Honshu News

Japan-based company PowerX has unveiled the detailed design of the first-ever ‘Battery Tanker’ at an exhibition in Imabari City, Japan. The inaugural ship “X” aims for completion by 2025, with domestic and international field testing planned to start in 2026. This electric propulsion vessel will be 140 meters long and will be equipped with 96 containerized marine batteries, providing a total capacity of 241MWh. "The onboard battery system is based on our proprietary module design, featuring safe and reliable lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells that ensure a lifespan over 6,000 cycles.

Japan's military said on Thursday that it had spotted four large Russian amphibious warfare ships sailing close to its islands as they traveled west, possibly towards Europe.Pictures of the amphibious transports, typically used for landing expeditionary forces ashore, published by Japan's defense ministry showed what appeared to be military trucks loaded onto the deck of one of the vessels."We don't know where they are heading, but their heading suggest it is possible," a Japanese defense ministry spokesman said.

Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) held a naming ceremony at its Sakaide shipyard for the new liquefied natural gas (LNG) carrier owned jointly by NYK Line and JERA.The ceremony was attended by Hendrik Gordenker, chairman of JERA Co. Inc.; Yasumi Kudo, chairman of NYK; and a number of related parties.At the ceremony, the ship was named “Shinshu Maru” by Mr. Gordenker and the ceremonial rope holding the vessel in place was cut by his wife. The ship derives its name from “Shinshu”, the traditional name for Nagano Prefecture, located in central Honshu—the primary island of Japan, which is one of the areas that the Chubu Electric Power Co. Inc.

Malaysian state-owned oilcompany Petroliam Nasional Bhd (Petronas) through its subsidiary, Malaysia LNG (MLNG) delivered its first liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargo to Japan's Hokkaido Electric Power on August 1st, 2018.This delivery marks the beginning of MLNG's supply to Hokkaido Electric via a 10-year Sale and Purchase Agreement (SPA) signed on 2 March 2017.Hokkaido Electric will be utilising the cargo for the commissioning of its LNG tank at Ishikari Terminal. The cargo was delivered from Petronas LNG Complex in Bintulu, Sarawak to Ishikari by Puteri Delima Satu, the LNG vessel chartered by MLNG and operated by Petronas' subsidiary MISC Bhd.

1865 - CSS Shenandoah, commanded by James I. Waddell, encounters the British merchant bark, Barracouta, in the Pacific Ocean and receives the first firm report the Civil War ended in April with the defeat of the Confederacy. Shenandoah rounds Cape Horn in mid-September and arrives at Liverpool in early November, becoming the only Confederate Navy ship to circumnavigate the globe. There she hauls down the Confederate ensign and turns over to the Royal Navy. 1943 - (PT 109), commanded by Lt. j.g. John F. Kennedy, is rammed by the Japanese destroyer, Amagiri, which cuts through the vessel at Blackett Strait near Kolombangara Island. Abandoning ship, Kennedy leads his men to swim to an island some miles away.

1813 - During the War of 1812, the frigate, President, commanded by John Rodgers, is en route between the Azores and England when it begins a series of captures of British vessels that include the brig Kitty, the packet brig Duke of Montrose, the brig Maria, and the schooner Falcon. 1869 - Secretary of the Navy Adolph E. Borie, orders the construction of the first torpedo station on Goat Island, Newport, R.I. Cmdr. Edmund O. Matthews is the first Commanding Officer. During the establishment, the station experiments with torpedoes and trained sailors in the use of the weapons.

1813 - HMS Shannon, commanded by Capt. Philip Broke, captures USS Chesapeake, commanded by Capt. James Lawrence off the coast of Boston, Mass. During the battle, Capt. Lawrence is mortally wounded, but as he is carried below deck, he orders the iconic phrase: "Tell the men to fire faster! 1871 - Two ships under the squadron command of Commodore John Rodgers, on USS Colorado, are attacked from Korean forts and batteries. The squadron is carrying Frederick Low, U.S. foreign minister to China, who was sent to negotiate trade with Korea.

1863 - During the Civil War, the steam screw sloop Sacramento, commanded by Captain Charles S. Boggs, seizes the British blockade-runner Wanderer off Murrells Inlet, N.C. 1896 - A landing party of 15 Marines and 19 Seaman from USS Alert arrive at Corinto, Nicaragua, to protect American lives and property during a period of political unrest. 1942 - USS Drum (SS 228) sinks Japanese seaplane carrier, and USS Trout (SS 202) sinks a Japanese freighter off the southeast coast of Honshu. 1945 - USS Springer (SS 414) torpedoes and sinks the Japanese frigate in the Yellow Sea and then sinks a Japanese coastal defense ship the next day. 1945 - Hospital Apprentice Robert E. Bush administers aid to a wounded Marine officer and fires back at the Japanese at the same time, earning the Medal of Honor.

1879 - USS Constitution, while sailing back to the U.S. from France, ran aground off Bollard Head on the south coast of England. She was towed to the Portsmouth Navy Yard and placed in Dry Dock 11 for inspection. The 82-year-old frigate survived the grounding and only needed to have 85 feet of her false keel replaced and several sheets of underwater copper. She resumed her voyage home on January 24th. 1885 - A Marine guard from steamer USS Alliance lands at Colon, Panama, (then in Colombia) to guard the railroad and to protect American lives and property during a period of political unrest.

1910 - USS Michigan, the first U.S. dreadnought battleship, is commissioned. 1943 - USS Shad (SS 235) sinks German minesweeper M 4242 (ex-French trawler Odet II) in the Bay of Biscay. 1944 - USS Bluefish (SS 222) and USS Rasher (SS 269) attack a Japanese convoy off French Indochina; Bluefish sinks a merchant tanker while Rasher damages another tanker. Also on this date USS Cabrilla (SS 288) sinks a Japanese freighter off Cape Padran, French Indochina while USS Tautog (SS 109) sinks a Japanese freighter off southern Honshu. 1945 - During attacks against the U.S.

During the second half of the 20th century, the Japanese ruled commercial shipbuilding. Today, numerous competitive forces in the Far East, led by South Korea and China, have continued to throw massive resources into building and maintaining modern shipbuilding dominance, so much so that it may seem as though the days of Japanese shipbuilding have passed for good. “Any single shipbuilder in Japan cannot fulfill a large-scale order, for example, for 10 ships,” an industry official told the Japan Times last September. Imabari Shipbuilding disagrees.

Japan's Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) took delivery of its biggest warship Izumo, since World War II, a vessel that observers say is a "de-facto aircraft carrier". The 19,500-ton destroyer Izumo, measuring 248 meters long and 38 meters wide, allows five helicopters to take off and land simultaneously. It can also load MV-22 Osprey transport aircraft to be purchased by the Ground Self-Defense Force, Japan's Kyodo News reported. The Izumo was indigenously constructed at a shipyard in Yokohama, near Tokyo, at a cost of around $1.5 billion. It is named after the former Izumo province in western Honshu. In Japanese mythology, the entrance to yomi (hell) is located in Izumo.

Debris from Japan's 2011 tsunami will continue to litter the North American coastline over the next three years, with everything from refrigerators to lumber and sports balls still floating offshore in the Pacific, an expert said on Tuesday. About one million tons of debris was still lingering in the Pacific Ocean four years after a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, the most powerful ever recorded in Japan, set off a series of massive tsunami waves that devastated a wide swathe of Honshu's Pacific coastline and killed nearly 20,000 people. It also damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, leading to a series of explosions and meltdowns in the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl 25 years earlier.

An earthquake of magnitude 6.8 occurred Friday about 165 kilometers east of the city of Iwaki on Honshu, the main island of Japan, prompting the authorities to issue an alert tsunami in the area. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS for its acronym in English) said the quake occurred at 1922 GMT at a depth of 10 kilometers. (Reporting by Sonya Hepinstall. Published in Spanish by Bill Trott)

Torrential rains from a weakened but still dangerous typhoon battered Japan's Okinawa islands on Wednesday, leaving two dead and threatening widespread flooding as the storm headed for the nation's main islands. Typhoon Neoguri, a super typhoon as it bore down on Okinawa this week, had winds gusting up to 162 kph (100 mph) on Wednesday, but weather forecasters said the major concern now was rain, especially as parts of the westernmost main island of Kyushu have already been hit by heavy rain over the last week. Authorities warned of record rainfall in Okinawa as rivers in some areas overflowed. More than 200,000 residents were told to leave their homes, down from over 500,000 on Tuesday.

One man died, more than 500,000 people were urged to evacuate and hundreds of flights were cancelled in Japan as a strong typhoon brought torrential rain and high winds to its southwestern islands and could bring heavy rain to Tokyo later this week. Typhoon Neoguri weakened from its original status as a super typhoon but remained intense, with gusts of more than 250 km per hour (155 mph). It was powering through the Okinawa island chain where emergency rain and high-seas warnings were in effect. The storm was at its most powerful when passing Okinawa, some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) southwest of Tokyo on Tuesday, but the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) warned of heavy rains and potential flooding in Kyushu…

Hundreds of flights were cancelled in Japan and more than 500,000 people urged to evacuate as a powerful typhoon brought torrential rain and high winds to southwestern islands and was forecast to reach Tokyo later in the week. Typhoon Neoguri weakened from its original status as a super typhoon but remained intense, with gusts of more than 250 km per hour (155 mph). It was powering towards the Okinawa island chain where emergency rain and high-seas warnings were in effect. There are no nuclear plants on Okinawa but there are two on Kyushu, which lies in the area through which the typhoon is likely to pass after hitting Okinawa. There is another on Shikoku island, which borders Kyushu and could also be affected.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has received an order for construction of a wide-area seabed research vessel from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), and an agreement has been signed. The vessel on order will efficiently advance wide-area research into seafloor resources, its comprehensive research capabilities to include elucidation of mineral and ore deposit origins and formation conditions, and will also enable contributions to disaster prevention research.

Japan to begin the world’s first offshore drilling operation to extract frozen natural gas locked under the seabed. Japan Oil, Gas & Metals National Corp., known as JOGMEC, and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology will begin test production for methane hydrate in the Nankai Trough about 50 kilometers (31 miles) off the coast of the country’s main island of Honshu, reports Bloomberg. Deposits of methane hydrate, known as “burnable ice,” could provide Japan with a “next-generation source of clean energy” and may be large enough to supply the country’s natural gas needs for about 100 years, according to JOGMEC. The government plans to develop technology to enable commercial use of methane hydrate by fiscal 2018. Source: Bloomberg

This advisory will be published on the MARAD web site at www.marad.dot.gov. The 9.0 magnitude earthquake that occurred march 11, 2011 off the east coast of Honshu, Japan resulted in a debris field in the North Pacific Ocean. Some possible marine debris types include derelict vessels, fishing nets and floats, lumber, cargo containers, and household goods. because different debris types move with currents and winds differently, the debris may be dispersed over a very broad area between Japan and the west coast of North America. US-flag operators with ships transiting the subject area should advise such vessels to remain vigilant and to monitor all sources of available information affecting safe and secure navigation in this area.

Japan is waging a public relations war as it struggles to control the nuclear contamination threat at home while playing down the concerns of consumers abroad. Fears of tainted goods from the battered nation are affecting trade flows, with regional weather distributing radiation particles and hysteria across Asia. In South Korea, panic over radioactive rain in March saw schools shut down en masse, despite the minute level of radiation posing no known health risks. In Hong Kong in April…

The tragic events in Japan have evoked a large scale international relief effort as the nation continues to deal with the enormity of the disaster. World-wide, maritime nations have been quick to respond and ships of all types have been deployed off the coast of Japan, providing humanitarian assistance to victims of the devastating earthquake and tsunami. Australian-built ships are among this number, playing their own part in the relief effort. Both Aomori on Honshu and Hakodate on Hokkaido, the traditional home ports for Incat-built 367.5-ft catamaran Natchan World, have been hectic.

The Natchan Rera, the first of Incat’s 112 metre Wave Piercing Catamarans, has been recognized at Europe’s annual ferry industry event, the Shippax Ferry Shipping Onboard Conference, attended by some 300 ferry shipping executives. Japan’s Higashi Nihon Ferry won the coveted ShipPax Hispeed Concept Award, recognizing the implementation of an integrated ferry system with state-of-the art port terminals as well as the largest diesel powered high speed ferry with separate truck and car decks.