Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
June 23, 2005 HMAS Cessnock (FCPB 210), a Royal Australian Navy (RAN) Fremantle-class patrol boat, was decommissioned following more than two decades of service. This vessel was named after the city of Cessnock in the Hunter Region of the Australian state of New South Wales. She was the second RAN vessel to bear the name... Continue Reading →
June 2, 1917 A little less than two months after the United States entered World War I on the side of the Allied Powers, the high-speed yacht Marold was commissioned in Boston for service in the U.S. Navy. This vessel had been built by the Ohio-based Matthews Boat Company in 1914 for engineer and businessman... Continue Reading →
March 21, 2022 After more than a quarter-century of service, the patrol ship USS Whirlwind (PC-11) was decommissioned at the U.S. Navy base Naval Support Activity Bahrain. (That military installation in the Kingdom of Bahrain serves as home to both U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and the U.S. Fifth Fleet.) Whirlwind had been built at... Continue Reading →
January 6, 1919 A little less than two months after the armistice ending World War I had gone into effect, USS Kestrel II (SP-529) – which served as a patrol vessel for the U.S. Navy during that military conflict – was decommissioned. Kestrel II was originally a private motor yacht that had been built in... Continue Reading →
October 11, 2018 In the Republic of Ireland, an offshore patrol vessel built by Babcock Marine in England’s ceremonial county of Devon was delivered to the Irish Naval Service at its base on the island of Haulbowline in Cork Harbour. This vessel was named after George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), a world-renowned Irish playwright whose works... Continue Reading →
August 23, 1917 A private motorboat named Natoma was commissioned into the U.S. Navy about four-and-a-half months after the United States entered World War I on the side of the Allied Powers. Natoma had been designed and built in 1913 as a vessel for Charles H. Foster, president of the Cadillac Motor Car Company of... Continue Reading →
April 18, 1917 Less than two weeks after the United States entered World War I on the side of the Allied Powers, a private motorboat designated as Patrol No. 4 was commissioned for service in the U.S. Navy. This vessel was owned by a Virginia resident named Guy Norman and, three days after her commissioning,... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 