Hospital Ship

Hospital ship brings comfort to so many I object to The Sun's coverage this week of the USNS Comfort's humanitarian assistance and training mission to Latin America this summer ("Symbol of Hope," Oct. 28-29). The USNS Comfort provided health care and training to approximately 100,000 of the most impoverished people in the Caribbean and Central and South America. Admittedly, this effort was constrained by limits of both time and U.S. taxpayer dollars, which were used judiciously to help others and to provide our military personnel and civilian organizations experience in delivering humanitarian assistance.

The four-year search for a permanent Baltimore home for the former Navy hospital ship Sanctuary may have moved a step toward resolution, allowing it to become a center for recovering women drug addicts.But despite a meeting with state officials described as a "positive" step, board members of Project Life, the ship's owner, voted unanimously yesterday to authorize its executive committee to sue the Maryland Port Administration if deemed necessary to obtain a suitable berth.Officials of the port administration and Project Life said yesterday that Thursday's meeting -- when the state suggested two sites -- was a positive step, but also one requiring more meetings and the working out of details before any lease would be ready to sign.

A converted former U.S. Navy hospital ship, still seeking a permanent home in Baltimore Harbor, will begin accepting women drug and alcohol abusers for treatment in April, it was announced yesterday.Stephen J. Hammer, chairman of the nonprofit group Project Life, which owns the ship, Sanctuary, said 60 women will receive help in the first phase of a program that will try to "break the grip of addiction" and also offer "life and employment skills."The women must have gone through detoxification before boarding the ship.

Bernard H. Hyllestad, a retired maritime policy specialist whose volunteer work resulted in a former hospital ship being based in Baltimore, died of cancer Saturday at his home in Street. He was 81.Mr. Hyllestad, a former steamship captain, retired in 1975 from the federal Department of Transportation, for which he was assistant secretary for policy, plans and international affairs.His work was concerned with such maritime issues and policies as the construction of a new sea-level canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and marine pilotage.

An article in yesterday's editions incorrectly reported the patient capacity of the hospital USNS Comfort, which is being deployed to the Caribbean in June. The ship has 1,000 beds.The Sun regrets the error.The Baltimore-based hospital ship USNS Comfort will be sent to the Caribbean early next month for possible use as a processing center for fleeing Haitian boat people, the Military Sealift Command (MSC) said yesterday.The Comfort -- last activated for military duty during the Persian Gulf war -- is undergoing routine maintenance at Newport News, Va., and "will report to the U.S. Atlantic Command for duty in the Caribbean in early June," according to the MSC, a civilian agency which operates the 250-bed hospital ship.

The United Way of Central Maryland voted yesterday to give a $35,000 grant to the former hospital ship Sanctuary, a decommissioned Navy vessel that may be resurrected as a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.The 562-foot Sanctuary, which saw extensive duty during the Vietnam War, is owned by Project Life. The local nonprofit organization hopes to have a 100-bed detoxification unit on board by June of next year.

"If they made it to the Sanctuary, they had a good chance of making it home," Jane Bolduc says.She's a Calvert County nurse and Vietnam veteran who spent a year or so tending to wounded troops aboard the USS Sanctuary, an old Navy hospital ship now docked at an old pier in South Baltimore. This Friday, Jane, who started her tour of duty a week after the Tet offensive of 1968, will lead a delegation of nurses back to the Sanctuary, the first time they've seen the ship since the war."I've warned them," she says, "to be prepared to see an old, rusting ship.

Let 'Sanctuary' be the healer it once wasOn Nov. 12, several friends and I had the pleasure of visiting your fair city for the purpose of touring the former hospital ship USS Sanctuary, which was berthed in the Inner Harbor.We were returning from the dedication of the Vietnam Women's Memorial in Washington, when a former Army corpsman with us suggested we stop in Baltimore to see the contemplated end of such a fine ship.Upon arriving at the pier, we were greeted by members of Life International, who told us they intended to make the former giver of life and hope a floating center for the rehabilitation of victims of chemical dependency.

The crew of the USNS Comfort, the Baltimore-based hospital ship that took part in the Gulf War, began preparing yesterday for a Christmastime mission in Somalia as part of Operation Restore Hope.The 42-member crew which maintains the ship in port at the Baltimore Harbor near Canton spent the day repositioning on-board materials and checking engines and other machinery in anticipation of shipping out this week.A request to activate the ship has been made by the U.S. Central Command to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

ABOARD THE USNS COMFORT -- On the way home to Baltimore, after eight months away in the Persian Gulf war, the USNS Comfort was anchored off Annapolis this morning, the Bay Bridge barely visible through the fog.A crewman's family rocked in a little cabin cruiser off to starboard in the hope of giving him an early welcome home. Congressmen and military brass were boarding helicopters to fly in for a welcoming ceremony. The ship was full of anticipation of its homecoming to Dundalk this afternoon.

WASHINGTON - With a $20 million, 24-nation aid effort under way for victims of the fighting in Georgia, the USNS Comfort, Baltimore's familiar white-hulled hospital ship, remains idle at its Canton pier, though on standby for possible deployment to the region. The Pentagon sent a military team into war-ravaged Georgia yesterday to determine what supplies are needed and the most effective ways to deliver them. Two Air Force C-17 cargo planes have already carried basic loads of shelter, food and clothing.

A former World War II hospital ship that has spent much of its retirement languishing in Baltimore will soon be towed to Greece, under a plan that's raising legal questions and pollution concerns from a Seattle environmental group. In a statement set to be released today, the Basel Action Network said it has contacted the U.S. Coast Guard, the Maryland Port Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency with allegations that the Sanctuary contains polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, thought to cause cancer.

Paul Moore was on vacation last week but took time out to select some reader comments on journalism in The Sun: On the Voyage of the USNS Comfort A two-part series by Sun national reporter Robert Little that described how a Latin American medical mission of the USNS Comfort, a Baltimore-based hospital ship, accomplished far less than might have been possible because of public relations priorities, drew a significant number of e-mails, many positive and...

Hospital ship brings comfort to so many I object to The Sun's coverage this week of the USNS Comfort's humanitarian assistance and training mission to Latin America this summer ("Symbol of Hope," Oct. 28-29). The USNS Comfort provided health care and training to approximately 100,000 of the most impoverished people in the Caribbean and Central and South America. Admittedly, this effort was constrained by limits of both time and U.S. taxpayer dollars, which were used judiciously to help others and to provide our military personnel and civilian organizations experience in delivering humanitarian assistance.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- The massive white ship that appeared one morning in the city's polluted harbor was wondrous on its own, but few Haitians could have dreamed of what was inside. There were nurses and surgeons, X-ray machines, cases of clean bandages and medicines. And, most incredibly, there was hope. Within sight of the city's squalid waterfront slums, the Baltimore-based hospital ship USNS Comfort dropped anchor to dispense free medical care, its ninth stop on a 12-country tour of South and Central America.

The M/V Sanctuary, a former Navy hospital ship left to rot at the port of Baltimore, was auctioned off yesterday for $50,000. A lawyer for the would-be owner refused to identify his client and couldn't say what will be done with the 522-foot-long, eight-story-high ship, promising more details if a judge agrees to accept the bid. The ship was seized by federal marshals in March and auctioned by the U.S. District Court to repay debt racked up by the...

The hospital ship USNS Comfort leaves its Baltimore home today without the usual war or natural disaster on its itinerary, but preparing nonetheless for one of the busiest and most complicated missions of its 20-year service in the U.S. Navy. Instead of rushing to a crisis, as it did in New Orleans and the Persian Gulf on recent deployments, the ship is beginning a carefully choreographed 120-day tour of Central and South America that will take it to 12 countries with varying medical and humanitarian needs.

NEW ORLEANS -- When the crew of the USNS Comfort pulled out of Baltimore harbor a month ago to help the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, the highly trained doctors and nurses aboard the Navy hospital ship never imagined they'd have to hunt for patients. Yet it has been a month of relative inaction for the 1,000-bed ship, at a cost of about $700,000 a day to taxpayers. After first docking in Pascagoula, Miss., where specialists trained to deal with severe trauma mostly treated people with cuts, bruises and other minor ills, the ship was sent to New Orleans, where needs were thought to be greater.

Its white hull towering above Baltimore Harbor, the USNS Comfort took on truckloads of bottled water, food and medical supplies yesterday in preparation for a mission to provide medical relief to the hurricane-stricken Gulf Coast. The ship, making its first excursion since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, was to steam out of the harbor as early as last night on a trip that could take five or six days. "It's a tragedy and an opportunity to help our own," Cmdr. Ben Feril said on the quarterdeck of the 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship.

Three weeks into the war with Iraq, the Maryland-based USNS Comfort is still treating more Iraqis than U.S. and British soldiers, and most of its coalition patients are in for routine injuries and sickness that occurred away from the battlefield. Of the 120 coalition fighters brought on board the hospital ship, only 35 or so had been hurt in combat, Capt. Charles Blankenship, commanding officer of the Comfort's medical facility, said at a press briefing yesterday. More than half the 300 patients admitted in the Arabian Gulf have been Iraqis - all but 30 of them prisoners of war. Activity on the 1,000-bed converted supertanker - which was designed to stabilize injured coalition fighters for transport to hospitals in Europe and the United States - has been relatively slow.