Nautical Lore
This area shares historical information developed by our members as follows. Click on each title (if underlined) to learn more …
Nikola Tesla, the first RC Model Boater
You may be surprised to know that Nikola Tesla was the first person to demonstrate a radio-controlled model boat. … READ MORE …
Merchant Navy Remembrance Day
A commemorative ceremony marking Merchant Navy Remembrance Day is held every year at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on 8 September at 11:00am. The Battle of the Atlantic was the biggest battle of World War 2. Geographically it was big, around 3000 miles from British harbours to the ports of North America, and from Greenland in the north to the Caribbean in the south. It was big in human tragedy, some 2200 Canadian & Newfoundland seamen and women were lost – a rate higher than in any of the three Canadian armed services. Another 38,000 of other nations were also lost. By the end of the war, Canadian merchant seamen had sailed all the world’s oceans, through storms, surface raiders and submarines to deliver essential supplies. … READ MORE …
SS Sudbury ocean-going salvage tug
HMCS Sudbury was ordered in February 1940, laid down by Kingston Shipbuilding Ltd. at Kingston in January 1941, launched in May and commissioned into the RCN in October 1941 at Montreal, Quebec. She was initially assigned to duties in the Western Atlantic where she served until January 1944 after which she was reassigned to the Pacific coast and immediately underwent a major overhaul. After workups in May 1944, she joined Esquimalt Force and remained with them until the end of the war. HMCS Sudbury was paid off at Esquimalt 28 August 1945. She was sold for civilian use as a 892 GRT tugboat and entered civilian service in 1949. The ship retained her name. HMCS Sudbury underwent several ownership changes until she was acquired in 1954 by Island Tug and Barge of Victoria, British Columbia. … READ MORE …
At the end of the civil war in the USA, the South lay in economic ruin, seemingly unable to rebound from a tragic depletion of manpower and treasury. That year George N. Ives, whose family was prominent in business and agriculture in Connecticut, came to Morehead City, North Carolina, to establish a wholesale fishing business. One of Ives’s first concerns was the lack of a local boat that could support his business needs. The log-built craft were, he wrote in Forest and Stream in 1881, “strong and serviceable boats admirably suited for their purposes…” About the boats that were used for “business and pleasure,” he noted that they were “deep, sharp, clinker-built; fast sailors, but totally unfitted for shoal water navigation.”! In the sharpie of his native state, Ives perceived characteristics that he thought would be ideal for the Carolina sounds. He placed an order with George M. Graves, a sharpie builder in Fair Haven (now a part of New Haven). … READ MORE …
RMS Queen Mary – Sale and Last Voyage
In July 1947 the Cunard company’s transatlantic liner “Queen Mary” returned to commercial service at the end of her war service. She resumed her weekly crossings which continued until air travel took so many passengers that she became no longer commercially viable. In 1967 Cunard offered the ship for sale and the City of Long Beach was the successful bidder. Read more in an extract from an article in the Ships Monthly magazine of June 1986 describing the delivery voyage. ... READ MORE …
In the 1990’s the magazine Ship’s Monthly ran a series of articles under the heading “A Captain and his Ship”. The August 1997 issue featured Captain James Caldwell, at that time Master of the veteran Canadian steamship “Segwun”. … READ MORE …
“The Canadian Merchant Marine had only forty-one ocean-going merchant ships at the outbreak of the Second World War. During the war this fleet underwent tremendous expansion as Canadian shipyards produced 403 merchant vessels. Most of these were taken over by Great Britain and the United States but a significant number sailed under the Canadian flag. The cost of the war was high, fifty-eight Canadian-registry merchant ships were lost to enemy action, or probable enemy action, and 1,146 Canadian merchant sailors perished at sea or in Axis prison camps. In addition, six Canadian Government owned, but British-registered, merchant ships and eight Newfoundland-registered merchant ships were lost to enemy action. Many other vessels serving the war effort were lost at sea to marine causes or accident.”
The above appears on the web at: family heritage a page that also lists many details of the ships lost and damaged. … READ MORE …
Remembering the Merchantmen: The loss of the SS Chulmleigh
Here in the Great White North we are familiar with cold weather and know how to live in and with it. But little can compare with the experiences of the sailors who manned the Arctic convoys of World War 2, which carried Allied supplies to Russia through the Barents Sea. And the worst of all must have been the experience of the crew of one ship. … READ MORE …
Canada had two navies in the Second World War. First, of course, was the Royal Canadian Navy, the big navy, the “real” navy, the “pusser” navy. It was, as its corps of public relations officers endlessly reiterated, a very big deal indeed. Thousands upon thousands of uniformed men and women filled teeming offices and training establishments, vast and ever-growing complexes of brick and concrete, representing the investment of hundreds of millions of dollars. Its organization, embracing dozens of commands, hundreds of departments, and thousands of experts and specialists, ranging from physicists to dietitians, from jurists to journalists, was a triumph of administrative genius which represented one of the nation’s major wartime accomplishments. … READ MORE …
The ‘Flower’ Class corvettes, hurriedly built, armed with obsolescent weapons and slower than a surfaced U-boat, will always be linked inextricably with the Battle of the Atlantic. Yet, despite their limitations, they were to become formidable opponents and claimed a significant number of U-boat kills. … READ MORE …
Charles Herbert Lightoller – 2nd mate of RMS Titanic and Survivor of Multiple Shipwrecks
Charles Herbert Lightoller was born in Chorley, Lancashire, UK, on 30 March 1874. At age 13, not wanting to end up with a factory job like most of Britain’s youth at the time, young Charles began a four-year seafaring apprenticeship on board the barque Primrose Hill. On his second voyage, he set sail with the crew of the Holt Hill, and during a storm on 13 November 1889 in the Indian Ocean, the vessel ran aground on an uninhabited four-and-a-half-square-mile island now called Île Saint-Paul. The island was uninhabited and unable to support habitation. He was lucky to be rescued by another vessel eight days later. … READ MORE …
The world’s first light vessel was the result of a business partnership between Robert Hamblin, an impoverished former barber and ship manager from King’s Lynn, Norfolk, UK, and David Avery, a regular investor in small projects. In 1730 the pair secured a government licence to moor a ship – with a prominent light affixed to it to serve as a navigation aid – at the Nore in the mouth of the River Thames. Hamblin and Avery intended to profit from the vessel by collecting a fee from passing merchant vessels. The licence was opposed by Trinity House which considered that it possessed a monopoly on construction and maintenance of navigation aids in British waters. After an extensive legal dispute the licence was revoked in 1732 and Trinity House assumed direct responsibility for the proposed lightship; Hamblin and Avery were granted nominal lease revenues in exchange. ... READ MORE …
Suggestions for avoiding collisions at sea
An extract from the “Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle for 1858” …READ MORE …
The ‘eagle eye’ of Peter recently spotted an unusual ship in Hamilton harbour. It interested Peter because it was smaller than the ships we usually see in the harbour. What turned out to be more interesting was the shape of its bow. The ship is the VikingBank and it was built by Ferus Smit at one of their shipyards in Groningen and Leer (Germany). The only information they give out about the bow design is: Special bow form with vertical stem profile and sharp waterlines without bulb results in less resistance at moderate speeds while having more displacement and cargo hold volume. Sharp entrance angles and less bow flare reduce speed loss in seaway.” … READ MORE ...
The roller ship was an unconventional and unsuccessful ship design of the late nineteenth century, which attempted to propel itself by means of large wheels. Two such vessels were constructed and found to be impractical … READ MORE …
Convoy SL36 left the anchorage of Freetown harbour on 16th June 1940. The convoy was in two sections, ships bound for UK West Coast ports on the port (left) wing, while those in the starboard (right) wing were heading for East Coast ports. One vessel was most unsuited to be in its company. The 5,218-ton Beignon housed a powerful diesel engine. … READ MORE …
In the late 19th century, the only way for rail vehicles to cross the Detroit River was a train ferry. One of these would make a realistic and relatively simple model to build. …READ MORE …
Niagara, St. Catharine’s and Toronto Navigation Co.
In 1901, the American-owned Niagara, St. Catharines & Toronto Railway established the Niagara, St. Catharines & Toronto Navigation Company following the purchase of the Lakeside Navigation Company. …READ MORE …
Surprising thought it may seem, there were two, and only two, ocean liners registered at Toronto, a port they never even saw. …READ MORE …
The spritsail barge developed on the River Thames from lightering barges. … READ MORE …
It is not a commonly known fact that sternwheelers were used much more extensively in British Columbia than in any other part of North America even though they are popularly associated with the Mississippi River area of the United States. … READ MORE …
One year ago there were headlines in the press that three WW2 warships had vanished from the sea bed. They were sunk by the Japanese during the Battle of the Java Sea in 1942, but what was the Battle of the Java Sea, and why was the disappearance of these ships in the news? One year ago there were headlines in the press that three WW2 warships had vanished from the sea bed. They were sunk by the Japanese during the Battle of the Java Sea in 1942, but what was the Battle of the Java Sea, and why was the disappearance of these ships in the news? ... READ MORE …
Have you ever looked at a possible plan for your next model and been a little wary of some tight triple compound curves on the stem, or wondered how to carve a bow section with a nice sharp (and straight) stem? Well here’s the ship for you…..
Imagine a ship with no pointy ends. A perfectly flat bottom, and not much of that fiddly superstructure stuff to fret about. It had lots of boilers and engines and things – 8 engines driving six propellers, so you’ll get lots of practice on shaft alignment. It sported two big guns and two tall smokestacks. … READ MORE …
Offshore powerboat racing is a type of racing by ocean-going powerboats, typically point-to-point racing. In most of the world, offshore powerboat racing is led by the Union Internationale Motonautique (UIM) regulated Class 1 and Powerboat GPS (formerly known as Powerboat P1). In the USA, offshore powerboat racing is led by the American Power Boat Association (APBA) /UIM. The sport is financed by a mixture of private funding and commercial sponsors. …READ MORE …
Lest We Forget the Merchantmen – Canada’s Merchant Navy
This topic became a regular feature in the club’s newsletter each year. However, we have learnt that it has been appearing in the wrong month. In 2003 the Canadian Parliament created Merchant Navy Remembrance Day which designated September 3 as a day to recognize the contributions and sacrifice of Canadian merchant mariners. Canada, like several other Commonwealth nations, created its own Merchant Navy in a large-scale effort during World War II, but that was not the beginning. An informal merchant navy appeared in 1914 at the start of World War I and was renamed as the Canadian Government Merchant Marine in 1918, but slowly declined and had disappeared by 1930. …READ MORE …
The meeting of the Foundation Franklin and the Beaverford
One of the interesting aspects of modelling a named vessel is that you can usually find reference to its history somewhere. It is not so often that you can find a mention of a meeting between two of the vessels modelled by club members. This is the case with Bill M.’s Foundation Franklin and Roy’s Beaverford. The following is an abbreviated extract from Farley Mowat’s book, “Grey Seas Under”. …READ MORE …
This is an extract from an article prepared by Robert G. Allan, P.Eng, Executive Chairman of the Board. and published recently in a special issue of “Tugs, Towing, and Offshore Newsletter” highlighting the achievements of Robert Allan Ltd., …READ MORE …
The unique tale of the SS Warimoo
The passenger steamer SS Warrimoo was quietly knifing its way through the waters of the mid-Pacific on its way from Vancouver to Australia. The navigator had just finished working out a star fix and brought the master, Captain John Phillips, the result. The Warrimoo’s position was latitude 0 degrees x 31 minutes north and longitude 179 degrees x 30 minutes west. The date was 30 December 1899. “Know what this means?”, First Mate Payton broke in, “we’re only a few miles from the intersection of the Equator and the International Date Line.” …READ MORE …
USS Wolverine – the Great Lakes Aircraft Carrier
During 1942, less than 11 months into WW2, the United States Navy had lost four front line carriers due to enemy engagements. A further two aircraft carriers were damaged, but were repaired at Pearl Harbor and returned to service. These early engagements and losses emphasized that carriers would be the backbone of the war in the Pacific. While American industry would build carriers and their airplanes, it was up to the US Navy to train the pilots and crews that would be necessary to make the ships and planes an effective fighting force. The Navy was hard pressed to come up with a solution to solve the training dilemma. …READ MORE …
This topic became a regular feature in the club’s newsletter each year. However, we have learnt that it has been appearing in the wrong month. In 2003 the Canadian Parliament created Merchant Navy Remembrance Day which designated September 3 as a day to recognize the contributions and sacrifice of Canadian merchant mariners. Canada, like several other Commonwealth nations, created its own Merchant Navy in a large-scale effort during World War II, but that was not the beginning. An informal merchant navy appeared in 1914 at the start of World War I and was renamed as the Canadian Government Merchant Marine in 1918, but slowly declined and had disappeared by 1930. …READ MORE …
Construction of Modern Super Yachts
The smell, the sound, the ambiance. As soon as you enter a shipyard that builds in wood, the differences are plain. Skilled craftsmen toil over intricate tasks, using techniques passed down through the generations. There is a deep emotion in wood construction,that contrasts with the mechanical nature of composite building. ...READ MORE …