Merchant Marine

Goucher, which wrapped up the top seed and home-field advantage in the upcoming Landmark Conference tournament, will conclude the regular season with Saturday's home contest against the Merchant Marine. The Mariners will visit Gopher Stadium again on Wednesday as Goucher's semifinal opponent in the conference tournament. Gophers coach Brian Kelly compared Saturday's game to a “dress rehearsal” for the tournament. “It's obviously a dress rehearsal for a game that will have a lot of significance for Wednesday,” he said Tuesday.

Goucher, which wrapped up the top seed and home-field advantage in the upcoming Landmark Conference tournament, will conclude the regular season with Saturday's home contest against the Merchant Marine. The Mariners will visit Gopher Stadium again on Wednesday as Goucher's semifinal opponent in the conference tournament. Gophers coach Brian Kelly compared Saturday's game to a “dress rehearsal” for the tournament. “It's obviously a dress rehearsal for a game that will have a lot of significance for Wednesday,” he said Tuesday.

AS A BRANCH of industry, shipping is valuable. But as a resource of defense, essential!"Thus declared Thomas Jefferson in a message to Congress. In the ensuing two centuries, the U.S. has ignored Jefferson's counsel, allowing its merchant marine, once the powerful "fourth arm of defense," to wither.While its main allies and trading partners lie across vast expanses of water, the U.S., as Operation Desert Storm has demonstrated, no longer has the means to project its economic goods or military might without critical support from other nations -- support that could be lacking in the future.

Graduation depleted Goucher of four starters - three on offense - and the program eventually bid farewell to the most successful coach in its history, but that did not prevent the team from extending its success in the Landmark Conference. Saturday's 7-6 overtime decision over Scranton cemented for the Gophers (7-7 overall and 5-0 in the league) the top seed and home-field advantage in the upcoming conference tournament with just one more league game against the Merchant Marine this Saturday.

It's the kind of sign that hasn't been seen on the Baltimore waterfront since the World War II: Seamen Wanted.But there it is in the window of a Fells Point store, complete with phone numbers for anyone holding seamen's papers.It's just a piece of cardboard, but to those who have watched the U.S. merchant fleet decline to the point where a one-time port of legend such as Baltimore was only providing jobs for a handful of sailors each month, the notice is extraordinary.War, for the moment, has refloated the sinking U.S. merchant marine.

Sharon Mazer, who went to sea in the wake of reading Joseph Conrad, could tell that ancient mariner a tale or two.As in "Heart of Darkness," Ms. Mazer has sailed up the Congo, though not all the way. She has squeezed 1,000-foot ships through channels so constricted the Earth itself should have choked.And she has been drugged and robbed in a life-follows-fiction incident in Manila.Hi, ho, it has been a seaman's life for her.Ms. Mazer, a rebel to the core, and Sheryl Dickinson, who thrives on the unusual, are among 185 women who have graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, N.Y. The school began accepting women in 1974, the first of the five service academies to do so.Of the one-third of female graduates who responded to a recent poll, 87 percent said they currently were working in the maritime industry, either on ships or ashore.

At 2: 30 a.m. Sunday, the voice emanating by radio from the U.S. Coast Guard station at Woods Hole on Cape Cod said an EgyptAir Boeing 767 jet had gone down 60 nautical miles off Nantucket. On the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy training vessel, crew members realized it was clearly within range of their 224-foot ship."It was surreal," said Gilbert Cadena of Nederland, Texas, a senior at the academy. "We didn't expect this to turn into anything."The transmission set the 26-member crew into action, plunging the team of mariners in training into a real-life odyssey of international scope and monumental human tragedy.

SOUTHAMPTON, England -- On the night of June 5, 1944, about the time that Allied paratroopers were landing behind German lines in Normandy and several hours after the largest invasion force in history had set out across the English Channel, a fleet of civilian-operated U.S. Army tugs pulled away from the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England.Their mission was to guide selected U.S. merchant ships into positions off Omaha Beach, where they would be intentionally sunk to create a breakwater.

For more than 40 years, Ray Thompson carried his book around inside his head; it took a devastating illness to finally get it out.His subjects are the unsung heroes of World War II, the officers and men of the merchant marine who ferried troops and materiel across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to the fighting forces and paid a dreadful price.In the prologue to "The Watery Hell," a roman a clef of his three wartime years at sea, Mr. Thompson, a former Evening Sun reporter, notes that the merchant service suffered a higher casualty rate -- 1 in 32 killed, or missing and presumed dead -- than all of the armed forces combined.

Michael Linkowich Sr., a retired ship's engineer who survived a German torpedo attack in the North Atlantic during World War II, died of lung disease Wednesday at Calvert Memorial Hospital in Prince Frederick. The Essex resident was 95. Born in Turners Station, he attended Baltimore County public schools and the old St. Mary's Industrial School until the eighth grade. As a young man, he worked for the old Essex Real Estate Co. and the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. He joined the merchant marine during World War II as an assistant engineer.

Charles F. "Blackie" Blockston Jr., a merchant mariner who during World War II survived the U-boat sinking of the freighter Carlton and spent three weeks drifting 600 miles in a lifeboat before being rescued, died Aug. 28 of multiple-organ failure at the Veterans Medical Center in downtown Baltimore. The longtime Rosedale resident was 93. Mr. Blockston's wartime adventures began in the engine room of the SS Carlton, a Lykes Brothers Steamship Co. freighter that departed Iceland on May 20, 1942, sailing for the Soviet Arctic port of Murmansk.

Capt. Carl F. Keener, a retired Chesapeake Bay pilot and World War II Navy veteran, died July 25 from complications of a lung infection at Stella Maris Hospice in Timonium. The longtime Timonium resident was 87. Carl Franklin Kenner was born in Baltimore and raised on East 35th Street. After dropping out of junior high school, he went to sea aboard a collier that was bound for South America. Captain Keener's maritime adventure was short-lived, but not before his ship broke down and was taken to Panama for repairs and he transited the Panama Canal.

Karl Max Jenkins, a former German merchant mariner who jumped ship in Baltimore and later became a stationary engineer and building superintendent, died Saturday of heart failure at Oak Crest Village retirement community. The former longtime Lauraville resident was 104. "He was an old salt and a walking history book," said Frank G. Lidinsky, a Baltimore attorney who was Mr. Jenkins' personal representative and friend for more than two decades. "He was a smart and engaging guy. " He was born Karl Max Jeglinski (a name which was later changed to Jenkins when he served in the U.S. Army)

Toothpaste and spiritual comfort share space in the double-wide storefront in Dundalk. Magazines and snacks fill crannies and shelves, racks hold donated sweatshirts and winter jackets and somehow, wedged toward the back, is a quiet corner to make a phone call or connect via Skype with family members half a world away. When you are at sea for months at a time, delivering cargo to ports around the globe, the tiny Stella Maris International Seafarers Center can seem like a palace stuffed with the good things of life.

Joseph Gordon Donald Jones, a retired Baltimore County police officer who served in the U.S. merchant marine and the Navy during World War II, died April 3 of a kidney infection at Franklin Square Medical Center. The longtime Essex resident was 84. The son of a plumber and a housekeeper, Mr. Jones, who was known as Gordon, was born the fourth of five children in Baltimore, and raised in Essex and the city. He dropped out of city public schools after his father's death in 1941 to help support his family.

Thomas S. Mallonee Jr., a retired advertising copywriter and restaurant reviewer who had also taught wine appreciation classes, died July 20 of cancer at Tate Chesapeake Hospice House in Linthicum. He was 82. Mr. Mallonee was born in Baltimore and raised in Pikesville. He was a graduate of Pikesville High School and earned a bachelor's degree in advertising in 1949 from the University of Maryland, College Park. In the 1950s, he served in the Coast Guard and the merchant marine.

Anthony Steven "Tony" Zyna, a retired National Brewing Co. mechanic and member of the merchant marine who was sent to a Soviet concentration camp during World War II, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease June 18 at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 88 and lived in Cockeysville. Born Anthony Zinowski in New Britain, Conn., and raised in New Haven, he left his home at 14 and later joined the Navy. A medical disability — a punctured eardrum — forced him to leave the service and he then joined the merchant marine during World War II. He served aboard the Liberty Ship Barbara Frietchie, as well as the Glenpool and the Paoli.

Karl Max Jenkins, a former German merchant mariner who jumped ship in Baltimore and later became a stationary engineer and building superintendent, died Saturday of heart failure at Oak Crest Village retirement community. The former longtime Lauraville resident was 104. "He was an old salt and a walking history book," said Frank G. Lidinsky, a Baltimore attorney who was Mr. Jenkins' personal representative and friend for more than two decades. "He was a smart and engaging guy. " He was born Karl Max Jeglinski (a name which was later changed to Jenkins when he served in the U.S. Army)

Anthony Steven "Tony" Zyna, a retired National Brewing Co. mechanic and member of the merchant marine who was sent to a Soviet concentration camp during World War II, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease June 18 at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 88 and lived in Cockeysville. Born Anthony Zinowski in New Britain, Conn., and raised in New Haven, he left his home at 14 and later joined the Navy. A medical disability — a punctured eardrum — forced him to leave the service and he then joined the merchant marine during World War II. He served aboard the Liberty Ship Barbara Frietchie, as well as the Glenpool and the Paoli.