Tag: maritime history

History coming to the big screen next year

Nathaniel Philbrick is one of my favorite historians.  I especially love his superb maritime history books.  And it turns out that one of his books is being made into a movie.  Heart of the Sea is based on his book In the Heart of the Sea, in which Philbrick recounts the story of the Essex, a whaleship that was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820, far out in the Pacific Ocean.  Its crew was stranded in small boats for several months until they were rescued and in the meantime they had been forced to commit cannibalism.  The disaster served as inspiration for Herman Melville, who used it and his own experience on a whaler to help him create the novel Moby Dick.

The film, directed by Ron Howard, is set to be released sometime in 2014.   And there are at least three actors from Game of Thrones that are also in this film: Joseph Mawle (Benjen Stark); Donald Sumpter (Maester Luwin); and Jamie Sives (Jory Cassel).  Good Northmen all, and all dead, sadly.*  So that frees them up to be in this film.  I am looking forward to it.

-Geoff

*Technically, Benjen Stark is missing, but let’s just say that it isn’t looking good for him to be alive at this point.

Another historic mystery may soon be solved

At least, I hope so.

For some 75 years or so people have wondered what happened to Amelia Earhart.  There have been all sorts of theories about what happened to her and Fred Noonan, but many of them were based on secondhand information, old recollections. or weird conspiracy theories.  Now we have some possible archaeological evidence near the island of Nikumaroro.  Over the years there have been a variety of clues that indicated a possible landing of the aircraft near this island.  Now, these clues are circumstantial, but the cumulative effects seems to have been to encourage further development of the sites near the island.  Last year a team thought they may have found landing gear from her aircraft.  And now a recent analysis of a sonar scan  may indicate the possible location of an aircraft in the area where they have been looking for it.

It would be great if we were finally able to solve this open-ended question of history, not to mention put to rest some of the more absurd theories about what happened.

-Geoff

A rare event, indeed

It’s not often I get to talk about three of my favorite subjects in a single post: cetaceans; 19th century technology; and maritime archaeology.  But it seems an exceedingly rare Howell torpedo has been found off the coast of Coronado, California – by dolphins trained by the U.S. Navy.

Honestly, this is amazing.  There was only one of these that was known to exist, and now another has been found in the ocean… by dolphins.  It just boggles the mind.  It makes me wonder if anyone has ever tried using dolphins to deliberately search for shipwrecks.

-Geoff

Modern marine archaeology

The continual adaptation of modern technology to the discovery of shipwrecks, especially historically significant shipwrecks, is something that fascinates me.  So when I saw this story in Salon about the use of a 3-D sonar to reveal hidden features of a Civil War shipwreck off the coast of Texas, I just had to read it.   And if that sort of thing interests you, go check it out, because I am going to babble about history geek stuff for a little while and you might as well understand what I am talking about.

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