The Lightship Nantucket - Part 1: A Ship Reborn

Over twenty years ago, I went aboard the last Nantucket Lightship (MLV-612). It was a floating museum then and had been maintained in roughly the same condition as when she was in service, only a few years before. The primary difference was that as a museum she was tied up alongside a dock and not bobbing at anchor forty to eighty miles out in the Atlantic, marking the treacherous Nantucket Shoals.

Last night, the New York Ship Lore and Modeling Club was hosted on the Nantucket Lightship by its owner Bill Golden. She was moored in Manhattan’s North Cove, off the Hudson River, one of only three vessels in the mid-winter solitude of the usually crowded cove. She didn’t look so different from when I had seen her last. She had a better paint job but otherwise was the same high-sided squat little ship with her two towering beacons that had welcomed travelers to America even as she warned them away from the shoals. It wasn’t until I crossed the gangway and stepped inside that I realized how much the ship had changed.

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Woodes Rogers did not cut off Blackbeard’s head!

I recently came across a really dreadful book review in the Daily Mail Online. The review was titled “He beheaded Blackbeard and hanged cut-throats by the dozen… the life of history’s most ruthless pirate hunter“. It reviews a new book, PIRATE HUNTER: THE LIFE OF CAPTAIN WOODES ROGERS by Graham A. Thomas.

One need not read beyond the title to see a problem. Woodes Rogers did not behead Blackbeard. Nope. Never happened. Blackbeard slipped out of the Bahamas to avoid Woodes Rogers when Rogers was appointed governor with a mandate to crush piracy. Blackbeard moved his base to North Carolina and was indeed killed and had his head cut off and hung from a bowsprit by Lieutenant Robert Maynard, who had been dispatched by Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia, not Rogers.

Starting badly, the review gets worse...

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Blockbusters and Publishing: The Pareto Principle vs. Netflix

In an article in today's Wall Street Journal by Anita Elberse, Blockbuster or Bust - Why struggling publishers will keep placing outrageous bids on new books, Ms. Elberse describes how publishers continue to fall back on their old business model of paying large advances for blockbusters, even in these difficult economic times.


It brought to mind the cliché about generals that are always preparing to fight the last war. That is exactly what the publishing industry seems to be doing now.



Go the complete article on Huffington Post

Huffington Post - Seeking Woodes Rogers: Piracy, Terrorism and International Law

The Huffington Post has seen fit to publish my thoughts once again on the current outbreak of piracy off Somalia. You can read it here:

Seeking Woodes Rogers: Piracy, Terrorism and International Law

“Get a Life” - An Interview with Julian Stockwin

Julian Stockwin’s new Thomas Kydd naval adventure, The Privateer’s Revenge (published as Treachery in the United Kingdom), is set in the Channel Islands. As with the previous Kydd novels, Stockwin and his literary partner and wife, Kathy, went on location, crossing the English Channel to Guernsey to research the ninth title in the Kydd series.
The author reflects on his journey as a writer and Thomas Kydd’s amazing career in the Royal Navy in this interview with Quarterdeck:

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Great News from Rhode Island - OLIVER HAZARD PERRY

The past decade has been a mixed bag for tall ship enthusiasts in the North East. On the one hand the HMS BOUNTY, which for years had a rotten foremast and was being kept afloat by a motor driven pump, has been restored and is back sailing again. She is currently on the West Coast, which is either good or bad news depending on how you look at it. The HMS ROSE was purchased for the movie Master and Commander and is now in the care of the San Diego Marine Museum and is no longer a sail training ship.

The great news is that Captain Richard Bailey, long captain of the ROSE, is leading an effort to build the OLIVER HAZARD PERRY, a three masted training ship to be completed in Newport, Rhode Island, named in honor of the Newport Naval hero. Commissioning is planned for 2010.

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Wake of the Windjammers

I just came across Frederick LeBlanc’s wonderful blog, Wake of the Windjammers. It features recent posts about the Schooner Sultana, the Stad Amsterdam, the Spirit of New Zealand, the Soren Larsen, the Barque Kaskelot and the Elissa, among others. Great stuff.

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