Baltimore Ii

As a teen-ager in 1977, Brett Hammond dreamed of sailing aboard the Pride of Baltimore. Yesterday he found himself 75 feet above the Chesapeake helping the crew of the schooner's successor, the Pride of Baltimore II, furl the topsail."

LONDON -- Rush hour on the Thames River. Pleasure boats and tourist vessels jockey for position in the murky water like commuters on the Beltway. Hordes of tourists line the riverbanks by the Tower of London. And there, just around the bend, comes the tallest, leanest ship of them all: the Pride of Baltimore II, sails unfurled and cannons booming."On this ship you sail into town, show what you've got, and then, take it all down and go boast about it," said the Pride II's captain, Jan Miles of Fells Point.

Of 16 port calls stretched over five months and 10,000 nautical miles, the Pride of Baltimore II was late for only one: its homecoming. To shouts of "Welcome home," the replica of a 200-year-old topsail schooner returned to its berth at the Inner Harbor yesterday - two days later than expected because of bad weather en route from Puerto Rico. "It's a little anti-climactic, through nobody's fault other than the storm off Cape Hatteras," said Lee Vogtman, chairman of the theater arts department at Brunswick High School in Frederick County, who spent three months on the Pride II as the official Teacher Aboard.

The Pride of Baltimore II's homecoming, originally scheduled for Friday in the Inner Harbor, has been delayed eight days by mechanical problems and stormy weather in the Caribbean.Baltimore's goodwill clipper ship left San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Saturday morning and is due to sail back into town Dec. 7, capping an eight-month, 11-country European tour."Everything's just fine," said Mark Belton, who became the Pride's executive director last week. "The weather looks pretty good. Depending upon the speed it can make, the ship will probably pull into Annapolis Dec. 6 and then do the ride up to Baltimore the morning of the seventh.

The Pride of Baltimore II was lifted out of the water yesterday at a Curtis Bay boatyard for routine maintenance and a close inspection of damage from its 21-month European odyssey -- including an incident in an English port where the goodwill ship ran aground in July.Linda Jordan, executive director of the Pride, said the inspection is an annual requirement for passenger certification by the U.S. Coast Guard and that the "haul out" at the Smith & Sons boatyard provides an opportunity to look at the ship's bottom.

Recreation Pier -- once the place to go in Baltimore for music, dancing and fun -- could reclaim that status under a development proposal that calls for a waterfront Ferris wheel, miniature golf course, and a tugboat museum. That is one of five concepts submitted to the city for redeveloping Fells Point's signature structure that were released yesterday. Other ideas include a 12-story condominium tower, a hotel, and a mixture of offices and retail shops. Most of the proposals include making the pier the permanent berth of the clipper ship Pride of Baltimore II. The Pride has no permanent year-round berth in its home port.

Robert Foster and Cathy Miles share a romance with the sea and with each other.They came together as husband and wife on the deck of the Pride of Baltimore II, docked off Pier 5 at the Inner Harbor yesterday."

GOV. ROBERT L. Ehrlich Jr. famously sold one Maryland-owned ship through an online auction on eBay. But he kept a second one around. And it's a good thing, too. Otherwise, the elaborate photo opportunity last week at City Dock in Annapolis would have been a lot harder to pull off. As hundreds of lawmakers, lobbyists and state residents waited in the State House for a traditional bill-signing ceremony Wednesday, Ehrlich participated in a splashier open-air...

For second mate Amy Strange's first voyage on The Pride of Baltimore II, the exciting part will be setting foot in China.Deckhand Jennifer Muther, on her third Pride trip, awaits those evenings when the boat cruises under a full moon and a heaven full of stars: "It's something completely magical."Captain Jan Miles has a veteran sailor's "concerned eye" about the threat of Pacific typhoons on what will be the Pride's first voyage to Asia and its farthest in mileage.He and his crew of 11 are preparing to leave the Inner Harbor at 4 p.m. tomorrow.

SHANGHAI, China -- If you're planning a trade mission in the rapidly changing world of global finance, you might do better to rely on a 747 than a 19th-century Baltimore Clipper ship.That's one of the early lessons of the Pride of Baltimore II's goodwill tour of Asia, which until last summer was the star of the world's economy. As the Pride arrived here last week at its first port of call in China, the region continued its struggle to climb out of a financial crisis that has seen currency values plummet and millions lose their jobs.