Sailors being a conservative lot, evolution happened about as fast as continents drift. Even as rigging changed from hemp to stainless steel, and sail cloth changed from flax to cotton to Dacron, sail plans remained largely the same. By the 1960s most racing boats had discovered that a single mainsail worked better than two: yawls and ketches were abandoned in favor of higher-pointing sloops and cutters. But foretriangles remained split, especially aboard non-racing yachts without the luxury of plentiful and athletic crews

“It is remarkable that an unlikely story about a mad heretic plotting a massacre has been repeated uncritically for almost 400 years,” Koehler says. His alternative scenario describes “extreme violence driven by famine”

Other reports have the unstoppable showman driving a car down the city's Smith Street blindfolded and apparently guided solely by the gift of mental telepathy.

After that whirlwind of stunts, Calvert boarded the Sea Fox in Darwin with his crew, including the banana-loving Jimmy. Unlike the other passengers, Jimmy boarded the yacht in a cage and, it was claimed by Calvert, was the chimpanzee that played Cheetah in the 1940s black and white Hollywood versions of Tarzan. More diva than monkey, Jimmy was known for off-screen antics, from demanding the odd banana to drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes.

Stand awhile with the Little Ships in view, cast your eye to the open sea, imagine how it looked in 1940; Ramsgate was one of the harbours used for the landing of rescued soldiers.

“Nothing can be more ridiculous to my mind than our open boats here with their enormous sails and unseaworthy qualities, they are always on the brink of capsize and their owners seem to measure their sport to the nearness they can go to the inside of a shark.”

One of the remaining trees was this 700 year old specimen, bought and felled by the late Dick McIlvride whose goal was to build an all-Kauri 47-foot ketch to the plans of the naval architect John Alden.

After around 15,000 years ago, sea levels began to rise quite rapidly, reflooding the low-lying coastal areas of the Bassian Plain. It took about a thousand or more years for Lutruwita/Tasmania to be separated from mainland Victoria, and another few thousand years for the main islands of the Bass Strait to emerge.

It happened in the early hours during darkness. Graham was below trying to sleep. They'd had little rest for three days and he'd just done 6 ½ hours on the helm. The first indication anything was wrong was when the seas suddenly changed, becoming very steep, and FORTUNA felt different. 

The crew of 1958 pilot cutter Goondooloo called police at 3:45pm on Wednesday after the vessel experienced a mechanical failure in D'Entrecasteaux Channel, in the state's south.

The original INDEPENDENCE was built in only five months by the ship's carpenter and some of the crew of a larger boat, the Union. The Union's captain Isaac Pendleton had learned from French explorer Nicholas Baudin of the existence of a large island, south of the South Australian mainland, where seals and other wildlife were plentiful.

Rogers’ song refers to Sir John Franklin, one of the best known of the explorers as, having led two missions to try and find the passage, he set out on a third journey with two vessels the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus in 1845. The ships were last seen in Baffin Bay, and in spring 1847. There are later accounts stating that Franklin died in June 1847. As you can imagine, the crews of two ships that had seemingly vanished into thin air captured the imagination of many at the time.

The Center will house one of the nation’s most important private collections of materials and photographs related to wooden boat and ship design, construction, and history. Photographer Benjamin Mendlowitz has contributed his entire slide collection, comprising a staggering 155,000 images spanning 1979 to 2005, to the Friend Memorial Public Library's Maritime Research Center.

No single museum can offer what Maritime Museums of Victoria can – eighteen museum sites with something for everyone, from detailed exhibits and restored vessels to entire villages with amazing lightshows.

There was little indication of what was to come over the next few weeks. The swell was so high that the treacherous, unrelenting waves were smashing onto the coast providing no access to the foreshore. The AMAZON wreckage was swept 60 metres to the east where it settled but over the next few weeks, in the bed of the eastern outlet of Wreck Creek it ‘slid’ a further 7 metres where it is now partially imbedded

Wickham and Anne took up residence at Newstead House along with three Galapagos tortoises called “Tom”, “Dick” and “Harry” (later re-named “Harriet”) which Charles Darwin gave Wickham on his second voyage on the Beagle. Upon Wickham’s 1860 departure from the District, Harriet lived in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens, and much later Australia Zoo, for another 150 years.

It is one thing for modern day master mariner travelling through Patagonia or the South Tasman Sea – in a modern one hundred thousand tonne plus cruise or commercial ship, viewing from enclosed bridge – to navigate and marvel at the ferocity of a Southern Ocean gale. It is quite another thing to command from an open deck a ninety  foot long two hundred tonne timber hulk, tasked with the safety of the vessel and sixty crew.

Sixty years after entering Port Phillip Bay [under Flinders in 1802], INVESTIGATOR returned with cargo for the Victorian Gold Rush. After 77 years of service, she was finally sold in Williamstown. Ironically, the ship that put Australia on the map [literally] finished up a coal hulk in Melbourne. In 1872, her register closed with the comment “broken up.” It was a dreadful end to arguably Australia’s most historically significant ship.

“It was 3am on 25th March when Flinders, Bass and William Martin rowed the over-laden little boat out through the heads of Port Jackson. They audaciously hauled directly offshore to clear the confused seas inshore and to catch a sea breeze.

Discussions on survival ensued until on about 23 or 24 July Dudley suggested that it was better that one of them die so that the others might survive. He suggested that they draw lots, but Brookes refused to take part. Dudley then suggested to Stephens that the obvious person to die was Parker.

The Australian surf boat evolved. The first real one that came—we have these old pictures of the Sly Brother of Manly. But they weren't real surf boats, they were fishing boats. The first real surf boat that came to Australia was designed on a Norwegian lifesaving boat.