Finding the unexpected in the everyday.
In Finland, a naming ceremony was held at Arctech Helsinki Shipyard for a pioneering icebreaker. The naming contest for the new vessel had been launched by the Finnish Transport Agency during the summer of 2014. The winning entry for this contest was Polaris, the name for the major navigational star commonly known as the North... Continue Reading →
The ferry M/S Finnhansa, which had been constructed by the Finnish shipbuilding company Wärtsilä Marine, was launched in Helsinki. The vessel was christened by Sylvi Kekkonen, the wife of longtime Finnish president Urho Kekkonen. Finnhansa was built for Finnlines, a major operator of vessels transporting both passengers and vehicles in the Baltic Sea and the... Continue Reading →
A French crew of 14 sailors on board the vessel Banque Populaire V began an ambitious round-the-world voyage. The voyage was undertaken to win the Jules Verne Trophy for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe by a yacht. Starting in 1993, the Jules Verne Trophy – named for the acclaimed French writer whose works included... Continue Reading →
ICGV Thor (Þór), a new patrol vessel built for the Icelandic Coast Guard (ICG), arrived in Iceland’s capital city of Reykjavík two-and-a-half years after being launched at the ASMAR Naval Shipyard in Talcahuano, Chile. The ship was named after the Norse god Thor. The origins of ICGV Thor can be traced to a proposal drafted... Continue Reading →
The cargo ship ARA Canal Beagle was launched in Buenos Aires. She was named after the Beagle Channel, a strait in Tierra del Fuego (an archipelago off the southernmost tip of the South American mainland). Canal Beagle was the first of three Costa Sur-class cargo ships built for the Argentine Navy to replace increasingly obsolete... Continue Reading →
Domingo Marcucci (1827-1905), who started out life in the part of the South American republic of Gran Colombia that now encompasses Venezuela, became a leading trailblazer for maritime activities in the United States. “Captain [Domingo] Marcucci is the pioneer boatbuilder of the Pacific Coast and the first to establish a shipyard in San Francisco,” asserted... Continue Reading →
Steamship captain Manuel A. Gonzalez (1832-1902) immigrated to the United States from his native Spain in 1846. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1859. During the Civil War, he put his maritime skills to effective use by using a boat on a regular basis to transport needed supplies to the Union Army troops stationed... Continue Reading →
Sampo, a pioneering icebreaker that the British manufacturer Armstrong-Whitworth (AW) had just built for the Finnish government, left the AW shipyard in northeastern England for her second sea trial. The first sea trial for Sampo took place about a month earlier and quickly ended in failure when the new vessel’s bow propeller shaft malfunctioned. Sampo’s... Continue Reading →
In 1928, former U.S. Naval Academy midshipman Henry Garcia received a U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) commission. In doing so, Puerto Rican-born Garcia made history by becoming that military branch’s first officially recognized minority officer. A decade later, he achieved another milestone when he was made the captain of the patrol boat USCG Morris. This assignment... Continue Reading →
Just over six months after being launched, the Japanese training sail ship Kaiwo Maru was fully completed by Sumitomo Heavy Industries. The four-masted vessel, measuring more than 361 feet in length, was built to replace a 1930 training ship bearing the same name. (The original Kaiwo Maru is now a museum ship in the Japanese... Continue Reading →
Transportation History 