Historic Site News

Maritime propulsion specialist Schottel said Tuesday it is expanding its thruster factory in Dörth, Germany, to include a logistics center with a capacity of around 4,000 square meters.A contract for the expansion has now been signed with general contractor Goldbeck from Koblenz.The new building will be annexed to the existing facility and will provide 2,634 square meters of industrial floor space and 1,326 square meters of offices. The groundbreaking ceremony for the 7.5-million-euro structure is to take place at the end of this year…

The decades long mystery of a missing U.S. Coast Guard Ship has finally been solved. U.S. Revenue Cutter (USRC) Bear, lost at sea in 1963, has been found on the seafloor about 90 miles south of Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, NOAA Rear Adm. Nancy Hann announced Thursday.Widely considered one of the most historically significant ships in American history, Bear was purchased by the U.S. government and first put into service by the U.S. Navy as part of the rescue fleet for the Greely Expedition to the Arctic in 1884, attaining legendary status for the rescue of the expedition's few survivors.

Four Houston-area refineries were unable to receive crude oil from tankers on Tuesday after a portion of the Houston Ship Channel was shut due to a fire aboard an empty tanker, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. In Texas, Valero Energy Corp's Houston refinery, LyondellBasell Industries' Houston refinery, Petrobras' Pasadena refinery and Royal Dutch Shell's joint-venture Deer Park refinery have crude on-site in storage tanks and also have access to long-distance and short-haul pipeline systems. The four refineries have a combined crude oil throughput of 761,505 barrels per day (bpd), equal to 4 percent of U.S. refining capacity. The Coast Guard was conducting assessments about how long it would take to move the Aframax River…

The board of the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority voted today to accept an annual budget for 2015. The budget includes $20 million in capital investments to enhance maritime operations and sediment management. The port’s balance sheet also allows it to continue investing in its European liner service, Cleveland-Europe Express (CEE), which was launched in April. The port is expanding CEE service in 2015 to two sailings a month between Antwerp and Cleveland, as announced in September.

Cortland, a global designer and manufacturer of engineered synthetic ropes, heavy lift slings, electro-optical-mechanical cables, and umbilicals has delivered a three-part Plasma 12x12 mooring line configuration for the Battleship Texas, the state historic site. Cortland said it received the quote, visited the site, supplied a quote and delivered the solution in less than a week. Texas is the last battleship to participate in the first and second world wars, and was the first battleship to become a memorial museum in the U.S in 1948.

First of five boats ordered by Rix Sea Shuttle launched in Grimsby, NE England. The vessel will be employed in the transport of maintenance engineers to and from offshore wind turbines in the North Sea. Each of the aluminium vessels will be crewed and operated by Rix and are designed to carry up to 12 technicians at a speed of up to 25 knots. The remaining boats are to be delivered next year and in 2014, representing a  £7.5m investment by the Hull-based company in the UK’s burgeoning renewable industry.

The Canadian government launches its largest search yet for the lost ships of Sir John Franklin's doomed 1845 quest for the Northwest Passage. This year's search, led by Parks Canada, is the fourth government-led expedition over the past five years, and is by far the biggest, involving a much larger alliance of federal departments and other public and private interests. A previous large-scale search for the Franklin ships was launched by National Defence in 1967 as part of Canada's centennial.