The Most Recent Ship Report Podcast:

What’s next with the Rose Festival Fleet, and a bit more about that car ship fire off Alaska

The Rose Festival Fleet will beginning their return trip downriver and out to sea over the weekend. We'll see the first visiting ship leave Portland on Sunday, and the rest on Monday. He USCG Barque Eagle will head out to sea Monday but will return at the end of next week for tours in Astoria. Photo Credit: Joanne Rideout. The USCG Barque Eagle, anchored off Astoria June 3, 2025.

Archive Podcasts:

The MSC Katie: the latest, biggest containership ever to transit the river

Apr 05, 2023

Today, a new recordholder on the river: the MSC Katie now becomes the largest containership every to transit the Columbia.

We’ll talk about what criteria make a ship biggest, how containerships are tending to get larger all the time, and how the Katie compares to other  large containerhips we’ve seen recently on the river.

Terrible Tilly gets new life

Apr 03, 2023

Today we take a look at Terrible Tilly, the former site of a lighthouse on a rock in the Pacific Ocean off Ecola State Park. The old lighthouse site is getting new life as the current owner attempts to refurbish the weather-beaten structure. The rock has been taken over for years by sea lions, seals and sea birds, and is still just about as hard to get to as she always was. We’ll talk about how Tilly came to be, a bit about her history, and what her future might hold.

Some poetry to start your weekend, and more ship details

Mar 31, 2023

Today we take a closer look at a couple of arriving ships, and we’ll also hear a poem written by Irish poet David Whyte, who lives in the Pacific Northwest.

The poem is titled, “Light Over Water,” and it’s about what I like to call the “beautiful ordinary,” those lovely things that happen right under our noses, things we often miss.

Cruise ship heads to Portland drydock

Mar 27, 2023

Today we’ll see a cruise ship in the river, but she’s not carrying passengers. This time this ship is headed for the shipyard. We’ll talk about what shipyards do, and why Portland’s Swan Island yard is specially equipped to handle big ships like this one.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

The Ship Report comes in small bites as SHIP REPORT MINUTES: The Fast Scoop on Maritime News and Info!

Monday through Friday (except major holidays) watch for 10-MINUTE SHIP REPORTS: Ship Traffic, Marine Weather, News and Interviews

Subscribe to the RSS feed.

The Ship Report is also broadcast Weekdays at 8:49 am on Coast Community Radio Astoria, Oregon

Follow The Ship Report on and