Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
September 10, 2013
The Japanese deep sea drilling vessel Chikyu is the first riser-equipped drilling vessel in the world designed and built for scientific work. It is capable of drilling in waters of up to 2,500 meters (8,125 feet) in depth. Its primary mission is to drill through the 7…
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
September 13, 2013
A meteorological tsunami (or meteotsunami) is a tsunami created by air pressure disturbances, such as atmospheric gravity waves, roll clouds, pressure jumps, frontal passages, or squalls, occurring over large bodies of water and causing barotropic waves.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
September 6, 2013
The Greenland Ice Service is an agency within the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) that collects information regarding ice conditions in waters around Greenland and distributes this information to ships primarily as ice charts and reports.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
August 13, 2013
Like the telephone, telex is a switched network, but connecting teleprinters rather than voice transceivers. Development of the telex began in Germany in 1926 and became operational in 1933. It was not until after the end of World War II that the system started to spread outside Germany…
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
September 3, 2013
During the American Revolutionary War, British forces captured thousands of “rebels”. Those in uniform were accorded treatment somewhat akin to prisoner of war status. Those not in uniform, particularly the maritime privateers, were subjected to harsher conditions.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
August 30, 2013
The Kuroshio Current (also known as the Black Tide or the Japanese Current) is the north-flowing portion of the North Pacific Ocean gyre. It is the Pacific Ocean equivalent of the Atlantic’s Gulf Stream. As the Gulf Stream moderates the weather of Iceland…
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
August 27, 2013
The ship rat is an alternative name for the black rat (Rattus rattus), a common long-tailed rodent. It originated in tropical Asia, reaching the Near East in about the first century before the Common Era, probably on the coattails of Alexander the Great, whose armies reached India in 326 BC.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
August 23, 2013
James Clark Ross (1800-1862) was the nephew of Sir John Ross, Royal Navy, under whose sponsorship he entered the Navy at the age of 12. He accompanied his uncle in 1818 on an unsuccessful voyage in search of the Northwest Passage. Voyages of that nature were very popular during the era.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
August 20, 2013
The whaleship Charles W. Morgan, on the National Register of Historic Places since 1975, is the only wooden whaleship surviving from the large nineteenth-century fleet of American whalers. It was built in 1841 in New Bedford at a cost of $48…
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
August 16, 2013
The USCGC Polar Star (WAGB-10) is a heavy icebreaker and one of the most powerful non-nuclear icebreakers in the world. Homeported in Seattle, it is currently conducting ice trials in the Arctic. The ship was commissioned in 1976 with an expected service life of 30 years.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
August 9, 2013
The University of Washington is leading the Regional Scale Nodes Project for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Ocean Observatory Initiative. The cabled underwater research facility is being constructed off the Oregon and Washington coasts.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
August 6, 2013
After French revolutionaries overthrew the monarchy in 1792 (arresting and eventually beheading Louis XVI), many of the surrounding nations engaged in efforts to contain and undermine the revolution. Their loosely-coordinated group has been referred to as the First Coalition.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
August 2, 2013
Frederick Joseph Noonan (1893-1937) was a mariner prior to becoming an aviator. At age 17, he shipped out as an ordinary seaman (OS) on a British sailing bark. Over the next few years, he qualified as a quartermaster and as a boatswain’s mate.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
July 30, 2013
The Russian Maritime Border Guard is part of the Russian Border Guard Service, which is part of the Federal Security Service of Russia. The Federal Security Service is the successor to the Soviet KGB, which collapsed with the rest of the Soviet Government in 1991.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
July 26, 2013
Tartus is the second largest port in Syria, located on the Mediterranean just north of the border with Lebanon. Originally founded as the Phoenician colony of Aradus in the second millennium BC, it later fell under the sway of (successively) the Greeks, the Romans, and the Byzantines.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
July 23, 2013
UK law requires that those companies who are responsible for the safety of their offshore installation workers (duty holders) make arrangements to secure a “good prospect of recovery and rescue” and transfer to a “place of safety” for those…
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
July 19, 2013
The Haixun 01 was commissioned into service by the Chinese Maritime Safety Administration (MSA) in a ceremony in Shanghai on 16 April 2013. With a length of 128.6 meters and a tonnage of 5,418 tonnes, it is the largest offshore patrol vessel in the MSA’s fleet.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
July 16, 2013
The BIO Hesperides (A-33) is an ice-strengthened oceanographic vessel of the Spanish Navy. It is named for the nymphs in Greek mythology believed to tend a blissful garden in a far western corner of the world on the shore of the Oceanus. The ship, built in Cartagena, Spain, was commissioned in 1991.
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
July 12, 2013
James Buchanan Eads (1820-1887) was a civil engineer and inventor. He was named for his mother’s cousin, Representative James Buchanan, who later was elected President. Growing up in St. Louis, he was largely self-educated. Eads made his initial fortune with the invention of a diving bell…
Posted to Maritime Musings
(by
Dennis Bryant)
on
July 9, 2013
Henry Miller Shreve (1785-1851) was a riverboat captain and inventor. Born in New Jersey, he moved with his family in 1788 to a homestead in western Pennsylvania on the Youghiogheny River. After his father’s death in 1799, he served on several riverboats, soon owning one of his own.
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