Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
October 16, 1965 After more than a decade with the reserve fleet at Suisun Bay in northern California, the United States Navy hospital ship USS Repose (AH-16) was recommissioned for service in the Vietnam War. The vessel dated back to the World War II era, having been built in 1943 by the Sun Shipbuilding &... Continue Reading →
October 10, 1903 The three-masted topsail schooner Alma Doepel was launched on the Bellinger River in the state of New South Wales in southeastern Australia. This type of sailing vessel was used extensively for trade along the Australian coast, and the Alma Doepel is one of the oldest ships of that kind still in existence... Continue Reading →
September 26, 1944 With the United States still fighting the Axis powers during World War II, the U.S. Navy cargo ship USS Beltrami was launched. Beltrami, which had been named after a county in northwestern Minnesota, was built by the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company at its shipyards in Richmond, California. The launch of Beltrami at Richmond... Continue Reading →
September 11, 2010 The dry cargo vessel USNS (United States Naval Ship) Washington Chambers was christened and launched at the National Steel and Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO) shipyard in San Diego. NASSCO, a division of General Dynamics, built USNS Washington Chambers for the Navy’s Military Sealift Command. The original crew for the ship included 129 civil... Continue Reading →
September 7, 1970 Arctic explorer Donald Baxter MacMillan, a lifelong New Englander who made seminal contributions to transportation in the world’s northernmost regions, died at the age of 95 in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In recounting MacMillan’s final years as a resident of that Cape Cod community, the New York Times highlighted his steadfast love for sailing... Continue Reading →
August 30, 1929 Lightship 115 (LV-115) of the U.S. Lighthouse Service was launched in Charleston, South Carolina. As one of the lightships built to serve as navigational aids in waters too deep or otherwise unsuitable for lighthouses, LV-115 was stationed beginning in 1930 at one of the most dangerous places along the entire Atlantic coast... Continue Reading →
August 28, 1957 The Grace Line’s cruise ship S.S. Santa Rosa, which would become the last passenger liner built at a U.S. shipyard to remain in active service, was launched at Newport News, Virginia. This vessel was among those designed by the naval architecture firm Gibbs & Cox and built by the Newport News Shipbuilding and... Continue Reading →
July 26, 1933 A record-setting dry dock was formally dedicated at the port city of Southampton on England’s southern coast. This new facility was specifically a graving dock, which is a basin into which a vessel can be floated for maintenance and repairs. After the water is temporarily pumped out of the basin, the vessel... Continue Reading →
June 29, 1900 A pioneering passenger ship built for the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG, or the Hamburg-America Line) was launched at the city of Hamburg in what was then the German Empire (now part of the Federal Republic of Germany). The ship was christened by the Countess von Waldersee (formerly Mary Esther Lee), the U.S.-born wife... Continue Reading →
June 22, 1927 The ocean liner SS Île de France embarked on her maiden voyage from the French port of Le Havre to New York City by way of the then-town of Plymouth, England. Those on board for this transatlantic journey included Myron T. Herrick, U.S. ambassador to France and a former governor of Ohio;... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 