Aboard The Ship

A sailor serving aboard the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first combat ship with female crew, will face the military's equivalent of a grand jury on charges that he raped a female sailor in a Virginia Beach, Va., park.The male sailor was reassigned earlier this week from the nuclear-powered carrier to a shore command in Norfolk, Va., to await an Article 32, a pretrial hearing that could lead to a general court-martial, said Cmdr. Kevin Wensing, a spokesman for the Atlantic fleet in Norfolk.

Joseph John Carbo, a retired merchant ship engineer who sailed around the world 14 times and later put his engine room expertise to work as a longtime volunteer aboard the Liberty ship John W. Brown, died Sunday at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The longtime West Towson resident was 82. Mr. Carbo, who was born and raised in South Philadelphia within sight of the Delaware River and the ships steaming in and out of port, was the son of a shipbuilder and a homemaker. During World War I, his father worked at American International Shipbuilding's Hog Island shipyard, and after the war at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

It wasn't an attempt to gain political asylum, but a Russian seaman's try for temporary freedom was close to it. Early Monday, Baltimore police responding to a bank's burglar alarm found a shattered front window and a man wandering around inside who spoke a language that none of the officers could understand, said Southeastern District Lt. David Reitz. After several failed attempts to talk the intruder out, officers entered the 1st Mariner Bank in the 1500 block of S. Highland Ave. and arrested the man without incident.

It wasn't an attempt to gain political asylum, but a Russian seaman's try for temporary freedom was close to it. Early Monday, Baltimore police responding to a bank's burglar alarm found a shattered front window and a man wandering around inside who spoke a language that none of the officers could understand, said Southeastern District Lt. David Reitz. After several failed attempts to talk the intruder out, officers entered the 1st Mariner Bank in the 1500 block of S. Highland Ave. and arrested the man without incident.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Shortly after midnight 50 years ago today in the waters off Guadalcanal, what one historian called "one of the bloodiest and most savage sea battles of World War II" raged.Variously known as the Battle of Guadalcanal and the Battle of Friday the 13th, the clash lasted less than 40 minutes.But it claimed the lives of nearly 1,500 men and sank nine warships -- six American and three Japanese.Although the Japanese sunk more ships, the battle is considered an American victory, because the engagement ended Japanese efforts to bombard Henderson Field and reinforce troops on Guadalcanal, turning the tide in a bloody battle for a key Southwest Pacific island.

The 717-foot oil tanker Kite glows golden at the anchorage just south of the Bay Bridge off Annapolis. It had arrived laden with heavy fuel oil from St. Croix heading to Hess Oil's dock in Curtis Bay. With a 42-foot draft - the depth of the ship below the waterline - the Kite is too deep to get to the dock in Baltimore, so a barge lightens the load, allowing the Kite to float at 34 feet. Now, at sunset, the tanker is ready to get under way. Like every ship coming from international waters, the Kite, by law, will be piloted not by its Greek captain but by a Chesapeake Bay pilot, in this case Davidsonville resident Capt.

A decade of neglect will draw to a close tomorrow as the sagging, rot-riddled warship Constellation is towed from the Inner Harbor for 2 1/2 years of reconstruction at Fort McHenry -- its first major repair since 1982.If all goes well, it should return in spring 1999 with a straightened keel and a look truer to its 1854 origins. It will get a new hull, two new decks and masts and rigging to replace those removed in 1994 to ensure they didn't fall on tourists.Louis F. Linden, executive director of the Constellation Foundation, said he expects the move will be so uneventful it will "put the entire harbor to sleep."

The 717-foot oil tanker Kite glows golden at the anchorage just south of the Bay Bridge off Annapolis. It had arrived laden with heavy fuel oil from St. Croix heading to Hess Oil's dock in Curtis Bay. With a 42-foot draft - the depth of the ship below the waterline - the Kite is too deep to get to the dock in Baltimore, so a barge lightens the load. Now, at sunset, the tanker is ready to get under way. Like every ship coming from international waters, the Kite, by law, will be piloted not by its Greek captain but by a Chesapeake Bay pilot, in this case Davidsonville resident Capt.

IF GOV. WILLIAM Donald Schaefer has his way, Baltimore's harbor will soon resemble a scene from the old TV show "The Love Boat," complete with loved ones waving to passengers leaving or arriving aboard cruise ships.The governor wants to develop a port of call for cruise ships at the foot of Caroline Street, at the site of the old Allied Chemical plant, not far from Inner Harbor attractions. Under the governor's plan, the state would purchase the 1.2-acre site adjacent to the old chrome works plant to construct a cruise ship terminal at a cost of about $50 million.

After months of writing letters to a Naval officer stationed on the USS Guam, students in Lois Lee Porter's first-period class at Old Mill Middle South finally got the chance to put a face to the name of their shipboard pen pal.Lt. David Gray, a graduate of Chesapeake High School and the U.S. Naval Academy, visited the school Friday to thank the 29 students who have corresponded with him and his shipmates aboard the Guam since Christmas. The amphibious assault ship had been on a tour of duty in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of the former Yugoslavia for six months.

The 717-foot oil tanker Kite glows golden at the anchorage just south of the Bay Bridge off Annapolis. It had arrived laden with heavy fuel oil from St. Croix heading to Hess Oil's dock in Curtis Bay. With a 42-foot draft - the depth of the ship below the waterline - the Kite is too deep to get to the dock in Baltimore, so a barge lightens the load. Now, at sunset, the tanker is ready to get under way. Like every ship coming from international waters, the Kite, by law, will be piloted not by its Greek captain but by a Chesapeake Bay pilot, in this case Davidsonville resident Capt.

Navy Lt. Todd Larson will spend today getting his ship ready for war, just as he did yesterday. Larson, 39, is a medical officer on the USNS Comfort, an 894-foot floating hospital that is to leave its port in Baltimore by the end of this week. At all times -- especially now -- Larson's job is getting ready. He's getting ready to bring nearly 300 people aboard the ship, which will be going to the Indian Ocean. He's getting the ship's 12 operating rooms ready to perform surgeries. He's getting ready to leave his wife and three children in Frederick.

The 717-foot oil tanker Kite glows golden at the anchorage just south of the Bay Bridge off Annapolis. It had arrived laden with heavy fuel oil from St. Croix heading to Hess Oil's dock in Curtis Bay. With a 42-foot draft - the depth of the ship below the waterline - the Kite is too deep to get to the dock in Baltimore, so a barge lightens the load, allowing the Kite to float at 34 feet. Now, at sunset, the tanker is ready to get under way. Like every ship coming from international waters, the Kite, by law, will be piloted not by its Greek captain but by a Chesapeake Bay pilot, in this case Davidsonville resident Capt.

Throw together 80 young, fit, attractive Scandinavians on a coed world-traveling ship for five months and tell them they are forbidden from romance. What happens? Exactly what you think. Don't ask, don't tell. Restraint is a lot to ask of a crew of 17- to 23-year-olds that is working, showering, dressing and sleeping side-by-side. But the rules are set on the Danmark, which is in town as part of the OpSail 2000 tall ship tour. It is one of the few mixed-gender boats taking part in OpSail 2000.

I am a hearty seafaring type of individual, so recently I spent a week faring around the sea aboard the largest cruise ship in the world that has not yet hit an iceberg. It is called the Voyager, and it weighs 140,000 tons, which is approximately the amount I ate in desserts alone. The Voyager sails out of Miami every week carrying 3,200 passengers determined to relax or die trying. The ship has (I am not making any of this up) an ice-skating rink, a large theater, a shopping mall, a rock-climbing wall and a nine-hole miniature golf course.

A converted former U.S. Navy hospital ship, still seeking a permanent home in Baltimore Harbor, will begin accepting women drug and alcohol abusers for treatment in April, it was announced yesterday.Stephen J. Hammer, chairman of the nonprofit group Project Life, which owns the ship, Sanctuary, said 60 women will receive help in the first phase of a program that will try to "break the grip of addiction" and also offer "life and employment skills."The women must have gone through detoxification before boarding the ship.

After months away from their boyhood homes, three cousins lapsed easily into a familiar routine, gathering around the swimming pool and reminiscing about recent adventures.All servicemen and recently returned from the Persian Gulf, they were swapping war stories while celebrating a homecoming with their families last weekend.The far-from-boyish tales revolved around aircraft, bombings and endless days at sea. The three said they never realized when they enlisted that they would fight a war together.

A decade of neglect will draw to a close tomorrow as the sagging, rot-riddled warship Constellation is towed from the Inner Harbor for 2 1/2 years of reconstruction at Fort McHenry -- its first major repair since 1982.If all goes well, it should return in spring 1999 with a straightened keel and a look truer to its 1854 origins. It will get a new hull, two new decks and masts and rigging to replace those removed in 1994 to ensure they didn't fall on tourists.Louis F. Linden, executive director of the Constellation Foundation, said he expects the move will be so uneventful it will "put the entire harbor to sleep."