Rhourd Enouss entering and leaving Portsmouth Harbor

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 — Sonatrach’s Rhourd Enouss is shown entering Portsmouth Harbor at about 2:30 p.m. on Wednesday, December 14th, and leaving at about 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, December 18th. The ship is 670 feet long, has a beam of 108 feet, and carries a little over 2 million cubic feet of propane. Owned by Sonatrach, Algeria’s government-owned petroleum company, it was built by Kawasaki Shipbuilding of Kobe, Japan, and delivered in 2008. The video is made up of a succession of screenshots taken from a pair of webcams owned and operated by Sebtec, of Derry, NH, and converted to a .mov file by …

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Now is the Time — Help Save RiverRun

Monday, November 7, 2011 — On September 7, 2006, a hundred or more members of the local community who understood the value of their independent bookstore rallied for a couple of hours to help it move. In a spontaneous gesture of affection, volunteers also lifted Tom Holbrook, the person who brought us the bookstore, on their shoulders and carried him into the new premises. Since that day, forces beyond the control of our community have made it impossible for RiverRun to stay in those premises. We can keep the bookstore, but a similar effort must be mounted. This time it’s money, not muscle, that’s needed. …

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Making It Up As They Go Along

Saturday, June 25, 2011 — Since the plot of the new Tea Party-sponsored movie Courage, New Hampshire: The Travail of Sarah Pine, takes place in 1770 and involves British soldiers, and the only British soldiers in New Hampshire then were stationed at Fort William and Mary, we naturally assumed that the film was set right here in Portsmouth. The reader may well imagine with what relish we anticipated dismantling a film purporting to represent this town in those days, when Daniel Fowle himself was running this, the Province’s only newspaper. But no, once again, we were outsmarted. The makers of Courage cleverly dodged that musket …

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Dreary Day, Great View

Thursday, June 23, 2011 — It’s a dreary day, but we’re happy to see that the view from PortsmouthNH.com‘s Harbor WebCam is no longer obscured by scaffolding and green mesh. We frequently check it while we should be writing instead. Between that and the Hellenic Shipping News’ Live Interactive Ships Traffic Worldwide Map, it’s a wonder we ever get the paper out.