captain

5 Blockade Runner Captains You Should Know About

/ Sarah Kay Bierle / 1 Comment

I think it’s important to talk about people in history, and I realized that’s something we haven’t really done in our weeks of posts on blockade runners. This week’s first maritime post focuses on five captains who ran the Union blockade during the Civil War.

Many of the captains had been Southern steamboat captains prior to the war, which was an ideal qualification since they usually knew the coastline, allowing them to be captain and navigator. Some captains had served in the U.S. Navy and resigned when their states joined the Confederacy. Others were foreigners, willing to have an adventure and perhaps earn a fortune.

The post will be relatively short since it’s the holiday season and I suppose most readers don’t want 2,000 words to study.

Continue reading →

Blockade Runners: If Captured

/ Sarah Kay Bierle / 1 Comment

So…what happened if a blockade runner was captured? What happened to the ship? The crew? And what would a captain do to prevent capture?

Today, we’ll continue our discussion of blockade runners bringing supplies to the Confederacy during the Civil War, focusing on a relatively common circumstance, but one that every Southern captain wanted to avoid. A captured ship meant loss of supplies entering the Southern states and loss of profit for the owners, captain, and crew. Continue reading →

Whaling Ships – A Few Historical Details

/ Sarah Kay Bierle / 1 Comment

It’s time to talk about the actual whale ships. But don’t confuse them with the whaleboats – there is a difference. Whaleboats were the smaller vessels used in the actual hunt; they were about 28-30 feet in length and not designed for a long voyage and equipped with oars, steering oar, and long lengths of rope which would be connected to the harpoon.

Today, we’ll focus on the big ship. The one that left harbor, sailed around the world, carried the smaller whaleboats, housed the crew, provided a platform for the boiling pots, and stored the barrels and bundles of profit. How big were these ships? What was the layout of the decks? How much could a ship stand from weather and other forces of nature? Let’s explore…

(For those of you who might be wondering about a new post on Thursday… Since we skipped a maritime post on Wednesday last week, you’ll get two this week to keep the series on schedule.) Continue reading →

Captains & Crews On Whaling Ships

/ Sarah Kay Bierle / 2 Comments

Recently, a friend told me how much she was enjoying this series on 19th Century American Whaling, and she followed the compliment with this observation, “But what a hard and horrible way to make a living.” That’s true. Whaling – even with its economic potential – had hard work. It was gross, messy, and back-breaking.

In some of the previous posts, we’ve discussed some of the ranks and demographics of whaling. Today, we’ll try to explore this a little more in-depth. Who was who on a whaling ship? Why did men work in the industry? (Were captains really as infamous as Captain Ahab from Moby Dick?) Continue reading →

A Whaling Voyage

/ Sarah Kay Bierle / 4 Comments

We’re launching into our blog feature on American whaling during the 19th Century. (Catch the introduction here, if you missed it!) And it seems the best place to begin is at the beginning of a voyage.

Whale hunting was an industry – a business – in 19th Century America. Ship owners intended to make a profit on the whale oil brought home. However, sending a whale ship to sea was a risky venture. Unlike a merchant ship that would sail quietly along, ideally weathering the storms, and (hopefully) return with a profitable cargo and no lives lost, a whale ship was like a battleship.

Sending a whaling ship to sea was almost a game of chance or like betting on a gladiatorial combat. The captain, crew, and sometimes the ship itself would fight the largest known animals on the planet. It would be a struggle for life and death between two foes – one, massive and powerful, the other, armed with small, deadly metal implements and long, long ropes.

Today’s blog post focuses on getting a whale ship to sea and its voyage to the hunting grounds. Though I’m certainly thankful that whaling isn’t a common practice anymore, it was a fascinating chapter in American maritime and business. Continue reading →