A work-in-progress. I’d forgotten what a subtly complex shape Virginia’s sloped casemate really is; flat, orthographic drawings just don’t do it justice. That, and how big the ship actually was. Little wonder they thought it was nigh-on invincible.

Video by Michael Paulsen, July 6, 2010

Had to happen, sooner or later.

Oil that washed up on the beach in Crystal Beach over the holiday weekend came from the BP oil spill, a spokesman for the Texas General Land Office confirmed. The U.S. Coast Guard and Texas General Land Office have scheduled a press conference for this afternoon in Texas City.

Land office spokesman Jim Suydam said that testing of the oil discovered Saturday on the Bolivar Peninsula was indeed from BP’s Deepwater Horizon well off the coast of Louisiana making it the first confirmed report that oil from the spill had reach the Texas Coastline.

Officials described the finding as a minimal amount of oil and that most of the oil had been cleared from the beaches on the peninsula. No beaches were closed because of the oil.

Officials have not confirmed if large oil sheets that washed up on Galveston’s west end last week were connected to the BP spill.

Texas is fortunate in that the prevailing currents of the Gulf of Mexico tend to move the oil to the east, rather than to the west. Nonetheless, there’s no way were we going to not have to deal with this. Still, what we end up with isn’t going to be anything like Louisiana and points east.

Image via Weather Underground. Udated details here.

Tropical Storm Alex — possibly low-level Hurricane Alex next week — is churning away across the Yucatan Peninsula, with (as of now) a likely landfall in northern Mexico early Thursday. Not sure how big the storm will be in expanse, but the Deepwater Horizon slicks will be on the “dirty” side of the storm, and that doesn’t bode well for the Texas coast, even if we avoid much in the way of storm conditions.

Also of note (but entirely unrelated to Alex), this morning I happened to see the best-defined funnel cloud I’ve ever seen, and just so happened to have the camera in my hand at the time. Don’t think it touched the ground.

Full-res closeups after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mariner of the Seas at Ocho Rios, Jamaica. Photo by Joe Kafka, Associated Press.

Story updated below.

Royal Caribbean has announced it will replace Voyager of the Seas, which has operated out of Galveston for the last few years, with Mariner of the Seas beginning in November 2011. Mariner is of the same class as Voyager, at about 138,000 gt, but is newer, having entered service in 2003. She is capable of carrying 3,114 passengers. Fun fact: Mariner of the Seas carries FIFA World Cup matches:

You won’t have to miss the World Cup while you’re sailing with us. From the first kick on June 11 to the final whistle on July 11, we’ll be airing all the games of the 2010 FIFA World Cup onboard.

Whether you choose to cheer on your team in the comfort of your stateroom or to gather with other fans in World Cup designated onboard lounges, our programs will bring the excitement of the tournament to sea with themed activities, food and beverages.

It’s also widely rumored Galveston port officials will announce Wednesday that Carnival will bring the brand-new (still under construction, in fact) Carnival Magic to Galveston in late 2011. It’s not clear whether Magic would join the line’s current Galveston-based ships, Ecstasy and Conquest, or (more likely) replace one of those replace the line’s current Galveston-based ship, Conquest, and operate alongside Ecstasy. At 130,000 gt, Magic is larger than either Ecstasy (70,367 gt, entered service 1991; refitted 2009) or Conquest (110,000 grt, entered service 2002).

Obligatory comparison of Carnival Magic (2011) and an Olympic-Class liner (1911). Note that while the length of ships hasn’t increased much, modern ships are massively bulkier, capable of squeezing in a similar number of passengers in much more overall comfort.

As oil spews in Gulf, BP chief at UK yacht race

LONDON – In what one environmentalist described as “yet another public relations disaster” for embattled energy giant BP, CEO Tony Hayward took time off Saturday to attend a glitzy yacht race around England’s Isle of Wight.

As social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook lit up with outrage, BP spokespeople rushed to defend Hayward, who has drawn withering criticism as the public face of BP’s halting efforts to stop the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Spokeswoman Sheila Williams said Hayward took a break from overseeing BP efforts to stem the undersea gusher in Gulf of Mexico so he could watch his boat “Bob” participate in the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race. The 52-foot yacht is made by the Annapolis, Maryland-based boatbuilder Farr Yacht Design.

The annual one-day race is one of the world’s largest, attracting more than 1,700 boats and 16,000 sailors as world-renown yachtsmen compete with wealthy amateurs in the 50-nautical mile course around the island.

It’s The Onion’s world; we just live in it.

I dislike posting to Maritime Texas in ways that seem explicitly partisan, but there are times that political debate and language — and their influence on real-world events — cannot be ignored. In response to Joe Barton’s asinine, fawning apology to BP CEO Tony Hayward yesterday, the House Republican leadership issued this statement (my emphasis).

The oil spill in the Gulf is this nation’s largest natural disaster and stopping the leak and cleaning up the region is our top priority.  Congressman Barton’s statements this morning were wrong.  BP itself has acknowledged that responsibility for the economic damages lies with them and has offered an initial pledge of $20 billion dollars for that purpose.

The description of this event as a “natural disaster” is not accidental. I’ve heard it repeatedly over the last few weeks, always from the GOP. It’s explicit messaging, an attempt to deflect blame (and presumably liability) away from BP in particular, and the offshore oil and gas industry in general. It started with my own governor’s remark that the Deepwater Horizon disaster was “a act of God,” and the bullshit continues continues to flow, like the blown-out well itself, just as ugly and just as toxic. “It’s a natural disaster,” they say, “like an earthquake or a tornado. Who could have known?” Or as Rand Paul recently said, in reference to both the Gulf disaster and the Massey Energy coal mine explosion in which 29 miners died, “maybe sometimes accidents happen.”

Deepwater Horizon is not a natural disaster, even if oil and gas are naturally occurring substances. Uranium is a naturally-occurring material as well, but anyone suggesting that Chernobyl was a “natural disaster” would (rightly) be laughed out of the room. The same now applies to Reps. Boehner, Cantor and Pence.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden meet with BP executives in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, June 16, 2010, to discuss the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Pictured, from left, are BP CEO Tony Hayward, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP General Counsel Rupert Bondy, BP Managing Director Robert Dudley, Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Attorney General Eric Holder, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Maritime Texas has been pretty hard on BP over the last few weeks, and will continue to be. But I’m glad to see that BP is doing the right thing in establishing — without too much arm-twisting — a $20B fund to pay damage claims related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, along with $100M to directly benefit oil workers who’ve been sidelined as a result of the moratorium on new offshore drilling. This is a real victory on many levels.

I know that this amount will, in the end, probably prove insufficient. And I know that as phenomenal a figure as this is, it’s still a relatively small amount compared to BP’s overall revenues. BP can afford it, and won’t suffer too much over the long haul. But after the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, it took twenty years — twenty years — to settle all the claims against Exxon in court. When the case finally ended a few months ago, many of the original plaintiffs were years since dead.

Here’s hoping that isn’t the case this time around.

In other news, Joe Barton is a horse’s ass, and a bought-and-paid-for one at that. I wonder what else he’s apologizing for.

“Sunrise, San Jacinto Park” by Captain Louis Vest, OneEighteen on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Millions of dollars and major repairs have kept the iconic Battleship Texas afloat over the years, but last weekend it was a pump and a rag that stopped it from sinking into the Houston Ship Channel.

On Thursday [June 10], an employee at the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site, where the Texas is moored, noticed the 96-year-old ship was sitting lower in the water than usual when he left the park.

“The next morning when he got back, it was noticeably deeper,” said Mike Cox, spokesman for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. “He and other staff went below deck and found the ship was taking on water — to use nautical speak.”

A combination of a pump failure and leaks — at least one new one — had caused the ship to take on at least 105,000 gallons of water and sink nearly three feet into the channel.

By Saturday, replacement pumps and a rag stuffed into the new leak had righted the ship, and it was stabilized on Sunday, Cox said. Tours of the ship continued throughout the weekend.

“We think it’s a wake-up call as to the importance to getting this vessel stabilized so future generations can appreciate and enjoy it,” he said.

Texas had her last major overhaul in 1988-90, when her hull was extensivelt repaired and she was completely re-decked. She emerged from that refit in her current overall blue, in what the Navy called Measure 21. That was the last scheme she carried during World War II, and the one that matches her current configuration, which is not much changed from 1945.

“This worrisome incident, which we fortunately succeeded in bringing under control, underscores the importance of moving forward rapidly with plans to place the Texas in a dry-berth,” said Carter Smith, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department executive director. “I’m just glad our folks at the park showed a lot of resourcefulness in preventing the situation from getting out of hand.”

Three years ago, voters approved a bond package that included $25 million to dry-berth the ship, with another $4 million provided by the Battleship Texas Foundation.

TPWD has selected an engineering firm to design the dry berth and is negotiating fees. The dry berth is slated to be completed by 2014, the centennial of the ship’s commissioning.