Fury Beach

⚓ Capt. Crozier in “The Terror” is based on a character from a novel & entirely fictional.

⚓ Neither the novel nor the series are legitimate historical sources.

⚓ Yes to history in fiction; no to fiction in history.

⚓ The two Crozier biographies are incomplete & far from accurate.

⚓ Interrogate – investigate – improve the knowledge!

A three-year project led by the University of Cádiz has now identified 151 archaeological sites in the bay, among them 134 shipwrecks. To date, the researchers and their colleagues from the University of Granada have worked to document 34 of those wrecks.

The oldest is that of a Punic era ship dating to the fifth century BC, while other finds include 23 Roman ships, two late Roman ships, four medieval ships and 24 vessels from the early modern period.

Although the team has come across large ships from the 16th and 17th centuries, one of the most exciting finds has been the wreck of the Puente Mayorga IV, a small, late 18th-century gunboat of a type used for rapid, stealthy attacks on British ships of the line around Gibraltar.

The archaeologists are surveying the Copenhagen harbour area that is going to be taken over by the Lynetteholm project, a controversial artificial island the size of 400 football pitches. Having searched the silt in near zero visibility, they discovered the Dannebroge at the depth of 15 meters.

On April 2, 1801, right before Easter, Nelson's Royal Navy ships attacked Denmark, mainly because the Danes wouldn't support the British trade blockades. There was established an impromptu defence line in the Copenhagen roads, consisting of hulks and rafts. The flagship Dannebroge, originally a ship of the line, was one of the anchored hulks (a so-called block ship), armed with cannons and manned, but without masts and rigging.

The battle lasted from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Dannebroge, situated in the middle, came under heavy fire and quickly sustained severe damage, but the ship's flag was only lowered at 2.30 p.m. While evacuating the wounded, the fire onboard caused the hawsers to part, and the block ship started drifting. The ceasefire had already been agreed when the gunpowder stores on the Dannebroge exploded.

The size and shape of the wreck fits the existing drawings, and the dendrological analysis also agrees with the year the ship was built, 1772. The wreck consists of timbers and ballast and lies in a field of cannonballs. Various smaller items have been recovered, as well as fragmented human remains.

Some images here (incl. a previously unknown uniform badge).

P.S. Danish Lieutenant Peter Willemoes, commanding Floating Battery No. 1 next to the Dannebroge, was 17 years old. His platform held the line for three hours despite being hastily crewed and underprepared.

The patrol is part of an annual Canadian Armed Forces operation to showcase Canada's military presence in the north. They followed a route that had not been attempted in 80 years in order to survey the land, learn more about climate change (which has made navigating Canada's Arctic region much more challenging), unlock new travel passageways and test Arctic survival and warfare capabilities.

For 52 days they drove snowmobiles, a core group of 20 at any given time, between remote northern communities. Some nights, they camped on the ice in tents as temperatures plunged to -60C (-76F). There were constant hazards to be wary of, from polar bears to frostbite and cold-weather dehydration.

Brig Gen Rivière of Operation Nanook-Nunalivut said that the mission was meant to prepare Canada for "the worst case scenario" and that Russia remained "a formidable force" in the Arctic despite its ongoing war with Ukraine, with dozens of permanent military bases in its Arctic, while Canada had none.

A key component of the Canadian Rangers is its indigenous Inuit members, helping with navigation, sharing food and lending gloves and boots. The patrol also received support from the Canadian Air Force and satellite intelligence and ice-monitoring technologies, some of which were being tested for the first time.

Not everything on this year's Arctic mission went according to plan. An exercise to fire a howitzer, an artillery weapon, was called off due to an extreme blizzard in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. Canadian Rangers on the patrol suffered a bout of food poisoning, likely from the military rations they were eating.

One Ranger cracked a rib after his snowmobile flipped over, but "he kept on going", Lt-Col Hanes said. Another got frostbite and was flown out of the mission before it worsened. With all the challenges, Hanes classified the operation as a success, saying it is a testament to Canada's growing expertise in an unforgiving climate.

Falls of Clyde was built in 1878 by the Port Glasgow shipbuilder Russell & Co., the first in a series of nine iron-hulled ships (all named after Scottish waterfalls). Falls of Clyde was saved from scuttling in 1963 to become a museum ship in Honolulu. The ship was damaged by a hurricane in 1982, and was virtually abandoned in the years afterwards.

"Enthusiasts in Scotland have spent a decade trying to bring the ship home for restoration, but were unable to reach an agreement with the harbour board which wants to redevelop the quay where it was moored.

"The Hawaii Department of Transportation said the operation to remove the ship began at dawn on [Oct 15] and it was sunk about 25 miles south of the harbour. It said the vessel's name, wheel and bell were retained along with other artefacts which will be put on display.

The Neoliner Origin, the world’s largest sailing cargo ship made its two-week inaugural voyage from the west coast of France to Baltimore, Maryland, in the US. "It is being powered primarily by the two semi-rigid sails made from carbon and fibreglass and a backup diesel-electric engine."

"Roughly 80% of goods traded worldwide are transported by ship, and the industry accounts for about 3% of global carbon emissions. If shipping were a country, it would be the world’s sixth-largest emitter.

"According to research by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), 90% of shipping decarbonisation will require a switch from dirty bunker oil to greener fuels – renewable hydrogen, ideally – with the other 10% including efficiency improvements such as retrofitting sails to ships for wind-assisted propulsion.

"For cargo ships, using wind is not as simple as adding two sails, however. A cargo ship with sails must either be built from scratch – the Neoliner Origin cost €60m to build – or undergo an expensive retrofit.

"There is also the question of size: the 136-metre-long roll-on, roll-off Neoliner Origin is the largest of a new wave of sailing cargo ships, but small compared with the 400-metre Suez canal-blocking behemoths used in international shipping.