“It was like breathing dirt.”

This chapter discusses how, in the instant the South Tower collapsed, the scale of the disaster had magnified, transforming the evacuation-in-progress into a full-blown rescue effort. The cloud rolling past the seawall blanketed the river's surface and blinded boat captains, forcing them to navigate by radar alone. But sometimes even the radar could not penetrate the particle-filled air. Nevertheless, ferry crews did not stop rescuing people: approximately 200 injured would end up transported aboard New York Waterway ferries by day's end. Despite the unprecedented scale of this disaster, mariners' “jack of all trades” capabilities proved essential in the aftermath of the attacks. Although the specific prerequisites have changed over time, attaining a Coast Guard “ticket” requires merchant mariners to complete training and earn certifications in first aid, CPR, and shipboard firefighting, among other specialized areas. On that morning, all that training was put to the test.

Transportation efficiency in eighteenth-century merchant vessels

A key ingredient in New England’s shipping successes was the speed with which its vessels completed their voyages. The principle research on this subject was completed by Gary Walton and published in its first form in 1967. Walton was ahead of his time in identifying the importance of a detailed study of colonial shipping and linking it to a broader Atlantic World. He draws several conclusions. First, that technological change between 1675 and 1775 was minimal in the industry. Second, costs and crew sizes declined due to increases in security after the Royal Navy eliminated piracy. Third, idle time in port decreased, leading to more efficiencies in acquiring cargo. Fourth, and finally, vessel speeds were stagnant throughout the period and were 1.6 to 1.97 knots for the voyage south between New England and the West Indies and 1.31 to 2.09 knots for the return trip. Averages calculated by Walton indicate speeds of between 1.6 and 1.8 knots, with the southbound legs slightly faster. I agree with Walton on all of his conclusions except for the last. Careful study of 145 logbooks chronicling the voyages of Massachusetts’s vessels in the West Indies trade indicates that the median vessel speed over the approximately 1,500 nautical miles from Boston to the islands was 2.71 knots and the mean speed approached 2.84 knots. In fact, the median southbound speed was five per cent slower than the trip home. In practical terms, this meant that according to Walton the time it took to travel 1,500 nautical miles averaged a minimum of almost 35 days. According to the logbooks, however, merchant mariners completed voyages between New England and the West Indies in slightly more than 25 days on average, 28 per cent faster than Walton figured.

Comparing historical and modern methods of Sea Surface Temperature measurement – Part 1: Review of methods, field comparisons and dataset adjustments

Sea Surface Temperature (SST) measurements have been obtained from a variety of different platforms, instruments and depths over the post-industrial period. Today most measurements come from ships, moored and drifting buoys and satellites. Shipboard methods include temperature measurement of seawater sampled by bucket and in engine cooling water intakes. Engine intake temperatures are generally thought to average a few tenths of a °C warmer than simultaneous bucket temperatures. Here I review SST measurement methods, studies comparing shipboard methods by field experiment and adjustments applied to SST datasets to account for variable methods. In opposition to contemporary thinking, I find average bucket-intake temperature differences reported from field studies inconclusive. Non-zero average differences often have associated standard deviations that are several times larger than the averages themselves. Further, average differences have been found to vary widely between ships and between cruises on the same ship. The cause of non-zero average differences is typically unclear given the general absence of additional temperature observations to those from buckets and engine intakes. Shipboard measurements appear of variable quality, highly dependent upon the accuracy and precision of the thermometer used and the care of the observer where manually read. Methods are generally poorly documented, with written instructions not necessarily reflecting actual practices of merchant mariners. Measurements cannot be expected to be of high quality where obtained by untrained sailors using thermometers of low accuracy and precision.

Administering Entitlement: Governance, Public Health Care, and the Early American State

This article explores the federal marine hospitals of the early republic, the first public health care system in US history. Beginning in 1798, the federal government collected twenty cents per month from mariners' wages and used this revenue to subsidize medical care for sick and disabled merchant mariners. Previous studies have traced links between marine hospitals and modern public policy. By studying governance from the bottom up, this article takes a different approach. I argue that jurists, physicians, and officials' regulation of sailors' entitlement to public health care facilitated and reflected a transformation of national authority. Between 1798 and 1816, sailors' entitlement was a local matter, based on the traditional paternalist understandings of maritime laborers as social dependents. By 1836, though, the federal Treasury redefined entitlement around a newly calculus of productivity: only the productive were entitled to care at the marine hospitals. This story about governance, federal law, and political economy in the early United States suggests that the early American state was a more vibrant participant in the market and society than has been previously understood.