The period from 1630 to 1730 is considered the golden age of piracy and Rhode Island was a major haven for buccaneers. The wars between England, Holland, and France gave rise to privateers who were licensed by their respective governments to raid enemy shipping. This…
Posts tagged as “Gregory Pettys”
Captain James Cook is considered the greatest British explorer of all time. In three voyages of discovery, starting in 1768, Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean, surveyed…
Bill Sisson grew up along the shore in Watch Hill and describes himself as, “one of a small group of gangly, feral boys who spent hours at the Watch Hill Lighthouse scouring the low-tide rocks for lost fishing gear, terrifying both fish and one another…
New York’s worst maritime disaster and the nation’s second deadliest maritime didn’t happen off the coast in the Atlantic Ocean or Long Island Sound but in the East River less than a few hundred feet from shore.On June 15, 1904, crowds of happy people, mostly…
Sometimes things happen that seem inexplicable and the other day one of those things happened to me. That morning I recalled a story I’d read years before about three fishermen that had been attacked by a giant squid, also known as a Kraken. Later that…
During the great age of sail there were many seaports along the New England coast that supported maritime industries. The Port of Gloucester in Massachusetts is well known for its fishing fleet. New Bedford and Nantucket are famous for their once large whaling fleets. Today…
On the night of February 11, 1907, only two miles off Watch Hill, the wooden paddlewheel steamship Larchmont, on the New York/Providence run, and the lumber schooner, the Harry P. Knowlton collided. As many as 150 people perished that night. The exact figure is not…
The Life and Strange Adventuresof Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe is considered the greatest maritime adventure story of all time. The idea of being stranded on an uninhabited jungle island and living off the land has fascinated people of all ages for generations. In 1719 Daniel…
Of all the lighthouses in this country only a few have as sinister a history as Whale Rock Light. Today, its ruins tell a grim tale of death and madness. Was Whale Rock Light cursed? Forty year old assistant keeper Walter Eberle, who perished there,…
It was late fall and a cold northeast wind rustled the water as we headed out of the Mystic River to a spot on the chart marked, “unexploded depth charges 1945.” Onboard the charter boat Thunderfish, Captain Bill Palmer and two other divers were planning…