Baltimore Ii

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...

When the Pride of Baltimore sank in a squall in the Atlantic in May 1986, many local leaders had no interest in building a replacement boat. The mayor, William Donald Schaefer, in particular considered it a bad idea. But the public felt differently. The same day that news of the sinking reached Baltimore, people began raising money for a new goodwill ship. A radio station launched an on-air drive, jars of pennies and dimes collected by children began arriving in the office of Pride of Baltimore Inc., and before long, local and state leaders committed to the idea.

Rouse Co. officials want city leaders to crack down on vendors selling food and other items outside Rouse's Harborplace pavilions, setting the company on a collision course with one of the city's prominent symbols, the Pride of Baltimore II. The owner of Harborplace and The Gallery is worried that the sale of premium ice cream at the city's good-will schooner's ticket kiosk could set a precedent for other harborside attractions, such as tour boats....

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.

In Maryland Winter's first snowfall forecast for area today The Baltimore area can expect its first snowfall today, thanks to a storm making its way from the Gulf Coast. National Weather Service forecasters said they expect 1 to 3 inches of snow to accumulate in Baltimore by midnight. North and west of the city could get between 2 and 4 inches. The storm should begin by late morning as rain, forecasters said, then mix with or change to snow by afternoon. In Baltimore City Pride of Baltimore II gets new executive director The Pride of Baltimore II, the topsail schooner that serves as a goodwill ambassador for the state and Port of Baltimore, has a new executive director.

CAMBRIDGE - A ceremonial salute last week from two Civil War replica cannons and a front-page newspaper photograph showing this Eastern Shore city's mayor standing next to a Confederate flag has angered many African-Americans here, who say the incident was an unwelcome reminder of the area's long history of racial tension. Mayor Cleveland L. Rippons posed with the model artillery pieces made by two local men who fired them as a salute to the Pride of Baltimore II when the vessel made a stop April 17 in Cambridge, the first goodwill port call of the schooner's 2001 sailing season.

In Baltimore County Police Department to promote 11 in ceremony today TIMONIUM -- The Baltimore County Police Department will promote 11 members at ceremonies at 2 p.m. today in the Administration Building at the Maryland State Fairgrounds. The promotees, their new ranks and assignments are: Capt. Randall B. Russin, major, Support Operations Division; Lt. Gordon R. Skinner, captain, Operations Bureau; Lt. Mark J. Warren, captain, School Resources Section; Sgt. David J. Folderauer, lieutenant, Wilkens Precinct; and Sgt. Paul D. Martin Jr., lieutenant, Wilkens Precinct.

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.

Sidney S. Miller, who was a Pride of Baltimore II captain on a voyage through Europe, died Sunday at his Sarasota, Fla., home after gall bladder surgery. He was 72 and had lived on South Hanover Street. He sailed with the Pride from 1989 to 1991, logging 10,000 miles and calling at more than 20 foreign ports. He took the city's schooner through the Caribbean and made a circuit of the Mediterranean as far as Odessa in the former Soviet Union. He also called at English and Dutch ports. "He was a competent mariner and was enthusiastic for Baltimore and Baltimore marine history," said Jan C. Miles, captain of the Pride.

Daniel Parrott, captain of The Pride of Baltimore II, says he lives a storybook life -- and as someone whose earliest adventures came by way of storybooks, he ought to know. Just as his imagination was stirred by "Robinson Crusoe," "Treasure Island" and other books about the sea that he read as a boy, Parrott's work is the kind to inspire imagination. As captain of the 185-ton topsail schooner since June 1998, he has sailed the world's oceans as a goodwill ambassador for Maryland. Sometimes he steps backs for a moment and asks himself, "Can you believe this?"