While many out there seldom notice the tiny speck of steel at the base of docking supertankers, some of us connoisseurs harbor a benign obsession
Tag: maritimehistory
Why Is the Malacca Strait So Important?
If you live in Europe, the Middle East, or Africa, most of the things you own have once been on a ship, passing through the
Hygiene on Sailing Ships – Was It Really So Disgusting?
We all love pirate films and their legions of scraggy, grimy vagrants with knives between rotten teeth. But Hollywood is known for popularizing entertaining stereotypes
The Swiss Museum of Transport
Fathers are a peculiar species. They tend to recall and regret their mistakes as parents, often overlooking the things they did right. Focused on the
History of the Port of Hong Kong: Part 2
The 20th century brought more prosperity and turbulence to Hong Kong, as the adolescent colony matured to become Asia’s leading commercial, logistical, and financial hub.
Tide Predictors: The Surprising Analog Computers That Helped Win WW2
On 9 October 1943, the Liverpool Tidal Institute received its most challenging task to date: to calculate the optimal day and hour for the largest
The Razzle Dazzle Camouflage: When British Artists Fought German U-Boats
If you have ever been to a modern-art gallery, you must have heard the likes of: ‘Hmm…what am I looking at?’ ‘What in the world
Great Ships That Saved Jewish Refugees From the Holocaust (And Some That Couldn’t)
The recent decade has been grimly generous with humanitarian catastrophes, and while recent history abounds with natural disasters, man-made ones have often surpassed them in
Supertankers – Back When Giants Crossed the Seas
Oil was among the cornerstones of the 20th century and continues to be a prevalent energy source so far in the 21st. Glorified by some
The Evolution of Early Naval Submarines: Part 2
In Part 1 we saw the early outbursts of inspiration and genius, which led to random but fascinating developments – the maritime equivalent of Woodstock,