In the early 60s I lived in Palos Verdes. This is the stubby thumb of…
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Neui…er, no…Neiu?…no—Niue! Yeah, yeah, that’s it.
Why don’t people go to Niue? Why have you never heard of this place? I…
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On the Beach
One of my favorite films of all time is On the Beach from 1959. Much…
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The amazing adventures of James Lick
I love the story of James Lick. He’s largely forgotten except for a two mile…
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Whirlpools and waterspouts
With Pacific Voyages, I like to go with the BIG stories. But many of the…
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What could possibly go wrong?
By far my favorite tale of the Pacific is the whale that exploded on a…
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All aboard the arks
Sausalito is an eccentric conglomeration of communities, from mega-mansions to floating piles of trash. Sausalito…
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The Philippines: the craziness starts in Woodside.
In 1988 US marshals were seizing property Imelda Marcos owned in Hawaii, Europe and in…
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The 9,300 flights of the Fu-Go balloons
It was November in 1944, less than a year before The War snapped to an…
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Malaita, the island of the white headhunter
Headhunting in the Solomon Islands region was a common practice long before the white man…
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The tragic voyage of Nicolai Rezanov
Nicolai Rezanov was born in St. Petersburg in 1764. He mastered five languages by the age…
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The floating islands of the Uros
Venturing a bit inland from the Pacific we encounter the sixty or so floating islands…
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Japan—the crazy bits
Ahhh Japan. Land of fan waving Geishas and polite people bowing and everyone gazing heavenward…
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Cape Horn, no Covid, no panhandlers…no nothing, but snow and shipwrecks
For centuries the most dreaded sea passage in the world was Cape Horn. The Horn…
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Nauru, land of disenchantment
In 1975, the tiny island of Nauru had the highest GDP per capita in the…
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Papua New Guinea, bigtime penis envy down under
The central highlands of the island of New Guinea was the last place on earth…
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Drake’s Bay—Part 2, The Voyage of the San Augustin
In 1565, Phillip II of Spain claimed the Philippine Islands (hence the name) to take…
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Drake’s Bay – Shipwrecks and lies.
In 1579, Sir Francis Drake was circumnavigating the globe for good Queen Bess when he…
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The State of Yap
Yap is a state of the Federated States of Micronesia that’s part of the Carolina…
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The Last Voyage of the Wateree
The USS Wateree was a sidewheel steamship built in Philadelphia in 1863 to patrol the…
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