Maritime History

[Amgine]

• 1574 - The Battle of Reimerswaal results in Dutch Admiral Louis Boisot defeating the Spanish resupply fleet under Sancho d'Avila.
• 1819 - Sir Stamford Raffles establishes an entrepôt port at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, soon known as Singapore.
• 1921 - "Olympic Blowdown of 1921", an extreme low with hurricane-force winds strikes North American western coast near the mouth of the Columbia River.
• 2004 - A whale explodes in the town of Tainan, Taiwan. A build-up of gas in the decomposing 56-foot long Sperm whale is suspected of causing the explosion.

Launchings, births, deaths

• 1906 - Franciscus Hin, Netherlands Olympic medalist 14' dinghy. (gold 1920)
• 1944 - USS Missouri (BB-63) in Brooklyn, New York City.

Holiday

• Australia - Australia day 2007

[Amgine]

• 1806 - The Battle of Santo Domingo off Hispaniola, British defeat small French squadron.
• 1836 - HMS Beagle reaches Diemen's Land (Tasmania)
• 1840 - Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand between North Island Maori chieftains and the British Crown representative.
• 1933 - Highest recorded sea wave (not tsunami), 34 meters (112 feet), in Pacific hurricane near Manila (no longer accurate; satellite wave height measurements of rogue waves regularly exceed this.)

Launchings, births, deaths

• 1964 - Matt Hayes, Australian Olympic team, bronze medalist Soling 1996
• Waitangi Day in New Zealand, commemorating the Waitangi Treaty between the Crown and Māori Chieftains.

[Amgine]

• 1863 - HMS Orpheus sinks off the coast of Auckland, New Zealand, killing 189.
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• 1974 - Grenada becomes independent from the United Kingdom.

Launchings, births, deaths

• 1700 - Philippe Buache born, French Geographer/Cartographer (d. 1773)

[Amgine]

• 1904 - Battle of Port Arthur: A surprise torpedo attack by the Japanese at Port Arthur, China starts the Russo-Japanese War.
• 1916 - WWI: French cruiser Admiral Charner torpedoed off Syrian coast, kills 374
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• 1941 - WWII: Japanese armored barges cross Strait of Johore to attack Singapore.
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• 1944 - WWII: U-762 sunk off Ireland by HMS Woodpecker and HMS Wild Goose.
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• 1996 - The U.S. Congress passes the Communications Decency Act.
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Launchings, births, deaths

• 1515 - Alonso de Ojeda, Spanish explorer, new-world slaver, namer of Venezuela, dies in Santo Domingo. (b. 1465)
• 1611 - Jan Huygen van Linschoten in Enkhuizen, Nederlands traveler and writer, published Portuguese charts which allowed other European countries to access the Far East, breaking centuries of Portuguese monopoly. (b. 1563)
• 1935 - Vincent Weir, 3rd Baron Inverforth, born to be a British shipping magnate (Bank Line).

[Amgine]

• 1799 - USS Constitution captures l'Insurgente off Nevis.
• 1822 - Haiti invades the Dominican Republic.
• 1870 - The founding of the U.S. National Weather Service, now a part of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• 1893 - Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal and initiator of the Panama Canal, found guilty of fraud and ordered to prison (the prison sentence is overturned.)
• 1920 - Norway gains sovereignty over Svalbard via the Svalbard Treat.
  • Svalbard is the archipelago which includes Spitzbergen Island.
• 1944 - U-734/U-238 sunk off Ireland.
• 1962 - Jamaica becomes independent nation within the Commonwealth of Nations.
• 2001 - The United States Navy submarine USS Greeneville accidentally strikes and sinks the Ehime-Maru (えひめ丸), a Japanese training vessel operated by the Uwajima Fishery High School, 9 crewmembers including 4 students die, 25 rescued.
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Launchings, births, deaths

• 1588 - Álvaro de Bazán, 1st Marquis of Santa Cruz dies, Admiral of the Ocean for Spain. (b. 12 December 1526)
• 1811 - Death of Nevil Maskelyne, 5th British Astronomer Royal (1765 - 1811), initiated the annual Nautical Almanac. (b. 6 October 1732)
• 1942 - Peder Lunde Jr. born in Norway, Olympic medalist Gold Flying Dutchman 1960, Silver Star 1968.
• 1957 - Miklós Horthy dies, Hungarian admiral (b. 1868)

[Amgine]

• 660 BCE - Traditional founding of Japan by Emperor Jimmu Tenno
• 1809 - Robert Fulton patents a steamship.
• 1907 - Steamer Larchmont rammed by collier en route from Providence to New York, near Westerly on Block Island. Between 180 and 322 die, 18 survivors including seven saved by the schooner Elsie.
• 1926 - Administration of Tokelau transfered to New Zealand.
• 1944 - U-424 sunk off Ireland.
• 1971 - US, UK, USSR, and 84 others sign Seabed Arms Control Treaty outlawing nuclear weapons.
• 1977 - 20.2-kg lobster caught off Nova Scotia (heaviest known crustacean)

Launchings, births, deaths

• 1812 - U.S.N. Rear Admiral Benjamin Franklin Sands, Superintendent Naval Observatory. (d. 1883)

[Amgine]

• 1502 - Vasco da Gama sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal on his second voyage to India.
• 1818 - Chile gains independence from Spain.
• 1832 - Ecuador annexes the Galápagos Islands under the name Archipélago de Ecuador.
• 1946 - Operation Deadlight ends after scuttling 121 of 154 captured U-boats. The last, U-3514 was sunk by naval tug Prosperous with gunfire and a "Shark" anti-submarine device on this day.
• 1989 - Thursday's Child breaks Flying Cloud's 1854 sailing record, New York-Cape Horn-San Francisco, 80 days 20 hours (previous record 89 days.)

Launchings, births, deaths

• 1612 - Christopher Clavius dies, primary developer of the Gregorian Calendar. (b. 25 March 1538)
• 1753 - François-Paul Brueys D'Aigalliers, French admiral (d. 1798)
• 1914 - Arvid Pardo, Maltese diplomat, a.k.a "Father of the Law of the Sea Conference" (d. 19 June 1999)
• 1995 - Philip Taylor Kramer, Iron Butterfly bassist, aerospace engineer. (b. 1952)

• United States - National Freedom to Marry Day (unofficial)

[Amgine]

• 1678 - Tycho Brahe first sketches "Tychonic system" of solar models.
• 1782 - Battle of St. Christopher's; superior French squadron under François Joseph Paul de Grasse occupies St. Christopher's (now St. Kitts) and defeats Samuel Hood's squadron.
• 1934 - The Russian steamship Chelyuskin, trapped in arctic ice, sinks. Crew had escaped onto the ice pack and built an ice runway, and were rescued by air.
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• 1944 - At 10pm, the beginning of the fire bombing of Dresden.

Launchings, births, deaths

• 1891 - David Dixon Porter, USN Admiral and Civil War naval hero (b. 8 June 1813)

[Amgine]

• 1630 - Nederlands fleet of 69 ships arrives Pernambuco, capturing Portuguese colonies on the Brazillian coast and establishing Nieuw Holland.
• 1779 - Captain James Cook's return to Hawai'i for repairs sparks a fracas in which he is killed.
• 1797 - Battle of Cape St. Vincent: Superior Spanish fleet under José de Córdoba defeated by British fleet under John Jervis.
• 1945 - WWII: Second day of the bombing of Dresden.
• 2002 - The Tullaghmurray Lass sinks off the coast of Kilkeel, County Down, Northern Ireland killing three members of the same family on board.

Launchings, births, deaths

• 1779 - Captain James Cook, British Navy, explorer and scientist. (b. 28 October (OS, 8 November Gregorian) 1728.
• 1862 - USS Galena, steamship and early U.S. ironclad. (recommissioned in 1864 as auxilliary sail.)

[Amgine]

• 1882 - 1st cargo of frozen meat leaves New Zealand for Britain, on SS Dunedin
• 1898 - USS Maine blows up in Havana harbor, cause unknown. 258 sailors die.
• 1912 - Fram reaches latitude 78° 41' S., farthest south ever by ship.
• 1982 - Ocean Ranger oil-drilling platform lost off Newfoundland, 84 die.

Launchings, births, deaths

• 399 BCE - Socrates sentenced to death.
• 1564 - Galileo Galilei born in Pisa, Italy, astronomer, physicist, inventor. (d. 8 January 1642)
• 1660 - Klaas Compaan, Dutch pirate and merchant, dies at 72.
• 1744 - John Hadley, inventor, mathematician, and astronomer dies. Invented, amongst other astronomy-related items, the sextant. (b. 16 April 1682)
• 1874 - Ernest Shackleton born, British antarctic explorer. (d. 5 January 1922)
• 1939 - German Navy Battleship Bismarck launched in Hamburg.

[Alan Wheeler]

Just for interest, the first shipment of frozen meat was a major mile stone for the future of NZ. Many firsts were created with this act.
Firstly refrigeration on a ship.
Secondly, it put NZ on the world stage for the first time. From that, NZ grew it's farming industry to fullfil the growing world demand for our export meat.
I nor anyone else really know just what the country would have been like today if it was not for that first shipment. But I do know it would have been a very different country.

[Amgine]

Yep! that's why I included it even though I couldn't find many corroborating facts online. Other than the anecdote of Captain Whitson crawling into the reefer to saw holes in order to improve the cold air circulation, I found no mention of the ship's master. Although the cargo is reported to have reached the Smithfield Markets in London, no mention is made at which port the ship arrived/discharged.

<rant>One of the more annoying things I run into in online researching is when a public institute (for example, the Australia public library) has spent public money creating a fabulous resource (for example, digitizing Jacob le Maire's chart), and then secretes it away someplace while still selling publication rights (!! - it's hardly copyrightable.) There are tens of thousands of historic documents which have been digitized and yet are unavailable.</rant>

Which is rather far afield from New Zealand, refrigeration, and the effect on the future/history of the country. New Zealand Edge has an article about two of the entrepeneurs who started the snowball. But you need to keep in mind they were following the innovators: Australia had shipped frozen meat to the British Isles in 1880, and they were copying Argentina who had done so in 1877(!).

One particularly interesting side not to all this is that the early frozen cargo ships were almost exclusively sail. And had no electricity. Which begs the question: how is it that they were able to so efficiently keep their freezer systems running with little or no insulation, no fans, no electro-magentic pumps? (Especially when compared with the reliability of modern refrigeration units on boats.) Captain Whitson was pulled from the reefer by a rope 'round his ankle, overcome by the cold.

[Amgine]

• 1804 - First Barbary War: Stephan Decatur, aboard USS Intrepid (the captured Mastico) raids Tripoli to destroy captured USS Philadelphia.
• 1832 - HMS Beagle/Charles Darwin reaches St-Pauls (1°N, 29°W)
• 1940 - WWII: The Altmark Incident - British naval forces board the German tanker Altmark in Jøssingfjord (the last British naval boarding action) to free captured British merchant sailors inside Norway's neutral zone, prompting the Nazi occupations of Denmark and Norway (which pre-empted Allied plans to occupy Norway.)
• 1986 - The Soviet liner Mikhail Lermontov runs aground in the Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand.
• 2005 - The Kyoto Protocol comes into force, following its ratification by Russia.

Launchings, births, deaths

• 1531 - Johannes Stöffler dies, mathematician, astrologer, and astronomer who refined the astrolabe, published an almanac, and other navigational references. (b. 10 December 1452)
• 1541 (ca.) - Georg Joachim Rhäticus (or Rheticus), student of Copernicus, published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium and wrote Opus palatinum de triangulus, the latter about solving the spherical triangle for astronomy.
• 2002 - Death of William Masters, gynecologist and sexologist, senior member of Masters and Johnson. (b. 27 January 1915)

• World - Kyoto Protocol Day (2005)
• Lithuania - Independence Day

[Amgine]

• 1600 - Giordano Bruno burned at the stake by Roman Catholic Church for professing the earth orbits the sun and rotates on its axis.
• 1864 - American Civil War: H. L. Hunley sinks the USS Housatonic, first warship sunk by a submarine.

Launchings, births, deaths

• 1723 - Tobias Mayer born, astronomer and mathematician, published on determining longitude via lunar distance. (d. 20 February 1762)
• 1754 - Birth of Nicolas-Thomas Baudin, French sailor, explorer, and botanist. (d. 16 September 1803)
• 1909 - Goyaałé (Geronimo) dies, Apache chieftain. (b. 16 June 1829)
• 1946 - Valdemar Bandolowski born in Denmark, Olympic medalist Soling, gold, 1976 & 1980.

[Amgine]

• 1797 - Trinidad surrendered (after ceding by Spain) to British control.
• 1854 - Lightning departs Boston, United States on her maiden voyage to Liverpool, Britain.
• 1965 - Gambia becomes independent from the United Kingdom.

Launchings, births, deaths

• 1805 - Louis Malesherbes Goldsborough born, Rear Admiral USN. (d. 20 February 1877)
• 1874 - Clan Macleod (James Craig) launched in Sunderland from Bartran, Haswell & Co shipyard for Thomas Dunlop & Co., Glasgow.

Holidays and observances

• China - Chinese New Year-The Year of the Boar (2007/4705)
• Gambia - Independence Day (1965)