A large Chinese-registered barge was detained by Malaysian authorities after it was found carrying massive piles of steel ship parts and old artillery shells believed to have been looted from a pair of British battleships wrecked during World War II. //

It is suspected the metal was stripped from the nearby wrecks of the HMS Repulse and the HMS Prince of Wales, two ships sunk by Japanese torpedoes in 1941 just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The attacks killed 842 sailors and the shipwrecks have since been designated as war graves. //

Looters have been known to target WWII shipwrecks for their raw materials. Known as “prewar steel,” the metal the ships were built from was untainted by radioactive elements created and spread across the world by the detonation of the first atomic explosion in 1945, making it extremely valuable for use in sensitive medical and scientific measuring devices.

Photos from the barge showed towers of rusted metal, cables, and maritime refuse piled high on the deck, with an excavator and large crane stationed nearby.

RMS Lusitania was an ocean liner operated by the Cunard Company that served the Liverpool, England – New York City, United States route on the North Atlantic. The ship was designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland. The ship was named after the ancient Roman province of Lusitania, which is now part of present-day Portugal and western Spain.

• Operator: Cunard Line, Ltd.
• Builder: John Brown and Co., Clydebank, Scotland
• Keel laid: 16 June 1904
• Launched: 7 June 1906
• Maiden voyage: Liverpool, England – New York, USA, 7 – 13 September 1907
• Round trip voyages: 101 (202 crossings)
• Length of career: 7 yrs, 9 months

Lusitania was launched on 7 June 1906 and entered service for Cunard on 26 August 1907. When she entered service, Lusitania set the records for the largest and fastest ship afloat, taking these records from the ships of the United Kingdom’s naval rival, Germany. Lusitania maintained these records until the entry of her twin sister Mauretania into the North Atlantic run. Lusitania, Mauretania, and slower but larger Aquitania provided a weekly passenger service for the Cunard Line just prior to the First World War.

During World War I, Germany waged submarine warfare against the United Kingdom. Lusitania, which had been built with the capability of being converted into a warship, was identified as a target. The German submarine U-20 torpedoed and sank her on 7 May 1915; this was early in the war before tactics for evading submarines were fully developed. The ship suffered two explosions, the second one which could never fully be explained, and sank in 18 minutes. The Lusitania disaster killed 1,192 of the 1,960 known people on board, leaving 768 survivors. Four of these survivors died soon afterwards of trauma sustained from the sinking, bringing the final death toll to 1,196.

The sinking turned public opinion against Germany, particularly those in Ireland and the then-neutral United States.

OceanGate Expeditions shot the footage earlier this year with a manned submersible.

Six sailors stranded on a remote island without food for almost two weeks have been rescued by the Brazilian Navy — after sending a message in a bottle out to sea.

In the heated jungles of Central America in the early 1900s, thousands of workers toiled in the rain and mud trying to cleave Panama in half in order to join the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean Sea. The difficult, dirty work involved more than digging and dynamiting, though. Working on the Panama Canal in the early days was about simply surviving.

Total Active Aircraft Carriers Worldwide: 45
Currently In Service In The U.S.: 11
Top Speed: >30 knots (35+ mph)
Powered By: Nuclear energy
Refueling Requirements: Once every 20 years
Lifespan: 50 years

Oldest In Service: USS Nimitz
Built: 1968
Commissioned By The U.S. Navy: 1975
Planned Decommission: 2025
Crew Size Of Nimitz-Class Carriers: 6,012
Capacity: ~80 fighter jets

How Aircraft Are Launched: Catapults
Throttle Power Required Prior To Catapult Release: Full
Brakes Held: No
Cue That Pilot Is Ready To Launch: Salute to catapult operator
Aircraft Acceleration At Launch: Zero to 150 knots in 2 seconds
Time Until Next Aircraft Can Launch: 20 seconds

Distance Between Flight Deck And Water Surface: ~280 feet
How Landing Aircraft Avoid Ending Up In Water: Tailhook snags arresting wire stretched across deck

The US Navy sold two old aircraft carriers for a cent each to a ship-breaking firm.
The USS Kitty Hawk and USS John F. Kennedy had been decommissioned for years.
They are due to be broken up by a firm in Texas, which can make money from the scrap metal.

A 1966 study by the U.S. Navy noted that "The passage of large-amplitude internal waves could make submarine depth control difficult, particularly when the submarine is running quietly at low speed." The report, titled Internal Waves: Their Influence Upon Naval Operations, added that such waves "could initiate uncontrollable sinking of a submarine."

In World War II, submariners avoided the Strait of Gibraltar partly because they were aware of its reputation for propagating unusual undersea waves that were considered hazardous, David Farmer, a physical oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island, told USA Today in 2014.

At the height of the Cold War in 1984, a Soviet submarine that was apparently running beneath a tanker to mask its exit from the Strait suddenly smashed into the tanker's hull, causing damage to both vessels and forcing the submarine to surface. The collision is thought to have been caused by an internal wave that unexpectedly thrust the submarine toward the surface.

The waves "are generated over steep topography due to the surface tides," he tells NPR. "In the South China Sea, internal wave amplitudes can be about 100 meters (330 feet)."

So apparently a ship, sailing under the Panamanian flag, owned by a Japanese company, operated by a German company, staffed by Indians and stuck in Egypt has no international guarantees of rights for its workers not to end up in a kind of floating solitary confinement. The world literally runs on this kind of shipping and it’s only possible because of these sailors that companies can apparently abandon if that’s how the spreadsheet shakes out. That’s fairly discouraging. Hopefully, the crew of the Ever Given can get some justice, and a flight home, soon.

Ship Logos

Monrovia, Liberia
February 16, 1977 to March 8, 1977

"I was a little bit upset," he added. "But I was really so motivated because I wanted the world to say: 'He did it.'" //

And for Abdel-Gawad, even the tugboats didn't offer the same spectacle as his excavator.

"Nobody really focused on those," he said, speaking of the memes about the situation. "It was just the excavator because of the huge size difference, such a tiny excavator in front of such a gigantic ship."

Another factor that drained any humor from the situation for him was how frightening it was to be underneath the enormous vessel, he said.

From his estimation, the Ever Given was lodged about 6 meters higher than where it would naturally float, and his job was to pry at the rock and mud encasing it. He said he had a very real fear that instead of refloating the ship, he would destabilize it, causing it to topple onto him.

"If you see the size of the ship, and you see the size of the excavator, it is absolutely terrifying," he said. Another two workers in excavators, who arrived at the scene a couple of days in, were too scared to work directly beneath the ship, Abdel-Gawad said.

The giant container ship “Ever Given” was stuck sideways in the Suez Canal for nearly a week, providing endless fodder for news outlets and meme creators. But the piscatorially-minded among us had only one question on our collective minds during this debacle: If we were stuck on a 1,300-foot-long boat run aground in the desert, could we at least catch fish while we wait?

Buried deep inside the Ever Given is a Mitsui–MAN B&W 11G95ME-C9 two-stroke diesel engine. This engine reportedly makes 79,500 horsepower at a slow 79 rpm and is fed by heavy fuel oil or diesel. The engine drives a single propeller hanging off of the back of the ship that propels it to a speed of about 22.8 knots, or 26 mph. //

A selling point for the MAN B&W ME-C series is a compact size and electronic control. It can also run on other fuels like propane, natural gas, methanol or ethane. //

The most surprising part to me is piston diameter. It comes in at 95 cm, or 3.1 feet. For comparison, the largest engine in the world, the Wärtsilä RT-flex96C, has a piston diameter of 3.15 feet. //

We might criticise two stroke marine diesels, but they’re the most efficient non-hybridised engines around.

Yep! While researching this, I found that they’re good for 50 percent efficiency, which is pretty awesome.

Egypt's Suez canal Authority warns the ship and its cargo will not be allowed leave if the issue of damages goes to court.

For Sudeep Choudhury, work on merchant ships promised adventure and a better life.

But a voyage on an oil tanker in West Africa, in dangerous seas far from home, would turn the young graduate's life upside down.

His fate would come to depend on a band of drug-fuelled jungle pirates - and the whims of a mysterious figure called The King.

A Venezuelan naval boat picked and lost a fight with a passenger cruise liner off the country's northern coast this week, ramming it several times before accidentally taking on water and sinking.

Ever wondered how the cost of shipping your toaster from China was calculated? Here we take a closer look at the container indices that measure the cost of the ocean leg of moving finished goods from around the world to you.

Containers, or boxes, are used to move finished goods from the factory gate to their final destination. Moved by road, rail and sea, the ocean leg of the journey is handled by containerships. These boxes generally come in two sizes, 40-foot equivalent unit (FEU) or 20-foot equivalent unit (TEU). Specialist containers such as tank containers for liquids and refrigerated containers (reefers) for perishable commodities are also used.

The indices which measure the containership market focus on either the cost of chartering the ships, or the cost of moving the boxes. Index data for container ships is calculated in earnings per voyage day or time-charter basis.

Public warned away from MV Alta, which ran aground on Cork coast during Storm Dennis //

Abandoned by its crew, the cargo vessel made a lonely odyssey across the Atlantic, a ghost ship seemingly destined never to make port.

The 77-metre MV Alta drifted for over a year, skirting the Americas, Africa and Europe, rusting and derelict yet resolutely afloat.

Its voyage came to an end during Storm Dennis on Sunday when it ran aground near Ballycotton, a fishing village in County Cork, Ireland, overlooking the Celtic Sea. The Alta wedged itself on to rocks, apparently intact. //

Built in 1976, the Alta was flagged in Tanzania, changed owner in 2017 and was sailing from Greece to Haiti in September 2018 when it become disabled about 1,380 miles (2,220km) south-east of Bermuda.

Unable to make repairs, the 10-strong crew was rescued by the US coastguard cutter Confidence, which brought the crew members to Puerto Rico. According to gCaptain, a maritime industry news site, the US coastguard contacted the ship’s owner to arrange a commercial tug to tow it to shore.

It was reportedly towed to Guyana only to be hijacked, with its subsequent fate unclear until August 2019 when a Royal Navy ice patrol ship, HMS Protector, encountered it in the mid-Atlantic, apparently unmanned.

Two days ago

@hmsprotector

discovered this apparently abandoned Merchant Vessel whilst mid-Atlantic. We closed the vessel to make contact and offer our assistance, but no one replied! Whilst investigations continue we’re unable to give you more detail on this strange event.