On predicted weather days, you might be looking at charts while passing the waking hours, waiting. And you might see unusual names . . . like Cholera Bank, about 10 miles out from
Jones Inlet. Why would someone name such a location after a plague gets explained here, and some statistics on numbers of deaths here. Given that explanation, you might expect an Ebola Bank in the future . . . somewhere if not here. But seeing
this odd name on the chart recalled other odd names like these: Bald Porcupine Island and Ile d’Amour off Maine, Pot Island off Connecticut, and North Dumpling Island, NY. Then there’s Ono (Oh no!) Island, Alabama, and of course one of my all-time favorites . . . Galivants Ferry, South Carolina, which prompted this detour (scroll through) some years back.
Speaking of gallivants, a friend in Netherlands sent me this photo yesterday as we hunkered down as Storm Juno approached. The photo below shows a convoy of tugs towing inland barges navigating a track through the Schie, a waterway in Rotterdam, a place I visited when I gallivanted there last May.
This is not exactly the same section of the Schie, but I’ve never shared these photos.
Nor this one of feeder container vessel called Temptation passing under the Erasmusbrug. If you want to see a beautiful 14-minute video of a restored century-old Dutch sailing vessel traversing the canal system between Delft and Rotterdam . . . ending up near the Schie . . . click here.
And since we are now many miles off our original course, what unusual or inexplicable charted or mapped names have you seen? Please share some.
All photos, except for the black/white one and the bicycle one, by Will Van Dorp, who wonders who Jones was.
tugster: a waterblog 
12 comments
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January 27, 2015 at 9:16 am
Harry T Scholer
How about “Execution Rocks” where the East River meets the Long Island Sound. Aptly named since it was a place that pirates were hung.
January 27, 2015 at 9:41 am
jollytar
Rock Dunder and Carleton’s Prize in Lake Champlain. BOTH were fired upon during the Revolutionary War being confused as ships. Carleton’s Prize being aptly named for the British Admiral Sir Guy Carleton. The other, so named for as the smoke cleared the commander was heard to proclaim:
“That’s a rock by Dunder!”
January 27, 2015 at 9:50 am
Daniel Meeter
What’s that apparatus hanging from the bow of the lead tug on the Schie? Some sort of ice-breaking device?
January 27, 2015 at 10:52 am
tugster
Hi Dan– It looks like a platform where someone might stand chopping ice with an axe? Ik weet het niet precies
January 27, 2015 at 9:51 am
Daniel Meeter
Will, the video link gets a “404” when I try it.
January 27, 2015 at 10:55 am
tugster
Hi Dan– Thanks for telling me about that link. I think it works now.
January 27, 2015 at 1:24 pm
eastriver
Newfoundland is chock full of ’em! Some faves: town of Come-by-Chance, on the Avalon peninsula; Ha-Ha Bay, west side of the Great Northern Peninsula; and the Bay of Exploits, northwest of Gander.
January 27, 2015 at 1:32 pm
eastriver
A-and don’t forget the little bay called Bailey’s Mistake, just SW of Quoddy Head, ME. Oops…
January 27, 2015 at 1:36 pm
tugster
since you bring us back to maine, eastriver, i’ll mention more cool island names there: bartender island, gallows island,grog island, and mistake island . . . .
January 27, 2015 at 1:46 pm
eastriver
I’m told by locals that Miah Maull Shoal, in the Delaware Bay up from Brandywine Light, is so named ’cause a local fisherman named Jeremiah Maull habitually ran aground there and constantly had to be pulled off by other local fishermen.
January 27, 2015 at 5:29 pm
tugster
many years ago, i was on mount desert island with the usually proper-speech parents of my then-girlfriend. i heard her mother refer to “raggedy ass corner.” surprised, i inquired and learned that all locals referred to that place so. i just checked on google now . . . and here’s a reference to same raggedy-ass corner” http://quercusdesign.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-black-house-aka-woodlawn-museum.html
January 28, 2015 at 5:57 am
Jeff s
Buzzard’s Glory…..south of the Susquehanna Flats.