A research vessel that specializes in hydrographic surveys has been dispatched to assist in the investigation into the recent sinking of the Gloucester-based commercial fishing vessel Lily Jean with all seven hands lost.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has dispatched its 208-foot survey vessel Thomas Jefferson to take part in support of the ongoing investigation.
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At least 50 shipping containers slipped off a vessel at the Port of Long Beach on Tuesday morning, leaving officials scrambling to determine what happened.
Port spokesperson Art Marroquin said the ship, the Mississippi, was berthed at Terminal G just before 9 a.m. when the containers mysteriously fell overboard into the water.
Marroquin and other port officials did not respond to questions about the ship. They confirmed, however, that no injuries were reported and all operations have been temporarily suspended as responders work to secure the containers.
Port officials are in the preliminary stages of investigating what caused the incident.
An online site dedicated to tracking ships says the Mississippi flies under a Portuguese flag and was last docked in China two weeks ago.
The incident happened only four days after the port was named the Best West Coast seaport in North America for a seventh straight year by the trade publication Asia Cargo News.
The Russian oligarch billionaire lifestyle can be yours for the potentially low, low price of tens of millions of dollars, courtesy of the U.S. government.
The National Maritime Services, working on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service, is auctioning off a superyacht, the $300-million-plus Amadea, which currently sits in a San Diego harbor, with a bid deposit starting at $10 million.
Florida-based Fraser Yachts, the auction’s promotional agents, described the prize “as one of the most comprehensively equipped yachts in her class.”
The luxury yacht Amadea, which officials say was seized from a Russian oligarch, is set to be auctioned.
(U.S. Marshals Service and National Maritime Services)
An additional 21 cabins can house a professional crew of up to 36 workers.
One of the ship’s jewels is a glass elevator that serves all decks, while a second lift is available for crew.
The yacht includes a glass-edged mosaic pool with submerged barstools, and an outdoor bar area surrounded by sun pads (cushioned areas for perfecting your tan).
The ship’s main salon showcases a piano and marble fireplace.
The superyacht Amadea sails into San Diego Bay on June 27.
(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)
The yacht was designed by Espen Øino, the acclaimed Norwegian designer and naval architect, while its decadent interiors were created by designer François Zuretti.
The ship has an ocean-crossing range of 8,000 nautical miles at a speed of 13 knots.
For late-arriving quests, the Amadea also boasts a helideck.
The U.S. Justice Department maintained in a 2023 civil forfeiture complaint that Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov was the ship’s owner. Kerimov took possession of the vessel sometime around 2021, though his transactions were cloaked through shell companies, according to the complaint.
The Amadea is escorted by the Coast Guard in the ocean off San Diego. The vessel was seized from a sanctioned Russian oligarch, officials say.
(Gregory Bull / Associated Press)
Kerimov was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018 and labeled a “specially designated national” for his alleged role in money laundering related to the purchase of French villas.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control determined Kerimov was a direct beneficiary of Russian President Vladimir Putin and “played a key role in advancing Russia’s malign activities,” which includes the invasion of Ukraine.
The U.S. has said it’s working with allies to put pressure on Russian oligarchs, some of whom are close to Putin and have had their yachts seized, to try to compel him to stop the war, the Associated Press reports.
The Amadea was seized in Fiji in April 2022 and arrived in San Diego in June that year.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled in March that the Amadea was to be forfeited to the federal government. That decision is being appealed by the man who claims to own the sumptuous vessel — Eduard Khudainatov, the nonsanctioned former chairman of Russian state-controlled oil giant Rosneft, according to the Associated Press. U.S. prosecutors maintain that Khudainatov is a straw owner of the yacht.
On July 1, the Marshals Service authorized Fraser Yachts as the promotional agent for the sealed bid auction.
While most people saw the action on land during the reenactment of the Battle of Bunker Hill in Gloucester, some took part aboard ships reenacting the Royal Navy off Half Moon Beach.
The ability to recreate an amphibious assault was a major reason Stage Fort Park was an ideal spot for the battle event, according to Maritime Gloucester Executive Director Michael De Koster.
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PORTICELLO, Sicily — Rescuers searching the wreck of a superyacht that sank off Sicily brought ashore a fifth body on Thursday, leaving one person still unlocated, as investigators sought to learn why the vessel sank so quickly.
Rescue crews brought the body bag ashore at Porticello port while divers continued the search for the sixth missing person.
No signs of life have emerged over four days of searching the yacht’s hull on the seabed 50 meters (164 feet) underwater.
The Bayesian, a 56-meter (184-foot) British-flagged yacht, went down in a storm early Monday as it was moored about a kilometer (half mile) offshore. Civil protection officials said they believe the ship was struck by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout, and sank quickly.
The six missing passengers included British tech magnate Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter and associates who had successfully defended him in a recent U.S. federal fraud trial.
I’d long forgotten the enlightening words I heard from the depths of my mind on an lsd trip as a young man. I was upon a sailing ship in the vacuum of space when a tidal wave of cosmos crashed down and pitched the boat around. The words, “your greatest joy will be furthest from shore” rang out.
A moon shot to make Southern California an international leader in the “blue economy” is taking shape in San Pedro as a $30-million renovation of three historic waterfront warehouses nears completion.
AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles, as the complex is known, is home to sea-centered businesses such as the headquarters of explorer Robert Ballard, who located the wrecks of the Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck. His research vessel the Nautilus docks there, as does Pacific Alliance, a vessel for farming mussels far out at sea.
On barges docked on AltaSea’s wharf, scientists from USC, UCLA and Caltech are developing methods of reducing ocean carbon dioxide and technology to scrub ships’ exhaust stacks. Other tenants in the former warehouses include startup firms that are building a new generation of remote undersea cameras and 3-D printers to build parts for offshore wind, wave and solar farms.
Jenny Cornuelle Krusoe, executive vice president and COO of AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
An aerial view of the Captura, a barge at AltaSea where crews monitor equipment used for pulling carbon dioxide from seawater.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“AltaSea is education, research and business all working together,” said Jenny Krusoe, executive vice president and chief operating officer. The size and waterfront location, she added, make AltaSea “a unicorn piece of property that is basically made to be the mother ship for the blue economy.”
Mayor Karen Bass and others who played a part in AltaSea, including City Councilman Tim McOsker and Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka, are expected to officially open the facilities at a ceremony Wednesday.
AltaSea is bringing new purpose to a previously moribund wharf that once played a rich part in the evolution of Southern California.
In the early 20th century, Los Angeles merchants and city leaders set out to capture a share of the increased global shipping trade expected to pass through the Panama Canal, a link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that opened in 1914. They created a municipal wharf on the waterfront of what has become the sprawling Port of Los Angeles, with a long stretch of warehouses where ships were loaded and unloaded into trains, carts and trucks by burly longshoremen.
The growth of containerized shipping after World War II gradually rendered City Dock No. 1 obsolete for moving goods, and the wharf was little used for decades. By 2011, advocates, including port officials,saw it for what it was: a choice 35-acre site for a research center and tech companies focused on sustainable uses of the world’s oceans.
A key part of the mission of the nonprofit enterprise is to create jobs with pioneering companies. Among them is the nonprofit AltaSeads Conservancy, the largest aquaculture seed bank in the United States. Like their terrestrial counterparts, aquaculture seed banks are meant to preserve genetic diversity in plant life for the future. AltaSeads is also advancing the use of kelp as an easily grown resource.
“It’s a super versatile crop,” said scientist Emily Aguirre of AltaSeads, that can provide food for humans and livestock while removing carbon from the atmosphere. “It can be also be used to fertilize terrestrial agriculture, and it’s fantastic because if you grow it out in the ocean, you’re not taking up any land.”
Michael Marty Rivera and Emily Aguirre of AltaSeads Conservancy monitor varieties of kelp in storage tanks.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Kelp is also a source of algae that cuts methane emissions from cows, Aguirre said, and has many other food applications, including reducing freezer burn in ice cream.
Eco Wave Power, an Israel-based company, is set to install the first U.S. onshore wave energy pilot station in the coming months on the port’s Main Channel, next to AltaSea. The system of floaters attaches directly to preexisting structures — like breakwaters, wharfs and jetties — and produces energy from the constant motion of the waves. Another AltaSea business, CorPower Ocean, uses buoys and hydraulic pressure for energy production.
Rustom Jehangir, founder and CEO at Blue Robotics, demonstrates his BlueROV2, a high-performance remotely operated vehicle that can be used for inspections, research and adventuring.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The figurative whale for AltaSea so far is Ballard, who set up shop at the aged docks several years ago and has captured public interest as a deep-sea explorer and scientific researcher. It’s his headquarters and home to his research and development.
AltaSea has an array of solar panels on the roof bigger than three football fields that generates 2.2 megawatts, enough to power 700 homes annually and more energy than the entire campus will need when it reaches full capacity.
The BlueROV2 vehicle.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
To fund the wharf’s redevelopment, AltaSea received $29 million from the state, Port of Los Angeles and private donors. The funds paid for construction, installation of the solar panels and the future creation of a park.
AltaSea is one of multiple projects that are part of a two-decade process to clean up the air and water at the port and turn unused docks, wharves and warehouses into places where more people will want to work or visit, port officials said.
“Bringing people to our waterfront has been a hallmark of the Port of Los Angeles for decades,” Seroka said in 2020, and recent investments “will really bring us to the next level.”
Before the pandemic, about 3 million people came to L.A.’s waterfront annually for recreation, a tally port leaders hope to see double in the years ahead. To smooth the path of new development catering to visitors, the Port of Los Angeles is investing about $1 billion in infrastructure improvements over 10 years, Seroka said. Private developers building AltaSea and other projects will invest an estimated $500 million.
Taylor Marchment, the manufacturing R&D lead at RCAM Technologies, shows off 3-D concrete printing for offshore renewable energy.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
One of those projects, West Harbor, is a long-planned redevelopment of a 42-acre site that used to be home to Ports O’ Call, a kitschy imitation of a New England fishing village, built in the 1960s, that fell out of favor years ago and was razed in 2018.
Restaurants anchoring the dining, shopping and entertainment center will include Yamashiro, the second branch of a Japanese-themed Hollywood destination for locals and tourists. Another large restaurant will be Mexican-themed, with an over-water bar. There will also be a food hall and Bark Social, a membership off-leash dog park, bar and cafe. The complex is slated to open next year.
The waterfront developments represent improvements that San Pedro residents have been waiting decades to see, said Dustin Trani, whose family has been in the local restaurant business for nearly a century. Last year the chef opened Trani’s Dockside Station, a seafood restaurant situated between AltaSea and West Harbor, in part to capitalize on the expected influx of visitors.
“We’re on the cusp of a very big economic boom in this area that has not yet been seen,” Trani said.
This file photo shows a cruise ship. The ship pictured is unrelated to the assault that federal prosecutors say took place on Oct. 20.
Lisa Davidson via Unsplash
Instead of quieting down on a Carnival cruise ship, a passenger smashed his cocktail glass into a man’s face and beat him during a theater show, federal prosecutors said.
The man who officials said asked Michael Truman to “quiet down” twice before he was beaten needed about 19 stitches for cuts on his face, according to court documents.
Truman, a 39-year-old resident of Portsmouth, Virginia, was accused of “loudly disrupting” the theater show as the Carnival “Magic” cruise ship was in the waters off Nantucket, Massachusetts, on Oct. 20, prosecutors said.
When he refused to keep quiet upon his fellow passenger’s requests, Truman struck the man in the face with his glass as the man tried to get help from a cruise employee, according to prosecutors.
Then, Truman got on top of the man and continued to hit him, prosecutors said.
Now Truman has pleaded guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia announced in a Feb. 15 news release.
McClatchy News contacted Truman’s defense attorney, Nicholas Ryan Hobbs, for comment Feb. 20 and didn’t receive an immediate response.
Cruise security said they found Truman inside his cabin, bleeding from his right hand, after the beating, according to an affidavit.
He told security he was defending himself against the man, who he said asked him “to stop clapping so loud” during the theater show, the affidavit says.
Truman claimed he hit the man after the man first swung at him, but he said he couldn’t remember exactly what he hit him with, according to the affidavit.
Investigators found a broken “old fashioned/lowball cocktail glass” following the assault, the affidavit says.
The broken cocktail glass. Affidavit
Truman also told ship security “he did not know how he got the cut on his hand, claimed he had consumed three or four drinks of alcohol that day, and offered to stay in his room for the rest of the cruise,” the affidavit says.
The wife of the man who officials said was beaten witnessed the assault and told investigators Truman appeared intoxicated, the affidavit says.
Two days later, the cruise ship arrived at the Norfolk Cruise Terminal on Oct. 22, according to the court filing.
McClatchy News contacted Carnival for comment Feb. 20 and didn’t receive an immediate response.
Truman faces up to 10 years in prison, prosecutors said. His sentencing hearing is set for Aug. 29.
Julia Marnin is a McClatchy National Real-Time reporter covering the southeast and northeast while based in New York. She’s an alumna of The College of New Jersey and joined McClatchy in 2021. Previously, she’s written for Newsweek, Modern Luxury, Gannett and more.
The Queen Mary has for years been a landmark for the city of Long Beach, an iconic ocean liner that acted as a majestic sentry at the port and a popular attraction for both tourists and locals.
But the aging ship has in recent years become more of a white elephant in need of millions of dollars in repairs just to stay afloat.
Years of mounting financial woes, a pandemic shutdown and much-needed repairs made for an uncertain future for the Queen Mary. Financial audits showed the ship was running a deficit, and at least one report warned that it was at risk of sinking if it didn’t get millions of dollars in repairs.
But now, the 90-year-old ship seems to be headed for smoother sailing, with financial records showing it is finally turning a profit for the city of Long Beach.
On the ocean liner that has been turned into a hotel and tourist attraction, rooms are being booked, visitors are touring the ship, and the Queen Mary’s operator said the number of visitors has been outpacing the figures from before the COVID pandemic, signaling a new, hopefully better, era for the famous ship docked in the Long Beach Harbor.
But the recent financial turnaround will do little in the short term to address the hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs needed to keep the ship afloat and open to the public.
The Queen Mary closed for more than three years because of the pandemic, and stayed closed due to much-needed repairs. But once the ship reopened in April — this time under the city’s direction instead of a leaseholder — visitors began to return in greater numbers. The ship has about 200 rooms and several large halls that can be booked for weddings and other gatherings.
“Even though it’s been here since 1967, it was kind of a relaunch — a new Queen Mary if you will,” said Steve Caloca, managing director of the ship under the contracted operator, Evolution.
It was a slow reopening, with just over a dozen rooms booked in the Queen Mary in all of April. But financial records obtained by The Times show the number of bookings quickly multiplied in the coming weeks.
By July, more than 4,300 room nights were booked in the Queen Mary, and the ship’s operator has seen at least 3,730 bookings a month since.
“We reopened after a three-and-a-half-year hiatus, which is nice, and we’re making money, which is nice,” Caloca said.
The Queen Mary was still operating in a deficit during the first two months it reopened, according to financial information provided by the city. By June, however, the ship’s revenue began to outpace its expenses.
According to city records, between June and October of last year, the ship generated more than $12.6 million in revenue and more than $3 million in profits.
It’s not just rooms in the ship’s hotel that are bringing in visitors and their cash either, Caloca said.
“We were getting the word out that there are things to do here,” he said. “It’s not just a beautiful ship.”
The Queen Mary began to offer old and new tours of the 1,019.5-foot ship, and hosting events to draw in locals, like $10 entry fees on Tuesdays, he said.
A game room and revamped observation bar are there for overnight and day guests, and the ship also rolled out the commodore’s office, where officers are available to answer guests’ questions about the ship.
“We asked, what can guests do now that they’re staying at the Queen Mary, what kind of content can we provide?” Caloca said. “We’re able to create things for people to do here in Long Beach.”
But the ship has also needed, and continues to need, repairs and maintenance, he said.
Much of the work done on the ship has centered on keeping the ship safe for visitors, as well as regular upkeep like painting, new flooring and lighting, and replacing new boilers and electrical transformers on the ship.
For the Queen Mary, which has been in dire need of repairs and work for years, turning a profit in 2023 is a significant turnabout in its recent history.
Financial audits of the ship obtained by The Times shows that from 2007 to 2009, the Queen Mary continued to see losses of more than $31 million.
A profit could mean the ship could get some much-needed TLC to keep it financially, and literally, afloat.
“When we get excited about the money, it’s not that we made a profit,” Caloca said. “It’s that we made money, but now we can put it back on the ship that we love so much.”
The city of Long Beach took over the Queen Mary in 2021, after worries that the aging ship was not being maintained. One 2017 study of the ship found that it needed up to $289 million in upgrades and renovations, including much-needed work to keep parts of it from flooding.
Making the ship a profit center for the city has been a challenge for several lease operators — including the Walt Disney Co. — that have been hired to operate the ship over the last few decades.
Now, the profits coming in can also be geared toward new activities and entertainment to keep attracting guests into the Queen Mary, Caloca said.
This summer, operators hope to reopen a movie theater at the ship, which can also double as a lecture hall and host other events, Caloca said. Another 100 rooms are expected to open by April.
“It’s not just, ‘Let’s fix it so it doesn’t break,” Caloca said. “It’s also, ‘Let’s fix it and make it so people want to come.’”
Choosing the best ship in Starfield is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. It’s not just your means of fast travel through the Milky Way. It’s everything from your storage locker to your crew’s quarters to the thing that protects you from space pirates. Your ship, in other words, is your home.
It’s nigh impossible to get the single best ship in Starfield early on, thanks to prohibitively expensive sticker prices. Bear in mind, too, that to pilot ships higher than class A, you’ll need to invest points in the Piloting skill (which requires destroying enemy ships, which itself requires a better ship).
Still, in short order, you’ll get plenty of money and skill points in Starfield, which should soon open up your options. Without further ado, these are the best ships in Starfield, including the best class C ship, the best free ship, and the best ship to buy.
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Complete the “Mantis” side quest Cost: Free
Fairly early into your playthrough, you will likely pick up a note titled “Secret Outpost!” from a dead Spacer. I found it during the mission “The Old Neighborhood,” while searching for the whereabouts of Vanguard Moara. Head to the Secret Outpost on Denebola I-b, and you’ll begin a quest titled “Mantis.”
Spoilers aside, as it is one of the best side quests in Starfield, you’re rewarded with some immensely powerful armor, along with the Razorleaf — one of the best class A ships in the game for anyone who is a fairly low level. It has a cargo hold with room for 420kg of stuff, so a slight downgrade on the 495 offered by the Frontier, but with almost triple the fuel and 100 higher hull protection, along with more powerful weapons, it’s a no-brainer. Especially since it has a shielded cargo hold with a capacity of 160, essential for smuggling contraband.
Best free ship: Kepler R
How to get it: Complete the “Overdesigned” side quest Cost: Free
After the “Starborn” main mission, linger around Constellation headquarters and talk to Walter. You’ll get the “Overdesigned” side quest, which sends you to the Stroud-Eklund offices to consult the company’s staffers on designing its new spaceship. Instinct would suggest you pick and choose ideas based on what you think would be best in a ship. Don’t do that. Instead, affirm literally everyone’s ideas. That will reward you with the best free ship in the game. (Consult our video walkthrough above for the detailed quest steps to “Overdesigned.”)
If you do it right, you’ll get the Kepler R — a class C ship with truly bonkers stats: six crew, 28 LY jump range, 805 shield power, 3,500 cargo capacity, and some pretty solid weapons to boot. Yes, the Kepler R is ridiculous-looking and, no, it would never in a million years sell on a legitimate spaceship market. But with stats like these and a price point of 0 credits, who cares about aesthetics?
Best class A ship: Wanderwell
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Select the Kid Stuff trait Cost: Free
If you chose the Kid Stuff trait, your parents will be alive in the game and you can visit them, in exchange for 2% of your credits every week to support them (though that is capped at 500 each time). Give it enough time and, eventually, your dad will gift you the class A Wanderwell ship that he won while… gambling. Guess that’s what the cash you send home to help the family is going toward!
On the plus side, while it doesn’t have any Shielded Cargo like the Razorleaf, the Wanderwell does have a cargo capacity of 880, making it perfect for carrying all the resources you need to complete side missions. It only comes with two weapons by default rather than the standard three, so you’ll need to fork out a little to get it fully equipped, but with a jump range of 27 LY, it’s the next best upgrade after the Razorleaf.
Best class B ship: Shieldbreaker
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Buy from New Atlantis Ship Services Technician Cost: 265,443 credits
This class B bad boy costs a fair whack, but if you’ve prioritized both main story and faction affiliation missions (both of which pay more than most side quests) and sold literally everything you’ve seen, you probably have enough credits in the bank for the Shieldbreaker. Once you turn your attention to side activities, such as destroying the Crimson Fleet and hauling thousands of resources across the galaxy, this ship can do it all.
With a crew size of five and a cargo capacity of 2,280 (none of it shielded though, unfortunately), there’s a lot of room here. Living up to its name, it also has relatively powerful weapons, and comes with laser that automatically target enemy ships.
Best class C ship: Silent Runner
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Buy from HopeTech HQ Cost: 390,150 credits
Want to become a full time hauler? Look no further than the Silent Runner, a class C ship that’s essentially the Shieldbreaker’s older brother. While the Shieldbreaker is pretty good in combat, the Silent Runner is all about the cargo, with a whopping 6,060 cargo space. You can upgrade it further with weaponry of course, but this is the one to go for if you want to become a space trucker.
On top of the cargo space, it can grav jump up to 29 LY and has 1,164 hull, which is more than enough to hold off any Crimson Fleet or House Va’ruun members that come a-knocking. It’s also got 300 fuel capacity, which will get you almost anywhere in the charted galaxy.
Best ship for carrying cargo: Vanquisher
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Buy from Stroud-Eklund Showroom in Neon Cost: 335,655 credits
The Vanquisher is a solid class C all-rounder, with 4,120 cargo capacity, 1,100 fuel, and 908 hull. Where it especially shines is its missiles, which do 149 damage, along with its 730 shield. It leaves room to be desired (read: upgraded) in the other weapon categories, but when your missiles are dealing that much damage, it doesn’t matter too much. It also may not be the most aesthetically pleasing ship, but at the end of the day, you’ll mainly be looking at the interior anyway.
Best ship for combat: Abyss Trekker
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Buy from Ship Services Technician in Paradiso Cost: 347,230 credits
The Abyss Trekker is another class C ship that is by far your best bet if you plan on getting into plenty of dogfights in space. You won’t be carrying much loot with this as it only has 340 cargo capacity, but you will be able to take down any opponents you encounter thanks to the 100 missiles and 170 ballistics stats.
With a shield of 850 and hull of 1,031, it’ll take a lot to get this cyan-white ship out of the skies, but if you do need to get away, it has 950 fuel and can grav jump up to 25 LY.
Best ship to buy: Narwhal
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Buy from Taiyo Astroneering in Neon Cost: 432,620 credits
The Narwhal is arguably the best — and certainly one of the most expensive — ship in the entire game. Setting you back more than 400,000 credits, this class C blue beast is incredibly well-rounded and can jump up to 30 LY, so you can go wherever you like. It can have up to seven crew members aboard, has 560 fuel, 2,118 hull, and 1,760 cargo capacity.
As a result, it does the job for hauling lots of materials (though isn’t the best for that), but if you want one ship to do as much as possible rather than switching between ships depending on what the current task is, the Narwhal is for you. Special shout out to its 114 ballistics and 82 missiles too, as they pack a serious punch.
[Ed. note: Spoilers follow for the ending of Starfield.]
Best New Game Plus ship: Starborn Guardian
Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon
How to get it: Start New Game Plus Cost: Free
Minor spoiler warning for New Game Plus here, so if you want to go in without any knowledge at all, you’re safe to stop reading and go for one of the other ships in this guide. However, once you do finish the game, New Game Plus will reward you with the Starborn Guardian, a class A ship that cannot be bought or stolen during your first playthrough.
The Starborn Guardian is one of the fastest pre-made ships in the game, can grav jump up to 30 LY away, and has two unique weapons in the Solar Flare Beam and Gravity Torpedo. With a cargo capacity of 950 and a hull of 649, it’s one of the best ships in the entire game, especially since you earn an upgraded one each time you start new game plus again. Plus it looks incredible — you can’t create anything like this in the ship builder.
A federal agency wants changes in how container ships are anchored off Southern California as well as new safety measures for vessels near offshore pipelines to help prevent or minimize ruptures like the one that spilled 25,000 gallons of crude oil off Huntington Beach.
The 2021 spill caused damage to beaches and wetlands and killed scores of fish and birds.
After a sweeping, two-year review, the National Transportation Safety Board released findings Tuesday that the Orange County spill was a direct result of container ships anchoring in close proximity to offshore pipelines. The board called for the U.S. Coast Guard to increase the buffer between anchored ships and pipelines.
The catastrophe also could have been avoided with improved communication and planning between those monitoring the massive container ships in Southern California’s ports and the operators of the pipelines, investigators found.
The probe into the major oil spill off Huntington Beach confirmed initial findings that indicated a months-earlier anchor strike caused the undersea pipeline to burst, sending at least 25,000 gallons of oil into the Pacific. The investigation found no other possible cause of the damage, officials said at an almost four-hour NTSB meeting Tuesday.
NTSB investigators specifically blamed the “proximity of established anchorage positions to the pipeline,” which made it difficult for crews to prevent the anchors of two container ships from striking the pipeline during stormy weather in January 2021.
Though two ships — the MSC Danit and Cosco Beijing — struck the pipeline with their anchors, investigators determined the former caused the “initiating event” that led to the spill.
NTSB officials said that, given the ships’ locations, there was not sufficient time to weigh anchor or redirect the vessels when bad weather struck. This finding led the board to recommend that the U.S. Coast Guard revamp its plan governing the locations of ships anchored off Southern California to provide a greater margin of error among pipelines.
“Anchorages need to be designed to account for the size of vessels using them and the time it takes for these ships’ crews to react when anchor dragging occurs,” NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in a statement.
In the 2021 incident off Huntington Beach, the initial contact from the anchor caused “progressive cracks” in Houston-based Amplify Energy’s 17.3-mile underwater pipeline, which eventually burst in October, almost nine months later. The two giant ships had been anchored outside the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports as vessels stacked up during the COVID-era supply chain backups, officials said.
The probe found two other factors also contributed to the spill: When the ships dragged their anchors, the pipeline operators were never notified — a step that officials noted is not yet required. Also, months later, the operators’ response to leak alarms was significantly delayed.
Based on those findings, board members urged the Coast Guard to implement new alarms for its marine traffic monitors who stand watch over busy waterways, to signal when anchors might come close to pipelines in any U.S. waterway, as well as to put in place processes for notifying pipeline operators when such contact may have occurred.
Although the NTSB does not have regulatory or enforcement power, its recommendations carry weight.
Investigators also found pipeline operators involved in the 2021 spill had “insufficient training,” which contributed to a 14-hour delay in halting the pipeline’s operation after the first alarm sounded to indicate a possible leak — confirming prior reports of a delayed response.
“It took eight total leak alarms before controllers shut down and isolated the line,” the NTSB said in a statement. “Had the San Pedro Bay Pipeline controllers responded in accordance with company procedures and shut down and isolated the line at the first alarm, it would have significantly reduced the volume of crude oil released and the resulting environmental damage.”
The NTSB board also is seeking a federal audit of the company operating the pipeline, a subsidiary of Amplify Energy. Although the report didn’t find any indication that drugs were a factor in the spill, it said operators were not given drug or alcohol tests after the spill — as regulations require — so it’s impossible to know for sure.
Amplify Energy did not immediately respond Tuesday to questions about the findings or recommendations.
“Although there were no human injuries, there most certainly was injury to the environment and to the wildlife and their habitats,” Homendy said Tuesday. She said the estimated damage and cleanup costs from the spill were $160 million, and a total of 116 dead birds were recovered.
Pinpointing fault in the spill before these findings created a string of complicated lawsuits, court cases and settlements. It wasn’t immediately clear if any would be affected by the federal investigation.
The companies behind the two container ships agreed earlier this year to pay Amplify Energy almost $100 million.
After a day of deliberations, a federal court jury in Los Angeles on Monday found former Conception dive boat captain Jerry Boylan guilty of gross negligence in the deaths of 34 people in the fiery maritime disaster.
Prosecutors said Boylan, who had been a captain for 34 years, was negligent in failing to appoint a night watch or to drill his crew in fire safety. When the fire broke out — possibly originating in a trash can — chaos ensued among Boylan’s inexperienced, ill-trained crew. In the bedlam, a crew member twice ran right by a 50-foot fire hose.
Boylan, then 66, woke up amid the smoke and flames, called in a mayday and jumped overboard, actions that prosecutors said amounted to abandoning his ship. The 34 people crowded in the windowless bunk room lived for minutes after he did so, but they had no exit — the stairs and the escape hatch were blocked by flames.
Boylan’s attorneys with the federal public defender’s office argued that there was little he could do by the time he woke up to “an unstoppable inferno,” and that the fire hoses were unusable because they were ablaze.
Defense attorneys said Boylan learned how to run a boat from Glen Fritzler, the owner of the Conception and the company Truth Aquatics, whose boats did not use an overnight watch.
Boylan, who had been with the company for decades, did not know that doing things “the Fritzler way” was endangering people, the defense attorneys argued.
Federal prosecutors derided the argument as the “blaming your boss” defense, and said he had “rolled the dice” with his passengers’ lives.
The courtroom was packed throughout the two-week trial by families of the fire victims, who have followed the case closely during the four years it took to reach trial.
After the verdict, the families wept and embraced in the hallway, saying “we did it” and “we got it.”
“We’ve waited four years for the guilty verdict, and it’s just a feeling like we can move forward a little with our lives,” said Susana Rosas, 65, who lost three daughters and her ex-husband in the fire.
Rosas sat in the 9th floor courtroom in downtown Los Angeles for every day of the trial, at times listening to graphic testimony about the effort to recover the bodies from the charred wreck of the Conception, 56 feet below the surface.
She learned that one of her daughters, Evan Quitasol, a 37-year-old nurse, was found huddled tightly with two other victims, Charles McIlvain, 44, and Alexandra “Allie” Kurtz, 26.
“As hard as it was, it was comforting to know she died embracing someone else,” she said. “They weren’t alone. No one there was alone.”
Boylan, who did not testify, will remain free until U.S. District Judge George Wu sentences him on Feb. 8. He could face up to 10 years in federal prison.
Even the maximum sentence feels lenient for Boylan’s crime, Rosas said, adding that it seems “such a short amount of time for him to serve, for 34 people.” Boylan had ignored the Certificate of Inspection hanging in his own wheelhouse, which spelled out the need for an overnight watch in capital letters.
“He didn’t follow policies and protocols. Other captains in the area weren’t either. They thought it was OK to do that,” Rosas said. “We were the unlucky ones.”
As a result of the tragedy, the Coast Guard has tightened regulations, and more boats are implementing overnight watches. But “it’s too late for our families,” Rosas said.
Jurors deliberated all day while the victims’ families waited in the hallway, and a verdict finally came at 4:30 p.m.
“I was so worried because it went on so long today,” said McIlvain’s mother, Kathleen. “I couldn’t imagine how any jury wouldn’t know he was guilty.”
She said Boylan had failed the people who had entrusted him with their lives. “He didn’t do his duty as a captain,” she said. “He abandoned ship. He abandoned them, and we never did.”
She and other families are already trying to write their victim-impact statements, which they will deliver to the judge at Boylan’s sentencing next year. She said she doesn’t know how she will do it.
“They died such horrific deaths,” McIlvain said. “We couldn’t even see them. We didn’t want that to be the last memory of Charlie.”
Among the items recovered from the wreck was an iPhone with a 24-second video, recorded by one of the passengers in her final minutes as flames encroached on the bunk room. Prosecutors played it during the trial, but the FBI had allowed family members to see it long before.
On the video, McIlvain could hear her son exclaiming, “There’s got to be a way out!” and “There’s got to be more extinguishers!”
“The last voice I have of him is on the video in the bunk room, and he wasn’t giving up,” she said.
Vendors are a crucial component of Starfield, as you’ll need to make use of the RPG’s merchants in order to get better gear, obtain necessary parts to fix a damaged ship, buy healing items, and sell off all your contraband to earn enough credits to eventually buy that house in Akila City. The bars and restaurants in Starfield are also vendors, as the items you can buy from there are considered “aid” in that they’ll restore a little health or give you temporary buffs.
But we don’t just go into Starfield’s bars and restaurants to make use of their functionality—we go there to hang out. Video game bars are fantastic little lore dumps, lovingly detailed spaces that really make the game world in which they’re set feel lived-in and real. There’s nothing quite like walking into Mass Effect2’s Afterlife for the first time, or settling down for a game of Gwent in The Witcher 3’s Golden Sturgeon, to make it feel like you really are your character, and you really are jonesing for a drink.
And like other Bethesda RPGs, Starfield has its fair share of watering holes decorated with interesting objects and frequented by colorful characters (you could even call it Barfield, there’s so many). We ranked all the ones we could find, from worst to best, based on decor, menu, and overall vibes. Which Starfield bar would we most like to drink at? Read on to find out.
Starfield, Bethesda’s newest RPG, is, well…a big game. It’s filled with quests to complete and aliens to shoot. It’s also jam-packed with items to grab, sell, and manipulate. And it’s very easy to pick up too much junk and suddenly find yourself overencumbered, unable to fast-travel or sprint as much as usual. That’s no fun! But you can avoid this annoying situation.
Diablo IV – Bear Bender Build
I’ve played about 55 hours of Starfield so far, and for most of that time, I’ve not been overencumbered. In fact, I’m usually carrying under 100kg of weight at any given time. What’s my secret? Well, after years of playing Bethesda games, I’ve gotten pretty good at managing all the weapons, health items, and junk you collect as you adventure through the studio’s massive open-world RPGs. So let me help you stop being overencumbered with these tips and tricks!
Stop grabbing everything
Look, okay, I know this is very obvious and all that, but…yeah, stop grabbing everything! I get it. This is a Bethesda game and one of the joys of these RPGs is how everything can be grabbed, manipulated, stored, and sold. Every plastic cup and dart and sandwich. But you don’t need to grab it all.
You might be thinking “I’ll sell this all for credits!” Well, sure, but you won’t get that much for that junk. And there are better ways to make credits in this game, like doing quests and selling high-value items like rare suits, guns, and very lightweight objects that are worth hundreds of credits. So yeah, stop. Put that cup down. Walk away. Leave it. Leave it! I’m watching.
Level up your carrying capacity
Certain stats are always useful in a Bethesda open-world RPG. Having extra health and the ability to lockpick anything, for example, are as handy in Starfield as they were in Skyrim.
Similarly, leveling up the skill that lets you carry more stuff without becoming overencumbered is very useful. I also recommend grabbing this early so you can start grinding away at its requirements to unlock higher levels. Trust me, this will save you time in the long run.
Make a habit out of checking for heavy items
You can sort your entire inventory by weight and you should do this regularly, as you’ll often find some random spacesuit or other item taking up a large chunk of your carrying capacity. Take care of these items and don’t let them clutter up your character. While looking at your heaviest bits of junk, you might also find one of the most likely culprits for why you are overencumbered: ship parts.
Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku
Don’t hold on to ship parts
Ship parts! These items are very useful, letting you repair your ship during combat. However, they are also very heavy, weighing 10kg each. It’s very easy to collect a stack of these and not realize it until you pick up a gun and become overencumbered.
Making matters worse, these heavy items are found not in your resources or misc. tab, but instead buried with your aid items, like food and health kits. This makes them easy to miss when dropping off resources to your ship. I’d love a future update to move these to resources by default. Until then, double-check whenever you feel too heavy to make sure you aren’t carrying around a bunch of these bulky items. And, one last thing: You can store these on your ship and still use them, no need to carry them around!
Pick a few weapons and sell the rest
There are a lot of weapons in Starfield, from laser rifles to old Earth shotguns and more. It’s a smorgasbord of killing options. But while I recommend you try everything at least once early on in Starfield, after the opening hours you should settle on three or four weapons and sell or store the rest.
This has a lot of benefits. You can focus your skills more, carry less ammo, and not have to manage an armory everywhere you go. But also, it means you’ll not be bogged down by 12 weapons all using up your precious carrying capacity! And that’s—hey, I told you to put down that plastic cup! Stop! Just because we’re on a new tip doesn’t mean I stopped watching!
Use your ship’s cargo bay to store resources/valuables
After you’ve been out on a planet exploring, mining, or completing quests, you should take a moment to drop off excess items in your ship’s cargo hold. Thankfully, Bethesda added a hotkey that lets you send all your resources—like minerals, metals, etc.—right to your ship with one button press.
But don’t just store resources in your ship’s cargo containers. You can store rare suits or guns you want to sell later in there too, as well as other items that are taking up space. And if your ship starts to run out of space, well, first, maybe stop grabbing everything. But also, invest in adding some more storage to your ship, which you can do at any spaceport with an NPC starship technician. Oh, and don’t forget: You can upgrade your ship’s storage capacity via the Payloads perk.
Screenshot: Bethesda / Kotaku
Look for spacesuits that have extra storage
During my third night of playing Starfield, I stumbled upon a legendary suit that let me carry 40 extra kilograms on my character. While you might not find one as good as this, keep an eye out for spacesuits that provide extra storage.
Spread the weight around to companions
If you travel with a companion, don’t forget to use them like a pack mule. They can carry quite a bit, which can help out a lot in big space dungeons filled with good loot. Just talk to your companion and ask to trade, then shove all the plastic cups and crappy guns into their inventory so you can sell it all later.
And, if all else fails, use chems or booze to temporarily boost your capacity
Perhaps you’ve done everything above and yet still find yourself carrying too much junk. Well, that’s why I recommend keeping some whiskey or other chems on hand, as using them can increase your carrying capacity.
Keep in mind that these are just temporary solutions and won’t last forever. But they can, in a pinch, help you stop being overencumbered just long enough to fast-travel and sell all your junk.
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