On 22 April 1988, the 172-year history of manned lightships came to an end in the Elbe estuary off Cuxhaven. As "floating lighthouses", these showed international shipping the safe way through the sandbanks into the Elbe estuary or out to sea. The crews were not only necessary to operate t...

T.A.A.F 2025

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is a portal fantasy novel written by British author C. S. Lewis, published by Geoffrey Bles in 1952. It was the third published of seven novels in The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956). Macmillan US published an American edition within the calendar year, with substantia...

Juan Carlos I is a multi-purpose aircraft carrier-landing helicopter dock (LHD)[7] in the Spanish Navy (Armada Española). Similar in role to many aircraft carriers, the amphibious landing ship has a ski jump for STOVL operations, and is equipped with the McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II attack air...

K XVIII was one of five K XIV-class submarines built for the Royal Netherlands Navy. She served during World War II. The submarine was laid down in Rotterdam at the shipyard of Fijenoord on 10 June 1931. The launch took place on 27 September 1932. On 23 March 1934 the boat was commissioned in the Du...

It is with deep regret that i have to inform everyone that our colleague Auke Palmhof has died.
Auke, a Dutchman who lived in New Zealand was, by far, the major contributor to our site and will be sadly missed.

USS Lejeune (AP-74) was a German cargo liner that was converted to a US Navy troop transport during the Second World War. Her original name was TS (Turbine Ship) Windhuk. Civilian liner Windhuk was built at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany and completed in 1937. She was one of a pai...

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the ship was scuttled in Mykolaiv. On 3 March 2022, a photo emerged showing Hetman Sahaidachny partially sunk and with a list to port. On 4 March, the Ukrainian Defence Minister confirmed that Hetman Sahaidachny had been scuttled to prevent her capture by...

During his short trip to Israel - it lasted only 11 hours - Pope Paul VI never once called Israel by name, and went out of his way to avoid using the word Jews. In those days, the Vatican saw Israel as a non-country, and its people as a non-nation. Pope Paul VI even used the occasion to praise his m...

You might recognise The Unsinkable Molly Brown as the moniker of possibly the most famous Titanic survivor, but the fact is that “Molly’s” real name was Margaret Tobin Brown. She was never actually called “Molly” during her lifetime. That nickname came from the “Unsinkable Molly Brown” movie and sta...

Francis Puara COWAN (1926 - 2009) is one of the figures of the ancestral Polynesian navigation of the 20th century. In 1947, he had the privilege to be close to the crew of the Kon Tiki in Tahiti and became friend with Hermann Watzinger, Thor Heyerdhal’s second. He was only 20 and he wanted to achie...

Rodolphe Tuko Harry WILLIAMS (1920 - 1986). Originally from Tahiti, fisherman and captain of boats carrying copra, "Rodo" Williams was an outstanding navigator, with a very detailed knowledge of the winds, currents, the geography of the different archipelagos of French Polynesia, in partic...

Captain Francis Crozier was Northern Ireland’s greatest ever polar explorer and a major figure in the three epic quests of 19th century Polar exploration – navigating the North West Passage, reaching the North Pole and mapping Antarctica. Crozier first went to sea at the age of 13, working his way u...

In 1819, 28 year old Englishman William Smith was captain of a small ship of 216 tons, 25m long that he owned in partnership with three others, a brig called the Williams (so named because three of the four owners were all called William) on a merchant voyage carrying cargo from Buenos Aires on the ...

The Haggadah (Hebrew: הַגָּדָה, "telling"; plural: Haggadot) is a Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder. According to Jewish practice, reading the Haggadah at the Seder table is a fulfillment of the mitzvah to each Jew to tell their children the story from the Book of...