Category Archives: sea

Attention: Impending Collision

February 21, 2022 – 12:13 pm

Aircraft Carrier USS LINCOLN This is the actual radio conversation of a US naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October 1995. Radio conversation released by the chief of naval operations, 10-10-95. CANADIANS: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision. AMERICANS: Recommend you divert your […]

By Peter | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

HALFWAY AROUND THE WORLD by Peter Nolan Smith

October 12, 2021 – 6:09 am

Distances around the world have dramatically shrunk with the spread of jet transportation. Columbus’ voyage to the New World lasted almost two months. That trip from the port of Palos in Spain to Plana Cays in the Bahamas would now take about twenty-hours with a train to Madrid, flights to Miami and Nassau followed by […]

By Peter | Also posted in 19th Century, family, semi-fiction, Travel, world | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Day After Loy Krathong

November 1, 2020 – 6:12 am

Loy Krathong has long been Thailand’s most beautiful festival with candle-lit balloons rising into a night sky illuminated by a full November moon. Ten years ago I was in Pattaya. Few girls and women dressed in the traditional costume. The police banned fireworks and their marine patrols gathered the krathong offerings less than 20 meters […]

By Peter | Also posted in holiday, Thailand | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

THE WAY OF SAIL by Peter Nolan Smith

May 7, 2020 – 11:59 am

Once the world had traveled by sail. One side of my ancestors had arrived in America on the Mayflower. The trip lasted 66 days. My great-grandaunt Bert had circumnavigated the globe in the 1870s. Her father?s clipper ship had been powered by wind. Steam engines had replaced sail by the beginning of the 20th Century. […]

By Peter | Also posted in 2010s, boston, NEW YORK, semi-fiction | Tagged | Comments (0)

The Bark MAGGIE MOORE

January 30, 2020 – 10:29 pm

I found this photo of the bark MAGGIE MOORE dating back to approximately 1877. My great-grandfather Charles S. Smith was the captain and owner. I recall the photo from my grandmother Edith’s house in Westbrook, Maine, but not the written page attached to the back of the frame, which had been penned by my grandfather […]

By Peter | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)