Latest Writings
On Patrol
The purpose of the Oceans and Seas blog is to present previously published and unpublished stories and interviews from my thirty five years as a journalist.
On Patrol: Pt. 18 – Safety and Plenty
Since merchant sailors go unarmed, with the exception of Russian and Israeli crews, there is little risk for the pirates.
On Patrol: Pt. 17 – Castaways and Fish Traps
We continue at flank speed. Then the operations center orders us to break off our escort. Slowly we pull ahead of the Haydock and come to fifty degrees.
On Patrol: Pt. 16 – Cover the Flanks
Since merchant sailors go unarmed, with the exception of Russian and Israeli crews, there is little risk for the pirates.
All the Men in the Sea
Part 109: In Closing
Faint Hope Two Americans who say they are suffering from PTSD are Ron Rozmarynoski and Kevin Dumont. Though Rozy had not been on the 269's sister barge that sank in the South China Sea four years before the 269 went down, he was one of the first rescuers on the scene...
Part 108: Where Are They Now?
Afterward And how are the survivors faring? Gustavo Zaldivar, the storesman who worked with El Padre, resumed working for C.C.C., now Global Offshore, and is a storekeeper on another barge. He and his wife worry continually that what happened to the 269 will occur...
Part 107: Insurance
$10,000,000 Attorneys representing some of the crew have suggested that with $10 million worth of hull insurance covering the ancient 269, she was worth more to C.C.C. on the ocean bottom that afloat. Nearing the end of her useful life, she would soon be worth only...
Lady Gillian
Lady Jillian: Carrying Cattle to Tasmania – Part 3
Night came. The wind had picked up. It was now blowing about twenty knots and coming from the starboard quarter. Spray came over the bow of the little Jillian and some of it landed on the five unhappy bulls in the hold. Garth Simms, the Jillian’s captain, is an Aussie...
Lady Jillian: Carrying Cattle to Tasmania – Part 2
Isolation has been the islanders’ main problem. Traditionally they have depended on small shipping companies both to transport their livestock to market and to supply them with everything they need from the outside world. Too often the shipowners were not reliable or...
Lady Jillian: Carrying Cattle to Tasmania – Part 1
Toughs They were a tough-looking bunch: Springhead, Max, Shortfinger Sprocket Jr., and Sprocket Sr. As the ketch-rigged Lady Jillian slid alongside the wharf at Launceston, Tasmania, her crew looked as though they were ready to jump from her rigging with cutlasses. A...
Trouble on the Saginaw River
Trouble on the Saginaw River / The Alpena Connection – Part 5
The historic meeting of vessels occurred on a cloudy day in early August 1984 in a harbor on the Michigan Peninsula. At Huron Cement’s small harbor, the world’s two oldest coal-burning steamships of their size met the world’s oldest operable steam-powered cargo...
Trouble on the Saginaw River – Part 4
A chart of the Saginaw River shows its channel to be 200 feet wide. For a ship the size of the Crapo, though, only 100 to 150 feet of the channel’s width are usable. If a large vessel nears a channel wall, the slope of the embankment and the suction created by the...
Trouble on the Saginaw River – Part 3
A long freight blends into the rust-colored metal of the Detroit-Mackinaw Railroad Bridge up ahead. The train crawls across the bridge above river so slowly that it hardly seems to be moving at all. Captain Knechtel jerks his head up at Mac’s announcement, sees the...
The Captain’s Story
Vätterö: Mutiny and Murder – The Captain’s Story: Part 4
The weather continued to be hot and the humidity increased. Every morning gigantic banks of clouds formed and each afternoon they broke their wrath on the ocean beneath them in blinding torrents of rain. The second morning in the Bay of Bengal a stillness swept the...
Vätterö: Mutiny and Murder – The Captain’s Story: Part 3
With grave misgivings Jan-Christer watched the new men come aboard. They were mostly Cypriots, Moroccans, and Algerians, and they looked as if they had been recruited at the local prison. The Diane completed loading and with a partial cargo sailed for Calcutta. It was...
Vätterö: Mutiny and Murder – The Captain’s Story: Part 2
For four years the young Swede sailed native coasters all over the Indonesian archipelago. It was a life straight out of Joseph Conrad. Jan-Christer, acting as captain, bosun, and cook, was the only European on board the vessels, usually with a crew of ten or twelve...
Lar’s the Sailor
Lars, the Old Sailor Part 1 – Capture
In 2003 I visited Lars Aursland, an old seaman with a fascinating story to tell. Lars lives in Haugesund, a small town in Norway’s Karmundet Sound, adjacent to the North Sea. In 1939 seventeen-year-old Lars Aursland left his home near Haugesund on Norway’s southwest...
Lars, the Old Sailor Part 2 – Escape
For many months a secret activity took place in a small, previously refrigerated compartment tween decks on the Nyhorn. At night when the guard was asleep, small boats were being constructed using dunnage for the framing, which in turn was covered with waterproof...
Lars, the Old Sailor Part 3 – Safety
A great fuss was made over them at Gibraltar, first at the pilot’s station, then at the harbor office. They were surrounded by congratulating well-wishers curious to know the details of their escape. First they were able to drink their fill of fresh water, then they...
Tiger Sharks
The Tiger Sharks: Part 1
Off the western tip of Efate Island, in the Western Pacific nation of Vanuatu, lies sprawling 6,000-acre Tuku Tuku Ranch. It is owned by the Trammel Crow family of Dallas and by a young American cowboy the family hired to resurrect the ranch after it had...
The Tiger Sharks: Part 2
From far off, somewhere on the ranch a cow bellows. Marcus remembers, sees in his mind's eye, the bullock calf. Though only six months old, it was large, at least five or six hundred pounds. That afternoon Marcus was sitting astride his mare, Doolittle, on the bluff,...
The Tiger Sharks: Part 3
Marcus seems barely able to rationalize shark hunting. Were it not for the danger the sharks present to himself, his men, and his livestock, he thinks he could not kill them. "They are magnificent animals," he says. "They are so at home in the wild that it makes you...
Covered by the Sea
Covered by the Sea: Surviving a Hurricane – Part 37
“I remember the great day [we opened the shop]. For the past month we’d been out fishing [to feed their families], looking ‘round for [machinery] and we’d been working pretty long hours to get this workshop going. Then an old man that was… he was a jeweler in New...
Covered by the Sea: Surviving a Hurricane – Part 36
“We left Palmerston in 1943, the year following the hurricane. There was nothing to eat on the island. We were very, very hungry and there was not likely to be coconuts for another year. We decided that things were going to be pretty grim, so we came back to...
Covered by the Sea: Surviving a Hurricane – Part 35
Rarotonga is one of the most beautiful islands in the South Pacific. It is only nineteen miles around, but it is spectacular. At the island’s center green volcanic crags tower above the surrounding palms. Avarua, Rarotonga’s picturesque village, faces the sea....