SEA

An $800 million business deal cut the heart out of the American merchant marine yesterday, as a foreign shipping conglomerate carved up the last global ocean carrier based in the United States.It was a paper transaction only. No American merchant seamen lost their jobs, and no U.S.-flagged ships were handed over to foreign crews.But the sale of Sea-Land Service Inc.'s international shipping division to the Danish A. P. Moller Group was the latest, and perhaps strongest, blow to a merchant fleet that once circled the globe and dominated international commerce.

Editor's note: April daydreams about the seashore and her search for the elusive moonsnail.April has a hidden treasure.It sings her to the sea.Her moonsnail sings of tidal flats,of water-rippled sandy shoresand otter rolling in swaying kelp.It whispers of the misty morning fogs,and sea salt air.Her moonsnail sings a harmonyof sideways scuttling crabsand driftwood tangles on the rocks,of crying gulls and crashing wavesbeating out their rhythm against the rocky shore.In and outOut and in.Like the rhythm of April's feet on the sidewalkas she skips rope in the park.

In the June 13 issue of Home & Family, the Summer Reading List page included quiz questions for each of the suggested titles. Here are the answers.INFANT AND PRESCHOOLERS"Beach Ball"Q. Why did Mary first lose her ball?A. The wind blew it away."Boo and Baa at Sea"Q. What finally gets the two sheep afloat?A. A motorboat that whizzes by."The Great White Man-Eating Shark"Q. Why does Norvin make the dorsal fin of a shark?A. People are getting in his way when he shoots through the water like a silver arrow.

Driving to Virginia's Eastern Shore, you quickly realize that you're headed into big sky country. The flat landscape serves as a pedestal for the wide vistas of azure sky and white clouds overhead. Leaving urban congestion behind and downshifting into a slower pace feels pretty good, too, especially when you feel as if you've arrived somewhere distinctly unlike the rest of the region.The Eastern Shore is different, but not in a pushy, overly obvious way.Its treasured offerings are presented on a microlevel, where one has to stop and appreciate the rich environment that has been preserved there.

About this page: Appearing monthly during the summer (also on July 11 and Aug. 8), this page will provide youngsters and their parents with age-appropriate readings suggested by local experts and regional libraries. Also included are activities and fun facts for entertainment and learning.Suggested titlesInfants and preschoolers1. "Beach Ball" by Peter Sis2. "Boo and Baa at Sea" by Olof and Lena Landstrom3. "The Great White Man-Eating Shark" by Margaret Mahy (will be excerpted in the June 27 Home & Family section)

I'VE LONG maintained that kayaks are great tools for exploring the Chesapeake region's thousands of miles of shallow shorelines and winding tidal creeks.A kayak is more capable than many power boats of crossing open water between islands or rivers, even of crossing the bay itself, and can handle unexpected weather.Downside: They are expensive to buy, and rental places are few and far between. Also, many people don't want to go on their own without more experience.In the past year I've become aware of a growing number of guides catering to those who want to kayak the bay and ocean-side areas of Maryland and Virginia.

Maryland officials yesterday gave the world's largest shipping alliance what is likely to be the state's final offer to lure them to the port of Baltimore. Then they moved back into a well-rehearsed mode of the negotiations: waiting.Shipping giants Sea-Land Service Inc. and Maersk Line are considering leaving their home port in Elizabeth, N.J., and set a deadline of 5 p.m. yesterday for an offer from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to keep them there.The governors of those two states continued quarreling over the matter yesterday, and no formal offer was made.

Capt. Ellery B. Woodworth had just recalled an old Navy line when he heard the cabin cruiser Katie Marie radio a distress call to the Coast Guard.His boat, Barcarole, a 30-foot rolling, pitching beauty of an old wooden boat built for the Chesapeake Bay, was headed due west in 45 miles of choppy Atlantic Ocean swells from Martha's Vineyard, Mass., to Block Island, R.I., before eventually sailing to Maryland.Woodworth's yarn, one of many flowing from his life in universities, politics, choral music and at sea, was the Navy order to new ship commanders: "Take her out, and bring her back, and don't hit anything."

Sea-Land Service Inc., the largest American shipping line and one of two companies eyeing Baltimore as the site for an East Coast cargo hub, will be carved into three individual businesses this year, company officials announced yesterday.The decision to split Sea-Land into a domestic shipping line, an international shipping line and a marine terminal operator should not affect the quest for a new Northeast hub, a company spokesman said. Officials at the port of Baltimore suggested that the move could improve the city's chances of winning Sea-Land's business.

ABOARD THE SEA-LAND INTEGRITY -- The ship was five hours behind schedule. Capt. Alan Hinshaw gripped the rail outside the bridge, and his body shuddered each time the cranes slammed another cargo container into the hull.Boom! Twenty-one tons of copper foil. Boom! Seven-hundred and twenty bags of glue.Before the Integrity could leave its pier in Elizabeth, N.J., 2,300 steel boxes had to be loaded on or off. Four cranes worked the deck simultaneously.Boom! Plywood, tulip bulbs, canned luncheon meet.

Jeff Brauner of Baltimore was in Atlantic City last month, "and for the first time I can remember I saw some terns on the beach in addition to the usual sea gulls. Does that have any weather significance?" The state Department of Natural Resources' Dave Brinker says no. You just got lucky. Tern populations are in long-term decline because of the loss of low, predator-free island habitat as sea levels rise and land subsides around the Chesapeake.

After having spent many years racing Austin-Healeys, Volvos and Lotus Elevens, Walter Cronkite finally gave up the rough-and-tumble sport of competitive driving, to his family's great relief, and turned to the sea for relaxation. He wrote in his 1996 autobiography, A Reporter's Life, that sailing was a more "family-oriented sport that I should substitute for racing," but "there has never been anything as exhilarating as driving at speed in competition." Cronkite, who acknowledged that he had read plenty of books about the sea, didn't know the first thing about sailing when he began on a Sunfish in the late 1940s.

"Many Brave Hearts Are Asleep in the Deep" 1897 sea chantey The ferocious February nor'easter that severely disrupted Atlantic shipping more than a half-century ago nearly took the life of a Baltimore merchant mariner who was aboard a crippled oil tanker. The gale that snapped the SS Pendleton in two off Cape Cod in the early morning hours of Feb. 18, 1952, inflicted a similar fate on another T-2 class tanker, the SS Fort Mercer, that was steaming some 30 miles southeast of Chatham, Mass.

Magical is the most overused word when writing about the Galapagos, those magical islands off the coast of Ecuador. Oops! Sorry, but there really is something about these islands that gets under your skin. One visit and you're hooked. Two visits morph you into a passionate advocate. On my last visit, I tried to figure out just what is so alluring about the Galapagos. Compared with the lush majesty of the Hawaiian Islands, they rank a distant second. They don't boast four-diamond restaurants or five-star hotels, and there is not a shopping mega-mall or multiplex anywhere.

Upon my return from a week's vacation this past summer in Tel Aviv, my friends and family appeared visibly impatient as I bragged about the city's beaches (" ... the sand? Like talcum powder!"), fascinating architecture, great shopping, as well as chic restaurants that serve splendid, fresh Mediterranean cuisine and excellent Israeli wines. No sooner did I pause for air, then they quickly interrupted, and always with the same two questions. "Did you feel safe there?" Answer: Yes, completely, despite several vivid reminders of Israel's perilous geopolitical status.

The Impressionist exhibit opening today at Washington's Phillips Collection features big names and the marquee draw of 17 Monet paintings. But what makes the show really pleasurable is that it's basically about people at the beach. With contributions from the likes of Monet, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Impressionists by the Sea serves as a reminder of the extent to which art movements depend upon technological and social movements. After railroads were built to coastal towns in northern France in the mid-19th century, vacationing Parisians soon turned humble fishing villages into fashionable resorts.

For Ralph Friedgen's birthday this summer, his two brothers-in-law and cousin paid for a deep-sea fishing trip. It was canceled because of the weather, but they decided to go out anyway. One brother-in-law drove the boat onto an oyster bed. Friedgen was in the back of the boat. The tide was going down quickly. Friedgen realized that if they were going to get off the oyster bed, he had to jump off the boat. They pushed it off, but Friedgen got stuck about waist-deep in something akin to quicksand.

A Wicomico County man drowned yesterday evening near the jetty off the southern edge of Ocean City while trying to save his two sons, who were being washed out to sea by a strong riptide, said the head of the city's beach patrol. The name of the 38-year-old Fruitland man was not released. Shortly before 6 p.m., about 20 minutes after lifeguards left their stations, a 911 call was made by someone reporting that two boys, ages 10 and 13, were being pushed out to sea by a southerly riptide and were heading toward the rocky jetty between the public beach and the inlet, said Capt.

Although it's not "officially" summer, we know many vacationers are ready for the season of sun, sand and sea. We're ready, too, with The Beach Zone, a weekly guide to what's happening on the Eastern Shore. From Ocean City to Rehoboth Beach, Del., and Cape May N.J., we've got our nose to the sand in search of beach highlights to help make your trip a shore thing. / / Page 3R

Let's take a few minutes on this, the 100th birthday of Rachel Carson, to consider the treasures she left us. Of course, we have her trilogy of environmental books --The Sea Around Us,The Edge of the Sea and the 1962 hallmark, Silent Spring. But in the 1930s, she also wrote outdoors articles for The Sun under the byline R.L. Carson. The biologist lived in Maryland for 35 years while attending Johns Hopkins University, teaching at the University of Maryland and writing for what is now called the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.