Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
May 20, 2014
Teak is the common name for the Tectona grandis, a member of the verbena family native to the hardwood forests of India, Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. It is a large deciduous tree, growing to a height of 130 feet, with gray and grayish brown branches.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
April 8, 2014
The Strait of Malacca is named after Malacca, now part of Malaysia. In about the year 1400, Parameswana, the last Raja of Singapura, was expelled from the area around present-day Singapore by local rivals. He relocated to the fishing village of Malacca…
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
April 1, 2014
Elephant seals are large seals represented by two species, the northern elephant seal and the southern elephant seal. Both were hunted to near extinction through the end of the nineteenth century. The smaller northern elephant seal is found in the eastern portion of the North Pacific Ocean…
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
November 15, 2013
The island group, consisting of two atolls and about 27 coral islands, was stumbled upon by Captain William Keeling (1578-1620) of the East Indiaman Susanna. In 1609, he was returning to England from the East India Company’s trading post on Java.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
May 4, 2012
Abel Tasman (1603-1659) was a Dutch merchant and explorer. He is credited with the European discovery of Australia and New Zealand. He joined the Dutch United East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie - VOC) in 1633 and was promptly…
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
August 5, 2011
Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709-1746) was a naturalist and zoologist, noted for being the first European to set foot in what is now Alaska and for describing and documenting some of the unique animal life of the region. He was born in Windsheim, Bavaria and studied at the University of Wittenberg.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
June 25, 2010
Live oak is a term used to refer to oak trees that are evergreen (retain leaves year-round, thus “alive”). There are a number of evergreen oak species and many are found in the southeastern United States (North Carolina to Texas). A mature live oak tree is massive…
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
April 6, 2010
The US Coast Guard adopted the concept of geographic districts when it absorbed the US Lighthouse Service in 1939. Previously, it had no formal segmentation of its chain of command based on geography. Rather, the chain of command was grouped around function.