Freighter

WASHINGTON -- Federal Express Corp. and federal aviation regulators are squaring off over how much cargo certain Boeing Co. 727 freighter planes can safely carry.Last July, the Federal Aviation Administration told FedEx, United Parcel Service and other airlines flying converted Boeing 727s that it intended to reduce their payloads by more than half until changes are made to strengthen the planes' floor decks.The FAA proposed cutting cargo loads to no more than 3,000 pounds from the existing limit of 8,000 pounds per container.

A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE is how folks in New Orleans are referring to the weekend accident at the Riverwalk mall there. To understand why is to see the news photos of the fancy shopping complex, crushed like a soda can by a grain freighter run amok, and to learn that no one was killed even though the collision happened in midday as shoppers lunched and browsed at the height of the holiday season.The scenario was dramatic and horrific: A 70,000-ton grain ship, the Bright Field, as long as two football fields, lost power due to an oil pump failure.

NEW ORLEANS -- Heavy rain and wind made already unstable rubble even more treacherous yesterday at the site of a giant freighter's collision with a crowded river-front shopping mall, forcing rescuers to postpone the search for survivors or victims.But even as darkness fell with about half the 200-foot-long damaged area still unsearched, rescuers said they were increasingly confident that they would find no one trapped alive or dead in the mass of crumbled concrete and twisted metal, some of it held in place by the freighter that caused the accident.

Q: I heard about a ship that is part freighter and part passenger, that boards passengers in Miami and sails to South America on a regular schedule. Can you give me some information about it?A: I think you mean the Americana. This ship sails as far south as Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a fairly regular schedule, but it recently changed its U.S. ports and no longer stops in Miami.This is no ordinary freighter.The 19,500-ton ship of Ivaran Line, which carries 88 passengers plus freight, now sails from New Orleans and stops at Houston, two ports in Venezuela, Rio de Janeiro and Santos in Brazil, before arriving in Buenos Aires.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Faced with a long cruise back to his homeland and the end of a port-of-call romance in Cuba, authorities said a lovesick Russian sailor jumped ship on the high seas near the Bahamas late Sunday night.Revelers on a passing Miami cruise ship heard the sailor's cries for help as he foundered in the dark ocean. With the help of a cargo freighter, the sailor was hauled from shark-infested waters and delivered to federal immigration authorities in Fort Lauderdale.Carol Chasse of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service said Igor Bajenol, 21, told authorities he jumped overboard from a military ship because he didn't want to go back to Russia -- or leave his girlfriend in Cuba.

TILGHMAN ISLAND -- The U.S. Coast Guard is investigatin the grounding on Thanksgiving Day of a Cypriot freighter, which was headed south in the Chesapeake Bay when it struck a muddy shoal near the mouth of the Choptank River.The 750-foot ship was freed with the help of yesterday's 5:30 p.m. high tide and two tugboats from Baltimore. Under its own power, the freighter last night was headed for Norfolk, Va., where it is expected to be checked for damage.The freighter, Katya V, left Baltimore Harbor Thursday with a load of grain bound for Spain.

Soon after the Pearl Harbor attack, which drew this country into World War II, there came almost daily, unrelated attacks much closer to home. The German naval command lost little time in trying to cut off all shipments of American supplies to the beleaguered British.From mid-January of 1942 the East Coast was blackened by ruptured freighters and tankers as half a dozen U-boats had free rein until mid-summer, when the U.S. Navy belatedly established an effective system of convoys and air cover.

Two shipping-company executives who operated the notorious Khian Sea -- the freighter that tried to dump incinerator ash on three continents -- have been indicted in Wilmington, Del., on charges that they lied to a federal grand jury.William P. Reilly, 66, of Severna Park, and John Patrick Dowd, 39, of Washington had told a grand jury sitting in Wilmington that the ash was not dumped at sea.Federal investigators say they determined that the ash was dumped in the Indian Ocean while the ship was traveling between Yugoslavia and Singapore.

Due to an editing error, a story in the first two editions of yesterday's Evening Sun said five stowaways aboard a freighter in Chesapeake Bay became violent when they learned they were going to be turned over to authorities.Actually, it was their attempts to escape confinement aboard the ship that prompted the captain to ask the Coast Guard to arrest the stowaways, according to federal officials and witnesses.Five stowaways were in federal custody today awaiting return to their native Dominican Republic after they were arrested aboard a freighter in Chesapeake Bay.The men, who boarded the 554-foot Maritime Lapis while it was berthed in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, were discovered a few days ago and were locked in a cabin by crew members, authorities said.

At least six vehicles reported stolen this year in Maryland and on their way to foreign countries by freighter have been recovered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, an agency spokesman said this week. Two of the vehicles, a 2000 Nissan Maxima and a 1999 Toyota Camry, were heading to Nigeria and Niger, respectively, Steve Sapp said in a news release. . Sapp said CBP agents at the port of Baltimore routinely review exports to determine whether shipping firms are complying with U.S. export laws.

At least six vehicles reported stolen this year in Maryland and on their way to foreign countries by freighter have been recovered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents, an agency spokesman said this week. Two of the vehicles, a 2000 Nissan Maxima and a 1999 Toyota Camry, were heading to Nigeria and Niger, respectively, Steve Sapp said in a news release. . Sapp said CBP agents at the port of Baltimore routinely review exports to determine whether shipping firms are complying with U.S. export laws.

A 43-year-old Baltimore man received a 15 1/2 -year prison sentence yesterday for his role in a drug conspiracy in which prosecutors said 155 kilograms of cocaine was smuggled from South America into Baltimore. U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles Jr. sentenced Donald Ryan, who pleaded guilty in January. According to court documents, Ryan agreed in September 2003 to serve as a broker for a freighter shipment of cocaine from Guyana to Savannah, Ga. On Feb. 24, 2004, the freighter containing the cocaine arrived in Savannah's port.

A week after the fatal collision between a freighter and a flotilla of tugboats and barges on the Elk River, three lawsuits have been filed in federal court by companies involved in the incident. Norfolk Dredging Co. of Chesapeake, Va., has filed two suits, one in U.S. District Court in Baltimore and the other in Norfolk. The suits seek a total of $30 million in damages as a result of the accident, in which the captain of its tugboat Swift and three crewmen died. The suits center around the events leading to the collision Feb. 25 of the freighter A.V. Kastner, owned by Gypsum Transportation, a Bermuda company, and a flotilla of barges, tugs and dredge equipment.

Jeffrey Slaton was the last man on the Swift and the last man off. He wasn't supposed to be on the tugboat that sank Monday morning in the Elk River near the entrance to the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. But the boat needed another deckhand, and he agreed to turn around from a shift on the Essex and start another one on the Swift, with just enough time at home to change clothes. If not for the help of God, Slaton says, he never would have seen home again. On Sunday night, the captain, William "Bo" Bryant, told the crew that a freighter would be passing on the port side the next morning.

Four members of a tugboat and dredging crew are missing and feared dead in the cold Elk River after the tug collided with a 520-foot freighter yesterday morning in fog 40 miles northeast of Baltimore. Five others from the tug Swift were rescued after narrowly escaping from the sinking vessel. The 60-foot tug rolled and sank within 20 seconds, apparently trapping some men inside, crew members told rescuers. The search for survivors was called off by evening and is scheduled to resume this morning.

As World War II began to expand in the autumn of 1939, the City of Flint, an outward-bound Baltimore freighter, found herself caught up in two major international wartime incidents. The City of Flint, under the command of Capt. Joseph Gainard, who was well-known in Baltimore maritime circles, was steaming across the Atlantic when her wireless crackled with a call for help from the Donaldson Atlantic Line steamer Athenia. On Sept. 1, 1939, the ship was sailing westward from Ireland, bound for Montreal with 1,103 passengers, of whom 311 were Americans fleeing the impending outbreak of war in Europe.

As German forces overran Europe in the spring of 1940, massive gold shipments began arriving in the United States from England, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway for safekeeping. As the May invasion of Oslo began, Norwegian officials played a cat and mouse game with some 600,000,000 kronor, which they successfully managed to spirit away from the Nazis aboard a British troopship and deposit in a London bank vault. The next month, a shipment of gold estimated to be in excess of $500 million arrived in New York from England and France, shipped by way of Canada.

The body of a man found yesterday floating off a pier in Canton may be that of a freighter crewman who was reported missing Dec. 23. The body was taken to the state medical examiner's office for an autopsy and identification, police said. Detective Dave Peckoo of the homicide unit said a contractor aboard a freighter saw the body about 1 p.m. off Pier 1 in the 2000 block of S. Clinton St. Peckoo said a missing-person report on the crewman had been filed.

WASHINGTON -- Federal Express Corp. and federal aviation regulators are squaring off over how much cargo certain Boeing Co. 727 freighter planes can safely carry.Last July, the Federal Aviation Administration told FedEx, United Parcel Service and other airlines flying converted Boeing 727s that it intended to reduce their payloads by more than half until changes are made to strengthen the planes' floor decks.The FAA proposed cutting cargo loads to no more than 3,000 pounds from the existing limit of 8,000 pounds per container.

A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE is how folks in New Orleans are referring to the weekend accident at the Riverwalk mall there. To understand why is to see the news photos of the fancy shopping complex, crushed like a soda can by a grain freighter run amok, and to learn that no one was killed even though the collision happened in midday as shoppers lunched and browsed at the height of the holiday season.The scenario was dramatic and horrific: A 70,000-ton grain ship, the Bright Field, as long as two football fields, lost power due to an oil pump failure.