The sea voyage is one of the earliest metaphors about the meaning of life. This lecture looks at how that metaphor works. First, we examine a short poem by Walt Whitman that seems to be about a merchant vessel. Next, we examine the story told in four nineteenth-century oil paintings by Thomas Cole, the Dean of the so-called Hudson River School of artists.
The Ups and Downs of Jack-Ups will present some of the history of the jack-up rig, from the early moveable construction barge in the late 19th century, through their early days in the offshore drilling industry to their current place as the prime method for drilling wells in shallow water depths (up to about 500 feet)
“The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome.” – Winston Churchill.
The Texas coastline and offshore waters are flat, shallow, featureless, filled with shoals and subject to extreme weather including hurricanes and nor’easter gales. Throw in two centuries of naval warfare in Texas waters and you get a recipe for shipwrecks.
December 2015 marked the fifteenth anniversary of the Houston Maritime Museum. As the Museum begins the process of moving to a larger facility on the Turning Basin, we look back on our beginnings as the brainchild of founder James L. Manzolillo. This lecture looks back at the life and passion of Jim Manzolillo as the inspiration for the museum we know today as well as fifteen years of concerted efforts to take the institution to the Port.
The oil and gas industry, over the past 25 years, has moved from shallow water exploration and production of oil to ever greater depths. Each advance requires new designs to explore and produce hydrocarbon from deep beneath the ocean floor. The marine industry rose to the challenge of lifting, transporting and delivering the diverse structures from shore side construction facilities to on location stations several hundred miles offshore in deep ocean environments
This lecture is inspired by a fascination with the Mexican government’s vision and the leadership of a handful of Texans that led to the transformation of a bay and a bayou to create a key engine of prosperity, the Port of Houston. The success of the Port has resulted from efforts made by these visionaries working through varied political systems, worldviews, and cultural differences.
In 1684, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, set sail on the La Belle to establish a French colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The story of this ill-fated expedition and recent discovery of the 300 year old wreck is an epic tale of adventure, exploration, international intrigue and death. This history, now told through the conservation of its recovered 1.5 million artifacts, has enough bizarre twists and turns to satisfy maritime novelists like C.S. Forester and Patrick O’Brien.
Richard S. Hall, Ph.D., award-winning author/artist/illustrator, native Texan, graduate of The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas, and Texas A&M University, will be discussing the variety of lighthouse and lightship designs, from coastal lights to major beacons, that once graced the Gulf Coast.
Within days of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, artists and writers of all levels drew inspiration from the seemingly unreal and inherently symbolic nature of the disaster, and a new cultural industry of Titanic myth-making was born.
