While our coronavirus experience seems so novel, in the arc of maritime history, pandemics like this are far from unusual. Actually, the most unusual part of the present pandemic is that we have not had to deal with a pandemic like this for over 100 years. Taking into account that in those 100 years… Read more »
Martin & Ottaway has been performing ship values since its formation in 1875. Our records go back to the late 1800’s and we have hung onto our historic records through all our office moves. A lot of our actual project work has now been digitized which is a huge space saver, but other paper records… Read more »
Not too long ago only a small proportion of humanity had access to vast resources (which actually equates to access to energy). Although the very rich could travel by ocean liner between continents, poorer people’s action radii were very much smaller. For most of humanity’s existence a human might be tied to a very small… Read more »
When unusual events occur we often get asked to assist on unusual remedial projects. As marine guys we never expected to get called in on 9/11, but we were, and after Sandy we have been asked to assist with waterproofing design of NewYork City subway stations. This is interesting work, because it allows us to… Read more »
A disaster like the Costa Concordia opens a wide variety of investigations and undoubtedly many people are very busy in analyzing what caused the vessel to strike the reef and to capsize, but striking reefs and capsizing actually is nothing new and, on a technical level, actually is pretty well understood. What is much more… Read more »
This rather ominous picture was taken two hours before high tide on October 29, 2012 at the Monmouth Boat Club in our headquarters town of Red Bank, New Jersey. The center of Sandy is still about 10 hours away. The river is the Navesink River and it is an estuary that enters New York Harbor at… Read more »
December 15, 2011, in Rochester, New York to inspect a pier on behalf of the Department of Justice with regard to a fatal boater’s crash on a dark night in 2008 on Lake Ontario. It was surprisingly warm for this time of year, but the USCG Boatswain in charge of the 47 foot MLB and… Read more »