Book Review: Inside the Britannic by Simon Mills
Britannic—Titanic’s little sister. The third Olympic-class liner, she suffered the same fate as her older sibling and sank near the Greek island of Kea on November 21, 1916. There was a (highly fictionalized) TV movie in 2000, but Britannic has still been largely overshadowed by Titanic in popular culture. But ship nerds (I use that…
Poem: An Elegy for Lucy on the 110th Anniversary
On the 110th anniversary of the Lusitania’s sinking, I wrote an elegy for the ship and those who died in the disaster.
Book Review: Finding the Titanic by Dalton Rains
Growing up, I was obsessed with the Titanic. I think most ship enthusiasts are. I remember buying books like Exploring the Titanic and 882 1/2 Amazing Answers to Your Questions About the Titanic at the Scholastic Book Fair or ordering from the Scholastic Book Club and pouring over them for hours. There’s certainly something to…
Blazing Star: The Loss of the Angelina Lauro
Greetings from the US Virgin Islands! My wife and I are on a Caribbean cruise aboard the Norwegian Escape this week, and today we’re in Saint Thomas. We have an excursion booked for Shipwreck Cove, where we’ll snorkel the wreck of the freighter Cartanza Senora (where I hope to get some cool underwater shots). But…
A Visit to the Yarmouth Castle Memorial
Between our cruises on the Margaritaville at Sea Paradise and the Norwegian Escape, my wife and I had a free day to spend in sunny Florida. So we rented a car and headed out to nearby Pompano Beach. It’s there—at the Pompano Beach City Cemetery—that exists a memorial to those who perished in the Yarmouth…
Why I Want to Sail on This 34-Year-Old Cruise Ship
“Why?” “That should be…interesting.” “Really?” “Eww.” These are just a few of the responses I’ve gotten when I’ve said that we’re sailing on the 34-year-old Margaritaville at Sea Paradise. I get it too. It’s the oldest cruise ship that regularly sails out of North America. It offers two and three-day cruises to the Bahamas at…
The Captain’s Table
Stories from the Golden Age of Ocean Liners to the Cruise Ships of Today
How it all started…
Over a decade ago, I started a blog called The Captain’s Table to tell the stories about the ships and people involved in the Golden Age of ocean liners. I was working as a tour guide aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA at the time and it was a way to help me both deepen my knowledge and explore a topic I’d been passionate about for a long time.
With this overhauled version of the blog, I’ll continue to explore the stories, ships, and people connected to the old ocean liners. But there’ll also be a new emphasis on cruise ships as well: they continue the traditions and history made famous by such ships as Queen Mary, United States, Mauretania, Caronia, and many others. I’ll be nerding out a lot, and I really hope that you enjoy this blog.
Zach Whitlow
Writer, Ship Geek, and Avid Cruiser