Naval Captain News

Capsized in a river in southern Iraq, the rusting wreck of a yacht that belonged to Saddam Hussein serves as a stark reminder of his iron-fisted rule that ended with the U.S.-led invasion two decades ago.The 121-metre (396 ft) "al-Mansur", a symbol of Saddam's wealth and power when it was built in the 1980s, is today a destination for sightseers and fisherman who clamber aboard the wreck to picnic and drink tea."When it was owned by the former president, no one could come close to it…

A ferry carrying roughly 130 passengers capsized in Brazil's coastal state of Bahia on Thursday, killing at least 22 people, the country's second fatal maritime accident this week, port authorities told Reuters. Local authorities said 21 others had been rescued by the navy after the ferry capsized on an early morning trip between Ilha de Itaparica and state capital Salvador. "Others were rescued by their own means, since the location was not far from the coast and also not so deep," said Flávio Almeida, a naval captain. "We are working hard on rescue efforts at the site," he said. The governor of Bahia declared three days of mourning in response to the tragedy.

For the first time since they were purchased in 1998, the Royal Canadian Navy has reached a stage where three of its four diesel-electric submarines are now shipshape and available for operations. Canada's Navy is marking what it calls a milestone for its controversy-plagued submarine program. Two of the subs, HMCS Victoria and HMCS Chicoutimi will be in the water off Esquimalt, B.C. this week, while HMCS Windsor is currently operating out of Halifax. A fourth vessel, HMCS Corner Brook is currently in dry dock in Esquimalt in what the navy calls a period of "deep maintenance". Canada's submarines were bought second-hand from Britain for $896 million in 1998. Critics believe they've cost at least twice that much to fix, maintain and update to modern standards.

Somali pirate attacks down by 95 pct since 2011 -Maritime bureau. Cash-strapped maritime security firms are being forced to use fewer costly elite guards and to diversify into other businesses such as cyber security, as a steep decline in Somali pirate attacks and hotter competition erode fast-thinning margins. Hundreds of security firms sprang up over the past seven years to offer protection to shipping companies, with scores of merchant vessels being boarded and sailors taken hostage in pirate raids off the coast of conflict-torn Somalia. However, attacks in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean have dropped from a peak of 237 in 2011 to just 10 in the first nine months of this year, the lowest since the piracy scourge began in 2008, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

Gibbs & Cox, Inc., an independent naval architecture and marine engineering firms, announced the appointment of Frank DeMasi to Deputy Director of its Government Services Group. In this role, DeMasi will carry out  initiatives to expand the group's core expertise to provide life cycle design and engineering support services that meet the evolving needs of U.S. naval and maritime defense customers. DeMasi, a former Naval Captain, served in the U.S. Navy for 29 years, and has also worked for ten years as SAIC's Vice President and Deputy Operations Manager of the Defense Engineering and Management Solutions operation.

Tara Leiter, an attorney at Blank Rome LLP, collaborated with John A.C. Cartner (United States Coast Guard shipmaster and lawyer) and Richard P. Fiske (retired U.S. naval captain and attorney with John Cartner at Cartner & Fiske LLC) to author the recently released legal treatise The International Law of the Shipmaster. Released in the IMO’s declared Year of the Seafarer, the book is designed to identify and explain the complexity of the legal position faced daily by today’s shipmasters…