Cruisy shipwrecks

With the refloating of the Costa Concordia, it must be time to revisit the topic of shipwrecks, especially as WebUrbanist recently published - Unloved Boats: 8 abandoned cruise ships & liners. Among the ships was one of my favourites the SS America (my post). The WebUrbanist post said the America had further succumb to the ocean (In 1996 the stern section collapsed into the sea. From November 2005 to April 2007, the bow section suffered a successive series of collapses. By March of 2013, the ship’s superstructure was only visible at low tide) and included a photograph from Ocean Inspire of the last remains.

The section on the Concordia begins with - 'The most notorious recent example of a buoyancy-challenged large passenger liner is the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia, which struck a reef and partially sank on January 13th, 2012 off the coast of Italy’s Isola del Giglio. The disaster cost 32 lives (with 2 people still officially missing) and roughly $500 million, the latter figure referencing the ship’s value after being declared to be a “total loss”.
Though hope that the Costa Concordia will someday sail again has been abandoned, the ship itself has not: salvage operations began a mere month after the tragic accident and the liner was successfully refloated on September 17th, 2013. Current plans are for the Costa Concordia’s hulk to be towed to an Italian port sometime in 2014, where it will be broken up and sold for scrap.' There go my hopes that it would become a marvellous dive site.
-The Costa Concordia off Isola del Giglio - WebUrbanist

The Costa Concordia at night - CNN

The crushed superstructure - CNN

Other ships featured on the Urbanist post were the World Discover (my post).  The Duke of Lancaster -launched in 1956, the TSS Duke of Lancaster was built at the Belfast shipyards where the RMS Titanic was constructed. The passenger steamer operated as a ferry and as a cruise ship. In November 1978, it was retired from service and in August 1979 was moved to Llanerch-y-Mor near Mostyn, Wales to become a static leisure center known as “The Fun Ship”. Legal issues crippled the idea, and the Duke’s slab sides were gradually covered by rust and unauthorized graffiti. The ship became the largest open air art gallery in the UK when graffiti artists spray-painted large-scale artworks on the ship’s side, which have been augmented and complemented by a wealth of bright and surreal graffiti. 

 And finally the ice-strengthened Lyubov Orlova cruise ship was launched in 1976 with the express purpose of exploiting the lucrative Antarctic and Alaskan cruise market. Originally owned by the Soviet Union-based Far East Shipping Company, by early 2010 the ship had been seized and impounded in St. Johns, Newfoundland due to mounting debts.

The Lyubov Orlova in better days

In February of 2012, it was planned to tow it down to the Dominican Republic to be broken up for scrap, but the tow rope snapped after just one day at sea and the Lyubov Orlova unpowered was at the mercy of wind and waves. Declaring the vessel to be a danger to nearby offshore oil platforms, Transport Canada sent another tug out to tow it into international waters, and cut it loose.
The ship was last seen on February 23rd 2013 drifting off the western coast of Ireland. On March 1st, the Lyubov Orlova’s emergency position-indicating radio beacon indicated it was 700 nautical miles off the Kerry coast. Since EPIRBs are programmed to broadcast automatically when exposed to seawater, it’s presumed the ship may have sunk, but it could still be out there.

Abandonments - the LO in the Bay of Hebron in 2009

This is only 5 of the ships see the rest at Unloved Boats: 8 abandoned cruise ships & liners.

Challenging collections

I'm quite impressed with 'Collections : spot the difference' photographed by Rick Schwab.

It is 100 photo puzzle challenges, in each there are subtle differences between each pair of seemingly identical photos.

Just to make things even trickier, the puzzles feature all kinds of collections - including vintage cars, butterflies, kites, tattoos, seashells, flags...

There are three levels: keen, sharp and masterful, and just in case you aren't masterful, there are answer pages too.

This is just one of the 'Spot the differences' series that Rick has produced. 

The feature that really appealed to me is Rick's choice of subject matter in some of the photos, the everyday and the exotic - a line-up of fireman's gear, a page of music, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and these ones below.

Have a go, see how good you are!