Cargo Ship

Authorities are investigating the pilot who crash-landed a helicopter at the Dundalk Marine Terminal this week, saying he might have been impaired when he tried to set the aircraft onto a trailer, the chief of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police said yesterday. The chief, Gary W. McLhinney, confirmed the additional details of the probe but would not elaborate or say whether police suspected drugs or alcohol were involved. The police chief said investigators are awaiting further medical tests on the 34-year-old pilot, identified yesterday as Darrell Kenneth Trivett of Fredericksburg, Va., who was hospitalized after the accident and remains in the critical care unit at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.

Three commercial cargo ships traded in their Norwegian and Swedish flags for the Stars and Stripes - and picked up the new American names Courage, Honor and Integrity - during a ceremony in Baltimore yesterday as part of a federal effort to lock up enough domestic vessels to haul military gear overseas during wars and emergencies. Without enough of its own ships to ferry goods, the government has encouraged the commercial ocean lines to reflag and supplement its fleet. The three ships, owned by American Roll-On Roll-Off Carriers of Montvale, N.J., also known as ARC, are the most to be reflagged at one time, the company and government officials said.

The investment partnership trying to revitalize the defunct Sparrows Point shipyard has won a $2.3 million federal contract to break two retired Navy reserve cargo ships into scrap in what the new owners hope is just the initial installment of an ambitious plan to bring hundreds of workers back to a historic waterfront industrial site in Baltimore County. North American Ship Recycling, a subsidiary of Boston-based Barletta Willis LLC, won the contract as part of the U.S. Maritime Administration's efforts to scrap dozens of rusting ships mothballed on the James River in Virginia.

In Baltimore City Woman accused of stealing benefits of man slain in 1996 A Baltimore woman suspected of illegally cashing the Social Security and retirement benefits of a Maryland man found slain seven years ago in Virginia was arrested yesterday on federal charges of bank, mail and wire fraud, and theft from a government program. Nancy Jean Siegel, 55, was accused in a federal criminal complaint of using the identity of Jack F. Watkins to obtain credit lines and to divert his Social Security checks and retirement benefits during a period in which authorities say he was dead but his body was unidentified.

TOKYO - Japan detained two North Korean cargo ships in Japanese ports yesterday, moves that North Korea denounced as sanctions and that Japan defended as safety inspections. "We are ready to thoroughly inspect all North Korean vessels at ports across the country," Chikage Ogi, Japan's transport minister, told a news conference, hours before her inspectors scoured the North Korean ships for violations. The detentions were ordered a day after Bush administration officials said they were encouraging allies to put pressure on North Korean shipping by enforcing safety rules and searching for illegal drugs, a major North Korean export.

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.

ABOARD THE COAST GUARD CUTTER RELIANCE - Sleepy figures milled about the ship deck in the early-morning haze. An orange sun sat on the horizon. Preparations for setting sail were already under way at Pier 14, Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in Virginia. The crisp white Coast Guard cutter bobbed gently next to gray warships on either side. Those aboard the cutter planned to board a Greek cargo ship full of kerosene, gasoline and oil - all "high-risk cargo" in the hands of the wrong people.

The many myths floating around the Amistad show that even those who think they know its history can be mistaken. It was not a huge slave ship carting thousands to America, but a cargo schooner that set sail from Havana on June 28, 1839, bound for a Caribbean plantation. It carried 53 Africans who had been abducted from West Africa and sold illegally. They were never to be slaves. One of the prisoners, Cinque, led a revolt, and the 129-foot vessel soon landed in America. After being tried on murder charges -- former President John Quincy Adams was one of their lawyers -- the captives were freed.

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced a $350 million emergency shipbuilding program in January 1941, its goal was to construct in three years more than half of the existing pre-war merchant fleet. To meet this need, shipyards across the nation were expanded to meet Roosevelt's goals. In Baltimore, Bethlehem Steel Corp's Sparrows Point yard was jammed with work for the Navy, so the company looked to Fairfield, in the southeast section of the city, for expansion of its facilities.