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Robert Smalls was a slave that seized a ship during the Civil War and delivered it to the North. He was later put in charge of the ship. After the war he bought the house he was a slave in and became a congressman.
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Quarantine is derived from the Latin word for "forty". This is the number of days a ship typically had to wait to dock because of the plague.
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In the Royal Navy there is a superstition that whistling on-board can cause bad weather. The only person typically allowed to whistle is the cook (because it means he's not eating the food!)
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During the Battle of Samar in World War II, the USS Johnston charged a much bigger force of Japanese ships. It did so much damage that while it was sinking, some of the Japanese ships saluted it.
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In 1784, a Japanese sailor named Chunosuke Matsuyama sent out a message in a bottle from his sinking ship. It washed ashore in 1935 near the very village where he had been born.
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In 2013, chef Harrison Okene survived underwater for 3 days when his ship sank. Apparently he took refuge in an air pocket where rescuers eventually found him.
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Jeanne de Clisson was a Frenchwoman who became a pirate in the 1300s to avenge the death of her husband. She sold her land to buy 3 ships and then proceeded to terrorize French nobility along the coast.
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Whenever merchant ships were stopped by pirates, quite often a number of the merchant sailors would join the pirate crew
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In 1628, the Swedish warship Vasa sank. It was recovered in 1961 nearly 100% intact. It is the only such ship we have from the 1600s.
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Ramon Artagaveytia survived the sinking of a ship in 1871. It wasn't until 41 years later that he mustered up the courage to get back on a boat. Unfortunately for him that boat's name was the Titanic.
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In spite of never having had any training, Admiral Yi Sun Shin defeated 333 Japanese ships with a fleet of only 13 Korean ships
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When researchers from Texas State University ran out of money while studying the pirate Captain Morgan, it was the Captain Morgan Rum Company that gave them money to continue!
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One of the most powerful pirates to ever set sail was Ching Shih. She was a Chinese prostitute who ended up commanding nearly 2,000 ships.
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The MS Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994 and all 852 passengers are still at the bottom. It is illegal to dive to the wreck.
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The Claw of Archimedes was an anti-ship weapon designed to basically lift ships and then drop them into the ocean. It was used by the Greeks against the Romans.
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Tommy Thompson was a treasure hunter that found the shipwreck of the SS Central America. In 1987 he recovered nearly $1 billion from the wreck and disappeared.
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In 1969, the ship named Baychimo was spotted drifting in the Arctic. It was abandoned nearly 40 years earlier in 1931 near Alaska.
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During World War II the Dutch disguised the HNLMS Abraham Crijnssen to look like a tropical island (to trick the Japanese).
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In 2012, an Air Canada flight was about to land in Australia when it got involved in a search and rescue mission for a lost yacht. After about 30 minutes the passengers spotted Glenn Ey of Queensland adrift.
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The actual crew of Captain Philip's ship claim he is a fraud who endangered their lives and that the film is inaccurate.
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In 1969, France canceled a delivery of 5 missile boats that Israel had bought. So Israel stole them in something that came to be known as the Cherbourg Project..
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In 1988 a steamboat named Arabia was excavated. It was beneath nearly 50 feet of dirt in rural Kansas. But guess what? Some of the food was still edible!
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According to studies performed by the National Institute of Health, retiring to a cruise ship was often cheaper and provided a higher quality of life than in a retirement home.
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An abandoned Russian cruise ship has been adrift in the North Atlantic since 2013 (Lyubov Orlova)
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