Literally Just Boat Facts

She/Her Sometimes satire, sometimes actual facts. I hyperfixated on ocean liners for 6 months and filled my head with useless boat facts and now I’m going to share them with you all. Feel free to send your favorite boat facts to my askbox. Will post image credits when able

[ltwilliammowett]

A Three Masted Vessel at Anchor at Sunrise, by Adolphus Knell (1801-1875)

[ltwilliammowett]

Ships in Falmouth Harbor, England, by Peter Ellenshaw, 1953

[boatfacts]

I know I don’f need to apologize for lacking activity on a gimmick blog, but here I am. Doing that anyways.

[boatfacts]

Boat Fact #36

The widest area on a ship is known as the Beam. typically, the wider the beam, the more initial stability the ship has.

[ltwilliammowett]

A ship of the line in a harbor, by English School, 19th century

[postingcards]

real photo postcards of cunard's greyhounds on their sea trials ca. 1907

[boatfacts]

Boat Fact #34

On this day, 111 years ago, RMS Lusitania was struck by a torpedo from a German U-Boat and sunk off the coast of Ireland on her way back from New York.

She sunk in about 18 minutes, taking 1,197 lives with her.

[postingcards]

postcards featuring charles turner's vertical portrait series for cunard ca. 1920s

[boatfacts]

Boat Fact #33

We all know, thanks to the Titanic, that no ship is unsinkable... or is there?

The MV Joyita, originally designed to be a luxury yacht and later converted into a merchant vessel, was a wooden cedar-oak framed ship. She was lined with 640 cubic feet of cork, making her virtually unsinkable.

And it's true, that when her passengers and crew went missing in October of 1955, the Joyita was found 5 weeks later partially submerged and adrift in the South Pacific.

[postingcards]

aquitania at new york art card from charles turner's ship portrait series, ca. 1923 @postcardtimemachine

[boatfacts]

Boat Fact #32

One aspect of the sinking of the Titanic that gets discussed from time to time was the pair of binoculars meant for the crows nest stuck in a locker. it's alleged that the key was mistakenly taken by the original second officer, David Blair, who was reassigned as part of a last-minute reshuffling of the crew.

However, lookouts were greatly discouraged from using binoculars to the point of not allowing binoculars in the crows nest at all. peripheral vision was far more effective when looking for obstacles. In fact, second officer Lightoller testified that binoculars were used only to identify objects, not to spot them.

[oceanlinersmodeller]

Farewell, old girl. Farewell.

SS United States 2025. Digital speed painting study sketch.

[postingcards]

rms andania in the mersey, alexandra towing co. tug in the foreground. art by charles turner postcard ca. 1922

[boatfacts]

Boat Fact #31

There are several terms and methods used to determine how large a ship is. Displacement is the actual weight of a ship. This is determined by calculating how much water the ship will displace and then converting this value into it's actual weight in either displacement tons or tonnes.

Gross Register Tonnage (GRT) is the historical measurement for internal volume. It determines how much usable space there is inside of a ship. We now determine this value with Gross Tonnage and Net Tonnage.

[rabbiteclair]

the Ever Given was March 2021

the Titan submersible was June 2023

circa September 2025 we're due for another round of the internet's favorite game show, How Fucked Is That Boat

[boatfacts]

Boat Fact

This person got me excited, man... smh that's so mean to lie like that

[sailorloneperblog]

"Sunrise over a calm sea and numerous sailboats"- Carl Locher (1851-1915) was a Danish realist painter

[boatfacts]

Boat Fact #30

The Dom Fernando II e Glória was the last sailing frigate to be built by the Portuguese Navy. Though she suffered from a fire in 1963, her hull survived and was later restored into a museum ship. She is one of the oldest warships you can still visit today!

[photo via lookphotos]