vintage anchor drawing

Donna Tobias

Hull Technician Donna Tobias graduated from the Navy’s Deep Sea Diving School in 1975, making her the Navy’s first female hard hat diver. She performed underwater repairs on surface ships and submarines and helped convert two barges into diving and salvage liftcraft. Donna served as a submarine escape instructor, hyperbaric chamber operator, and SCUBA instructor at the Submarine Escape Training Tank in Groton, Connecticut from 1976-1980. She was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2001.

Asteroidea

Starfish have rather complex nervous systems, with a distributed brain. They have a network of interlacing nerves called a nerve plexus which lies within, as well as below, the skin. The esophagus is also surrounded by a central nerve ring, which sends radial nerves into each of the arms, often parallel with the branches of the water vascular system. These all connect to form a brain. The ring nerves and radial nerves coordinate the starfish’s balance and directional systems. Although starfish do not have many well-defined sensory inputs, they are sensitive to touch, light, temperature, orientation, and the status of water around them. The tube feet, spines, and pedicellariae found on starfish are sensitive to touch, while eyespots on the ends of the rays are light-sensitive. The tube feet, especially those at the tips of the rays, are also sensitive to chemicals and this sensitivity is used in locating odor sources, such as food. The eyespots each consist of a mass of ocelli, consisting of pigmented epithelial cells that respond to light and narrow sensory cells lying between them. Each ocellus is covered by a thick, transparent cuticle that both protects them and acts as a lens. Many starfish also possess individual photoreceptor cells across their bodies and are able to respond to light even when their eyespots are covered.

wikipedia

Andrea Doria, Bronzino

Bronzino was commissioned to paint Andrea Doria for a gallery of portraits of great men. Indeed, there was no more illustrious man of war in the 16th century than this famous Genoese admiral. Doria (c1466-1560) had a dramatic effect on European history when in 1528 he abandoned his ally, the king of France, and sided with France’s enemy Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor and ruler of Spain. He put his galleys at Charles’s disposal, and the Genoese fleet became the dominant power in the western Mediterranean on behalf of the Habsburgs. In 1535 Doria and Charles V conquered Tunis in a daring attack on the Ottoman empire. In his power over the sea, Doria seemed comparable to the god Neptune, with whom he is equated here. Distinguishing features: Bronzino has the mighty admiral tantalisingly exposing his pubic hair behind the cloth he holds, which just barely conceals his penis. The painting consciously equates naval and sexual prowess, as Neptune/Doria holds aloft a thick-shafted trident in front of a powerful mast. His richly flowing grey beard has the florid abundance of a fertile deity of the green waters; his chest and arms twist, ripple and flex like the rigging of a ship rolling into battle. He is old but his flesh is still supple. There is massive muscular force in his right hand, which shapes itself against the wooden shaft, almost like a crab or a coiling seashell. His beard, too, belongs in the sea, like weeds waving in the water. He looks as if he has posed - as if Bronzino had painted Doria naked, from life - but this is not the case. And yet the provocative sense of nude posing, and the danger this brings to the image, anticipates Caravaggio in making us aware of a strong frisson of sex and power. Bronzino’s admiral on the deck of his ship looks out of the picture, ready for anything, and convinces us that the sea is his to command.

guardian.co.uk

Japanese exotic sea crabs

Flying fish

Exocoetidae, is a family of marine fish in the order Beloniformes of class Actinopterygii. Fish of this family are known as flying fish. There are about sixty-four species grouped in seven to nine genera. Flying fish can make powerful, self-propelled leaps out of water into air, where their long, wing-like fins enable them to glide for considerable distances above the water’s surface. This uncommon ability is a natural defense mechanism to evade predators.

wikipedia

Ironbottom Sound (alternatively Iron Bottom Sound or Ironbottomed Sound) is the name given by Allied sailors to Savo Sound, the stretch of water at the southern end of The Slot between Guadalcanal, Savo Island, and Florida Island of the Solomon Islands, because of the dozens of ships and planes that sank there during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942-43. Prior to the war, it was called Sealark Sound. Every year on the battle’s anniversary, a US ship in the area cruises into the waters and drops a wreath to commemorate those who lost their lives. For many Navy sailors, and those that served in the area during that time, the waters in this area are considered sacred, and strict silence is observed as ships cruise through.

wikipedia

Mermaid

Cacciucco fish soup, is a popular traditional seafood dish with a history that stretches back at least five hundred years. Its name probably comes from the Turkish for ‘minute’ which is ‘kuciuk’. In Tuscany, cacciucco has come to mean ‘a mix of things’ and in fact is also now used to describe other meat and vegetable dishes too.
The original seafood cacciucco soup was first made in Livorno around the year 1500. There are many legends and myths surrounding its creation although there are two stories which stand out from the rest.
The first such story states that there was a fisherman from Livorno who lost his life at sea in a shipwreck. His children were so hungry with nobody to provide for them after his death that they turned to all their neighbours for food. Everyone gave them different types of fish, with which their mother made a huge soup adding tomatoes, garlic, oil and slices of bread – thus creating the first cacciucco.
The second, and perhaps more realistic story, is that a lighthouse keeper created the soup. The Florentine Republic had prohibited the use of olive oil which he always used to fry his fish and so rather than go without, he made a fish soup instead.
 
Recipe

1.5 kg. fish
Slices of bread, baked in a wood-burning oven
1 kg of tomato paste
Garlic
Parsley
Pecorino
White wine

Sauté the chopped herbs and garlic in a large terracotta pot, taking care not to burn the garlic. Next, add the tomato paste (in summer it’s best to use fresh tomatoes) and the white wine. When the tomato sauce has simmered, place the fish in the pot, starting with the firmer fish and ending with the softer, more tender varieties (octopus, calamari, scorpion fish, slipper lobsters etc… and a handful of mussels). Once the soup is ready, prepare a serving bowl by placing slices of toasted bread on the bottom. Rub garlic cloves over the bread to give it flavor and then slowly pour the caccuccio into the bowl.

Shark and puzzling chimera, Ulisse Aldrovandi, De Piscibus, 1613

Woody “Spider” Brown began body-surfing in California on a carved wooden plank, using it in a style now known as Boogie-boarding. Realising that if he could stand up he could catch waves before they broke, he used glider construction techniques to build his first hollow plywood surfboard in 1936, a forerunner of modern boards.
“I started surfing right away. I first made these solid redwood planks, you know. You’d stand in the shallow water and shove off just like a Boogie board. But, then I began to go, ‘Gee, man, if you could just have a board that would hold you up; instead of, like, solid planks… then I could catch ‘em before they’re breaking. This way, I’m just catching white water.’ I thought, ‘Gee, then you could catch ‘em way out there and ride ‘em all the way in.’ So, that’s when I made the hollow little plywood box. About 9 feet long and about 4 inches thick [and 22 inches wide]. It was great. I could paddle out there and catch the waves and ride.”
Thinking back on how [his] second “plywood box” responded in the surf, Woody exclaimed, “It was just like these modern kids’ boards, now! I’m amazed, you know. Don Okey wrote to me from California and said, ‘You know, Woody, that old board you had, it was a wonderful board. It was so good, I feel we should make a duplicate because I think it was a forerunner of the boards, today.’ He said, ‘I’m gonna make another one.’ He asked me for the drawings. I sent him what I could remember and he built one. When I went over there [in 1993], he had one built! Exactly the same. And I rode it! And, you know, it was just like these boards, today. You don’t have to use your foot [“In the old days, you had to put your foot in the water in order to turn.”], you just lean and turn it like that! And, boards in those days, aw, you couldn’t do that. It rode really good! And, yet, that was way back in ‘36! Amazing, just amazing.
Although people had been surfing for years in the Polynesian islands, this was the first appearance of it in California.
For more manoeuvrability, he added a skeg, or small keel, a breakthrough normally accredited to another legendary American surfer, Tom Blake. Brown was happy to give Blake credit.
“about ‘36 or ‘37, somewhere in there; about the same time. But, I didn’t know anything about [Blake] and his experiments with adding fins to surfboards. See, we were all separated out. I was in San Diego and he was in L.A., way up there.”

wikipedia

Port of Naples

The foundation of Naples and its port dates back to the period of Greek colonisation; in the ninth century B.C. a group of sailors from Rhodes reached this part of the coast of Italy and, between the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., the Greek colony was founded on the Acropolis of Pizzofalcone.
In 475 BC the inhabitants of Cumae founded Neapolis (new city) in the eastern part of the original city. As a mainly military port in Greek and Roman times, the Port of Naples gradually became more open to sea traffic and grew in importance.
It was under Norman rule that the port enjoyed a period of great splendour becoming the only one of the Italian marine republics to join the famous Lega della Compagnia, known as the Hanseatic cities. However, it was with the Anjovins in the second half of the thirteenth century, and in particular during the reign of Charles I of Naples, that the port expanded and it acquired new buildings, while the city became the most heavily populated and admired city in Europe. The fortification of the port and the construction of warehouses, storage depots and factories continued under Catalan-Aragonese rule (fifteenth century) and under the Spanish viceroy.
It was not until the dynasty of the Bourbons (eighteenth century) that the port became established as one of the most well-equipped and strongest in Europe and the city became one of the great European capitals alongside Paris and London. Indeed, it was under the Bourbons that the arsenal became an enormous shipyard and the day of September 27, 1818 saw the launch of the Real Ferdiando I, the first steamship of the Mediterranean Sea.

wikipedia

RMS Queen Mary is a retired ocean liner that sailed primarily in the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard Line (known as Cunard-White Star when the vessel entered service). Built by John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland, Queen Mary along with her running mate, the RMS Queen Elizabeth, were built as part of Cunard’s planned two-ship weekly express service between Southampton, Cherbourg, and New York City. The two ships were a British response to the superliners built by German and French companies in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Queen Mary was the flagship of the Cunard Line from May 1936 until October 1946 when she was replaced by Queen Elizabeth. The vessel also held the Blue Riband from 1936 to 1937 and then from 1938 to 1952 when she was beaten by the new SS United States.

Queen Mary sailed on her maiden voyage on 27 May 1936 and captured the Blue Riband in August of that year; she lost the title to the SS Normandie in 1937 and recaptured it in 1938. With the outbreak of World War II, she was converted into a troopship and ferried Allied soldiers for the duration of the war. Following the war, Queen Mary was refitted for passenger service and along with Queen Elizabeth commenced the two-ship transatlantic passenger service that the two ships were initially built for. The two ships dominated the transatlantic passenger transportation market until the dawn of the jet age in the late 1950s. By the mid-1960s the ship was aging and though still among the most popular transatlantic liners, was operating at a loss.
After several years of decreased profits for Cunard Line, Queen Mary was officially retired from service in 1967. The ship left Southampton for the last time on 31 October 1967 and sailed to the port of Long Beach, California, United States, where she remains permanently moored. Much of the machinery including two of the four engines, three of the four propellers, and all of the boilers were removed, and the ship now serves as a tourist attraction featuring restaurants, a museum, and hotel. The ship is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

wikipedia

A tsunami (plural: tsunamis or tsunami; from Japanese: 津波, lit. “harbor wave”; English pronunciation: /suːˈnɑːmi/ soo-NAH-mee or /tsuːˈnɑːmi/ tsoo-NAH-mee) is a series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water, typically an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions (including detonations of underwater nuclear devices), landslides, glacier calvings, meteorite impacts and other disturbances above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami.

Tsunami waves do not resemble normal sea waves, because their wavelength is far longer. Rather than appearing as a breaking wave, a tsunami may instead initially resemble a rapidly rising tide, and for this reason they are often referred to as tidal waves. Tsunamis generally consist of a series of waves with periods ranging from minutes to hours, arriving in a so-called “wave train”. Wave heights of tens of metres can be generated by large events. Although the impact of tsunamis is limited to coastal areas, their destructive power can be enormous and they can affect entire ocean basins.

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