adventures-of-the-blackgang:

It is a tried and true cinematic gimmick to trap adults in a confined space so they must face their past and confront the present.  Ships crewed by sweaty nomads with checkered pasts have all the right ingredients. Just add water and you get

Heart Stopping Terror
on the High Seas!!!

Maritime Monday for June 17th, 2013: The Horror, The Horror…

By Monkey Fist On June 16, 2013

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

SS Exodus

The ship, built at Sparrows Point, MD in 1911, was formerly the packet steamer SS President Warfield for theBaltimore Steam Packet Company, (American steamship line from 1840 to 1962) providing overnight steamboat service on the Chesapeake Bay, primarily between Baltimore, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia.

President Warfield was expropriated in 1942 by the War Shipping Administration for national defense as a transport during World War II. Following the end of World War II, the President Warfield was decommissioned and returned to the War Shipping Administration for disposal as surplus.

The old President Warfield was eventually acquired in early 1947 by Mossad Le’aliyah Bet, a Jewish organization helping Holocaust survivors illegally reach Palestine, then under British mandate.

The former Baltimore Steam Packet and U.S. Navy steamship was renamed Exodus when she embarked from France for Palestine on July 11, 1947, carrying 4,515 passengers. +

The Exodus arrives at Haifa in July 1947
1000 × 767

Maritime Monday for June 10th, 2013: Movement of Jah People

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

Maritime Monday for June 3rd, 2013:
Float, Float On…

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

Belgian Antarctic Expedition
(1117 x 738)
Grosvenor Philatelic Auctions

Maritime Monday for May 27th, 2013:
Hard Water Sailing

Grosvenor Philatelic Auctions
(1118 × 750)

The Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897 to 1899 was the first expedition to winter in the Antarctic region.

In 1896, Adrien de Gerlache purchased the Norwegian-built whaling ship Patria, which, following an extensive refit, was renamed Belgica.

With a multinational crew, which included Roald Amundsen, Frederick Cook and Henryk Arctowski, they set sail from Antwerp on 16 August 1897. After charting and naming several islands during some 20 separate landings, they crossed the Antarctic Circle on 15 February 1898.

more

Cook, at left, with Roald Amundsen, ca. 1898

“We are imprisoned in an endless sea of ice… We have told all the tales, real and imaginative, to which we are equal. Time weighs heavily upon us as the darkness slowly advances.”

Several weeks later, on 17 May, total darkness set in, which lasted until 23 July.

Frederick Cook: A Digital Exhibition:
Belgian Antarctic Expedition (1897 – 1899)
Ohio State University Libraries

Royal Penguin in the ice by the Belgica

South Pole Belgian Antarctic Expedition
on Digital History Project

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

EASTWIND (WAGB-279); Antarctic Operation Deep Freeze
(1955-56); PENGUIN DRILL TEAM

Player’s Cigarettes “Polar Exploration”; A series of 25 cards issued in 1914
#7 Ross & Parry’s Arctic Expedition, 1818     (1098 x 592)
Commander Ross at the North Magnetic Pole

#3 How Icebergs Are Formed
(1097 x 593)

Maritime Monday for May 20th, 2013:
Ice Ice Baby Part 1

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

John Bull, Liberty Magazine 1943
illustration by Arthur Szyk

John Bull is the personification of the British nation,
the epitome of tenacity and dogged determination.

Allied curious?

Maritime Monday for May 13th, 2013:
Britain’s Best Bitter
(or The Art of English Manliness)

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

Tora! Tora! Tora! was a 1970 American-Japanese war film that dramatized the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Directed by Richard Fleischer and featuring an ensemble cast including Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotten, Sō Yamamura, E.G. Marshall, James Whitmore and Jason Robards…

Maritime Monday for May 6th, 2013:
“Climb Mount Niitaka”

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

Maritime Monday for April 22nd, 2013:
Dämmerung des Königs

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

Maritime Monday for April 15th, 2013:

Seiner Majestät Schiff

a selection of picture postcards produced within each
of the belligerent nations during the wartime

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

Maritime Monday for April 8, 2013:
Reichsflotte

The Reichsflotte (Imperial Fleet) was the first all-German Navy, founded on 14 June 1848.

The German Confederation, founded in 1815, was initially not in need of a navy, as it could rely on three members who commanded large fleets: The Grand Duke of Luxembourg as commander of the Royal Dutch Navy, the Duke of Holstein as the commander of the Danish Navy, and last but not least, the King of Hanover as commander of the British Royal Navy.

This had changed by the late 1830s, though, as the Kings of the Netherlands and Great Britain ceased to be members of the German Confederation, and Denmark turned against Germany in the First Schleswig War that started in early 1848. Soon, the Danish Navy stopped all German trade in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea.

keep reading

above:
Sail-Frigates Eckenförde  (captured Danish SMS Gefion; 1852)
and Deutschland 1849

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

Wreckage of the USS MAINE
3,000 × 2,295
US Navy battleship that sunk after a mysterious explosion in Havana Harbor
Havana, Cuba, 15 February 1898

Sent to protect US interests during the Cuban revolt against Spain, she exploded suddenly and without warning; sinking quickly and killing nearly three quarters of her crew.
2131 × 1613

1024 x 648
The cause of the Maine’s sinking remains the subject of speculation. +

Maritime Monday for March 25, 2013:
Boom, Boom, Blub, Blub (or Stow High In Transit)

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

Maritime Monday for April 1st, 2013:
Burn, Baby Burn

The USNS Harland Sanders (built originally as the oiler MV Bork Bork in Goteburg, Sweden in 1957) is one of the strangest stories of the Vietnam War.

Commissioned into the US Naval Reserve in 1966, then re-named by the navy. The ship’s new moniker was noticed by a Manhattan advertising executive browsing the New York Times.

He brought the ship to the attention of the Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation, who agreed to sponsor the refitting of the vessel as a mobile supply, rest and relaxation berth for US army and naval personnel active in operations against the Viet Cong.

In a joint event staged by the US Navy and KFC, Elvis Presley was hired to christen the vessel before it steamed out of Las Vegas and embarked for Vietnam in January, 1967. Unfortunately, news footage of the King’s dock side acapella serenade to the crew, “Have you heard the news, there’s good chicken tonight” is lost.

USNS Harland Sanders served in the South China Sea and in the Mekong Delta between 1967 and 1968.  The ship is unique in operating the first floating fried chicken restaurant that included a helicopter deck to airlift breasts and thighs to GI’s on the ground in SE Asia. These chicko-copters are mentioned fondly in a number of Vietnam war memoirs.

“After a long day of smoking weed in the jungle, those chicko-coptors sure were a sight for sore eyes. Charlie don’t deep-fry.”

–Corporal Lance Bantam; Bowling Green, Kentucky; 101st Airborn

Only their hairdressers know for sure.

On 25th July 1968 the ship was at anchor off the village of Hung Ree when a fire erupted in the galley.

The subsequent explosion rained hot grease, chicken bones, and cheap plastic toys down onto a nearby hamlet; injuring 11 villagers. The crew and all GI’s on board were safely evacuated.

After the dreadful disaster, plans for construction of a sister ship, USS Ettore Boiardi, were scrapped.

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

Maritime Monday for March 18th, 2013:
Catholics Need Not Apply

On the fourth of July, eighteen hundred and six
We set sail from the sweet cove of Cork
We were sailing away with a cargo of bricks
For the grand city hall in New York
‘Twas a wonderful craft, she was rigged fore-and-aft
And oh, how the wild winds drove her.
She’d got several blasts, she’d twenty-seven masts
And we called her the Irish Rover.

We had one million bales of the best Sligo rags
We had two million barrels of stones
We had three million sides of old blind horses hides,
We had four million barrels of bones.
We had five million hogs, we had six million dogs,
Seven million barrels of porter.
We had eight million bails of old nanny goats’ tails,
In the hold of the Irish Rover…

“The Irish Rover” is an Irish folk song about a magnificent, though improbable, sailing ship that reaches an unfortunate end.

This week: Irish Shipping

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

Maritime Monday for March 11, 2013:
While You Are Away…

header:
Neues systematisches Conchylien-Cabinet
An ordered new systematic Conchylien Cabinet described by Friedrich Heinrich Wilhelm Martini, and under whose supervision were drawn from nature and illuminated with vibrant colors. Nürnberg: Bey Gabriel Nikolaus Raspe, 1769-1829
- click through for link to view full set on The Ernst Mayr Library -

adventures-of-the-blackgang:

Maritime Monday for February 3rd, 2013:
“You, Sir… have debauched my sloth”