Sea Disaster

  • The sinking of the Titanic may be history’s most infamous maritime disaster and the torpedoing of the Lusitania, the most notorious wartime naval tragedy. Yet, both—with death tolls of approximately 1,500 and 1,200, respectively—are overshadowed by the fate of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff. On January 30, 1945, the German ocean liner was struck by torpedoes

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  • Harry Truman

    I know what you all will be thinking that this will be a blog about President Truman, possibly about the order he gave to drop the atomic bombs. Well, you’d be wrong. It is indeed a blog about some explosive events but nothing WWII related. In fact it isn’t about President Truman either. The subject

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  • It is often assumed that it was mainly the poorer passengers that died on the Titanic, but this assumption is only true to an extend. In fact the richest man on board, an it can be argued the richest man on the planet, also perished in the cold Atlantic waters on April 15 1912. Financier

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  • On the night of 31 January – 1 February 1953, many dykes in the province of Zeeland, the southern parts of the province of South Holland and the northwestern parts of the province of North Brabant ,in the Netherlands,proved unable to resist the combination of spring tide and a northwesterly storm. It was to become

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  • St Elizabeth’s flood 1421

    The Dutch have always been in constant war with the sea. Most people know about the 1953 flood but there have been floods throughout the centuries with higher casualties. I specified the year in the title because today is the 597th of the St Elizabeth’s flood, but technically this is the 2nd flood with that

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  • Sinfra was a cargo ship built in 1929 as Fernglen by Akers Mekaniske Verksted in Oslo, Norway, for a Norwegian shipping company. The ship was sold to Swedish owners in 1934 and to a French company in 1939, on the last occasion having her name changed to Sinfra. Sinfra was confiscated by German authorities in 1942, and used by them in the Mediterranean. On 19 October 1943, Sinfra was bombed

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  • The Titanic

    There have been far greater sea disasters then the Titanic but for more then 100 years it still captures the imagination of people like no other nautical disaster. Below are just some pictures of that famous unsinkable ship. Unfinished, at Belfast, on May 31, 1911. Under construction. The Titanic, ready to be launched The iceberg

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  • RMS Atlantic, yard number 74, was a 3,707 ton four masted steam ship; only the second steam ship to be built for Thomas Ismay’s White Star Line. Sometimes referred to as White Star Line’s first Titanic, Atlantic sank  sank on April 1,1873 with the loss of around 562 lives, after striking rocks in Nova Scotia,

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  • The Herald of Free Enterprise disaster occurred on 6 March 1987 after the Townsend Thoresen car ferry MS Herald of Free Enterprise left her berth at Zeebrugge, Belgium, with her bow doors open, capsizing soon after leaving the harbour.The ship left its berth in Zeebrugge inner harbour at 18:05 (GMT) with a crew of 80

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  • On this day in 1953, flooding in the North Sea killed more than 1,500 people in the Netherlands and destroyed one  million acres of farmland. The storm also caused death and destruction in Great Britain and Belgium. A combination of a high spring tide and a severe European windstorm over the North Sea caused a

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