Maritime Notes and News

The day after the Senate followed the House of Representatives in voting to declare war against Great Britain, President James Madison signs the declaration into law—and the War of 1812 begins. The American war declaration, opposed by a sizable minority in Congress, had been called in response to the British economic blockade of France, the induction of American seaman into the British Royal Navy against their will, and the British support of hostile Indian tribes along the Great Lakes frontier. A faction of Congress known as the “War Hawks” had been advocating war with Britain for several years and had not hidden their hopes that a U.S. invasion of Canada might result in significant territorial land gains for the United States. Read the complete article on History.com.

English Captain William Bligh and 18 others, cast adrift from the HMS Bounty seven weeks before, reach Timor in the East Indies after traveling nearly 4,000 miles in a small, open boat. On April 28, Fletcher Christian, the master’s mate on the Bounty, led a successful mutiny against Captain Bligh and his supporters. The British naval vessel had been transporting breadfruit saplings from Tahiti for planting on British colonies in the Caribbean. The voyage was difficult, and ill feelings were rampant between the captain, officers, and crew. Bligh, who eventually would fall prey to a total of three mutinies in his career, was an oppressive commander and insulted those under him. On April 28, near the island of Tonga, Christian and 25 petty officers and seamen seized the ship. The captain and 18 of his crew were set adrift in a small boat with 25 gallons of water, 150 pounds of bread, 30 pounds of pork, six quarts of rum, and six bottles of wine. By setting the captain and his officers adrift in an overcrowded 23-foot-long boat in the middle of the Pacific, Christian and his conspirators had apparently handed them a death sentence. By remarkable seamanship, however, Bligh and his men reached Timor in the East Indies on June 14, 1789, after a voyage of about 3,600 miles. Bligh returned to England and soon sailed again to Tahiti, from where he successfully transported breadfruit trees to the West Indies. Read the complete article on History.com.

At London’s Execution Dock, British privateer William Kidd, popularly known as Captain Kidd, is hanged for piracy and murder. Born in Strathclyde, Scotland, Kidd established himself as a sea captain before settling in New York in 1690, where he bought property and married. At various times he was commissioned by New York and other American colonies to rid the coast of enemy privateers. In 1695, while on a trip to London, the recently appointed governor of New York commissioned him to defend English ships from pirates in the Red Sea. In 1696, Kidd sailed to New York aboard the Adventure Galley, enlisted men for the mission, and set sail for the Indian Ocean. The expedition met with little success and failed to capture a major prize until February 1698, when the Quedagh Merchant, an Indian vessel allegedly sailing under a French pass, was taken. Word of Kidd’s capture of the boat, which was loaded with gold, jewels, silk, sugar and guns, aroused significant controversy in Britain, as the ship had an English captain. Read the complete article on History.com.

Zebu, formerly Ziba, was a historic tall ship. Built in Sweden in 1938, she was used as a trading vessel until the late 1960s, before circumnavigating the globe in the 1980s. She had been based in Liverpool since the 1980s. She sank in 2015, and was subsequently restored. She partially sank again in 2021 after running aground on Holyhead breakwater after slipping her anchor, and had masts and sails removed to reduce weight so the hull could be moved. On 21 May 2021 after suffering further damage due to a storm, she was declared a wreck. Read the complete article on Wikipedia.

On May 19, 1588 a massive Spanish fleet, known as the “Invincible Armada,” sets sail from Lisbon on a mission to secure control of the English Channel and transport a Spanish invasion army to Britain from the Netherlands. [This historic engagement inspired many contemporary songs, as well as songs looking back on the action, including a 1982 rendition by Peter Bellamy of “The Spanish Armada” on his collection, The Maritime England Suite. This song was crafted from a poem written by John O’Keefe, published in 1902.] Read the complete article on History.com.

On May 17, 1970, Norwegian ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl and a multinational crew set out from Morocco across the Atlantic Ocean in Ra II, a papyrus sailing craft modeled after ancient Egyptian sailing vessels. Heyerdahl was attempting to prove his theory that Mediterranean civilizations sailed to America in ancient times and exchanged cultures with the people of Central and South America. The Ra II crossed the 4,000 miles of ocean to Barbados in 57 days. Read the complete article on History.com.

One year after the United States doubled its territory with the Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark expedition leaves St. Louis, Missouri, on a mission to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. Even before the U.S. government concluded purchase negotiations with France, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned his private secretary Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, an army captain, to lead an expedition into what is now the U.S. Northwest. On May 14, the “Corps of Discovery”–featuring approximately 45 men (although only an approximate 33 men would make the full journey)–left St. Louis for the American interior. Read the complete article on History.com.

Ed was a well-loved musician in the folk music community. He appeared on over 40 recordings, most of them with Folk Legacy Records, now part of the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. His discography includes 4 solo records, 11 as a trio with Gordon Bok and Ann Mayo Muir, and countless recordings with other artists. Despite persistent pressure early in his academic career to give up music and focus exclusively on psychology, he remained steadfast in his commitment to doing what he loved on his own terms. Musicians in the folk community cite his influence as an interpreter of songs who always put the song first, filling in harmonies without becoming the centerpiece. [From his biography.]

On May 8, 1541, south of present-day Memphis, Tennessee, Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River, one of the first European explorers to ever do so. After building flatboats, de Soto and his 400 ragged troops crossed the great river under the cover of night, in order to avoid the armed Native Americans who patrolled the river daily in war canoes. From there the conquistadors headed into present-day Arkansas, continuing their fruitless two-year-old search for gold and silver in the American wilderness. Read the complete article on History.com.

His rich baritone and gift for melodies made him one of the most popular artists of the 1970s with songs like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “If You Could Read My Mind.” Read the complete article on The New York Times. Wikipedia’s article is being rewritten as of the time of this writing. His MMDI listing can be found here.

After traveling three-quarters of the way around the globe, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan is killed during a tribal skirmish on Mactan Island in the Philippines. Earlier in the month, his ships had dropped anchor at the Philippine island of Cebu, and Magellan met with the local chief, who after converting to Christianity persuaded the Europeans to assist him in conquering a rival tribe on the neighboring island of Mactan. In the subsequent fighting, Magellan was hit by a poisoned arrow and left to die by his retreating comrades. Read the complete article on History.com.

The idea of transporting trucks on ships was put into practice before World War II. In 1926 regular connection of the luxury passenger train from London to Paris, Golden Arrow/Fleche d’Or, by Southern Railway and French Northern Railway began. For transport of passengers’ baggage, four containers were used. These containers were loaded in London or Paris and carried to ports, Dover or Calais, on flat cars in the UK and “CIWL Pullman Golden Arrow Fourgon of CIWL” in France In the early 1950s, Malcolm Purcell McLean decided to attempt use of the containers commercially. By 1952, he was developing plans to carry his company’s trucks on ships along the U.S. Atlantic coast, from North Carolina to New York. It soon became apparent that “trailerships”, as they were called, would be inefficient because of the large waste in potential cargo space on board the vessel, known as broken stowage. The original concept was modified into loading just the containers, not the chassis, onto the ships, hence the designation container ship or “box” ship. At the time, U.S. regulations would not allow a trucking company to own a shipping line. Read the complete article on Wikipedia.com. TEU: 20-foot equivalent unit is the international standard measure of containers. TEUs are featured in the Jack Forbes song, Rolling Down the River. Jack said this about his song, “I wrote and recorded the song ‘Rolling down the River’ in 1982 for a radio programme about Tilbury Docks. It has since been used in an Educational Drama production, a folk theatre presentation and also as a Morris Dance, as well as being sung all over the world. It can be heard wherever there are shanty sessions at folk festivals and festivals of the sea. There is an American version* and a Polish version (sung of course in Polish).” Jack Forbes was a member of the Hoy Shanty Crew and Slow Loris. Jack passed away on January 30, 2016; many kind words about him were shared on MudCat Cafe

At 8 a.m. on April 23, 1778, John Paul Jones, with 30 volunteers from his ship, the USS Ranger, launches a surprise attack on the two harbor forts at Whitehaven, England. Jones’ boat successfully took the southern fort, but a second boat, assigned to attack to the northern fort, returned to the Ranger without having done so, claiming to have been scared off by a strange noise. To compensate, Jones decided to burn the southern fort; the blaze ultimately consumed the entire town. It was the only American raid on English shores during the American Revolution. Later the same day, Jones continued from Whitehaven, where he began his sailing career, to his home territory of Kirkcudbright Bay, Scotland. There he intended to abduct the earl of Selkirk, and then exchange him for American sailors held captive by Britain. Although he did not find the earl at home, Jones’ crew was able to steal all his silver, including his wife’s teapot, still containing her breakfast tea. From Scotland, Jones sailed across the Irish Sea to Carrickfergus, where the Ranger captured the HMS Drake after delivering fatal wounds to the British ship’s captain and lieutenant. Read the complete article on History.com.

On April 10, 1778, Commander John Paul Jones and his crew of 140 men aboard the USS Ranger set sail from the naval port at Brest, France, and headed toward the Irish Sea to begin raids on British warships. This was the first mission of its kind during the Revolutionary War. Read the complete article on History.com.