him from working on ships for three years afterward, but the court only fined Tuchin 130,000 rubles ($4,200), the report said.

No one is obligated to put his or her own vessel in danger to assist someone else. In my own case, I went to the aid of a small craft stranded on some rocks on a falling tide. The captain there wanted my ship to tow his boat off, but I considered it too dangerous to get that close to the rocks. Instead, I sent the Chief Mate and some crew members to stand by in a skiff in case the stranded boat needed to be evacuated. While the captain of a vessel in distress -- or, often, the search and rescue authority in a given area – has the right to “requisition” other vessels for emergencies, a captain’s ultimate responsibility is to his or her own ship.

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Liberty Ships (Re-post)

2012-01-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

On this date in 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt submitted a budget calling for production of 60,000 planes, 45,000 tanks, 20,000 antiaircraft guns, and 6 million deadweight tons of merchant shipping. His $59 billion budget earmarked $52 billion the war effort. Despite the attack on Pearl Harbor exactly one month earlier, most of the materiel is bound for the European theater. This post was originally published December 11, 2010

This country is already, in effect, an arsenal for the democratic Allies. Let it be proclaimed as such, as an expression of our national policy. Let us cooperate in the one way that we reasonably can.
-- playwright Robert Emmet Sherwood
quoted in The New York Times, May 12, 1940

Sherwood is credited with coining the term "arsenal of democracy," although Franklin Roosevelt popularized it. In the years leading up to the United States' entry into the World War II, no policy would be more emblematic of that term than the construction and deployment of the more than 2,700 Liberty Ships that carried materiel to all theaters of the war.

Originally built to fill British orders for vessels to replace those lost to German U-boats, the production of Liberty ships was stepped up after US entry into the war. These early Liberty ships were coal-powered due to Britain's access to coal resources and petroleum shortages. To speed up production, welding replaced the more labor-intensive riveting and, in another first, women became the main welders as more men entered active military service. Their quick and simple assembly allowed no room for eye-pleasing design and Roosevelt himself referred to the early Liberty Ships as "ugly ducklings" and "a dreadful looking object." He put a better PR spin on it when the first vessel, Patrick Henry, was delivered to the British in September 1941: Roosevelt drew on Henry's famous "Give me liberty or give me death" quote to name the ships, saying they represented the "Liberty of Europe."

All Liberty ships were built according to the same general plan: approximately 450 feet long, propelled by one single propeller (the American versions were oil-fueled), able to carry more than 9,000 tons of cargo 23,000 miles without refueling. The 41 to 44 crew members were complemented by the 12 to 25 armed Naval Guards to man the handful of deck guns the vessels carried. Although relatively lightly armed, it was a Liberty ship, the Stephen Hopkins, which became the the first American ship to sink a German vessel in the war.

Although the first ships took several months to build, the US shipyards eventually filed that down to a mere 42 days. In one famous case, the Robert E. Peary was built in less than five days by the Permanente Metals shipyard in Richmond, California (although it was not fully outfitted for several more weeks). The quick construction was not without it's problems: twelve Liberty ships broke in half, including theJohn P. Gaines, which sank with the loss of ten men. The average Liberty ship cost less than $2 million; most "paid for themselves" in less than one round trip.

Although a handful of Liberty ships were still in service as late as the 1960s, most were sold off or scrapped in the first few years after the war. Only two are still intact: the John W. Brown (pictured above), based in Baltimore and the Jeremiah O'Brien, based in San Francisco.

For more on the Liberty ships, click here to the usmma.org website.

The Legend Of The Wren (Re-post)

2011-12-31T00:01:00.000-08:00

This post was originally published on January 1, 2011

The wren, the wren the king of all birds
St. Stephen's Day he was caught in the furze
Up with the kettle down with the pan
Give us a penny to bury the wren.

If a mariner wears the feather of a wren killed on New Year’s Day, he will not drown at sea, claims an old superstition. According to the legend, a mermaid who enjoyed luring sailors to their death transformed herself into a wren when pursued. Eventually, the gods took notice of the mermaid’s misbehavior, and condemned her to appear every New Year’s Day as a wren, hunted by the sailors once lured to shipwreck and death by her songs.

In pagan times, the wren was considered a sacred bird. The Irish noun for wren, Dreoilín, is derived from drui-éan, meaning “Druid bird.” The Celtic goddess of love, Clíona, frequently took the form of a wren, and the birds themselves were considered messengers of the gods. The Oak King, who is sacrificed to the sun god Bel on the summer solstice, also takes the form a wren.

Christians consider the wren a bad omen, perhaps because it was held sacred by the pagans. A wren is supposed to have led the Romans to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane; another is said to have betrayed the martyr St. Stephen to the mob that stoned him to death. More recently, a wren was supposedly beat a drum betraying the location of an Irish army subsequently massacred by Oliver Cromwell’s troops. A French folk belief holds that touching a wren’s nest will cause pimples.

These latter beliefs led to the hunting of wrens, the main day for which was December 26, or St. Stephen’s feast day. Boys who caught and killed wrens would take them from house to house and receive money from the families living there. If a household refused to pay up, the boys would bury the wren in front of the house, causing the family disgrace.

Wrens are not the only birds to figure in sailors’ superstitions. Perhaps best known is the albatross, which are supposed to carry the souls of dead sailors. Killing an albatross is considered bad luck for the entire ship, thus the phrase “an albatross around his neck.” Other common mariners’ superstitions involving birds:

Sighting a cormorant or a curlew at sea is considered bad luck
Sighting a swallow, robin, or dove is considered good luck
If a robin flies over a woman on St. Valentine’s Day, she will marry a sailor.
Three seagulls flying together, directly overhead, signify impending doom.

Ice

2011-12-28T00:01:00.000-08:00

Note: A different version of this post originally ran on July 14, 2009.

Ice has been a challenge to mariners from ancient times right up until today. Two of the most infamous maritime disasters of all time, the Titanic sinking and the Exxon Valdez oil spill, were caused by either a collision with an ice berg or an attempt to avoid one.

Calving glaciers. The photos at left show the South Sawyer glacier in Tracy Arm, a fjord in Southeast Alaska. The picture on top was taken in May of 1995, the bottom picture in June 2009. South Sawyer was always good for a show, but about five years ago it started calving at a much increased rate and went into what scientists call "catastrophic retreat." The pictures weren't taken at the exact same distance (lots of seal pups were hauled out on the ice in the more recent picture, so the Spirit of Yorktown kept her distance to avoid disturbing them) but it's obvious how much the glacier has retreated in the intervening years.

Ice words. It's a myth that Eskimos have more than a dozen words for "snow," but mariners have developed a huge vocabulary to describe ice of various sizes, age, and composition. Large chunks of floating ice are called either bergy bits or growlers. Bergy bits are the size of a small building, reaching up to five meters above the water and an area of up to 300 square meters. Growlers -- named for the sound they sometimes make as they bounce in the waves -- reach less than a meter above the water and take up about 20 square meters. Sea ice -- ice formed by saltwater -- can be described as frazil, grease, nilas, rind, pancake, young, old, etc.

Great Lakes Ice. During a particularly cold winter, Lake Superior can be completely frozen over for some periods, with ice as thick as 100 centimeters. During a mild winter, Lake Ontario can be basically ice-free, possibly with some forming around the entrance to the St. Lawrence River in early January. Despite this variability, recent years have seen a decline in the amount of overall Great Lakes ice formed and the time it stays frozen. While this may seem like a boon for shipping at first, the increased time the water of the Lakes stays in liquid form increases the evaporation rate in a given year, ultimately lowering the lake level.

Ice breakers. Coast Guard and research vessels (or cruise ships that are converted research vessels) rated as ice breakers have especially heavy and reinforced hulls. These vessels don't break ice by plowing through it, they break ice by running their bows up on the ice and using the weight of the vessel to break up the ice from above. Ice breakers are mainly used in areas where sea ice has formed, or in large frozen areas of fresh water like the Great Lakes. In places like Tracy Arm, ship captains go slow, contact ice chunks at an angle, and take into account the material and thickness of their hull. The above video shows the Canadian Coast Guard cutter Samuel Risley in action in Thunder Bay.

Michael Scott of The Cleveland Plain Dealer filed an excellent article on the consequences of the reduction of Great Lakes ice in March 2009. Find it here.

Misunderstood Mariners: Robert Louis Stevenson and Christmas At Sea (Re-post)

2011-12-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

Note: This post originally appeared December 22, 2009.

British writer Robert Louis Stevenson not only invented the popular characters Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (in the novel bearing their names), and Long John Silver (in the novel Treasure Island), he was also an accomplished mariner. After a lifetime of ill health, he set out from San Francisco in 1888 on his yacht Casco, and spent the last six years of his life sailing and writing about the South Pacific, especially the Hawaiian Island and Samoa. Among his non-fiction works are In The South Seas (available here from Google Books). He also wrote this poem:

CHRISTMAS AT SEA

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;

The decks were like a slide, where a seamen scarce could stand;

The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;

And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;

But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.

We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,

And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;

All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;

All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,

For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;

But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:

So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,

And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;

The good red fires were burning bright in every 'long-shore home;

The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;

And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;

For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)

This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn,

And the house above the coastguard's was the house where I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,

My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;

And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,

Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,

Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;

And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,

To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.

"All hands to loose topgallant sails," I heard the captain call.

"By the Lord, she'll never stand it," our first mate Jackson, cried.

..."It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,

And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.

As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,

We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,

As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;

But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,

Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

I Saw Three Ships On Christmas Day (Re-post)

2011-12-21T00:01:00.000-08:00

This post ran originally on December 19, 2009.

I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day in the morning...

O they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
O they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas Day in the morning.

The Christmas carol "I Saw Three Ships" dates from at least the 17th century, and may be another version of "Greensleeves," on which the carol "What Child Is This?" is based. Like most Christmas carols, the song strives for a specific religious message, rather than historical accuracy. If someone actually saw three ships sailing into Bethlehem, they were most likely camels, the so-called "ships of the desert." Bethlehem then, as now, is landlocked.

Ships and boats, however, do figure in the story of Jesus; they are mentioned more than 50 times in the New Testament alone. The so-called "Jesus Boat," (a full-scale replica is pictured above) discovered near Kibbutz Ginosar (on the Sea of Galilee) in 1986, has been dated to the traditional time of Christ in the first century AD. The 25-ft long craft shows signs of being repaired multiple times over decades, leading some scholars to guess it may have seen continuous use over nearly a century. Carrying a crew of up to five, it is typical of the kind of boat used on the lake at that time for fishing and even passenger transportation.

The eastern Mediterranean has enjoyed a bustling maritime trade almost since the beginning of recorded history. The Phoenicians sailed ships into and out of this area from 1500 BC to about 300 BC. The Philistines of the bible traded in this area until about 1100 BC. Greeks, Egyptians, and others also sailed these shores. The Romans, who ruled this area at the time of Jesus, learned much about how to build and run a ship from their defeated enemy Carthage, a colony of the Phoenicians.

Things hadn't changed much by the first century AD. Wide, round-bottomed ships plied the shores of the Med, powered mainly by sails, but also by long, parallel banks of oars. Navigation was primitive: ships rarely left sight of the nearest shore and would pull right up on the beach in the event of threatening weather, or at night.

There wasn't as much fishing activity in the Mediterranean waters off the Holy Land as in the Sea of Galilee, but there was heavy trade to Greece and beyond in ceramics, stone work, and most of all in purple dye. Bulk products, like grain, were exclusively shipped by sea. Then, as now, it was much more economical to carry such products by ship than overland.

The vessel carrying Saint Paul to Rome in the middle of the first century AD would have been a vessel much like this. A typical vessel of the time might have been as big or bigger than the ships Columbus sailed to the new world fourteen centuries later.

The photo above is used with the kind permission of HolyLandPhotos.org. More on the Jesus Boat at Sacred Destinations.com.

Mercy Ships, Mariners, and Religion (Re-post)

2011-12-17T00:01:00.001-08:00

A version of this post originally ran on January 30, 2010. I'm also reprinting Dr. Ben La Brot's Comment below.

A reader noted that in a previous post about maritime-based relief efforts in Haiti, I pointed out that two of the charities were Christian. Having worked for a large charity in the past, I know it's important for many donors to know where their money is going. Some would not want their money going to a Christian charity, some would not want their money going anywhere but a Christian charity, some couldn't care less. I only pointed out the charities' religious affiliation since I was encouraging people to donate money, goods, and expertise, but I thought they should do so with their eyes open.

One of the charities, Mercy Ships, was for many years associated with the Christian missionary organization Youth With A Mission (YWAM). Mercy Ships itself was founded by two YWAM members, but has for years been operationally separate from the youth missionary organization. YWAM has been the subject of several controversies over the years. Mercy Ships has been criticized recently for high salaries paid to its top officers. According to the Charity Navigator website, the charity's president earned more than $124,000 in 2007. Mercy Ships also note that more than 82 percent of donations go to programs, as opposed to salaries, administration, and other expenses.

For Charity Navigator's complete report on Mercy Ships, click here.

South African Murray Tristan Crawford is currently serving as an Assistant Purser with Mercy Ships and blogs about it here.

Modern mariners sometimes have an uneasy relationship with religion. One captain I worked under forbade crew members from holding non-denominational "gatherings" in public areas on board the vessel. Another told the crew to honor the Sabbath as best as possible by only performing necessary watchkeeping, safety, and sanitary duties on Sundays. On the evening of September 11, 2001, I was asked by some passengers to lead a prayer before dinner. It was a natural reaction on their part, but I had to refuse: with sixty passengers on board, you can be sure someone would be offended. Then there's the HR issues that come up when "asking" crew members to pray with you.

Religion used to be a much more important part of mariners' lives. Englishman John Newton, a seaman working on a slave trader, did not consider himself a spiritual man until his vessel was in a storm one night and he called out to God for help. His conversion would eventually lead to him giving up the sea and the slave trade, becoming a clergyman, and writing and publishing the song "Amazing Grace" in 1779. Religion is a major theme in Herman Melville's Moby Dick which, while it is fiction, is based on real events and informed by Melville's career at sea.

Churches and other faith-based organizations have often rallied to the cause of the seaman, traditionally lonely, poor, and possibly a slave to the bottle. Sometimes, religious orders provide material needs, like the monks that Time magazine reported on in its January 11, 1960 edition:

The little coastal freighter barely made it to the lee of Caldy Island, in the Bristol Channel, one mile off the Welsh coast. Bound out from the Scottish port of Irvine on a 30-hour run to the Welsh port of Milford Haven, the 700-ton St. Angus had run into one of the winter's wildest storms, which raked and pounded Britain from the Hebrides to the Scilly Isles. Off tiny Caldy (pop. 59) the seven-man crew faced a grim Christmas. Their food was running low and there was little hope of getting more. The men of St. Angus radioed the situation to the mainland, and resigned themselves to riding out the storm on empty stomachs. Suddenly they saw a sight to make Lord Nelson rub his eye. Out from the island, against 8-ft. waves and a 60-mile-an-hour wind, bucked an old World War II amphibious craft manned by four cowled monks and a coast guardsman. When St. Angus finally got a line to them, the crew hauled up a tea chest of staples. It was no ham or roast goose Christmas dinner, for the monks who brought it were austere Trappists, who eat only bread, butter, cheese and fruit, but there were some cans of beer (kept for monastery guests), for St. Angus men.

Today several religious organizations exist to serve seamen. All listed here are Christian. If you know of any serving mariners of other faiths, please add a Comment below or email me at misunderstoodmariner@yahoo.com.

New York's Seaman's Church Institute, which I mentioned in my "Holidays At Sea" post, can be contacted here. Also mentioned in the at post were the Charleston Port and Seafarers Society (more information here) and the Seafarers & International Home in New York here.

Seamen from around the world call on the Stella Maris Center nearest them. More here.

UK seamen may look to the Seamen's Friendly Society of St. Paul here.

The Mission To Seafarer's is also based in the UK but ministers to mariners of all nations. More info here.

Comment by Dr. Ben La Brot

I actually happened across your blog while looking up mercy ships; my name is Dr. Ben La Brot of the Floating Doctors. We are another 501c3 all-volunteer non-profit (no salaries here) medical relief team working from our 76' 77-ton ship Southern Wind. We worked in Petit-Goave, Haiti for 2.5 months this spring [of 2010 - RE], then transited to Roatan, Honduras where we have been working in health centers opening a clinic, and doing mobile clinics with Southern Wind. We are getting set to head back to Haiti in late January to deliver IV fluids, medical supplies, water treatment systems and medical personnel to a string of clinics along the north coast, west of Cap Haitian.  

Any info, suggestions, comments, or helping us put the word out would be a great help. Please visit our website www.floatingdoctors.com for blogs, pics, and more about us.   We are not affiliated with any specific religion, but we welcome help from all quarters. If anyone would like to support our mission to Haiti, or can help connect us with more support in country (we are working with Partners in Health, Direct Relief International, and the Cap Haitian Health Network on our upcoming trip), please contact us directly at floatingdoctors@gmail.com.

Fair Winds, y Prospero Ano Nuevo de la costa de Honduras...

Dr. Ben La Brot President of Floating Doctors

Hurricane Season 2011

2011-12-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

People are still cleaning up from Hurricane Irene and the other storms of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season, but we already know that this year is one of the most active on record.

For more on how hurricanes form, see my August 31, 2011 post here.

Hurricane seasons begin on June 1^st of a given year and end on November 30^th. This does not mean there are no storms before or after those dates, but they typically are concentrated within that half of the year. Thus, mariners, meteorologists, and insurance companies have considered that period “hurricane season” since the 1930s.

This year was tied with 1887, 1995, and 2010 in being the third most-active hurricane season on record (the most active was 2005, with 28 storms and which actually extended into early 2006). Although it was considered “above normal” in the number of tropical storms and hurricanes, it was atypical in some ways. The first storm, Tropical Storm Arlene, did not develop until late June, when it slammed into Veracruz, Mexico, killing 30 people. The first full hurricane of the season, Irene, did not occur until late August. Irene made up for lost time, however, killing 55 people in the Caribbean and North America and causing more than $10billion in damage.

Irene was followed a week later by Katia which, after it was finished with the North American coast, sent remnants into Europe, killing a person in the British Isles and causing power outages as far east as St. Petersburg, Russia. Meanwhile, the US and Canadian coasts were still getting hammered by Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Maria. More storms followed, a total of twenty for the season, seven of which developed into full-blown hurricanes.

Above: NOAA video of the entire 2011 Atlantic hurricane season in 4.5 minutes

Holidays At Sea (Re-post)

2011-12-10T00:01:00.001-08:00

A version of this post was first published on December 1, 2009.

When you consider how many traditions and superstitions mariners have about almost everything, it's surprising how few Christmas traditions there are at sea. At least one in seven people on earth are Christians, and twice that many will celebrate Christmas in one form or other. Add to that those who recognize the Jewish Hanukkah, the African Kwanzaa, and the Pagan Yule, and you have a good share of the world's people, yet holiday traditions at sea are mainly just those brought from land.

Many seafaring traditions are based in the Christian faith. Christians believe that Jesus was crucified on a Friday and resurrected on a Sunday, so it is bad luck to begin a sea voyage on Friday, and good luck to begin one on Sunday. It's also bad luck to begin a voyage on the first Monday in April (the day Cain killed Abel), the second Monday in August (the day God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah), or December 31 (the day Judas Iscariot hanged himself). Such superstitions predate the Christians by centuries, of course; Roman seafarers believed it bad luck to cut your nails or hair on board ship (it offended Neptune), and that it was good luck to offer the gods wine by pouring onto the deck of a ship.

Three chapters of From The Bridge: Authentic Modern Sea Stories, by mariner and writer Kelly Sweeney, are devoted to the topic of the holidays at sea. In addition to recounting some of his holiday experiences on board various vessels, Sweeney looks at various gifts for the mariner. The biggest, if you are another mariner, is holiday relief:

It is no easy task locating reliefs during the holidays, because no one wants to miss the time with the family. Sailors scheduled to go back to work may avoid answering the phone, or perhaps they'll travel somewhere they can't be reached until after the New Year. Those currently onboard, who are supposed to have the holidays off, call and harass the office to find a relief so they can make it back in time for the festivities.

If you're not a mariner, but just love one, Sweeney suggests a good set of rain gear, a pocket knife, a set of channel locks for those working on tankers, a flashlight, or a laminated family photo.

Some other nautical holiday traditions:

New York's Seaman's Church Institute has run a Christmas At Sea volunteer knitting program for more than a century. Knitting groups around the country makes scarves and other items, which are distributed free of charge to seamen. For more information clickhere.

The Charleston Port and Seafarers Society delivers care packages at ships calling in Charleston during the holidays. More information here.

The Seafarers & International Home in New York has a similar program. See more here.

The Patrick O'Brian website re-creates some Christmas dishes from the Age of Sail here.

The schooner Rouse Simmons, the legendary "Christmas Tree Ship," was lost with all aboard while delivering Christmas trees to Chicago in 1912. For more see The Maritime History Of The Great Lakes website.

If you work at sea, check out Kelly Sweeney's New Years resolutions for mariners in the December 2009 issue of Professional Mariner here.

Many seaside communities have Christmas ship or boat parades, or boat lightings, like those pictured above. For info about this year's festivities, check out the following links to a port near you

Baltimore

Boston

Charleston

Corpus Christi/Port Aransas

Florida (all cities)

Hampton Roads

Houston/Galveston/Kemah

Los Angeles/Long Beach Area

Best Pearl Harbor Films

2011-12-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

The Japanese attack in Tora! Tora! Tora!

In honor of today’s 70^th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, I look at some of the best films made about or inspired by the attack.

1) Pearl Harbor: The Real Story (Terra Studios, 2001). A great mix of interviews with survivors and rare footage, much of it never seen before. Gives a real ground-eye-view of the attack.

2) Pearl Harbor: Two Hours That Changed The World (ABC News, 1994/2007). The late David Brinkley narrates this look back, featuring interviews (including two with two Japanese pilots who were part of the attack), rare footage and still photos. The 1994 version is 100 minutes and was edited heavily for the 2007 DVD release.

3) Tora! Tora! Tora! (Richard Fleischer, 1970). The whole story of the attack, based on Gordon Prange’s book At Dawn We Slept. Fleischer looks at the attack from the points of view of both American and Japanese characters. The attack scene was the mot visually stunning and accurate until the CGI-assisted version in Pearl Harbor more than 30 years later.

4) Pearl Harbor: Legacy of the Attack (National Geographic, 2001). Tom Brokaw narrates this look at not only the attack, but its legacy today, including the “ecological time bomb” that is the USS Arizona. Also features Robert Ballard, the explorer who found the wreck of the Titanic.

5) From Here To Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953) This adaptation of James Jones’s novel is probably best known for the scene where Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr roll around kissing on the sand while the waves crash over them. This films recreates just how unready America was for the attack.

6) In Harm’s Way (Otto Preminger, 1965) A detailed re-creation of the attack opens this epic starring John Wayne and Kirk Douglas, which follows its characters through the first two years of the Pacific war. Not just flag-waving patriotism, Preminger touches on mistakes leading up to and following the attack and the burdens those mistakes became for many in the US military.

7) The Final Countdown (Don Taylor, 1980) Kirk Douglas again and Martin Sheen star in the Pearl Harbor “what if?” The aircraft carrier Nimitz encounters a freak time warp while at sea and the crew finds itself thrown back in time to the day before the attack. The US Navy cooperated with the making of this film, so there’s lots of vintage aircraft and ships to be seen.

8) The History Channel Presents Pearl Harbor (History Channel, 2001). Covers the political, economic, and military wrangling between the US and Japan that preceded the attack. Then it looks at the planning and execution of the attack from the vantage point of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the Harvard-educated America-phile who led the Japanese forces.

9) Sacrifice At Pearl Harbor (BBC, 2001). The most serious look at the thesis that Franklin Roosevelt and others knew the attack was coming, but did nothing in order to have an excuse to put the US into World War II. Has been compared to the 9/11 “Truther” film Loose Change.

10) December 7^th: The Pearl Harbor Story (John Ford, 1943). Ford’s full docudrama was not available until recently; it was cut severely before its original release because of its criticism of the Navy and its lack of preparedness before the attack. On the other hand, it recreated the attack so well that other feature films borrowed footage from it for years.

The Pearl Harbor Conspiracy

2011-12-03T00:20:00.000-08:00

From the firing on Fort Sumter to the Kennedy assassination to the 9/11 attacks, many pivotal and traumatic events in American history leave many wondering: what don’t we know? Is there more to the story, conspiracies not accounted for in official histories? Today, seventy years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, some say we still don’t know the whole story. The key to this particular conspiracy is this: did President Franklin Roosevelt or other high ranking members of the US or British government have advanced knowledge of the attack and do nothing, in order to draw the US into World War II on the side of the allies? Despite seven decades of digging, no irrefutable evidence exists that Roosevelt, Churchill, or anyone else knew the attacks of December 7, 1941 were imminent.

Proponents of the view that Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen generally cite five main reasons for their belief:

The US had already broken many Japanese codes and thus would have known about such a large naval operation
Japanese radio transmissions were intercepted just prior to the attack that should have given warning
Roosevelt, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and other government officials are on the record indicating they knew an attack was imminent and did nothing about it
No US Aircraft carriers were in Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack, leaving the Navy with its most powerful ships intact despite the great losses
A desire by Roosevelt to get the US into the war, and desperation on the part of Winston Churchill and what was left of the other democratic governments in Europe to get America involved.

Several official US investigations were conducted during and after the war. The early investigations tended to cite incompetence, inter-service rivalry (and thus lack of communication), and slowness in decoding and analyzing collected intelligence. Field commanders bore the brunt of the blame: no one in Washington was found to be at fault. A 1995 Congressional hearing produced a somewhat different interpretation:

Various conspiracy theories have been advanced, but no evidence has
been offered to support those theories. Rather, the evidence of the
handling of these messages in Washington reveals some ineptitude, some
unwarranted assumptions and misestimates, limited coordination,
ambiguous language, and lack of clarification and follow-up at higher
levels.

Various non-governmental investigations over the decades have led to more sinister conclusions. Journalist Robert Stinnett, in his 1999 book Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, cites evidence that the President knew an attack was coming, but that he withheld the information his field commanders. Stinnett cites, among other evidence, a 1940 memo by a Naval Intelligence lieutenant outlining ways Japan might be manipulated into attack the United States.

The definitive popular history of the Pearl Harbor attack is Gordon Prange's At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. The googlebooks page has reviews and links here. This book was the source for the 1970 film Tora! Tora! Tora!

Parts of Stinnett's book Days of Deceit: The Truth About FDR And Pearl Harbor are available at googlebooks here.

The so-called McCollum Memorandum, which Stinnett cites in his book, is available at Wikisource here.

The text of the "Dorn Report," the result of the 1995 Thurmond-Spence hearing, can be found here.

Guest Post: "For Whom The Bell Tolls"

2011-11-30T08:32:00.000-08:00

http://www.universalcargo.com

In light of my recent series about the presidential candidates and maritime issues, I found this Op-Ed by Tony Munoz, editor-in-chief of Maritime Executive magazine timely. It is reprinted here without his permission. Find the original article here.

The Administration’s ZERO Bucks Plan for Maritime

An exuberant President Obama last week unveiled a $447 billion infrastructure plan to quickly inject money into the economy and create jobs. The plan included $50 billion to jumpstart surface transportation projects, but the strategy once again emphasized rail, air and highways. That’s right: “ZERO” bucks for maritime again.

President Obama’s Infrastructure speech rang the warning bells as he said, “Building a world-class transportation system is part of what made us an economic superpower. And now we’re going to sit back and watch China build newer airports and faster railroads?” He continued: “Ask yourselves—where would we be right now if the people before us decided not to build our highways, not to build our bridges, our dams, our airports?”

During 2010, China spent about 9% of its GDP on infrastructure and Europe invested 5%. The U.S currently ranks twenty-third in overall infrastructure quality, somewhere between Spain and Chile and spends only 2.4% of GDP on infrastructure. While it’s indisputable that the nation’s aging highways and bridges are in desperate need of repair, the fact is China’s 1.3 billion people are in need of a modern infrastructure and its government has lots of America’s money to invest in it.

The Summer of Our Discontent

The federal government currently spends about $50 billion annually on all forms of transportation. But the U.S. maritime sector gets “ZERO” bucks annually and is currently not part of the economic recovery plan to rebuild infrastructure and create jobs. When the President reminisced about past generations building the U.S. into an economic superpower, he forgot to mention that most of the economic wealth of those past generations was delivered on a fleet of U.S. ships.

Mr. President, America’s maritime heritage is the backbone of the nation’s economic greatness. U.S. commercial fleets were the workhorses of the Industrial Revolution and they delivered the harvests and manufactured products and bulk resources around the world. They supported the U.S. military in every armed conflict this nation has ever been in. And they delivered America’s generosity when natural disasters or famines inflicted harm and suffering to other people around the planet.

Jobs are what Americans want and need. And lots of new jobs are what it will take to push this economy out of the Great Recession. The disparity between rich and poor has never been greater. While the nation’s wealth disparity is calculated as the top 20 percent of Americans owning 84 percent of the nation’s wealth, it is the income disparity, which is now the greatest since 1928, that is causing massive unemployment and increased spending of 18 percent on food stamps. Today, of all nations in the world, the U.S. now has the largest income disparity of its people except for Luxembourg.

And while Americans need jobs, U.S. shipyards and waterways are empty. The only ships congesting U.S. ports are owned by foreigners and manned by foreign mariners. Today, the greatest trading nation with a $14.7 trillion economy doesn’t own a deepwater fleet or its own intermodal system. Why? Because there has not been a national maritime policy since the Reagan Administration.

If a nation is judged by its policies and budgets, then the Obama Administration’s 2012 budget for the Maritime Administration shows an absolute disregard for the U.S. maritime sector. While nations with coastlines or waterways consider shipyards and flagged fleets as national assets, the U.S. maritime sector will get a pittance of $357.8 million. Furthermore, the Administration sought to rescind more than $50 million from the Title XI loan guarantee program as well, but Congress refused to accede to the request.

The President’s transport infrastructure support includes an increase of 12 percent in DOT’s 2012 budget ($129 billion). Moreover, that is an increase of 66 percent since FY 2010. Highways will get $70.5 billion, transit $22.4 billion, railroad $8.3 billion and aviation $18.7 billion, and maritime will get $357.8 million to assist the military. Furthermore, the President’s $50 billion transport rejuvenation plan will go to rehabilitate 150,000 miles of existing roadways, to construct 4,000 miles of new railways and renovate 150 miles of airport runways. When it gets broken up again, the U.S. taxpayer will get to fix it again.

The U.S. has the 9th largest coastline (86,000 miles) in the world and 25,000 miles of inland navigable waterways. The U.S. has 360 commercial ports employing 13.3 million Americans, which contribute $3.15 trillion to the economy and provides $212.5 billion in federal taxes. U.S. inland waterways handle 63 million tons of cargo and contribute $74 billion to the economy. Yet the federal government has “NO” maritime policy.

The Administration needs to realize the nation cannot pave its way or railroad its way to inevitable growth. The U.S. maritime sector can alleviate highway congestion and urban pollution and save billions of dollars in fuel costs by transporting goods on water. The maritime infrastructure of coastline, waterways, shipyards, and ports is already in place. Mr. President, you don’t have to spend $50 billion to build the marine highway system. And if jobs are the #1 issue for Americans and for the Administration, the people can be put back to work very quickly by training them to work in the shipyards, on vessels, and in the ports. Imagine a budget surplus for the arts, education, mass transportation, and health care for the poor. Imagine….

If you believe in jobs and support rebuilding America, then join the Maritime Executive and a distinguished panel of U.S. maritime executives at CCMIT in Linthicum Heights, Maryland on October 12th and 13th, 2011 for “Rebuilding America and Creating Jobs - A Maritime Forum.”

New Lyrics For "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"

2011-11-26T00:01:00.002-08:00

The haunting tune is familiar to anyone who’s listened to popular music in the last four decades: Gordon Lightfoot’s "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Lightfoot’s ballad about the fate of the Great Lakes freighter is one of his most-played songs, but recent investigations have lead to the singer/songwriter changing the lyrics in light of new findings.

Background. At 13, 600 tons, Edmund Fitzgerald was one of the largest “iron boats” working the Great Lakes. After being launched in 1958, she carried ore throughout the Lakes and came to be know for her size, speed records, and “DJ Captain” Peter Pulcer, who played music through the ship’s PA system when she transited the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers. Ernest McSorley was captain when Edmund Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin on November 9, 1975 bound for Detroit. By the next day the ship was caught in a storm with 35-foot waves and hurricane-force winds. Over the course of several hours, McSorley reported that the Edmund Fitgerald was taking on water and had a bad list. At shortly after 7pm, he told the captain of another vessel that “We are holding our own.” The ship was never heard from again.

Several theories attempt to account for Edmund Fitzgerald’s fate. Unusually high winds and waves, a “rogue wave,” and shallow water have all been blamed. The ship itself and the actions of the crew have also been suspected, including the failure of the crew to properly secure the large cargo hatch on the ship’s deck.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The following year, Lightfoot recorded the song for his album Summertime Dream. Although Lightfoot’s account sticks mainly to the facts known at the time, his lyrics speculate about events on the ship shortly before the sinking:

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'.
Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya.
At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in, he said
Fellas, it's been good t'know ya

Although Lightfoot admitted that this verse was purely speculative –“It's the only verse in the whole song where I give myself complete poetic license,” he said in a 2010 interview -- a US Coast Guard report on the incident at the time blamed the failure of the hatch due to improper use of the clamps used to hold the hatch to the deck. Almost from the beginning, though, the National Transportation Safety Board, and the families and labor unions of the lost 29 crew members, challenged the Coast Guard’s findings. Lightfoot’s song was a painful reminder to the families, though, that the official cause of the Edmund Fitzgerald’s sinking was human error.

The Dive Detectives. The wreck itself was found in 1976. In the following decades various attempts – including one by Jean-Michel Cousteau. were made to discover what had caused the wreck. The History Channel program Dive Detectives set out to investigate in 2010, and came down firmly on the side of the “rougue wave” theory. According to the program’s website, their investigation

calls the official U.S. Coast Guard theory into question, and reveals another potential cause of the disaster. They determine that a maritime phenomena known as a “rogue wave”— a giant wall of water that can reach heights as tall as a ten-story building— may have triggered the sinking. Once dismissed as a sailor’s myth, rogue waves not only exist, they may occur far more frequently than once believed.

The producers of Dive Detectives contacted Lightfoot to ask about using his song in their program. After learning of their findings, he started changing the lyrics to his song in his live performances. The section now goes

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'.
Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya.
At 7 p.m., it grew dark, it was then he said,
'Fellas it's been good to know ya.’

For the Dive Detectives trailer of the rogue wave theory of the sinking, click here.

For a Toronto Sun article on Lightfoot changing his lyrics, click here.

Mayflower and Speedwell

2011-11-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

Note: this post originally appeared November 24, 2009.

On August 15, 1620 two ships departed Southampton, England with more than 100 colonists -- Separatists resistant to the Church of England -- bound for an area near the Hudson River in North America. The two ships were Mayflower and Speedwell, and the colonists would come to be known as the Pilgrims.

The earliest records of Mayflower date to 1607. At that time the vessel was captained (and partly owned) by Christopher Jones, who would serve as captain on the Pilgrims' voyage, and was engaged mainly in wine trade between England and France, with frequent trips into the Baltic Sea to Norway. Mayflower, 100 feet long and 25 wide, and was a typical merchant ship of her day.

Speedwell had a somewhat more colorful history. Originally named Swiftsure, she was built in 1577 and took part in the English defeat of the Spanish Armada. She was renamed Speedwell in 1605. At sixty tons she was only a third the size of Mayflower.

The Speedwell developed a leak shortly after the Pilgrims' departure in August 1620 and both ships returned to England for repairs. More leaks developed on their second attempt two weeks later, so the ships returned again. All the colonists crowded onto Mayflower, which departed for the last time September 16th. Soon after, and suspected by the colonists all along, it was discovered the Speedwell's own crew had caused the leaks to escape fulfilling their one-year contracts.

Sixty days after leaving England, Mayflower arrived not at the Hudson River, but at Cape Cod. The incoming winter weather had made precise navigation difficult. Jones has been mocked for missing "Virginia" by hundreds of miles, but the term Virginia at that time applied to most of the British-claimed area of the eastern seaboard, not just to the US state we know today.

Two people died along the way, including Dorothy Bradford, wife of colony leader William, who fell overboard accidentally. A legend that she committed suicide dates from the mid-1860s. Two were also born, one en route, and one that winter as the colonists waited out the winter aboard ship. It was during this winter that more than half the remaining passengers died, leaving only 53 to go ashore in March to begin setting up their colony, called Plymouth (this was not the first active European settlement in North America; St. Augustine, Florida had been founded more than fifty years before). Mayflower left for England the following month, arriving back there in May.

Capt. Jones died in 1622. Records indicate that Mayflower was probably broken up for her wood around 1624, although some records suggest she was still afloat as late as 1629. This may be confusing two ships of the same name, as a second ship named Mayflower sailed back to Plymouth colony that year. A replica, Mayflower II, was built and sailed to the US in the mid-1950s, captained by Australian mariner and writer Alan Villiers.

A 1920 claim by a barn owner in Jordans, England that his barn was made with wood from Mayflower has been disproved, but has occasionally been cited as fact by some media, including National Geographic and the TV quiz show Jeopardy!

Perhaps the most accessible account of the Pilgrims early history in North America is humorist Sarah Vowell's The Wordy Shipmates. Vowell also has better scholarship than many high school history textbook writers: the Mayflower Pilgrims were Separatists, not Puritans. For a firsthand account see William Bradford's own Of Plymouth Plantation.

For more on the early exploration and settlement of North America, see my post on Amerigo Vespucci.

For more on the defeat of the Spanish Armada, see my review of The Pirate Queen.

Telling Time

2011-11-19T00:01:00.001-08:00

What time is it? 2017, of course.

My wife looked up from her computer and said to me: "Sixteen ten is four ten." I looked back at her in confusion. She repeated her statement. I still wasn't getting it. Was she talking to me in code? Was my wife a secret agent and I was only now finding out? Then it occurred to me: she was asking me a question about how time was told on ships: "1610 is 4:10?" She meant that 4:10pm was expressed as 1610 on ships using the 24-hour clock, or what some call military time.

It's common for seagoing vessels to use a 24-hour clock since most are 24-hour a day operations. It's easier to say that something is going to happen at 0700 or 1900 rather than risk confusion by saying it's going to happen at 7 o'clock and not be sure if that means am or pm. For those of us raised with a twelve-hour clock, this can be confusing at first and you have to convert the time in your head. To figure out what time 1610 is you subtract twelve hours from 16 to get 4, and you know it's "pm" because 16 is greater than 12 (1200 is noon). It's like learning a foreign language, though: after awhile you stop translating and just start thinking in 24-hour time.

Watches. Time on ship is also measured by watches, work periods meaning the same thing as a "shift" for land occupations. In the early Age of Sail, ship's crews were divided into two groups, also called watches, which switched off every four hours. William Bligh, of HMS Bounty fame, came up with a three-watch system of which a version is often still used today:

Middle Watch: Midnight to 0400
Morning Watch: 0400 to 0800
Forenoon Watch: 0800 to 1200
Afternoon Watch: 1200 to 1600
First Dog Watch: 1600 to 1800
Second Dog Watch: 1800 to 2000
First Watch: 2000 to Midnight

Each watch was further subdivided by bells. The ship's bell was sounded once a half hour into the watch, twice one hour into the watch, and so on with eight bells marking the end of one watch and the beginning of another (or four bells in the case of the two hour dog watches).

In 1915, the US Congress mandated a change in the watch system for US-flagged vessels, consolidating the dog watches into one four-hour watch and requiring a three-watch system on most vessels. Thus, most crew members will work one four-hour watch, then have two off, thus working two four-hour watches each day (although there is often more work available or required during technically off-watch periods). Just to add to the confusion, these watches usually correspond to the same am and pm times on a 12-hours clock, so a crew member on watch 0400-0800 and 1600-2000 will say he or she stands the "four-to-eights."

The Republicans on Maritime Issues

2011-11-16T00:01:00.000-08:00

Richard Shiro/AP

This is the last in my series of posts on maritime issues in the 2012 presidential election. Here I've tried to glean from various sources where the major contenders for the Republican nomination stand on the issues. Not surprisingly, I could find little or nothing on specific issues such as TWIC cards or the relationship of the Coast Guard to merchant mariners.

Deepwater Horizon and Offshore Drilling

Michelle Bachman: She voted to open the outer continental shelf to drilling. “The one that has really hurt the economy in the most devastating way is the moratorium that President Obama put on after the oil spill that occurred. There was devastation that occurred because of the oil flow that occurred but there was nothing that was worse than the moratorium that he put on.”

Herman Cain: Called for “responsibly” relaxing regulations on energy industry. “Drill here, drill now.”

Newt Gingrich: Says oil and natural gas industries should be able to drill offshore reserves now blocked from development.

Jon Huntsman: Favors phasing out all energy subsidies (“Subsidies don’t work and that we can no longer afford them”) and cutting regulatory obstacles to drilling and production

Ron Paul: Favors removing restrictions on drilling.

Rick Perry: “This president has killed more jobs with his regulatory schemes that have gone forward and that knee-jerk reaction of stopping drilling and that is some of the fastest things that we can turn around with a new president.” Proposes opening off-limits waters inclusingthe Southern Atlantic and Alaskan outer continental shelves.

Mitt Romney: Supports drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic and Pacific outer continental shelves, and offshore Alaska.

Rick Santorum: Favors scaling back “oppressive regulation” hindering drilling elsewhere.

The Jones Act

Perry: “Gov. Perry supports the Jones Act that makes the domestic maritime industry strong, contributes to national and homeland security, and makes an important economic contribution to our nation. Governor Perry believes there are times during a national emergency when suspending the Jones Act may be in the best interest of the country, like when President George W. Bush suspended the Act after Hurricane Katrina.”

Size of the Navy

Cain: Former Department of the Navy employee. Called for upgrading and doubling the size of the U.S. Navy's Aegis surface combat system.

Hunstman: "A Pacific orientation may bring a dramatic change to 'the look' of our military. The Asia Pacific is a maritime theater whereas Europe was mostly a land theater. It is a region full of disputed islands, maritime borders, and resource claims when compared to the relative calm of other regions. The United States is a Pacific nation with vital interests tied to the region that cannot be compromised for the sake of additional defense savings. Losing presence and/or capabilities in the Asia Pacific are the wrong trade-offs to make as we approach the tough decisions about our future defense spending."

Romney: “In my first 100 days in office, I will take a series of measures to put these principles into action, and place America—and the world—on safer footing. Among these actions will be to restore America’s national defense. I will reverse the hollowing of our Navy and announce an initiative to increase the shipbuilding rate from 9 per year to 15.”

Santorum: “We need to improve our Navy with more ships.”

Inland Waterways and Infrastructure.

Bachmann: Voted “Yes” on Water Resources Development Act of 2007

Paul: “Today its easier to get funding to build infrastructure in Iraq than to build a bridge in the United States. Indeed, we cut the Army Corps of Engineers’ budget and operate on the cheap with our veterans as the expenditures in Iraq skyrocket.”

Monday Morning Mariner: President Barack Obama

2011-11-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

President Obama visiting a Deepwater Horizon spill cleanup site

The two previous posts were rather long, but since those candidates took the time to answer the questions I put to them, I thought it worth the space to give their complete answers. President Obama did not respond to my questions, so we (and he) will have to live with his record on maritime issues as mariners decide who to vote for. On Wednesday, I'll look at the statements and records of the major Republican candidates.

Deepwater Horizon and Offshore Drilling. Early in his administration, Obama called for expanded offshore drilling. Following the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Obama Administration put a moratorium on all drilling that lasted several months. Even when permits began to be issued late last year, the pace was too slow for many critics. Most recently, the Administration has developed a five-year plan of what the Wall Street Journal called “modest expansion” of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico only – the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are still off limits.

The Jones Act. As a candidate in 2008, Obama said

The Jones Act is a vital part of our national defense and supports American workers. As President, I would fully enforce it. The Jones Act should be waived only under rare circumstances… Furthermore, maintaining the American merchant marine fleet is vital to our economy and national security. I would oppose any move to undermine this Act.

Despite this, Obama waived the Jones Act requirement more than 50 times last summer to allow foreign-flagged vessels to transport oil released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He was criticized heavily by American shipping companies, who said more than 30 US-flagged vessels were available but not utilized.

Size of the Navy. Under Obama, the number of “battle force ship” construction proposed in the federal budget has increased to levels not seen since the Cold War. A total of 32 such vessels were procured in Obama’s term, with 12 expected to be built in 2013, the most in any year since 1990. As a comparison, in each of Bill Clinton’s terms the Navy built 20 vessels, in George W. Bush’s first term it built 24, and in his second 20.

Inland Waterways and Infrastructure. Obama’s most recent economic bill included money for infrastructure improvements on land, but nothing for the nation’s inland waterways. At the same time, the Administration has proposed a user fee for vessels using locks and dams to help offset the costs of repairs.

TWIC Card. Obama signed a law late last year that provides for possible amendments to the TWIC process, specifically allowing mariners to receive their TWIC cards without a second trip to the TWIC center. The law only provides for s feasibility study of such a change.

Role of the US Coast Guard. Obama addressed the graduation class of the Coast Guard Academy earlier this year. He commented on the varied role of the Coast Guard in the modern world

And while we can never predict what the future may hold, we know that the complex missions asked of our Coast Guard have never been more important. Around the world, we need you to partner with other nations to secure their ports, protect the vital shipping lanes of the Persian Gulf, combat piracy off the Horn of Africa, and help train foreign partners from the Americas to Africa to Asia. Here at home, we need you to stop those smugglers, and protect our oceans, and prevent terrorists from slipping deadly weapons into our ports.

Candidate Matt Snyder

2011-11-12T00:01:00.001-08:00

Arizona-born Republican Matt Snyder freely admits that's "It's true..I am holding a grudge." According to his website, he has been unemployed for a year and lost his home to foreclosure shortly after that. Despite this, he maintains an extensice campaign website, part of which is devoted to defeating the degenerative disease ALS. Find his site at http://mattsnyderforpresident.com/

Prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster last year, President Obama called for expanded exploration and drilling on the US’s continental shelf. But, following the explosion, the Administration placed a temporary ban on drilling. Did you support the President’s call for increased exploration at the time? What, if anything, would you have done differently than the President in response to the spill?

It is my understanding that the oil industry is private, so the president “calling” for expanded exploration and drilling really means that he’s calling for the gov’t departments that restrict exploration and drilling to ease up and let these things go on without bureaucratic interference. I agree that if US oil companies have reason to believe there is oil to be found, they are the cleanest, safest, most qualified entities in the world to have looking for it. At the same time, I agree that if these companies have determined that domestic supply can aid in meeting domestic demand, they are the cleanest, safest, most qualified entities in the world to have drilling for it.

American oil companies, and other companies which operate in industries that are potentially hazardous to the environment, operate with greater concern for the environment than any other companies around the world. I believe it is more hazardous to the environment to cease American exploration and drilling, while the world’s demand for oil is met by countries that do not have nature’s best interest at heart.

During the Deepwater Horizon incident, many in Washington and elsewhere blamed the Jones Act for slowing down the disaster response. Do you agree with this? Where do you stand on the Jones Act and various attempts to reform it?

From what I understand about the Jones Act, I would have to say I support it. Having considered the impact on the price of goods shipped to Hawaii, Alaska, and our territories, I find that the negative effects of repealing the Jones Act would far outweigh the benefits.

From my understanding of the law, US shipbuilders are not restricted from building ships in other places, those ships just couldn't be used to move goods and/or passengers between US ports. They're still able to compete internationally, on the international market, if they choose to purchase facilities and hire workers in foreign lands-- as well, they hold a virtual monopoly within the US for ships to be used in the types of transport regulated by the Jones Act. There is no question that union workers in the industry are glad to have the laws in place. Companies that purchase US-built ships for this purpose stand to lose the most by repealing the act. If international crews and ships are introduced into the market, operating at a fraction of the cost incurred by buying and hiring US ships and crews, one can easily imagine the financial turmoil within the industry.

These facts, even in combination, are not enough to win my support for repealing or keeping the law. What ultimately moves me to keep the law in place, is national security. As I mentioned before, this is the world we live in now-- post 9/11. To introduce international fleets into a market where so many vessels would be coming and going, would create a heavy risk to national security at a time when our Coast Guard is already heavily burdened with inspections, credentialing, and emergency situations. Ultimately, I feel it is necessary for government to play a part in issues of of national security, and the citizens of Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, etc., can either pay a few bucks less for their imported food and supplies, or they can sleep well at night with the peace of mind that comes from knowing that the cereal they feed their children was not delivered on a foreign-owned and operated ship that hauled barrels of nuclear waste out of China two weeks before they loaded up that cereal.

As to my belief that the Act slowed down the disaster response, I find it very hard to measure. I don't see how ships regulated in the movement between US ports would affect the movement of ships engaged in the act of clean up. I would have to see reports suggesting how the effort was hindered. Until then, I could not say that it was.

The US Navy currently operates more than 280 vessels. Should the current fleet be expanded, kept the same size, or reduced? Should Navy shipbuilding contracts always go to the lowest bidder, or should US shipyards be given preference?

My answer to the size of the fleet would depend on the use of the vessels currently in operation. I cannot imagine a reason to reduce the size of the fleet, unless there are vessels that simply are not utilized even in training.

Whenever the gov’t spends money, it should be spent in America. Even if it costs more to build ships here, putting American shipbuilders to work acts as a sort of stimulus to the economy. Taxpayers’ money sent overseas hurts, no matter what the reason.

Beyond jobs and economy, there is also a technological advantage to using US shipyards, conversely, a technological disadvantage is created when employing foreign companies to build them.

The American Waterways Operators estimates that the nearly 4,000 tug and towboats on the inland waterways transport 20-percent of the nation's coal and 60-percent of its grain each year in the more than 28,000 barges in active service. New England gets most of its heating oil, and the inland Pacific Northwest most of its diesel fuel by barge. The AWO says all this traffic contributes $5 billion a year to the US economy. Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers struggles to keep up with needed repairs to locks, dams, levees and other infrastructure necessary to carry this trade. What should be done to better maintain America’s inland waterways systems?

The answer to infrastructure maintenance, whether we’re talking about roadway, utilities, riparian avenues, or otherwise, lies simply in money management. Our economy is in terrible condition currently and I believe we’ve squandered our good fortune on wasteful and unnecessary spending. Like our homes, these vital systems require maintenance to ensure their longevity-- this means spending money to make repairs and upgrades when necessary and when possible. People who take pride in, and care for, their homes and vehicles understand the importance of preventative maintenance. Waiting for tragedy and reacting to it, is a poor substitute.

The $5 billion contributed to the US economy via these waterways represents one-tenth of the money our gov’t sends to foreign countries every year in aid. Cutting foreign aid to non-allies for two years would provide a huge boost to the economy if it were spent employing US contractors helping build America, rather than padding the governments of foreign nations to build… other countries.

Many American merchant mariners have found the TSA’s TWIC card program to be an onerous expense and pointless exercise that contributes little to America’s security, yet it is required by law. Do you favor repealing of the TWIC card requirement? What, if anything, should replace the program?

Peace is the only thing that can sufficiently replace our systems of security. Paraphrasing Ben Franklin, "He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither." Clearly, Mr. Franklin never fathomed having to engage religious zealot suicide bombers attacking innocent civilians while wearing civilian clothing as they walk freely through a nation paralyzed by political correctness.

As a person who travels occasionally on airplanes, I can tell you that I, personally, don't mind the TSA's efforts in that arena. Terrorism is a very real threat, but it doesn't seem like a threat that's often thwarted by policing our own citizens-- but is it?

The airline industry requires such security because it accommodates international passengers every day on many flights. I do not agree with the extent of the measures employed by some of its agents (let's face it, some people do not hold positions of authority with great humility). I do believe it's possible, however, that the transportation industry, in the eyes of terrorist organizations, has been removed from the list of easy targets thanks to the programs initiated by the TSA. Saying that the TWIC program contributes little to security is like saying we don't need to immunize our children against chicken pox because we haven't had an outbreak of chicken pox in years, so obviously, immunization is useless.

Our generation has the distinct displeasure of living within the time of our nation's history that experienced the attacks of 9/11. We are the unlucky few who have a basis for comparison between life before, and life after the attacks. We remember what it felt like to feel free from such horrors and to operate without onerous expenses and seemingly pointless exercises to conduct the same business we conducted with relative ease and prosperity little more than just a decade ago. The tragedy hits us twice for this reason. It truly is, for Americans, a different world now. To go back to living with ignorance and insecurity after having learned of our enemy's' will to penetrate into the heart of our country and sacrifice their own lives in the pursuit of executing thousands of innocent civilians would be, to put it simply, tragically stupid.

It is, ironically, the technological advancements of the transportation industry that allows our enemies to strike at us with their suicidal terror missions, and that industry, along with the rest of us, will share in some reasonable burden of ensuring the maximum degree of security possible at the cost of our stolen freedoms until such time as peace is achieved on Earth. In short, get comfortable-- kids have to wear helmets when they ride their bicycles too. We're adults. We should maintain a greater understanding of the big picture and do our best to comply with the necessary measures implemented to ensure our citizens' safety during these difficult times.

If a better system is developed, it should absolutely be discussed and implemented if it handles these issues at least as well as the current system does, while providing greater freedoms to our businesses and citizens as we live out our lives with some semblance of security and a minimal sacrifice of liberty.

With the US Coast Guard’s expanded security role following the 9/11 attacks, its resources for inspecting vessels and credentialing merchant mariners have been stretched thin. This has lead to safety concerns on one hand, and a sense that the Coast Guard has become more heavy handed and adversarial with American mariners on the other. Should the Coast Guard continue to perform these functions? If so, how? If not, do you favor transferring those functions to another agency, creating a new agency, or privatizing those functions?

Unfortunately, this is the post-9/11 world we live in. The Coast Guard is the best equipped, funded, and organized entity on the planet to perform the duties of national security on the water. Given the ardor of some world leaders with their will to develop nuclear technology for the purpose of causing havoc on peaceful nations, and the capacity for large-scale catastrophe being delivered via freightliner, I believe it is essential to the protection of American lives, that the Coast Guard continue to perform its “expanded” duties regarding inspections and other tedious processes.

As for their resources wearing thin, it just so happens that I know a place where we can find some 30 million people looking for work right now.

I am adamantly opposed to creating new agencies. A new agency means more bureaucracy, more laws, more funding, more paperwork, and less productivity. I would much rather see a more competent, experienced, well-trained organization like the US Coast Guard reinforced to meet its goals, than to create another opportunity for government officials to make things more difficult than they need to be for everyone involved.

Nor do I like the idea of privatizing these functions-- there is way too much potential for fraud, bribery, and unnecessary animosity among private businesses. One of the few duties specifically described within the Constitution regarding powers of the federal government is the duty to protect America’s citizens from threats. Outsourcing this duty to private companies seems like too much potential for disaster.

Candidate Danny Woodring

2011-11-09T00:01:00.001-08:00

Danny Woodring is a telecommunications and networking consultant based in Florida. He is a Vietnam-era US Army veteran and recipient of the Purple Heart. Woodring's entire campaign is Internet based because "I like most grass roots Americans live paycheck to paycheck." Find his website at http://www.woodring2012.com/

Prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster last year, President Obama called for expanded exploration and drilling on the US's continental shelf. But, following the explosion, the Administration placed a temporary ban on drilling. Did you support the President's call for increased exploration at the time? What, if anything, would you have done differently than the President in response to the spill?

I am against deep water drilling for the simple reason of the chances of an issue like the Deep Horizon leak which economically devastated the Gulf Coast and will impact the Gulf for years to come. The companies that participated in constructing and operating the well did not have the foresight to develop the technology to cope with such a spill and they scrambled for answers including the Government once they were faced with the disaster . This is unacceptable and was driven by greed. As usual the government also failed to react and did not have the answers nor did the participate to the level they should have to get it resolved.

I will approach it with common sense and set into motion reforms to eliminate any future restraints.

The fleet should be expanded and all contracts awarded WILL BE AMERICAN ship building companies by my mandate. It is time we take care of our own and get our house in order. Please do not think I am a separatist but it is high time AMERICA takes back its ownership of our future.

Americas waterways are an important aspect of our nations infrastructure just like our highways and bridges. The Corps are spread too thin and grossly under funded. The levee systems along our rivers are in bad need of repair as well as our lock systems. We need to modernize and upgrade all of our infrastructure and in doing so bolster the Corps manpower and authority.

Many American merchant mariners have found the TSA's TWIC card program to be an onerous expense and pointless exercise that contributes little to America's security, yet it is required by law. Do you favor repealing of the TWIC card requirement? What, if anything, should replace the program?

The TSA needs its wings trimmed it is out of control and yes I would repeal and look at other solutions.

With the US Coast Guard's expanded security role following the 9/11 attacks, its resources for inspecting vessels and credentialing merchant mariners have been stretched thin. This has lead to safety concerns on one hand, and a sense that the Coast Guard has become more heavy handed and adversarial with American mariners on the other. Should the Coast Guard continue to perform these functions? If so, how? If not, do you favor transferring those functions to another agency, creating a new agency, or privatizing those functions?

First I would take its control away from the treasury department and incorporate it as part of the US Navy. The Coast Guard it a very important part of our national security and given the priority of adding manpower, technology and ships to cope with the growing marine threat. The privatization of the Coast Guard or any military organization just invites more corruption and I would not support it.

Monday Morning Mariner: Who To Vote For

2011-11-07T00:01:00.000-08:00

http://thewackydeli.com/

Following my August 15 post, I compiled some questions for the US presidential candidates regarding maritime issues. The truth is, I didn't get much of a response. I emailed the questions to every declared candidate I could find except for Socialist Stewart Alexander: all of his links led back to the Socialist Party website. Messages sent to Libertarian candidate R. Lee Wrights received only "Message Undeliverable" responses.

President Obama's campaign responded with an automatic message that said "We're just getting set up and are receiving a lot of questions and comments...we will do our best to get back to you as soon as we can." Republican Gary Johnson and Libertarian RJ Harris both put me on their emailing list, but did not answer my questions.

Not responding at all were Democrat Randall Terry, Libertarians Roger Gary and Carl Person, and Republicans Michele Bachman, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Fred Karger, Andy Martin, Jimmy McMillan, Tom Miller, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Buddy Roemer, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Vern Wuensche.

Independent Danny Woodring and Republican Matt Snyder's answers to the questions below will be prtinted in the next couple of posts. Following that, I'll look at President Obama's rhetoric and record on maritime issues. Finally, I'll look at where the top Republican candidates stand on the issues, based on their previous statements and actions.

Here are the questions I asked each candidate except for President Obama, who I asked to explain his record and current thinking on each of the subjects addressed:

Prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster last year, President Obama called for expanded exploration and drilling on the US’s continental shelf. But, following the explosion, the Administration placed a temporary ban on drilling. Did you support the President’s call for increased exploration at the time? What, if anything, would you have done differently than the President in response to the spill?
During the Deepwater Horizon incident, many in Washington and elsewhere blamed the Jones Act for slowing down the disaster response. Do you agree with this? Where do you stand on the Jones Act and various attempts to reform it?
The US Navy currently operates more than 280 vessels. Should the current fleet be expanded, kept the same size, or reduced? Should Navy shipbuilding contracts always go to the lowest bidder, or should US shipyards be given preference?
The American Waterways Operators estimates that the nearly 4,000 tug and towboats on the inland waterways transport 20-percent of the nation's coal and 60-percent of its grain each year in the more than 28,000 barges in active service. New England gets most of its heating oil, and the inland Pacific Northwest most of its diesel fuel by barge. The AWO says all this traffic contributes $5 billion a year to the US economy. Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers struggles to keep up with needed repairs to locks, dams, levees and other infrastructure necessary to carry this trade. What should be done to better maintain America’s inland waterways systems?
Many American merchant mariners have found the TSA’s TWIC card program to be an onerous expense and pointless exercise that contributes little to America’s security, yet it is required by law. Do you favor repealing of the TWIC card requirement? What, if anything, should replace the program?
With the US Coast Guard’s expanded security role following the 9/11 attacks, its resources for inspecting vessels and credentialing merchant mariners have been stretched thin. This has lead to safety concerns on one hand, and a sense that the Coast Guard has become more heavy handed and adversarial with American mariners on the other. Should the Coast Guard continue to perform these functions? If so, how? If not, do you favor transferring those functions to another agency, creating a new agency, or privatizing those functions?

Avast! Ahoy!

2011-11-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

We were passing another ship on the Columbia River. The crew was out on deck waving at their friends on the other vessel, the passengers were out on deck because there wasn't much else going on at that moment. I stepped out on the wing station of the bridge and gave my own wave. A passenger standing nearby looked at me and asked "Aren't you supposed to say 'Avast, ahoy,' or something like that?" I have a standard answer for questions like that: "We don't do that any more." The poor guy: he actually looked a little disappointed.

Like much else in the maritime field, terminology has changed over the years (and decades and centuries). And many terms that are commonly used are misunderstood, even by folks in the industry. Avast, for instance, simply means "stop" and has commonly been replaced by "stop" (although it is still used in some specific technical contexts, like distress signals). Ahoy is a way to get someone's attention, like calling "hello" or "hey, you." Even the Coast Guard doesn't use it anymore, preferring "hello" on its all-station radio announcements.

The term aweigh as in "anchor's aweigh" is another commonly misunderstood word, perhaps because it sounds like "away." An anchor that is "aweigh" is one that is hanging just off the bottom, usually when the anchor is being pulled back on board a vessel.

bulwark

A commonly misused term among mariners is gangway, which refers to the opening in bulwark or rail through which people can pass to and from the vessel. For many, "gangway" is shorthand for the ramp or ladder that allows access to that opening. Speaking of which, gangplank is another obsolete term. Large vessels will use a ramp made of metal or sometimes wood, or an accommodation ladder, a fold up stairway. Yachts may use a similar, smaller version called a passerelle.

Many of the old-fashioned terms falling out of use date to the Age of Sail, but new terms come in as the technology aboard ships changes. Except for the few tall ships still afloat, most ships have dispensed with the term sailing master, but many have an ETO or electronics technology officer.

In 1867 Admiral William Henry Smyth published an interesting collection of nautical terms called The Sailor's Word Book: An Alphabetical Of Nautical Terms including some more especially military or scientific but useful to seamen as well as archaisms of early voyagers etc. Find it here at Google Books.

The website Ports and Ships: Shipping and Harbour News Out of Africa has an excellent online glossary of currently-used nautical terms here.

SOLAS

2011-11-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

Titanic's lifeboats

The years immediately following the release of the 1997 movie Titanic were interesting if you worked on a cruise ship. A couple of people were arrested for standing on the bow of large cruise ships and yelling "I'm king of the world." Others had to be chased out of lower deck areas, usually crew quarters, because they thought all the really fun parties were in "steerage." And there were a lot of questions about life boats; people were really concerned about there being enough room in the life boats.

The sinking of the Titanic in 1912 led to public outcry for tougher safety standards on merchant ships, and two years later the first International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) went into effect. Then new treaty required sufficient life boat space for all passengers and crew, mandated certain safety equipment, and required a continuous radio watch on all vessels. The treaty changed and expanded over succeeding decades, then underwent a major overhaul that went into effect on November 1, 1974. A form of that treaty is still in effect today, nearly a century after the Titanic disaster.

Among the requirements of the SOLAS '74 treaty:

All ships must be built to keep them afloat, even if one watertight compartment might be flooded
Specific provisions for fire fighting equipment, life boats, life jackets, and other "life-saving appliances"
"Carriage requirements" for equipment compatible with the Global Maritime Distress Safety System (GMDSS)
Cargo carrying rules, including those for dangerous cargos
Security procedures
Various rules for nuclear-powered vessels, bulk carriers, and high-speed craft

The treaty mainly applies to merchant vessels not recreational vessels, yachts, or military craft. One section, Chapter V, applies to all vessels. In addition to setting forth requirements for the proper manning and equipping of all vessels, the treaty obligates ship captains to go to the aid of other vessels in distress

The master of a ship at sea which is in a position to be able to provideassistance on receiving a signal from any source that persons are in distressat sea, is bound to proceed with all speed to their assistance, if possibleinforming them or the search and rescue service that the ship is doing so.

For more on the SOLAS Treaty, see the International Maritime Organization's SOLAS page.

Monday Morning Mariner: Shameless Self Promotion

2011-10-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

My commercial writing business, Ship Canal Communications, is back up and running again after some re-tooling. We specialize in written communication for businesses of all sizes, and any size job from one word to 100,000. We offer special expertise in the maritime, travel, and commercial space travel industries. Check out the web site here.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Irish poet and songwriter Thomas Moore composed this poem, one of the first literary references to the legend of the Flying Dutchman.

Written on passing Dead-man's Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Late in the Evening, September, 1804

See you, beneath yon cloud so dark,

Fast gliding along a gloomy bark?

Her sails are full,--though the wind is still,

And there blows not a breath her sails to fill!

Say, what doth that vessel of darkness bear?

The silent calm of the grave is there,

Save now and again a death-knell rung,

And the flap of the sails with night-fog hung.

There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore

Of cold and pitiless Labrador;

Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,

Full many a mariner's bones are tost.

Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,

And the dim blue fire, that lights her deck,

Doth play on as pale and livid a crew,

As ever yet drank the churchyard dew.

To Deadman's Isle, in the eye of the blast,

To Deadman's Isle, she speeds her fast;

By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,

And the hand that steers is not of this world!

Oh! hurry thee on-oh! hurry thee on,

Thou terrible bark, ere the night be gone,

Nor let morning look on so foul a sight

As would blanch for ever her rosy light!

SeaSpeak

2011-10-26T00:01:00.001-07:00

It was during an “internal audit,” when someone from the office comes out to the ship to make sure we’re running our safety program correctly:

Latin American Crewmember: "You know what would be good? If we put all these policies together into some kind of..."
Office guy (American southerner): "Handbook?"
Crewmember: "Yes, a handbook!"
Office guy: "We have a handbook. Didn't you get one?"
Crewmember: "No."
Other crewmember (East Coast American): "Me, either."
Third crewmember (West Coast American): "[Owner's name redacted] is too smart to put anything in writing."
Office guy: "I'll get you an handbook!"

The discussion continued...

Office guy: "Do you want it in English or Spanish?"
Crewmember: "Both."
Office guy: "Well we only have it in English."
Crewmember: "That's fine."

For historic and economic reasons, English is the closest thing we have to a “universal language” in the world today just as, in their times, French, Latin, and Greek all filled that role. It is also the “official language” of mariners worldwide. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) requires that bridge officers speak English for bridge-to-bridge, bridge-to-shore, and bridge team-to-pilot communications.

On ships where all the crew speak the same language, it’s possible for communications among them to be conducted in their native language, but with so many of today’s vessels having crew from several different countries, sometimes English is the only common language. This can be especially important in emergency response.

On the night of April 7, 1990, a fire on the ferry Scandinavian Star, sailing between Oslo, Norway and Frederikshavn, Denmark, killed 158 people. The fire fighting response was hampered, in part, by the inability of the crew to communicate with each other; the officers were Norwegian, the crew largely Portuguese. The incident led the IMO to adopt stronger standards for SeaSpeak, a group of standardized English phrases for navigational and emergency communications.

Although many SeaSpeak phrases would make your high school English teacher grimace (“Please proceed to my assistance.”), the idea is to provide a means of expressing certain ideas common to marine communications situations using only a few simple words and phrases, called the Standard Maritime Communications Phrases (SMCP). A few examples, from the Australian Maritime College’s Marine Radio Operator’s Handbook:

“Question” Indicates the following message is of interrogative character.
“Answer” Indicates that the following message is the reply to a previous question.
“Request” Indicates that the content of the following message is asking for action with respect to the ship.
“Information” Indicates that the following message is restricted to observed facts.
“Intention” Indicates that the following message informs others about immediate navigational actions intended to be taken.
“Warning” Indicates that the following message informs other trafﬁc participants about dangers.
“Advice” Indicates that the following message implies the intention of the sender to inﬂuence the recipient(s) by a recommendation.
Where the answer to a question is in the afﬁrmative, say: “Yes” followed by the appropriate phrase in full.
Where the answer to a question is in the negative, say: “No” followed by the appropriate phrase in full.
Where the information is not immediately available, but soon will be, say: “Stand by”.
Where the information cannot be obtained, say: “No information”.
Where a message is not properly heard, say: “Say again”.

One problem that comes up with SeaSpeak is that native English speakers don’t use it when communicating with ships crewed by non-English speakers. SeaSpeak is not the same as regular English, or even English as a Second Language (ESL). Even native English speakers sometimes find each other hard to understand if they come from different countries or regions.

For the AMC’s Marine Radio Operator’s Manual Appendix 6, “Standard Marine Communications Phrases,”, click here.

A challenge for American readers: check out Mr. Tongue Twister's video and see if you can make heads of tails of it (then maybe you'll give that Chinese container ship captain a break next time!):

The United States

2011-10-22T00:01:00.001-07:00

In the early 1950s, war planners in the US Navy realized something: the Second World War had been won, in part, by ocean liners. Hundreds of thousands of American troops had been transported to the European Theater on ocean liners converted to troop transports, including the famous Queen Mary. In partnership with a private company, United States Lines, the Navy built the largest ocean liner ever, one that could be easily converted to a troop transport should the need arise. That vessel, the SS United States, was the largest, fastest, and safest ocean liner ever built.

Over the two years (1950-1952) she was being built in Newport News, Virginia, the United States’s construction incorporated many safety features learned from the previous half-century of ship losses, both in the passenger industry and during wartime. The ship is heavily compartmentalized – a precaution that includes separate engine rooms for each steam turbine main engine – and incorporates almost no wood, the grand saloon piano and galley butchers block being notable exceptions. The entire superstructure, as well and many furnishings and fittings, are aluminum; the United States was, at the time, the largest aluminum construction project ever. The 990-ft hull itself was steel.

The project was not without its critics. Many, in government and out, balked at the $78 million price tag, two-thirds of which was paid for by the navy. President Harry Truman ordered an investigation, but the construction went on.

The finished 53,000-ton United States could carry 15,000 troops, nearly 2,000 passengers, or function as a hospital ship. She was also fast. A deliberate disinformation campaign put the ship’s speed at 45 knots, although the fastest official speed she ever recorded was 38 knots. She broke a transatlantic speed record on her maiden voyage: just over 85 hours from New York Harbor to Cornwall, UK. She would soon break the westbound speed record as well. Nearly sixty years later, United States still holds the records for westbound and passenger service voyages.

With more travelers using air travel, demand for ocean liners decreased. In 1969, the United States was retired from passenger service. In the following four decades, many plans for her have come and gone, including a plan by the Navy to convert her to a full-time naval vessel. A 2007 study by Norwegian Cruise Lines – into whose hands the ship had passed by then – found the vessel still sound, but various plans by NCL to put her back in service have not panned out. NCL started collecting bids to scrap the vessel, but eventually sold it for $3 million – less than the scrap value – to a group called the SS United States Conservancy, which has been trying to find a new home for her, possibly as a museum on the New York waterfront (she currently sits in Philadelphia).

For more see the SS United States Conservancy site here.

For a Pittsburg Press editorial on the funding controversy, click Google news here.

Piracy Update

2011-10-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

The captain on the fast ferry I was working on recently was an avid sailor and sailboat owner himself, so we were admiring different boats out for a sail on one particular late summer day. "That's something I don't do much anymore," he said, pointing to a boat flying a skull-and-crossbones flag from it's rigging.

"The pirate flag?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "With all that's happened the last couple of years it's just not as 'cool' as it used to be."

In 2009, there were 111 attempted seizures of vessel off the coast of Somalia, 42 of them successful including the famous Maersk Alabama seizure. In 2010, there were 217 attacks, 49 successful. So far this year, there have been 24 successful hijackings in 194 incidents. There are currently 15 vessels and 277 hostages in the hands of Somali pirates.

A close look at those numbers show that the pirates are less successful than they were just two years ago. Only 12-percent of attacks this year so far have been successful, compared with 49-percent in 2009.

"Piracy...has become an industry one could say, spawning commercial businesses," British maritime lawyer Sarosh Zaiwalla recently told the Indian news site Mid-Day. "There are now law firms specialising in piracy issues, insurance firms and even security firms, with war veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, all with commercial avenues arising because of piracy." With piracy costing shippers, and thus their customers, between $7 and &12 billion a year, there is plenty of incentive for these new ventures in piracy prevention.

New anti-piracy measure range from very low tech to very high tech. One company offers a razor-wire system that can be put up and taken down by the ship's crew in less than a day, and that costs $30,000 or less. High tech solutions include on-board "safe rooms" with direct links to shore-based response centers, all independent of the vessel's power supply.

The Asian Shippers Council recently called for the pirates to be classified as terrorists, which would allow for more aggressive anti-piracy efforts by some countries. The Russian Navy has been particularly aggressive, as in the video above when they seize a pirate vessel, rescue the Russian mariners taken prisoner, then blow up the offending vessel (they did not handcuff the pirates to the vessel first, as initial reports suggested). The Netherlands this summer began a comprehensive anti-piracy effort including armed guards on ships, increased money laundering enforcement, and even building more prisons for Somalia. The United States just last week tried two pirates accused of killing four yacht crew members in February, both pirates were sentenced to life in prison. Meanwhile, the International Maritime Organization is working to facilitate the arming of the merchant ship crews themselves

The UK's Channel 4 reported on a rescue of a seized vessel by special forces; the statistics about the rate of piracy off Somalia can be found in the report here.

The complete Mid-Day article about Sarosh Zaiwalla can be found here.

Sex Discrimination At Sea

2011-10-15T00:01:00.001-07:00

Note: Today's post contains frank sexual language.

"Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash" -- attributed, probably inaccurately, to Winston Churchill

The end of the U.S. military's "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" (DADT) policy last month marks another milestone in the uneasy relationship between mariners and sex, whether heterosexual or homosexual. More than 3,100 servicemen and -women in the Navy, more than 150 in the Coast Guard, and nearly 900 in the Marines were forced out of due to their sexual orientation under DADT, but "sodomy" has been grounds for discharge since the Revolutionary War. The Urban Institute estimates that about 2.5-percent of active-duty servicemen and -women are gay, or nearly 40,000 currently serving.

Masthead on the Royal Clipper

DADT is only the most recent form of sex-based discrimination on board ships. Women in general were long considered bad luck aboard a ship; male mariners were afraid the sea gods would be angered by the presence of a woman. There were cases of female passengers being tossed overboard to appease the spirits plaguing a vessel. There were exceptions to this, though. A naked woman was considered good luck, since her uncovered state "shamed" the sea, keeping the weather calm. As it was impractical to have a naked woman running around most ships, the tradition of having a bare-breasted masthead mounted at the front of the ship came about as a substitute.

"In The Navy..." With few or no women around, male sailors were left to each other to express themselves sexually. Unfortunately for them, this was often harshly discouraged. King Henry VIII declared "buggery" on British navy ships a hanging offense in 1553 and it would remain so for more than 300 years. It was still punishable by a life sentence as late as 1967. But it went on just the same. As one British navy officer told University of Denver researcher Arthur Gilbert in the mid 1970s

[H]omosexuality was rife, and one could see with his own eyes how it was going on between officers. I have been told that in some services (the Austrian and French, for instance), nobody ever remarks about it, taking such a thing as a natural proceeding: that may be so or not; but in any case, nobody was ‘shocked’ on board...There were half a dozen ties that we knew about … To my knowledge, sodomy is a regular thing on ships that go on long cruises.

Similar reports come from the US Navy. The Americans were often not as harsh as the British in punishing homosexual behavior, but were prompt putting gays ashore and out of the the navy. This was often accompanied by a less-than-honorable discharge, such as the "blue" discharges used in the demobilization following World War II. A sailor so discharged would find it haunting him in civilian life, either as a stain on employment applications or through denial of G.I. Bill benefits.

As harsh attitudes towards gays have softened in the decades since World War II, so have attitudes about women. Women were first allowed to serve on US Navy surface ships in the 1970s and then this year on submarines. The Royal Navy first permitted women on surface ships in 1990, and on submarines in 2010.

Clara Gordon Mains (on left)

The Civilian World. Civilian merchant marines, especially in the English-speaking world, have been ahead of their military brethren in their acceptance of women and gays. Clara Gordon Mains, a steward on the SS President Harrison, was one of the first Americans taken prisoner by the Japanese in World War II. Half a dozen other merchant mariner women saw combat or were taken prisoner during the early days of the war, before all women were removed from US vessels for the duration. Today somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of American merchant mariners are women.

It's harder to say how many gay civilian merchant mariners there are. Personally, I have worked with gay captains of both genders and at least two gay male engineers. There's only one work boat and one small private yacht that I've worked on that didn't have at least one openly gay crew member. In the passenger industry, it's very common; on one 200-ft pocket cruise ship, I was the only straight deckhand on one four-week hitch.

The US Navy's DADT repeal site can be found here. Find the Coast Guard site here.

The Urban Institute's page on "Gay and Lesbian Demographics," including numbers in military service, can be found here.

More on women as bad luck on ships at the Timeless Myths blog here.

A.N. Gilbert's "Buggery and the British Navy, 1700-1861," published in the Journal of Social History, can be purchased for $12 here.

Misunderstood Mariners: Amerigo Vespucci (Re-post)

2011-10-12T00:01:00.001-07:00

With the usual annual controversy surrounding Columbus Day, it seemed appropriate to wrap up a couple of weeks of re-posts with this article, which originally ran on June 28, 2009.

You learned it in high school history class: although Christopher Columbus discovered America, the continents were named for his contemporary and rival Amerigo Vespucci. Well, Columbus and Vespucci were contemporaries but pretty much everything else about that statement is wrong.

Vespucci, a Florentine by birth (although not residence), was already middle aged when he first sailed to the Americas for the King of Spain in 1499. Over the next few years he sailed on three (some sources say four) expeditions to the New World for either Spain or Portugal. He found little that hadn't been already charted and frequently had trouble finding work. Columbus was hardly threatened by Vespucci: he found him an honorable man and seems to have felt a little sorry for him. After his voyages, though, he came into his, own, being made chief of navigation for Spain. He died there in 1522.

Vespucci was not without his contributions. He charted many navigational stars that had been forgotten since the time of the Greeks. He developed a method of finding longitude that was more accurate than any other until the invention of the chronometer more than two centuries later. He is also credited with being the first to demonstrate that the Americas were not part of Asia, but an entirely different continent.

The Waldseemuller Map

The idea that the Americas were named for Vespucci derives from the use of the word America on a world map drawn by the German cartographer Martin Waldseemuller in 1507. Not everyone agrees that Vespucci was the source of the word, however. Pointing out that new lands were either named for religious figures or the sponsors of the expedition doing the discovering, many point to Welshman Richard Amerike, sponsor of John Cabot's second (and only successful) voyage to America as a more likely source. This latter claim is weakened by the lack of any documents directly supporting it; on the other hand Vespucci has been accused of embellishing and even outright fictionalizing many of his exploits.

For an entertaining biography of Vespucci, see historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America. Fernandez-Armesto portrays Vespucci as a self-promoter of the highest ambition and debunks many of the myths perpetuated by Vespucci himself. See an excerpt at google books here.

Geologist Jules Marcou first advanced the theory that America was named for the Amerrique region of Nicaragua, a gold-bearing area known to both Columbus and Vespucci. George C. Hurlbut, longtime librarian of the American Geographical Society of New York, published the definitive article on this perspective in that society's Journal in 1888. Find the complete article (for $12 fee) at here.

As for who "discovered" America, it is a pointless question since humans have been living in the western hemisphere for at least 12,000 years. Despite inconoclastic claims for Egyptians, Chinese, Polynesians, and others, the first modern people to colonize the Americas were the Inuits, who arrived about 1000 AD. Archaeological evidence shows Viking settlements in Newfoundland about the same time, but the Vikings pulled out relatively soon thereafter. Modern European settlement of the Americas really began with Columbus, just like you learned in high school. For a humorous and informative look at that early exploration and settlement, see Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange: On The Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America. See an excerpt at google books here.

Shining A Light On "The Lighthouse Story" (Re-post)

2011-10-08T00:01:00.001-07:00

I’m taking a few weeks off to get married and go on a honeymoon, so I’m re-posting a few favorite articles. New posts start again Wednesday, October 12. This post was originally published May 26, 2009.

The story goes back to at least the 1930s, although the advent of the Internet has given it viral growth: a large ship (often a battleship or an aircraft carrier) is steaming along at night when it spots a light ahead. The commander (often a medal-bedecked admiral) hails the other vessel, instructing them to change course. The other vessel refuses, and the admiral gets increasingly puffed up and indignant, finally trying to assert his lofty rank and the size of his huge vessel in an effort to intimidate the other vessel into changing course. Then comes the punch line: the other person is a lowly seaman and the other “vessel” is actually a lighthouse!

This urban legend is passed around as a true story and an object lesson in arrogance and what students of logic call the Fallacy of the Argument from Authority. It is, of course, total bilge water. Lighthouses are rarely manned these days (and never by Navy personnel), are lit very differently than ships, and of course are clearly marked on nautical charts. It’s also unlikely that two vessels, or a vessel and a shore station, would communicate that long without both of them indentifying themselves very early in the exchange. And, just like there are rules of the road governing how two automobiles must interact (the rules governing a four-way stop, for instance), there are nautical rules of the road as well, and the larger vessel, military or not, does not necessarily have the right of way.

People love this story for the way the swollen-headed admiral is cut down to size. And despite its nearly complete technical inaccuracy, it serves to remind mariners of the importance proper communications, situational awareness, and Rules of the Road (and no, the “tonnage rule” is not an actual Rule of the Road).

Pilots (Re-post)

2011-10-05T00:01:00.001-07:00

I’m taking a few weeks off to get married and go on a honeymoon, so I’m re-posting a few favorite articles. This post was originally published September 27, 2009. Legal action in the Cosco Busan oil spill case came to an end last month with a US $44 million settlement. The San Francisco Chronicle article on the settlement may be found here. Pilot John Cota had previously been found criminally negligent and sentenced to 10 months in jail

Having recently conned a vessel over the Columbia River Bar, I am frequently asked if I took on a pilot to assist in the transit. The questioner is often surprised to that I “acted as” pilot, but there is nothing particularly mysterious about being a pilot. “Pilotage” is simply navigation using local knowledge. A person who does this is a “pilot.” On the other hand, when we refer to a pilot in the modern maritime industry, we are probably talking about a professional mariner who specializes in guiding ships through a particular area. It is the difficulty some of these areas present — like the Columbia River Bar or, in a different way, the Panama Canal — that lend a mystique to the job.

The only real qualification you need to be a pilot is local knowledge that a captain from outside the area — called a “stranger” — doesn’t possess. And that knowledge can be very localized indeed. For a time early in the decade, the port at Cabo San Lucas, Mexico required ships to take on a harbor pilot. He came out in a water taxi, shook hands with the captain, and sipped a cup of coffee while he yelled at charter fishermen to get out of the way. The whole trip was a straight line less than half a mile long from the “pilot station” to the dock. Between the short trip and the yelling, he didn’t even have time to finish his cup of coffee. Compare that to the Chesapeake Bay pilots, who have to learn 200 miles of some of the most traveled waterway in the Americas. Pilots who have to deal with large areas may work in teams, with one on the bridge while the other one sleeps.

In the United States, most areas require a pilot to have a Coast Guard license and hold a First Class Pilot certification for the area in which he — or in many instances she — will be sailing. This usually means logging a certain number of trips through the area and then taking a written test, which includes hand drawing relevant landmarks, aids to navigation, danger areas, and so on a blank chart.

Pilots frequently have several decades of experience at sea — the average age of a Puget Sound pilot is 55 years old. While this experience is valuable, it can also be challenging for middle-aged and older pilots to meet the physical demands of the job, like climbing up a long pilot ladder after jumping onto it from the deck of a pilot boat (like one picture above, stationed in Astoria, Oregon near the mouth of the Columbia River) heaving in the surf. Pilots also face the same medical issues we all do as we get older, including ever more crowded medicine cabinets. In fact, use of medications by the pilot on the Cosco Busan was taking were cited as a root cause of resulting oil spill.

For Professional Mariner's report on Chesapeake pilot Lynn Diebert's 2007 death in the line of duty, click here. For the journal's report report on the 2006 death of Columbia River Bar pilot Kevin Murray, click here.

Tsunami (Re-post)

2011-10-01T00:01:00.001-07:00

As I take a few weeks off to get married and go on a honeymoon, I'm re-posting some favorite articles. This one originally appeared on July 10, 2010.

On February 27, 2010 I was serving as master on the small cruise ship Spirit of Endeavour en route from La Paz, Mexico to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Early that morning, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Chile, killing 521 people. The resulting tsunami spread throughout the Pacific and did damage as far away as Japan. Someone at company headquarters asked me to write up my impressions of the event; this is the report I filed.

Preparations for dealing with the tsunami began as soon as we got the word. The Second Mate called me about midnight to tell me about the earthquake off the coast of Chile and that the Pacific Tsunami Center had issued an advisory: it was not yet known whether an actual tsunami had occurred. I got up and did a quick check online: information was sparse, even about the earthquake itself. But information started to roll in, and as soon as the existence of a tsunami was confirmed, there would be a constant clatter from the Inmarsat printer, as bulletin after bulletin came over the satellite. That printer, the beeping of the GMDSS alarms, the constant worried chatter in Spanish over the VHF would be the soundtrack of the day for me.

By 0500 it was confirmed that the tsunami was headed toward Mexico, with an expected arrival time of 1050. Sport fishing boats were starting to come out of Cabo San Lucas harbor and there were no long lines of cars on the highway visible from the water, so I took that as a good sign, that the local authorities weren't too alarmed. Either that or they hadn't got the word yet. We relaxed a little and even took the time to check out a couple of humpback whales before breakfast call and our arrival in Cabo San Lucas.

I chatted with our agent and someone from the Captain of the Port's office before disembarkation. They were aware of the situation and were taking a wait and see attitude. The sport fishermen and sightseeing boats were being told to stay close to the harbor just in case. Another quick check on the Internet revealed this was the attitude almost everywhere except Hawaii and in the earthquake zone itself.

During disembarkation someone from Reservations called. She told me a passenger has just gotten on a plane and was concerned about the tsunami and was asking questions. I told her what I could, then noted to the Assistant Engineer that if anywhere was safe, it was on a plane.

Then things began to tense up. The Captain of the Port closed the port, and the sport fishers and sightseers started to stream back into the harbor, as they cursed each other, the COTP, and tsunami on the radio. They were not worried about the tsunami, they were worried about losing a day's business on a peak-season Saturday. The COTP finally lost it and told everyone that he wasn't answering anyone who didn't identify himself, and the chatter died down. A bit. Other officials were warning locals and tourists to stay off the beaches. A quick check on the ever-growing pile of paper streaming off the Inmarsat printer showed that the tsunami had passed Acapulco, about 700 miles to the southeast, with a surge of only 1.2 feet. Not bad, but predictions for harbors in southern California were higher, more like three feet, so who knew what we would actually experience? I held a quick crew meeting, trying to get everyone prepared without scaring the heck out of them, then we jumped to stations. The deck crew slacked the mooring lines a bit, and we set the gangway on the dock. The Guest Programs staff got busy fending off guests -- the first of them would probably start to arrive right about the same time as the tsunami -- and the rest of the crew tried to carry on as normal, or as normal as it gets on a Turnaround Day.

It was the ship's doctor who first noticed that the tide seemed to be going the wrong direction. I went up to the bridge, which faced right out the entrance to the harbor and into the open Pacific. Whatever was about to happen, I would have box seats for it. It was quite a sight. Water was rushing out of the harbor. You could look at the excursion boat moored across the dock from us and see it sinking against the background of the Finnesterra Hotel perched on the nearby hills. I looked at my watch and noted that the time the Pacific Tsunami Center had predicted was pretty much dead on. It was 1050.

On the first surge, the water dropped about two feet, then turned around without stopping and started flooding back into the harbor. We saw it before we felt it: two boats Med moored to the pier across the channel suddenly swung back to the west and pointed the other direction. And in came the water. Our own lines strained in the other direction, and the deck crew adjusted them and the fenders we had broken out for whatever might come up. The water at the harbor entrance turned brown as the bottom was churned up. Soon it was back where it had started and I checked my watch again. Twelves minutes had elapsed.

Soon the surge was heading out again, then in, then out, then in, each time dropping us about three feet and bringing us back up again. The boatswain marvelled at how those rocks next to the south breakwater nav light tower were exposed in a matter of seconds, then covered again just as quickly.Then it seemed to stop. We thought maybe that was it and everyone headed down for crew lunch. The lull didn't last, though, and when we saw the dock rising past the dining room window like the wall of Snake River navigational lock, we all rushed back to our stations. One of the Med moored boats had come loose, the skipper freeing the lines thinking the worst was over, but then unable to get the anchor up before the surge returned. He struggled to control his boat for the next fifteen minutes before two crewmen from a sport fisher came to his rescue.

This next series was the most extreme, at one point surging out enough to drop the Spirit of Endeavour four feet or more, and strand pangas tied to the opposite breakwater in the sand for a few minutes. The vessel surged a lot more. At one point I saw a whirpool at the entrance to the harbor, brown and blue water swirling in a shallow circle 75 yards wide. The frigate birds, gulls, and pelicans were having a surprise feast, diving down to grab at poor, confused fish. Watching the pelicans drift by on the ebbing water, and the water itself splash against and wrap around the docks and piling, I figured the current at more than three knots at it's swiftest.

It went on like this for another hour and a half. By 1400 the worst was over, but there were still small, quick changes in the water level, complicating our efforts to deal with the tide already lower than normal due to the full moon. A few boats still went in and out, defying the Captain of the Port's order, but for the most part it was quiet, very strangely so for Cabo San Lucas.I checked the still-chatering Inmarsat: it said Cabo San Lucas had experienced a 1.2 foot range. Maybe on the beach, but it was a lot more extreme in the harbor. We were already getting reports off the tsunami making landfall in California, and Alaska was expecting it only to hours later. But for us, it was time to get the gangway down, get the luggage aboard, and get the guests checked in. The tsunami had passed.

The Deadliest Blog Post (Re-post)

2011-09-28T00:01:00.001-07:00

While I take a few weeks off to get married and go on my honeymoon, I'm re-posting some favorite articles. This one was originally published July 21, 2009.

Living near and working at Seattle's Fisherman's Terminal, I hear a lot about The Discovery Channel's program Deadliest Catch. Any fishing vessel moored here that ever had anything to do with the show advertises the fact with a banner or sign on its side, tour buses drive through several times a day, and the word deadliest appears everywhere, from restaurant signs to bumper stickers. But gallows humor and shameless opportunism aside, how deadly is working at sea?

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, "fishers and related fishing workers" do indeed have the highest death rate of any American workers, suffering nearly 112 fatalities for every 100,000 workers. Loggers place second (86 per 100,000) followed by aircraft pilots and flight engineers (67 per 100,000). The BLS reports on civilian deaths only, but a recent military report put the death rate for all US active-duty military personnel at 73 per 100,000 for the period 2004-2007. In combat specialities, military personnel have more than twice the death rate of commercial fishermen.

In terms of actual civilian deaths, truckers and other drivers fared the worst (in 2007, where all my numbers come from), with more than 900 deaths, followed by farmers and ranchers with 285. There were 38 deaths among fisherman in the same period but, of course, there are a lot fewer of them than either truckers or farmers.

About 65 percent of US mariner deaths in 2007 were in the fishing or towing industries. According to the latest US Coast Guard Marine Safety Performance Plan, "(m)ore than three-quarters of commercial mariner deaths and injuries are accounted for by incidents where the initial event is a personnel injury, such as falling overboard or being struck by an object." Most of the rest are caused by either a vessel casualty of some kind (a grounding, loss of steering, etc.) or a "material failure."

Going to sea has always been dangerous. Of the more than 200 men that set out to sail around the world with Ferdinand Magellan, only 18 made it home three years later. In modern times, more than 8600 civilian merchant mariners died in World War II, more than half again the death rate of the US Marines and twice that of the army.

Find the Bureau of Labor Statistics report mentioned above here.

For Kelly Kennedy's Army Times report on the military death rate sudy, click here.

The Coast Guard's Marine Safety Performance Plan 2009-2014 can be found here.

Some good background on the US Merchant Marine and its service during WWII and subsequent struggle for veterans status may be found here.

Married At Sea, Buried At Sea (Re-post)

2011-09-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a few weeks off to get married and go on a honeymoon, so I'll be re-posting some favorite articles. Look for fresh posts starting October 12. This one, appropriate to the occasion, was first published July 25, 2009.

Time was, if a couple in love wanted to be married at sea, the captain of their ship enjoyed the happy privilege of performing the ceremony. That's still possible in today's increasingly regulated world, but the restrictions are much tighter than they used to be.

For a shipboard marriage to be recognized in most jurisdictions, it has to meet the requirements any land-based marriage would in that jurisdiction. For instance, if a wedding is performed in the territorial waters of a state requiring that an ordained minister perform the ceremony, the captain must be ordained in order for the marriage to be legal. Many American captains, including yours truly, are ordained for this very purpose. If the couple wants to be married on the high seas -- outside the territorial limit of any state or nation -- they must often have a civil service performed in port if they want the marriage to be recognized as legal. Some large cruise lines have worked around this. Princess Cruise Lines used to be the best bet for a high seas wedding, but other cruise lines are starting to offer the service as well.

Ironically, it may be simpler to be buried at sea than married at sea. In the United States, a captain may scatter ashes as long as the vessel is at least three nautical miles from shore or "bury" a body at sea if in at least 600 feet of water. California forbids full-body burials at sea and most other states require some preparation to ensure the body sinks quickly. Local jurisdictions tend to be more forgiving of cremated remains, allowing ashes to be scattered as long as they don't blow back on shore (Alaska), or even right off the dock (New York).

Burial at sea is so popular that some outfits offer it for a fee. The Neptune Society is the most well-known of these companies, although it has had some legal troubles. Last October its Colorado franchise was cited by that state's Division of Insurance; other franchises have been in court facing charges of illegal dumping and emotional distress caused by co-mingling of ashes.

The Cruise Critic website has a good article about getting married on a large cruise ship here. It's undated, so I'm not sure how current the pricing and availability information is.

For more on the Neptune Society's controversy, see the Funeral Consumers Alliance website here.

Ships, Toxic Waste, and The Mob

2011-09-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

With the high cost of storage and disposal of pharmaceutical, chemical, and other industrial waste, it's not surprising that organized crime might get involved in the illegal disposal of such material: the potential savings to unscrupulous operators run into the thousands of dollars per ton. When that material is being transported on a ship, the easiest method of disposal is obvious: just sink the ship or shipping container holding the waste.

This is exactly what happened to 39 ships in the Mediterranean between 1979 and 1995, according to Massimo Scalia, an investigator in Italy quoted in Scientific American. In the same country, the newspaper il Manifesto dug even deeper and found a series of incidents leading up until 2001, with as many as 20 being called "extremely suspicious." Scalia says an average of two ships a year disappeared under suspicious circumstances in the 1980s and early '90s, and the total increases to nine per year after that.

Because finding such wrecks is expensive, little hard data exists as to locations and materials in such vessels and containers. But there are some notorious examples that have come to light. The most famous is the case of the Rosso (pictured above), which washed ashore on Italy's west coast after what officials believe is a failed attempt to scuttle the vessel. Someone tried to offload and bury the cargo and paint the ship to hide its markings. Local authorities in Calabria detected what appeared to nuclear reactor waste buried in concrete blocks and leaching into the local water table.

In another case, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami washed sunken shipping containers onto beaches in Somalia. Fumes from the containers hospitalized and killed many locals, according to a United Nations report.

The 'Ndrangheta ("valiant and defiant") organized crime organization, based in Calabria, is blamed for much of the dumping both in the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. An informant led Italian authorities to one wreck in 2009. If true, the criminals may be poisoning their own well: Calabria has recently seen in increase in some cancers and in cancer-related deaths.

For an interactive map of suspected Mediterranean Sea toxic waste ship sinkings, including ship and cargo particulars, see the in fondo al mar (under the sea) website here.

For the United Nations Environmental Program report on the tsunami response, click here. Many sources have blamed toxic contamination of Somali fishing grounds for the rise of piracy in the area. For more, see this 2008 al Jazeera report here.

For the February 2010 Scientific American article "Poisoned Shipments: Are Strange, Illicit Sinkings Making the Mediterranean Toxic?" click here.

Update: Dad, Magellan, and Greenwich Mean Time

2011-09-17T00:01:00.001-07:00

On a personal note, yesterday marked the third anniversary of the death of my father, Don Earle. Dad was a US Marine during the Korean War. Like a lot of combat vets, Dad didn't talk about his experiences much, but in a paper he wrote for a college class after the war he said:

I was then [summer 1951] selected by my friends and neighbors to enter the Armed Services of the United States, and was chosen by the Marine Corps after vainly trying to get into the Army. I took my boot training in Parris Island, South Carolina, then transferred to Camp Lejuene, North Carolina for three months schooling in their baking class. After completion of this school, I travelled to California for a four-month refresher course in Infantry Training, to prepare for a year in the lovely peninsula named Korea. I lived a calm, peaceful happy life for the following year then reluctantly I was persuaded to return to the United States where they forced me to take a thirty day leave, then return to Cherry Point, North Carolina where I was released to return to the dreary life of a civilian.

On a geopolitical historical note, this week marks the anniversary of the Battle of Inchon when, in 1950, United Nation forces numbering 30,000 came ashore and ultimately dislodged Communist forces from the South Korean capital Seoul. It was the largest amphibious invasion since World War II. Approximately 1,500 UN and North Korean troops died over the four days of fighting; there were 800 wounded on the UN side alone. A version of this post was originally published on July 9, 2009.

When my father and a few hundred of his fellow US Marines sailed to the Korean War in 1951 on an old Liberty ship, they were split up into two watches."Port watch" would be responsible for galley, clean up, and various other duties about the ship on even-numbered days, and "starboard watch" on odd-numbered days. After more than a week under way, for most of which Dad was very seasick, his watch was suddenly awakened on a day they thought they were going to have off. "We just had the watch yesterday," the Marines of his watched grumbled. "Yeah, but we just crossed the International Date Line," the able seaman shaking Dad awake explained. "It's an even-numbered day again. Now, get to work, Marine!"

The survivors of Ferdinand Magellan's circumnavigation more than 400 years earlier were similarly surprised when they arrived at the Canary Islands and found their calendars off by a day. The ship's log recorded:

In order to see whether we had kept an exact account of the days, we charged those who went ashore to ask what day of the week it was, and they were told by the Portuguese inhabitants of the island that it was Thursday, which was a great cause of wondering to us, since with us it was only Wednesday. We could not persuade ourselves that we were mistaken; and I was more surprised than the others, since having always been in good health, I had every day, without intermission, written down the day that was current.

The International Date Lines follows, roughly, the line marking 180 degrees of longitude, exactly half way around the world from the Prime Meridian, which cuts through the Royal Naval Observatory at Greenwich, thus the term Greenwich Mean Time or GMT. Mariners use GMT to avoid problems like those of my Dad or the Magellan expedition survivors. If you're crossing several times zones in the course of your passage, it's easier to stay on the same time throughout, so many long-distance vessels use GMT or "Zulu" time (each time zone as a letter designation and Greenwich's is "Z, " as seen on the map above). Some vessels, especially military ones, may use Coordinated Universal Time, abbreviated UTC.

Time is important to navigation as well. It's fairly simple to find your latitude using the sun or the stars, but longitude is a problem that evaded mariners for centuries. British clockmaker John Harrison thought that if you compared your current time and the observed position of a heavenly body to a known time and position of that body, the difference could help you determine your position. The problem was having an accurate enough timepiece, which Harrison went on to invent and eventually win a big prize for.

Although these days we're more likely to glance at the GPS to get our longitude and latitude, mariners still need to know what time it is. Official tide and current tables are published using standard time, so we have to take that into account if we're using a local Daylight Savings Time. And if we have to rely on "celestial navigation," it's essential to have an accurate local time.

Dad was probably pretty happy that the navigator of that Liberty ship had an accurate clock, especially when they pulled back into San Francisco Bay a couple of years later. As he told me once: "I'll bet no one was ever as happy as I was to see Alcatraz!"

The photo at top shows Marine Corps Lieutenant Baldomero Lopez leading the scaling of the seawall at so-called "Red Beach" on September 15, 1950. Baldomero was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for throwing himself on a live grenade only minutes after this photo was taken.

Jules Verne's hero Phileas Fogg wins the day thanks to the International Date Line in the 1873 novel Around The World In 80 Days. Find it on googlebooks here.

The Royal Naval Observatory is now part of the National Maritime Museum. Find lots of good info about the Prime Meridian, timepieces, Harrison, and more here.

For a good, quick read on the "longitude problem" and Harrison's struggle to solve it (not to mention his subsequent struggle to collect the prize), try Dava Sobel's Longitude. See an excerpt here.

A nice one-page primer on celestial navigation can be found on the US Navy Quartermasters' website here.

For more about the US Marines in the Korean War, see Lee Bergee's 1963 memoir Rendezvous With Hell, James Brady's The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea (read an excerpt here), and Martin Russ's The Last Parallel: A Marine's War Journal. All present a jarhead's-eye view of the war.

Dynamic Positioning

2011-09-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

One of the truisms of the oil industry in general and the offshore drilling industry in particular is that all the easy-to-get-to oil was extracted first. Shallow-water oil fields were drilled first so, as time went on, oil rigs moved into deeper and deeper water. Eventually, oil was being drilled for in areas where the water is too deep to build a rig on the bottom itself, or even to practically anchor a rig or drillship. Thus, it became necessary to find a way to keep an oil rig or drillship in a single position while floating on the surface. This led to the development of dynamic positioning.

Dynamic positioning (DP) is a system that keeps a vessel in a single position at a constant heading using only its own propellers and thrusters. The first DP vessel was the CUSS 1 (pictured above). CUSS 1 was not an oil industry vessel, but a scientific expedition to drill for core samples of the Earth's crust. In 1961, CUSS 1 held position in 11,700 feet off Mexico and drilled up to 600 feet into the sea bed. CUSS 1 held position using radar and sonar, a human operator, and four steerable propellers that were installed on the ship. Modern DP vessels use advanced computer systems, position-finding systems ranging from GPS to weights on a wire, heading-finding methods using a gyrocompass or more advanced system, and a variety of thrusters, all depending on the vessel and its mission.

DP allows a level of position-keeping not previously available, making it very useful outside of drilling operations as well. For instance, with DP two vessels can maintain position near each for cargo or crew transfers without tying off to each other. Other tasks like cable-laying or salvage may also be simplified by DP. Even the private yacht industry has adopted DP, whether for close-quarters ship handling in crowded marinas or maintaining the cocktail hour crowd's view of a particularly spectacular sunset.

DP is largely computer controlled, but human operators are required to monitor the system and to take over when things go wrong. Because DP-equipped ships are often conducting precise operations, the consequences of a failure can be fatal. Thus, DP operators go through a long and expensive training and certification program consisting of several weeks of classroom time combined with months of at-sea experience. On the other hand, DP operators also command top wages in the maritime industry, often earning $900 or more per day.

For more on DP, check out this video from YouTube:

Monday Morning Mariner: My 9/11 Story

2011-09-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

On September 11, 2001, I was captain of the small cruise ship Spirit of Alaska cruising through southeast Alaska. Normally, I was the chief mate aboard this ship, but the captain was on a scheduled time off, visiting his brother in Manhattan. This was our last Alaska cruise of the season; we were on Day 5 of a meandering 10 day passage from Juneau to Seattle, which included stops in Glacier Bay and, just the day before, Sitka. The 11th was a "captain's choice" day, a day to look for wildlife and maybe get a last glimpse of a glacier.

Very early on the morning watch, the Chief Mate called me to say he was hearing some unusual chatter on the VHF radio. The local commercial fishermen were chatting about reports that airliners had been flown into the Capitol Building in Washington DC, the Pentagon, and other landmarks. We weren't sure what to make of this; I instructed the Chief Mate and the deckhands on watch to keep this to themselves until we had some hard information. We then headed into Red Bluff Bay, an inlet on the east coast of Baranof Island, to look for bears and check out a spectacular waterfall before breakfast.

Breakfast was served and we slowly made our way out of Red Bluff Bay. A few hundred yards outside the entrance the cell phone lit up, telling me we'd missed nine messages. It was a little after 8:00 A.M. Alaska time. It was at that moment I knew that the fishermen's chatter had a nugget of truth in it.

I called the company Port Captain in Seattle. The company and the country were in chaos. The two attacks on the World Trade Center and the one on the Pentagon were known at that point, but there were rumors of other planes unaccounted for, including one out of Anchorage. The death toll was thought to be as high as 15,000 people. All aircraft were grounded and the borders were closed. All the company's ships were put on a higher security footing. And it was up to me to tell the passengers and crew.

I called a general meeting in the dining room, which was in the last stages of breakfast service. The deckhands woke the off-watch crew: I only wanted to have to say this once. Before I started to speak, one woman ran out of the dining room toward her cabin, she just couldn't wait. I remember thinking she was going to remember that trip to the bathroom for the rest of her life.

Then I told them.

Many were in disbelief. Three asked me if I was joking. "Is this like the pink flamingos?" one man asked, referring to the "wildlife sighting" the day before of pink plastic lawn flamingos that someone had put in a tree outside of Sitka. I assured him it wasn't.

I then moved on to the new security arrangements, told them the vessel's satellite phone would be available if anyone needed to use it, and that the trip would continue as planned, at least for now.

Many ran right up to the sun deck and turned on their cell phones. Crew members were in tears. I was hammered with a hundred questions, none of which I knew the answer to. Then the lookout spotted whales.

Soon we were drifting in the tide rips off Yasha Island, with twenty-some humpback whales all around us. The passengers lined the rails, cameras clicking and video cameras whirring, but there was only one topic of conversation. The same phrases kept coming up: "Pearl Harbor" and "this changes everything." At lunch I had a deputation from some of the passengers: why wasn't the vessel's flag at half mast? I told them that a country at war doesn't lower its flag, but the truth is I just hadn't thought of it. The next morning the Spirit of Alaska's ensign was a half mast.

That night we anchored in Thomas Bay near Petersburg. One of the passengers had asked me to lead a prayer at dinner, but I declined. I listened to the radio station out of Petersburg while on anchor watch, but could only get a broadcast of the local school board meeting. Life went on. Late that night I got a call to come to the lounge. A passenger -- at 30-ish one of the younger ones -- was inconsolable, drunkenly weeping. I talked him into bed, thinking how much better the older folks were handling this.

The next morning at breakfast the assistant chef said "I can't wait to see a newspaper!" But all newspapers come into southeast Alaska by plane, and all the planes were still grounded.

When we docked at Petersburg, I got another surprise: me, the second mate, and the hotel manager had all been selected by the computer for random drug testing. It was in the clinic's waiting room that I first saw images of the attacks. I watched for a few minutes, then my turn came. I left my government-mandated urine sample with the technician and returned to the ship.

The head of our local office in Petersburg has recorded on videotape some of the network coverage of the attacks, which we played on the lounge TV for awhile. By mid-afternoon, one of the passengers asked, "Can we turn this off?" There were no objections.

The next day we called at Ketchikan, and it was a mess. People who were supposed to have flown out by then were roaming the docks looking for a berth on a southbound cruise ship. "Where are you going?" one guy asked me.

"Seattle," I said. "Assuming we can get across the border." I told him I had no extra room, however. There were several large cruise ships in port, and those "will get at least as far as Vancouver," I told him.
At least he was in civilization. Hunting and fishing parties all over Alaska were stranded because the planes they relied on to get them in and out were grounded.

When we left Ketchikan I had no idea if I would be able to cross back into US waters or not. Forty-eight hours later we did cross back into US waters and eventually docked in downtown Seattle. It wasn't over for me, however. The regular captain was stilled trapped in Manhattan, so I was not to be relieved as scheduled. We had received a photo of the captain and his brother with one of the World Trade Center towers burning in the background. It was chilling: the other tower hadn't been struck yet at the time the picture was taken.

At Seattle's Pier 69, I told the engineer to keep the engines running. As soon as the passengers and their luggage were off the boat, I wanted to leave for the dock where we'd prepare for our positioning trip to Portland. It occurred to me these passengers were disembarking into another world, different from the one they lived in when they'd boarded the Spirit of Alaska in Juneau ten days before. It had been a tough few days for me, the toughest of my career, but for the first time in a long time, I didn't envy the people going ashore.

Following the September 11 attacks, more than 300,000 people were evacuated from lower Manhattan by US merchant mariners. To honor the efforts of these mariners, the Maritime administration released this video for the tenth anniversary of the attacks.

Morro Castle

2011-09-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

I knew it was something serious. And by that time everybody was yelling and screaming in the hallway. I went back to put my clothes on- put on a shirt and trousers and we got out. Oh yeah, the companionway it was filling up with smoke. You could still see, you could still navigate but it was filling up with smoke. And that’s when my roommate gave his lifebelt away. The lifebelts? Where were they kept in the cabin? Under the bunk… the lights went out. And…I told them “let’s hold hands” because I knew the way out, and we went up the stairs to B Deck and from there we could see pretty well.
Did we try to get to the lifeboats? Well, when we were on C Deck and B Deck to get to the lifeboats seemed like… well it was, an impossibility…. The boats on one side weren’t lowered and on the other side some were, some weren’t… Well, there was panicking and it was crowded and finally the vibration of the boat….I figured the propellers were rotating and I wasn’t about to jump in and be sucked in to the propeller. When the vibration stopped, that’s when I decided, “well, it’s time to get out of here.” Well, the steel plates were burning- it was the paint that was burning. It was a nightmare on earth.
-- George Watremmez, Morro Castle survivor
Interviewed by Jim Kalafus on garemaritime.com

On the morning of September 8, 1934, the SS Morro Castle, en route from New York to Havana, caught fire and burned, killing 135 passengers and crew. The fire would lead to the jailing of the acting captain, chief engineer, and a Ward Line company vice president, and would lead to many reforms in ship construction that we adhere to even today.

Built only four years before the fire at a cost of $5 million dollars, the Morro Castle was a party ship, meant to get around the rules of Prohibition then in force in the United States. She was fast, too, making the trip to Havana in only 59 hours and returning in 58. At 508 feet long, more than 11,000 tons, and with a passenger capacity of nearly 500, she resembled modern cruise ships in many ways, including plenty of food and drink available at all hours.

The food may have played a part in the Morro Castle disaster. Her captain, Robert Wilmott, had his dinner delivered to his cabin the night of September 7th, complained of stomach pain shortly after that, and died soon after that, apparently of a heart attack. The Chief Officer, William Warms, assumed command that night, just as the weather began to get worse.

Early on the morning of September 8th, a fire was detected. Within 20 minutes it had knocked out the ship's power and within 30 the entire vessel was engulfed in flames. Fire fighting and abandon ship efforts were disorganized. Only half the Morro Castle's lifeboats were launched and only 85 people, most of them crew members, made it to life boats. The passengers were never shown how to put on life jackets or told what to do in an emergency. Many died from drowning in the rough seas or from having their necks broken by their own life jackets.

Causes. To this day the cause of the fire is unknown, but subsequent investigation pointed to several factors that led to the quick spread of the flames:

The ship was equipped with fire doors, but there was a six-inch gap between the top of the doors and the overhead that rendered them essentially pointless.
Only about half the spaces on the ship had fire detection devices that would trip an alarm.
The fire pump could not produce enough pressure to effectively use more than six of the vessel's 42 fire hydrants. With all of them opened up, none got any water pressure to speak of at all. Some weren't working at all, being shut down to keep water from pooling on the deck and creating a slipping hazard
The ship's interior was built with attractive, but highly flammable, veneered wooden surfaces which burned quickly and released toxic fumes.

In addition, Warms waited to slow the ship -- he was trying to beach her -- and the high apparent winds contributed to the spread of flames. Meanwhile, crew members broke windows to vent the smoke, but only contributed to the spread of the fire.

Consequences. Warms and the chief engineer were convicted of willful negligence, but their conviction was eventually overturned. The incident also drove Congress to pass the Merchant Marine Act of 1936, which established construction and training standards for US-built vessels.

To read the complete Jim Kalafus interview with George Watremez (quoted above), see the Gare Maritime website here.

Mutiny!

2011-09-07T00:01:00.000-07:00

It's a frequent joke among charter guests. "We should have a mutiny!" they cry, more often than not raising a glass of pinot noir in salute. It's a romantic and somewhat old-fashioned notion, owing more to Clarke Gable and Humphrey Bogart than to reality. Although the most famous mutiny, that on the HMS Bounty, lies two centuries in the past, mutiny continues to be a problem today.

These passengers could not, strictly speaking, make a mutiny. As I noted in my very first post on the blog more than two years ago: "If the crew illegally takes control of a vessel, its cargo, etc. it’s called mutiny. If an outside person or persons do so it’s called piracy. If the captain does so it’s called barratry." Thus, the wine-loving charter guests would technically be pirates, not mutineers.

Among the more famous recent mutinies:

Columbia Eagle, 1970. In the first armed mutiny aboard a US ship in 150 years, two merchant seamen seized control of a merchant vessel carrying napalm bombs to American forces in Southeast Asia. The mutineers put 24 crew members off the ship, then ordered the remaining 13 to take the vessel to Cambodia. Although initially granted asylum, a coup in Cambodia led to the ship and crew being returned to the US three weeks later. One of the mutineers, steward Alvin Glatkowski, eventually served ten years in prison for mutiny and other crimes. Fireman Clyde McKay escaped, disappeared and was presumed dead.

Velos, 1973. The Greek destroyer, formerly the USS Charette, commanded by Nicolaos Pappas, refused to return to Greece after joint NATO exercises. Pappas had noted that several fellow officers opposed to the 1967 junta-installed government in Greece had been arrested and precipitated the mutiny as a means of brining world attention to the situation in Greece. Pappas and several crew members sought asylum in Italy, after which the ship was returned to Greece. The gambit worked, however, and the junta fell the following year.

Storozhevoy, 1975. The Soviet anti-submarine frigate was seized by the political officer, Valery Sablin, and crew members loyal to him with the intent of using the vessel to broadcast a program decrying the forsaking of the principles of the Russian Revolution. The Soviet navy took quick action, disabling the ship and storming it with marine commandos. Sablin was executed in 1976. The incident was one of the inspirations for the novel and film The Hunt For Red October.

Majestic Blue, 2009. The former South Korean purse seiner fishing vessel was re-flagged in the US, but continued to operate with a largely foreign crew under the terms of a wavier. The new American captain, Doug Pine, came to realize that he was only to be a "paper captain" and was resisted by the former captain (now called the "fishing master") in his attempts to secure more humane treatment for the crew, compliance with environmental laws, and even participate in navigation of the vessel. Pine would eventually leave the vessel, partly in fear of his own safety, and say that he planned to file mutiny charges against certain members of the crew. The vessel sank in June 2010.

Gorch Foch, 2010. Four cadets aboard the tall ship, a training ship for Germany's merchant navy, refused to climb the rigging after a colleague was killed in a fall. They were charged with "inciting a rebellion," but subsequent investigation led to charges of sexual harassment and improper conduct by the captain and officers. The captain was suspended in January of this year and reinstated in March.

Monday Morning Mariner: Planning For Shipyard

2011-09-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

Warning: This post contains salty language.

Labor Day means the end of the summer tourist season and thus the end or near-end of the operating season for a lot of passenger vessels. Tug business slows down too in some areas, and many operators take advantage of the time to plan their annual maintenance and shipyard periods. A couple of tools I have found (from various sources) for making the planning and execution of "yard" easier:

Some definitions

Contractor. A gambler who never gets to shuffle, cut or deal!

Bid opening. A poker game in which the losing hand wins.

Low bidder. A contractor who is wondering what he/she has left out.

Engineer's estimate. The cost of construction in Heaven.

Critical Path Method. A management technique for losing your shirt under perfect control.

OSHA. A protective coating made by half-baking a mixture of fine print, split hairs, red tape and baloney - usually applied at random with a shot gun.

Strike. An effort to increase egg production by strangling the chicken.

Delayed payment. A tourniquet applied at the pockets.

Completion date. The point at which liquidated damages begin.

Liquidated damages. A penalty for failing to achieve the impossible.

Estimates

To estimate the time any given task will take, double the amount of time it should take then go to the next higher unit of measure. Thus a five minute job will actually take 10 minutes, a two day job will take four weeks, etc.
To estimate the actual cost of any given tool or material, take the normal cost of the item and add 5 percent for every day that's passed since you should have ordered it. Add another 40 to 150-percent if the item or vendor has the word "Marine" in its name.

Trouble shooting

Cities Beneath The Sea (or Not): New Orleans

2011-09-03T00:01:00.000-07:00

After Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans on August 29, 2005, it was popular in news accounts to blame much of the damage on the fact that the city lay below sea level. This was more than an academic point, as it was common to ask why the city was built below sea level in the first place and why resources should be expended rebuilding it when it was inevitable the city would flood again. The basic assumptions behind those questions are not so simple.

What Is Sea Level? Websters defines sea level as "the position of the sea's surface at mean level between high and low tides." Mariners might be expected to have a more precise definition and turn to the American Practical Navigator, or "Bowditch," where sea level is defined as the "height of the surface of the sea at any given time." At first it might seem that Bowditch and Webster are talking about two different things, but the truth lies somewhere in between.

Sea level is not the same all over the world. The Caribbean Sea's level at the Panama Canal is eight inches higher than the Pacific Ocean's. Several reasons may account for this, including variations in the Earth's gravity field, salinity, and time required for the sea's surface to find equilibrium in a given volume. Whatever the cause, the Canal's builders were aware of it even a century ago and took the difference into account in their construction plans.

Sea level also varies over time. Tides run in 19-year cycles, thus the "mean" between high and low tides is going to vary during that cycle. In cases like New Orleans, where the elevation varies between 20 feet above sea level to nearly seven feet below sea level, whether a particular point on land is above or below sea level can depend on the given time within the tidal cycle.

Global climate also effects sea level. During the last Ice Age, worldwide sea levels were as much as 100 feet lower than they are today, when much of the planet's water was frozen into ice. Climate scientists say a warming climate has increase sea levels by as as much as a meter every 50 years.

New Orleans Is Below Sea Level. The United States Geological Survey puts the lowest point in Louisiana in the city of New Orleans at eight feet below sea level. Of the nation's 50 largest cities, 17 have areas at or below sea level. Of those, only Houston does not lie on a sea coast. Washington DC, with a minimum elevation of 1 foot, just misses making the list.

A city may have areas at sea level and not be in danger of flooding however. San Francisco and Seattle are both on the above list, for instance, but most of the inhabited areas of these cities lie well above sea level. As I write this, I am in Seattle a mile from the nearest beach, but 125 feet above sea level. Long Beach, California has spots as low as 7 feet below sea level, and as high as 360 feet above. On the other hand, a post-Katrina study by Tulane and Xavier Universities found that 51% of New Orleans was between sea level and 20 feet above.

New Orleans Is Above Sea Level. The Tulane and Xavier study pointed out that most of New Orleans's population lives in areas above sea level. The study also found that much of the area above sea level was under-utilized. This may be important, as New Orleans may be sinking. A report by the American Society of Civil Engineers found that the city my be sinking due to the natural settling of underlying soil, the pumping of groundwater and, ironically, the use of flooding control measures which prevent the natural replacing of silt and sediment by the Mississippi River.

Hurricanes

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On his second voyage to the New World, Columbus encountered a tropical storm. Although his vessels suffered no damage, this experience proved valuable during his fourth voyage when his ships were threatened by a fully developed hurricane. Columbus read the signs of an approaching storm from the appearance of a southeasterly swell, the direction of the high cirrus clouds, and the hazy appearance of the atmosphere. He directed his vessels to shelter. The commander of another group, who did not heed the signs, lost most of his ships and more than 500 men perished.
-- The National Imagery and Mapping Agency,
The American Practical Navigator ("Bowditch"), 2002 Bicentennial Edition.

Origins. A hurricane starts its life as a tropical disturbance, an area from 100 to 200 miles in diameter marked by atmospheric convection, resulting in cloud formation, and a discrete character distinct from a normal weather front. It becomes a tropical depression when it takes on a rotary character and wind speeds reach up to 33 knots. A tropical storm is clearly spinning and wind speeds reach up to 63 knots. With speeds above that, a tropical storm becomes a hurricane.

The word hurricane is derived from the Carib god Hurican, called Hurakan by the Mayans, whose breath blew the primordial sea from the land, creating dry Earth. Because of its Carib/Mayan origins, hurricane is the name given to storms in the North Atlantic and the Eastern North Pacific. In the Western North Pacific, they're called typhoons, except in the Philippines, where they're sometimes called baguios. In the Indian Ocean hurricanes and tropical storms are called cyclones or cyclonic storms. Such a storm originating in the Timor Sea is called a willy-willy.

Formation. No one is sure exactly what causes hurricane to form. There are several factors that are present in most hurricane formation:

water temperatures of at least 79.7 degrees F
rapid cooling with height that provides the energy for the hurricane
high humidity
low contrary winds (that would stall the storm's formation)
a distance at least 5 degrees of latitude from the equator (to allow the Earth's Coriolis effect to create spin)
a pre-existing tropical disturbance

By no means does a hurricane form every time these factors are present, and sometimes they form when some of the factors are not present.

Hurricanes and Climate Change. Some evidence suggests that the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes has increased in the last fifteen years, possibly due to increase water vapor in the atmosphere and higher sea surface temperatures. Despite this, the number of hurricanes worldwide has not increased. Major studies in Nature and Science predict stronger hurricanes over the next century.

Mariners and Hurricanes. Entire books have been written for mariners on hurricanes and hurricane avoidance. Most of the time, the smartest course of action is to avoid the storm entirely, a choice made more possible by the advent of increasingly accurate predictions using computer models and satellite monitoring. There are entire companies devoted to weather routing for ships. This is not and has not always been possible, however, and mariners who encounter a hurricane never forget it. In "The Typhoon Lady" (published in the US Naval Institute Proceedings in June 1949) Lieutenant (j.g) Robert J. Lauer described the encounter of the light aircraft carrier USS San Jacinto with a typhoon in September 1944

The intensity of the storm could never been imagined beforehand. Winds of over 100 knots and seas 70 to 80 feet high lashed at the ships of the formation. To ease the ferocious pounding the course was adjusted to place the ships in the trough of the seas, and speed was reduced to the minimum required to maintain steerageway. All hands stood by their respective spaces to ensure their security.
It was a terrifying sight to watch the gigantic breakers on the crest of the seas looming up, sometimes as much as thirty degrees above the horizontal, as the ship rolled through forty degrees or more. It would have been suicide to venture onto the flight deck.

Despite its reputation, even the so-called "eye of the hurricane" is not safe. Visibility increases and winds decrease, but seas can be "monstrous" and come from any direction. As "Bowditch" says of these storms, "The awesome fury of this condition can only be experienced."

The Bermuda Triangle

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Whatever force exists in the Triangle affects craft and crew whether on, over or under the water. The weirdest Triangle incident of all occurred on December 5, 1944, while World War II was still raging. Five torpedo bombers took off from the Fort Lauderdale Naval Air Station. It was a routine patrol intended to last two hours. The planes were within easy radio contact of their base. The day was clear and sunny. The planes, each carrying a crew of three (pilot, radio operator, and gunner) were in perfect condition. Each man wore an inflatable life jacket, and each plane carried a raft.
     The planes left at 2 P.M. At 3:45 P.M, when they were supposed to be returning to base, the patrol leader radioes, "We seem to be off course...we cannot see land...repeat, we cannot see land..."
     When asked for his position, the reply came, we don't know which way is west. Everything is wrong...even the ocean doesn't look as it should."
     Even with a defective compass, the patrol leader should have been able to fly into the setting sun on a clear day. Why couldn't he see the sun? The tower operators heard the men talking with increased panic. A new pilot took over the radio phone. At 4:25 P.M. the new leader was in the middle of a sentence..."Looks like we are entering white water. We're completely lost!"
     Then contact was lost. That was the last ever heard of the five planes.
-- Raymond Schuessler, writing in Robert Hendrickson's The Ocean Almanac

The story of Flight 19 is one of the most chilling in Bermuda -- or Devil's -- Triangle lore. Tales of ships, sailors, and aircraft disappearing in this area of the North Atlantic go back centuries, some say all the way to Christopher Columbus. Ships disappear, sometimes reappearing later missing all crew. The schooner Ellen Austin supposedly disappeared with two different crews then reappeared before vanishing for good with a third in 1881. Nuclear submarines and yachts vanish, satellite images are scrubbed, strange weather phenomena occur. With the 1974 publication of The Bermuda Triangle by Charles Berlitz and the subsequent movie based on the book, the Triangle has become not only a mystery, but an obsession to some.

Famous cases. Shuessler claims that "[at] least 100 ships and planes and 1,000 sailors and pilots during the last 30 years" have disappeared in the Triangle, but that "[ships] have been dropping out of sight in this area for centuries." Besides Flight 19 and the Ellen Austin, some of the more celebrated cases include:

Cyclops, 1918. The largest ship ever lost in the Triangle, the US Navy collier (coal vessel) was more than 500 feet long and carried a crew of more than 300.
Carroll A. Deering, 1921. The vessel was found abandoned and stuck in the sand near Cape Hatteras. Half-eaten meals were still on the tables in the mess, lights were on, there was no sign that anything was wrong. Locals later claimed to hear strange noises and see strange lights coming from the wreck.
La Dahama, 1935. The crew was rescued from the damaged ship by another vessel, then both crews watched the vessel sink. The vessel was found later, floating, off Bermuda.
Nereus, 1941. A sister ship to the Cyclops.
Proteus, 1941. Another sister ship of the Cyclops

Causes. What is the cause of these mysterious goings on? Explanations abound, from the mundane to the truly strange. Atlantis, space aliens, psychic sea monsters, and gateways to strange dimensions all get blamed. Many natural explanations from human error, to compass various, to undersea eruptions of "methane hydrates" are also put forth. This last was the topic of a recent posting on a LinkedIn discussion board used by maritime business professionals, hardly a hot-bed of crackpot conspiracy theorists.

Is there really a Bermuda Triangle? Schuessler claims that "Lloyds of London knew back in the 1600s that losses in the Triangle surpassed anything on other sea routes." But the maritime insurance giant told Fate magazine in 1975 that the incidence of insurance payoffs was no greater in the Triangle than in any other part of the ocean and the cost of insurance for ships transiting the area was no higher than those sailing elsewhere. The US Coast Guard also says that the number of ship, yacht and aircraft rescues is not out of proportion in the Triangle area compared to other areas it services.

The Discovery Channel has an interesting "tour" of the Triangle here.

See the US Navy's take on the Triangle -- which it calls "an imaginary area" -- here.

The Misunderstood Mariner

Cell Phones

Queen Mary 2: A Village At Sea

Monday Morning Mariner: TWIC Changes & Compensation Survey

"Heave! Ho!" To Misused Nautical Terms

The Captain's Code

Strait of Hormuz

The Good Samaritan Requirement

Liberty Ships (Re-post)

Top 10 Stories of 2011

The Legend Of The Wren (Re-post)

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Misunderstood Mariners: Robert Louis Stevenson and Christmas At Sea (Re-post)

I Saw Three Ships On Christmas Day (Re-post)

I saw three ships come sailing inOn Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;I saw three ships come sailing inOn Christmas Day in the morning...

O they sailed into Bethlehem,On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;O they sailed into Bethlehem,On Christmas Day in the morning.

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Holidays At Sea (Re-post)

Best Pearl Harbor Films

The Pearl Harbor Conspiracy

Guest Post: "For Whom The Bell Tolls"

New Lyrics For "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"

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Telling Time

The Republicans on Maritime Issues

Monday Morning Mariner: President Barack Obama

Candidate Matt Snyder

Candidate Danny Woodring

Monday Morning Mariner: Who To Vote For

Avast! Ahoy!

SOLAS

Monday Morning Mariner: Shameless Self Promotion

Happy Halloween!

SeaSpeak

The United States

Piracy Update

Sex Discrimination At Sea

Misunderstood Mariners: Amerigo Vespucci (Re-post)

Shining A Light On "The Lighthouse Story" (Re-post)

Pilots (Re-post)

Tsunami (Re-post)

The Deadliest Blog Post (Re-post)

Married At Sea, Buried At Sea (Re-post)

Ships, Toxic Waste, and The Mob

Update: Dad, Magellan, and Greenwich Mean Time

Dynamic Positioning

Monday Morning Mariner: My 9/11 Story

Morro Castle

Mutiny!

Monday Morning Mariner: Planning For Shipyard

Cities Beneath The Sea (or Not): New Orleans

Hurricanes

The Bermuda Triangle

I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
I saw three ships come sailing in
On Christmas Day in the morning...

O they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas Day, on Christmas Day;
O they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas Day in the morning.