When the autopsy was performed on the diver in 1900, they found bubbles in his brain and heart. There were so many bubbles, in fact, that when examiners lifted the heart, it gurgled with froth. The cause of death was decompression sickness. And while doctors knew the cause of ...read more
Though Tony King is sharp and alert at the age of 94, a part of him is trapped forever in the summer of 1945. He time-travels there when he speaks of it—even as he sits in a wheelchair near the lone window in his San Francisco apartment. King’s eyes mist over as he tells his ...read more
The January 1968 capture of the U.S.S. Pueblo during a spy mission in international waters cost the life of one American sailor and began a grueling 11-month imprisonment for the other 82 Americans aboard. While the Pueblo crew was remembered for their bravery and defiance, ...read more
On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed the British-owned luxury steamship Lusitania, killing 1,128 people including 128 Americans. The disaster immediately strained relations between Germany and the neutral United States, fueled anti-German sentiment and set off a chain of ...read more
The Nazis’ efforts to protect one of their biggest battleships from Allied attacks during World War II left a lasting mark on the Norwegian landscape. Commissioned in 1941, the German battleship Tirpitz spent much of the war stationed in various fjords along the coast of Norway, ...read more
From the surface, the water was dark green—the Royal Navy diver peering down from the little boat could see no more than a few feet. Slipping into the sea, he adjusted the air valves on his heavy diving helmet and allowed the weights affixed to his body to drag him down to the ...read more
Before there was Air Force One, there was the presidential yacht. Dating back to the 19th century, America’s chief executives utilized navy ships and other vessels for recreation and entertaining foreign dignitaries. Nearly a dozen different ships acted as the “Floating White ...read more
In thick fog and heavy seas, the 14-gun naval schooner USS Revenge struck a reef off Watch Hill in Westerly, Rhode Island, on January 9, 1811. The ship’s commander, Lieutenant Oliver Hazard Perry, ordered his sailors to jettison weight—including the ship’s mast, anchor and eight ...read more
In early 1862, the Union and the Confederacy were locked in one of the most influential arms races of the Civil War. While their navies still relied on wooden ships, both sides had gambled on building revolutionary “ironclad” vessels that boasted steam engines, hulking cannons ...read more
On July 19, 1545, England’s King Henry VIII stood on the ramparts of Southsea Castle and watched as his country came under attack. The monarch gazed out from his newly constructed citadel, which guarded the entrance to Portsmouth Harbor on England’s south coast, at the greatest ...read more
In 2001, a team of marine archaeologists led by Bjørn Lovén of the University of Copenhagen launched the Zea Harbor Project, a major land and underwater investigation in search of the ancient Athenian naval bases of Zea and Mounichia. They got a huge break in 2010, when a local ...read more
Under the cover of darkness in the early morning hours of May 19, 1941, the most formidable battleship to have ever been built slipped into the Baltic Sea on its maiden voyage. An ocean-bound castle, the thickly armored Bismarck was the first full-scale battleship constructed by ...read more
In 1768, the British government decided to send an expedition to observe the southern hemisphere during the rare passage of the planet Venus in front of the Sun, predicted for the following year—and to search for a long-rumored southern continent. Captain James Cook was chosen to ...read more
Lake Pontchartrain could be a noisy place during World War II. Many of the 20,000 boats constructed in the New Orleans factories of Higgins Industries during the war roared across the lake on their trial runs, but none were as sleek or as fast as the hundreds of wooden ...read more
1. Drebbel: 1620-1624 British mathematician William Bourne made some of the earliest known plans for a submarine around 1578, but the world’s first working prototype was built in the 17th century by Cornelius Drebbel, a Dutch polymath and inventor in the employ of the British ...read more
As sunlight waned over the coast of Colombia on June 8, 1708, José Fernández de Santillán cursed the listless wind. The Spanish admiral knew the safe refuge of Cartagena was only 16 miles away, but the absence of any breeze had turned his sprint for safety into an interminable ...read more
It began as nothing more than a routine training flight. At 2:10 p.m. on December 5, 1945, five TBM Avenger torpedo bombers took off from a Naval Air Station in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. The planes—collectively known as “Flight 19”—were scheduled to tackle a three-hour exercise ...read more
1. Before attacking Elizabeth I, Philip II tried to marry her. The Armada was the culmination of years of hostility between King Philip II of Spain and Elizabeth I, but the two weren’t always sworn enemies. Philip had once been married to Elizabeth’s half-sister, Mary I, and he ...read more
Shortly before noon on October 21, 1805, a fleet of 27 Royal Navy warships sliced through the seas near the southern coast of Spain. Onboard the flagship HMS Victory, Lord Horatio Nelson paced the main deck, his gazed fixed on the 33 French and Spanish ships floating on the ...read more
With a powerful blast of its steam horn, a truly titanic ocean liner departed New York City on its maiden voyage on July 3, 1952. Built for luxury and speed, the mammoth SS United States—100 feet longer than RMS Titanic—inspired bursts of patriotic pride as its towering red, ...read more
1. George Washington was the father of the Navy. Despite having virtually no experience at sea, Washington was a huge early proponent of the Navy, believing among other things that it would disrupt British supply lines. “It follows then as certain as that night succeeds the day, ...read more
The Potemkin uprising was sparked by a disagreement over food, but it was anything but accidental. Morale in Russia’s Black Sea fleet had long been at rock-bottom lows, spurred on by defeats in the Russo-Japanese War and widespread civil unrest on the homefront. Many navy ships ...read more
The hundreds of Union veterans and recently released prisoners of war who boarded the steamboat Sultana on April 24, 1865, were bloodied, exhausted and starving—but unlike more than 600,000 of their fellow soldiers who fought in the Civil War, they were alive. They had survived ...read more
1. The Battle of Salamis In 480 B.C., Ancient Greece was fighting for its life. The Persian conqueror Xerxes had defeated a coalition of Hellenic defenders at the Battle of Thermopylae, and his forces had sacked Athens and torched the Acropolis. Total defeat seemed on the ...read more