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SS Ohio
SS ''Ohio'' was an oil tanker built for The Texas Company (later Texaco). The ship was launched on 20 April 1940 at the Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. in Chester, Pennsylvania. The United Kingdom requisitioned her to re-supply the island fortress of Malta during the Second World War. The tanker played a key role in Operation Pedestal, which was one of the fiercest and most heavily contested of the Malta convoys, in August 1942. Although ''Ohio'' reached Malta successfully, she was so badly damaged that she had to be effectively scuttled in order to offload her cargo, and never sailed again. The tanker is fondly remembered in Malta, where to this day she is considered the saviour of the beleaguered island. Design and building Sun Shipbuilding & Drydock Co. built ''Ohio'' as hull 190, launching her on 20 April 1940 and completing her that June. She was a skillful compromise, promising broad cargo-carrying capacity to the merchant and speed, balance, and stability to the marine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Valletta
Valletta (, mt, il-Belt Valletta, ) is an Local councils of Malta, administrative unit and capital city, capital of Malta. Located on the Malta (island), main island, between Marsamxett Harbour to the west and the Grand Harbour to the east, its population within administrative limits in 2014 was 6,444. According to the data from 2020 by Eurostat, the Functional Urban Area and metropolitan region covered the whole island and has a population of 480,134. Valletta is the southernmost capital of Europe, and at just , it is the European Union's smallest capital city. Valletta's 16th-century buildings were constructed by the Hospitaller Malta, Knights Hospitaller. The city was named after Jean Parisot de Valette, who succeeded in defending the island from an Ottoman invasion during the Great Siege of Malta. The city is Baroque architecture, Baroque in character, with elements of Mannerist architecture#Mannerist architecture, Mannerist, Neoclassical architecture, Neo-Classical and Mo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Defensively Equipped Merchant Ship
Defensively equipped merchant ship (DEMS) was an Admiralty Trade Division programme established in June 1939, to arm 5,500 British merchant ships with an adequate defence against enemy submarines and aircraft. The acronym DEMS was used to describe the ships carrying the guns, the guns aboard the ships, the military personnel manning the guns, and the shore establishment supporting the system. Background In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European countries such as Spain, France, the Netherlands and Britain armed their merchant ships to prevent capture by pirates, enemy commerce raiders and privateers when they conducted overseas trade. The most heavily armed were ships carrying valuable cargo back from the Far East. Notably the East Indiamen class of ships were constructed from the keel up with defence in mind, with their heavy armament making some of the most powerful examples equivalent to naval Fourth-rate ships of the line. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 18 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lloyd's Of London
Lloyd's of London, generally known simply as Lloyd's, is an insurance and reinsurance market located in London, England. Unlike most of its competitors in the industry, it is not an insurance company; rather, Lloyd's is a corporate body governed by the Lloyd's Act 1871 and subsequent Acts of Parliament. It operates as a partially-mutualised marketplace within which multiple financial backers, grouped in syndicates, come together to pool and spread risk. These underwriters, or "members", are a collection of both corporations and private individuals, the latter being traditionally known as "Names". The business underwritten at Lloyd's is predominantly general insurance and reinsurance, although a small number of syndicates write term life insurance. The market has its roots in marine insurance and was founded by Edward Lloyd at his coffee house on Tower Street in 1688. Today, it has a dedicated building on Lime Street which is Grade I listed. Traditionally business is tr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malta Convoys
The Malta convoys were Allied supply convoys of the Second World War. The convoys took place during the Siege of Malta in the Mediterranean Theatre. Malta was a base from which British sea and air forces could attack ships carrying supplies from Europe to Italian Libya. Britain fought the Western Desert Campaign against Axis armies in North Africa to keep the Suez Canal and to control Middle Eastern oil. The strategic value of Malta was so great the British risked many merchant vessels and warships to supply the island and the Axis made determined efforts to neutralise the island as an offensive base. The civilian population and the garrison required imports of food, medical supplies, fuel and equipment; the military forces on the island needed reinforcements, ammunition and spare parts. British convoys were escorted to Malta by ships of the Mediterranean Fleet, Force H and aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm and Royal Air Force, during the Battle of the Mediterranean (1940–1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operation Pedestal
Operation Pedestal ( it, Battaglia di Mezzo Agosto, Battle of mid-August), known in Malta as (), was a British operation to carry supplies to the island of Malta in August 1942, during the Second World War. Malta was a base from which British ships, submarines and aircraft attacked Axis convoys to Libya, during the North African Campaign (1940–1943). From 1940 to 1942, the Axis conducted the Siege of Malta, with air and naval forces. Despite many losses, enough supplies were delivered by the British for the population and military forces on Malta to resist, although it ceased to be an offensive base for much of 1942. The most crucial supply item in Operation Pedestal was fuel, carried by , an American tanker with a British crew. The convoy sailed from Britain on 3 August 1942 and passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean on the night of The Axis attempt to prevent the fifty ships of the convoy reaching Malta, using bombers, German E-boats, Italian MA ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malta
Malta ( , , ), officially the Republic of Malta ( mt, Repubblika ta' Malta ), is an island country in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago, between Italy and Libya, and is often considered a part of Southern Europe. It lies south of Sicily (Italy), east of Tunisia, and north of Libya. The official languages are Maltese and English, and 66% of the current Maltese population is at least conversational in the Italian language. Malta has been inhabited since approximately 5900 BC. Its location in the centre of the Mediterranean has historically given it great strategic importance as a naval base, with a succession of powers having contested and ruled the islands, including the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, Knights of St. John, French, and British, amongst others. With a population of about 516,000 over an area of , Malta is the world's tenth-smallest country in area and fourth most densely populated sovereign cou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is , with an estimated 2020 population of more than 67 million people. The United Kingdom has evolved from a series of annexations, unions and separations of constituent countries over several hundred years. The Treaty of Union between the Kingdom of England (which included Wales, annexed in 1542) and the Kingdom of Scotland in 170 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chester, Pennsylvania
Chester is a city in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, United States. Located within the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area, it is the only city in Delaware County and had a population of 32,605 as of the 2020 census. Incorporated in 1682, Chester is the oldest city in Pennsylvania and is located on the western bank of the Delaware River between the cities of Philadelphia and Wilmington, Delaware. It was the location of William Penn's first arrival in the Province of Pennsylvania and the county seat for Chester County from 1682 to 1788 and Delaware County from 1789 to 1851. Chester evolved over the centuries from a small town with wooden shipbuilding and textile factories into an industrial powerhouse producing steel ships for two World Wars and a myriad of consumer goods. Since the mid-twentieth century, it has lost its manufacturing base and over half of its residents and devolved into a post-industrial city struggling with pollution, poverty, and crime. History Early history Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oil Tanker
An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk transport of oil or its products. There are two basic types of oil tankers: crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries. Product tankers, generally much smaller, are designed to move refined products from refineries to points near consuming markets. Oil tankers are often classified by their size as well as their occupation. The size classes range from inland or coastal tankers of a few thousand metric tons of deadweight (DWT) to the mammoth ultra large crude carriers (ULCCs) of . Tankers move approximately of oil every year.UNCTAD 2006, p. 4. Second only to pipelines in terms of efficiency,Huber, 2001: 211. the average cost of transport of crude oil by tanker amounts to only US. Some specialized types of oil tankers have evolved. One of these is the naval replenishment oiler, a tanker which can fuel a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gyrocompass
A gyrocompass is a type of non-magnetic compass which is based on a fast-spinning disc and the rotation of the Earth (or another planetary body if used elsewhere in the universe) to find geographical direction automatically. The use of a gyrocompass is one of the seven fundamental ways to determine the heading of a vehicle. A gyroscope is an essential component of a gyrocompass, but they are different devices; a gyrocompass is built to use the effect of gyroscopic precession, which is a distinctive aspect of the general gyroscopic effect. Gyrocompasses are widely used for navigation on ships, because they have two significant advantages over magnetic compasses: * they find true north as determined by the axis of the Earth's rotation, which is different from, and navigationally more useful than, ''magnetic'' north, and * they are unaffected by ferromagnetic materials, such as in a ship's steel hull, which distort the magnetic field. Aircraft commonly use gyroscopic instrumen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Echo Sounding
Echo sounding or depth sounding is the use of sonar for ranging, normally to determine the depth of water (bathymetry). It involves transmitting acoustic waves into water and recording the time interval between emission and return of a pulse; the resulting time of flight, along with knowledge of the speed of sound in water, allows determining the distance between sonar and target. This information is then typically used for navigation purposes or in order to obtain depths for charting purposes. Echo sounding can also be used for ranging to other targets, such as fish schools. Hydroacoustic assessments have traditionally employed mobile surveys from boats to evaluate fish biomass and spatial distributions. Conversely, fixed-location techniques use stationary transducers to monitor passing fish. The word '' sounding'' is used for all types of depth measurements, including those that don't use sound, and is unrelated in origin to the word ''sound'' in the sense of noise or ton ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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