Cargo Ship

With guns bristling, police officers in full tactical gear sweep across the vast deck of a cargo ship and creep up the stairs to the bridge. Their mission: Take the vessel back from armed intruders. Twice a month, the Natural Resources Police Tactical Response Team practices its craft. Tuesday morning's exercise was aboard the USNS Gilliland, a 956-foot vessel operated by the Navy Military Sealift Command and tied up at the Clinton Street Marine Terminal. "Basically it's a high-rise lying on its side, but it's a lot more complicated," said Sgt. Mel Adam, the squad leader, of the vessel.

Whether it's a war-zone deployment, a cargo ship in port for 18 hours or a passenger cruise ship on its regular stop, R.S. Stern Inc. has put groceries in larders and spare parts in engine rooms since 1870. From its brick warehouse in Canton, the company's 15 employees dispense uniforms and copier supplies, mops for swabbing and pork chops for dinner to about 1,000 ships calling on Baltimore and other nearby ports each year. Need a 4-by-6 Sri Lankan flag for the mast? Stern's got you covered.

Each one weighs as much as 9,000 Tony Siragusas (the former Ravens defensive lineman) and at full extension rises as high as Baltimore's World Trade Center. Together, the port's four new cargo cranes are about to make a splash on the city's skyline. But first the gleaming white cranes, worth $40 million, must be rolled off the ship that brought them from China — without a splash. Coaxing them from the Zhen Hua 13 onto the dock requires delicate planning and brute force. Engineers and ironworkers at Seagirt Marine Terminal in Baltimore's port have already unloaded two of the cranes and are ready to move the final two before the month is out. On Sunday, the first crane came rolling off. On Tuesday morning, the second crane crept across the ship's deck on railroad tracks and crossed the 8-foot watery gap between the ship and its berth.

Each one weighs as much as 9,000 Tony Siragusas (the former Ravens defensive lineman) and at full extension rises as high as Baltimore's World Trade Center. Together, the port's four new cargo cranes are about to make a splash on the city's skyline. But first the gleaming white cranes, worth $40 million, must be rolled off the ship that brought them from China — without a splash. Coaxing them from the Zhen Hua 13 onto the dock requires delicate planning and brute force. Engineers and ironworkers at Seagirt Marine Terminal in Baltimore's port have already unloaded two of the cranes and are ready to move the final two before the month is out. On Sunday, the first crane came rolling off. On Tuesday morning, the second crane crept across the ship's deck on railroad tracks and crossed the 8-foot watery gap between the ship and its berth.

The port of Baltimore has been chosen as a port of call for a ship bringing military equipment back to the United States, giving the port the chance to persuade the government to route additional cargo ships through Baltimore.Baltimore did not load a single military cargo ship during the massive effort to supply the U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf. Now that the direction of the cargo flow has reversed, the port will get at least one ship -- the Cape Ducato, due in Baltimore late next week or early the week after.

Law enforcement officers arrested three men Monday and seized more than 11 pounds of nearly pure heroin that they allegedly smuggled off a Pakistani cargo ship that was docked at the Dundalk Marine Terminal.The suspects were identified as Shah Zahir, 37, and Sardar Ali, 35, both Pakistani nationals, and Sardar Ali Khan, 30, a native of Pakistan now residing in Queens, N.Y.The men were charged with smuggling and importation of narcotics. Other charges may be filed later, said a spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

JERUSALEM - A lightning nighttime raid by Israeli commandos against a cargo ship in the Red Sea has thwarted a Palestinian arms-smuggling operation linked to top Palestinian officials, the Israeli army said yesterday. At least 50 tons of weapons, including rockets that could easily reach Israeli cities when fired from Palestinian areas, were found Thursday hidden in 83 crates aboard the ship, which the army said was owned by the Palestinian Authority. Army officials said they arrested a Palestinian naval officer and several other Palestinian Authority security officers aboard the Karine A. The ship, flying the flag of the South Pacific nation of Tonga, was seized in international waters, about 310 miles south of the Israeli port city of Eilat.

CHESTERTOWN - For the past three years, the thump of hammers and the high-pitched whine of power saws on Cannon Street has meant something was abuilding here in the seat of Kent County government. Yesterday, it meant the building was finished. Crews tore away parts of the scaffolding and put finishing touches on the schooner Sultana to make ready this replica of a Colonial era cargo ship for the huge trailer - imagine the world's biggest fork lift - that will carry it today five blocks to the Chester River waterfront.

Hold No. 3, deep within the dark steel hull of the British ship Global Mariner, once carried pallets of cargo around the world.Today, it's the "disaster room."The aft bulkhead is covered with a giant color photograph of men injured at sea -- a body crushed by a piston, a hand severed by a slammed hatch cover. To starboard is the scorched hull of the hijacked passenger ferry Achille Lauro. Toward the bow: the bulk carrier Flare, which broke in half off the coast of Newfoundland in January.

With the wind whipping granules through the sweet-smelling air, Monday could have been just another day on the Domino Sugars docks in South Baltimore. But workers in orange coveralls unloading raw sugar from a massive cargo ship were making company history. In its nearly 90 years, the Domino refinery never before has received such a large single shipment of raw sugar - more than 95 million pounds. Moreover, Monday's arrival of the vessel Simon Schulte marked the largest single shipment of raw sugar ever to any port east of the Mississippi River, Domino officials said.

A delicate maritime ballet in two acts is playing out Wednesday afternoon as tugboats muscle a cargo ship carrying four supersized cranes to the port of Baltimore. The ship has cleared the Bay and Key bridges and is approaching Seagirt Marine Terminal. The bridges were closed to traffic while the ship approached and passed underneath with its giant cargo. The space between the top of the cranes and the bottom of the Bay Bridge was about 10 feet, according to Coast Guard Capt.

Traffic on the Bay and Key bridges will be temporarily stopped Wednesday afternoon as tugboats push a cargo ship carrying four massive cranes beneath the spans on the way to the port of Baltimore, the Maryland Transportation Authority said Monday. Coast Guard and state transportation officials were concerned that motorists would become distracted by the sight of the 14-story-tall cranes approaching the bridges and stop to gawk or cause an accident. The cranes stand 178 feet high.

The Baltimore Sun's front page on July 22, 1959, carried the news accompanied by a six-column photo: The world's first nuclear-powered cargo ship had been launched at Camden, N.J. The christening of the $47 million N/S Savannah was bigger than news about legislation to extend the GI Bill of Rights, bigger than a Cape Canaveral rocket launch, bigger, even, than a federal court ruling to allow the steamy novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover" to be...

About two weeks from now, a cargo ship 21/2 football fields long will squeeze under the Key Bridge and deliver the future of the port of Baltimore. On its deck are four massive cranes built in China that state officials and the maritime industry hope will turn the already bustling Seagirt Marine Terminal into a conduit for mountains of goods delivered by the world's largest ships. Baltimore will join Norfolk, Va., as the only East Coast ports with 50-foot-deep berths and cranes able to accommodate vessels up to 1,200 feet long, which will begin using a widened Panama Canal in 2014.

With guns bristling, police officers in full tactical gear sweep across the vast deck of a cargo ship and creep up the stairs to the bridge. Their mission: Take the vessel back from armed intruders. Twice a month, the Natural Resources Police Tactical Response Team practices its craft. Tuesday morning's exercise was aboard the USNS Gilliland, a 956-foot vessel operated by the Navy Military Sealift Command and tied up at the Clinton Street Marine Terminal. "Basically it's a high-rise lying on its side, but it's a lot more complicated," said Sgt. Mel Adam, the squad leader, of the vessel.

A federal judge in Baltimore has awarded $462,500 to a low-level merchant marine officer who alerted Coast Guard inspectors that his cargo ship was intentionally polluting the high seas. In his ruling Monday, U.S. District Judge Marvin Garbis also left open the possibility of giving Salvador Lopez, a former ship's engineer from the Philippines, an additional $462,500 in reward money, depending on the outcome of another portion of the case. Lopez gave Coast Guard inspectors in Baltimore a handwritten note tipping them off to the illegal dumping of oily waste and garbage during the M/V Aquarosa's first visit to the port of Baltimore in February 2011.

Traffic on the Bay and Key bridges will be temporarily stopped Wednesday afternoon as tugboats push a cargo ship carrying four massive cranes beneath the spans on the way to the port of Baltimore, the Maryland Transportation Authority said Monday. Coast Guard and state transportation officials were concerned that motorists would become distracted by the sight of the 14-story-tall cranes approaching the bridges and stop to gawk or cause an accident. The cranes stand 178 feet high.

A delicate maritime ballet in two acts is playing out Wednesday afternoon as tugboats muscle a cargo ship carrying four supersized cranes to the port of Baltimore. The ship has cleared the Bay and Key bridges and is approaching Seagirt Marine Terminal. The bridges were closed to traffic while the ship approached and passed underneath with its giant cargo. The space between the top of the cranes and the bottom of the Bay Bridge was about 10 feet, according to Coast Guard Capt.

With the wind whipping granules through the sweet-smelling air, Monday could have been just another day on the Domino Sugars docks in South Baltimore. But workers in orange coveralls unloading raw sugar from a massive cargo ship were making company history. In its nearly 90 years, the Domino refinery never before has received such a large single shipment of raw sugar - more than 95 million pounds. Moreover, Monday's arrival of the vessel Simon Schulte marked the largest single shipment of raw sugar ever to any port east of the Mississippi River, Domino officials said.

As a freed U.S.-flagged freighter cruised out of Somalia's crime-infested waters Thursday, a tense standoff continued for a second day between a U.S. warship and a tiny lifeboat, adrift with four stranded pirates and the American captain they were holding hostage. A day after the American crew managed to turn the tables on pirates who had seized their cargo ship, the Danish-owned Maersk Alabama headed for safer waters with 18 armed guards from the U.S. destroyer Bainbridge on board. Reports suggested that the cargo ship, which is carrying food and other humanitarian aid for African nations, including food destined for Catholic Relief Services programs in Rwanda, was headed to its original destination of Mombasa, Kenya.