Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

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Category: Maritime history

Maritime history

Forgotten at Home, Hong Kong’s Iconic Junks Sail on in Foreign Waters

by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
Posted on December 5, 2018

Maritime history

Hong Kong’s Lighthouses and Their Eurasian Sentries

by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
Posted on April 18, 2018May 1, 2018

Maritime history

Songs the Drowned Men Sing

by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
Posted on August 31, 2017May 1, 2018

Maritime history

What Happened to the Titanic’s Six Chinese Survivors?

by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
Posted on August 13, 2017May 1, 2018

Maritime history

The Dragon Boat Festival Has Nothing to do With Dragons

by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
Posted on May 30, 2017May 1, 2018

Maritime history

For China, Lighthouses and Empire-Building Have Always Gone Hand in Hand

by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
Posted on October 14, 2015May 1, 2018

Maritime history

Yellow River, Blue Ocean: The Documentary Series that Almost Changed China

by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
Posted on May 22, 2015May 1, 2018

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“As for the fall, it began long ago. Can’t stop the rain; can’t stop the snow. I sit in my chair. I look at the street. The neighbour returns my smile of defeat. I move with the leaves. I shine with the chrome. I’m almost alive. I’m almost at home. No one to follow and nothing to teach—except that the goal falls short of the reach.” Tuen Mun to Yuen Long, the long way around.

Grazzi, Malta. It’s been real.

Sicilian scenes.

HMS Hellespont is one of Malta’s many WWII shipwrecks. A familiar site in Valletta’s Grand Harbour for over 20 years, the sea rescue paddle steamer tug was sunk during an Italian air bombardment in 1942—a year that saw this little island become the most bombed place on Earth. After the war, her mangled metal body was towed several nautical miles out to sea, where she now lies under 42m of dizzyingly blue and clear water. Dropping down the water column, the temperature plummets sharply from 28 degrees to a spine-chilling 17 on the rocky seabed. As her lines slowly come into focus, you begin to notice the details that make the Hellespont feel so much realer than bigger scuttled wrecks: the eratic scatter of debris that surrounds her, the thick layers of calcium carbonate concretions built up over decades, and the splayed metal ribs of her port bow still frozen in the moment she met her violent end.

“Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home.” Written for the white whale but just as germane to the wreck-hunting ROV, our eyes in a world never before beheld by living men.

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