Every so often I am going to depart from the Pacific theme (though I will…
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The Glomar Explorer
In the late 1960s the US military noticed a good deal of Soviet naval activity…
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PT 109
Sure you have all heard the name of this WWII naval boat but what’s the…
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Venice
Venice used to be great and it is pretty cool now but when Jim Morrison…
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Ghost fleets
In times of war governments tend to build a lot of warships, and once the…
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Shoo Fly Landing.
From Borax to babes, blow and blackjack Before the freight trains tracks were laid there…
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Kamchatka, land of fire and ice
Unwelcome to Kamchatka! You disuninviteded! I travel all over the world (or did until the…
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PALOS VERDES
In the early 60s I lived in Palos Verdes. This is the stubby thumb of…
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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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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 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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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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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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The Island of Borneo’s crown jewel—Brunei
Ask most folks where the oil-rich Muslim nation of Brunei is and they place it…
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