Ryan Ho Kilpatrick

writer

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  • Maritime history

Hong Kong’s Lighthouses and Their Eurasian Sentries

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

Reef Fish Could Disappear Within Our Lifetimes

  • by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
  • Posted on April 4, 2018May 1, 2018
  • Piracy

Hong Kong the Pirate Capital: Hijacked on the High Seas

  • by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
  • Posted on February 7, 2018May 1, 2018
  • Piracy

Hong Kong the Pirate Capital: Piracy and Prejudice

  • by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
  • Posted on January 18, 2018May 1, 2018
  • Piracy

Hong Kong the Pirate Capital: The Worst Generation

  • by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
  • Posted on December 14, 2017May 1, 2018
  • Piracy

Hong Kong the Pirate Capital: Cheung Po Tsai and the World’s Largest Pirate Fleet

  • by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
  • Posted on November 16, 2017May 1, 2018
  • Piracy

Hong Kong the Pirate Capital: Rising Tide

  • by Ryan Ho Kilpatrick
  • Posted on October 18, 2017May 1, 2018

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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.
Watercolours.
“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.
Unlike many of the wrecks that litter Malta's waters, the demise of Um El Faroud was not entirely planned. In 1995, an explosion ripped through the Libyan fuel tanker during maintainance works at the dry docks, taking the lives of nine shipyard workers. Declared beyond repair, the 120m-long hulk was towed to the south of the island and committed to the deep.
P29 is a a former patrol boat from the Maritime Squadron of the Maltese Armed Forces. Built for the GDR Volksmarine, she swept the River Elbe that divided East and West Germany for mines before being sold on to Malta after the fall of the Iron Curtain. In 2007 she was scuttled in the Gozo Channel, where continues to rest, proud of the sandy seabed, just shy of 40 metres below the surface.

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