Tall Ships

A thunderous sea battle between tall ships. Pirates swarming around the harbor, singing chanteys and staging sword fights. Military surgeons of dubious pedigree, enthusiastically offering amputations.What a cable television network will do for a little publicity.In an elaborate promotion for its four-film series, "Horatio Hornblower," based on the nautical adventure classics of C. S. Forester, the A&E Network turned Baltimore's Inner Harbor into a stage for a Napoleon-era extravaganza yesterday.

The China Sea Marine Trading Co. -- that grand emporium of serendipitous seagoing stuff on the Ann Street wharf -- is shipping out. And another slice of the Fells Point mystique slips away into the gathering gloom.Steve Bunker and Sharon Bondroff have been denizens of Fells Point so long you could imagine they sold Capt. William Fell his first sextant. They're simultaneously early pioneers of the new Fells Point and preservers of the old.Bunker's a familiar Fells Point character, professionally nautical in his somewhat piratical Vandyke beard and mustachio, longish hair, one earring and with a parrot or two perched on his shoulders.

Baltimore is looking for a few tall ships -- but the competition is pretty fierce.Naval officials in Uruguay say they will send a tall ship here July 2. But in what may be an off year for the popular attractions, most of the world's stately tall ships will be setting sails for port cities competing with Baltimore.So far, Uruguay's Capitan Miranda is the only tall ship scheduled to visit Baltimore this year. Typically, from two to six tall ships have visited the Inner Harbor each year since their initial invitation in 1976.

Someday, the Russians may dock a warship by the Inner Harbor promenade. And so may the Chinese, the Guatemalans, the Albanians and the Pakistanis.At least that's the hope of Baltimore port officials, who gave military commanders from those nations and about 30 others a tour of the Inner Harbor yesterday in the hopes of bringing warships, tall ships and other vessels to Harborplace."

Virtually all of the fishing season lies ahead, but the Department of Natural Resources already is looking forward to next year, proposing changes in nontidal fishery regulations and seeking public input regarding the possible changes.Among the specific changes under consideration are:* Adding Greenbelt Lake (Prince George's County) and the main stem of the North Branch of the Potomac River from the upstream boundary of Potomac State Forest to bridge at Old Wilson Road (Garrett County) to the list of put-and-take trout waters.

TALL SHIPS 'A-COMIN'A summer tradition since 1976, tall ships and other international vessels will visit the Inner Harbor this spring and summer. Many of them will dock at the Inner Harbor, West Wall. All ships will be open to the public and admission will be free.The five tall ships scheduled to visit this year are part of a fleet of nationally owned training ships that tour world ports each year.At least two of them, the U.S. Coast Guard's Eagle and the Danmark, from Denmark, were part of the city's initial tall-ship festival during the nation's bicentennial in 1976.

If the idea of sailing a 200-year-old, wooden-hulled schooner through choppy, pirate- and shark-infested waters appeals to you, visit "Virtual Voyage" at the Fells Point Maritime Festival this weekend.At the dockside exhibit, visitors can don virtual reality gear that instantly puts them in the captain's chair, with total interactive control of helm and navigation.If you want to raise sails, you can raise sails. If you want to fire cannons, you can fire cannons. (You can't make people walk planks, however.

Many Baltimore-area residents may live their entire lives with nary a reminder that Charm City functions as an international maritime center. But for others, the port of Baltimore dominates their working and social lives."

Ships from Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States will drop anchor at the Inner Harbor and Fells Point over the next four months for Baltimore Operation Sail '93."We have a variety of ships this year, from one of the world's largest tall ships to one of the smallest replicas," said Mary Sue McCarthy, executive director of Operation Sail.That replica is the Half Moon, a first-time visitor that is a copy of a ship built in 1608 by the Dutch East India Co. and sailed by Henry Hudson in 1609.

When Baltimoreans board the Italian tall ship Amerigo Vespucci today, they'll walk sleek teak decks that stretch 333 feet from bowsprit to the captain's garden and crane their necks for a glimpse of the top of the pine mast.They'll step around thick curls of rope that, propelled only by the muscle of men, lift the ship's sails skyward.They'll see their reflections in brass fittings and marvel at the gilded arabesques adorning the hull.Visitors to the Vespucci, the oldest ship in the Italian navy whose namesake explored the "New World," will feel the romance of the high seas and experience the regal splendor of the 19th century frigates that inspired its design.

As the Mexican flag flapped in the wind high above the Patapsco River, the crew on the decks of the Cuauhtemoc prepared for the final leg of their trip up the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore awaited them. One sailor dabbed at a white wall with a paintbrush, giving it a final gleam. Others climbed up the masts to partially unfurl the sails. Using an electric pump, another pair of sailors pulled in the anchor, caked with black mud from the bottom of the Chesapeake. With a few short blows from his boatswain's whistle yesterday, a lieutenant directed scores of sailors up the ship's three tall masts.

Phillips Foods World Headquarters was bustling with activity long after work hours on a Friday evening. The activity was also of the after-work sort - drinking, eating and listening to good music - all in the name of raising money for Sail Baltimore. This was the organization's fourth annual "Beer, Boats & Ballads" celebration, already a tradition for some of the guests. And everyone had his or her favorite part. "Raw oysters. Cold and salty," said Jim Stevens, a University of Maryland accountant.

Tall ships -- The Annapolis Maritime Museum will present a Tall Ships Festival on June 24 at Annapolis City Dock. The Schooner Sultana and Delaware's tall ship Kalmar Nykel will be open for public boarding and inspection, along with maritime music and historic exhibits. The Kalmar Nykel, a reproduction of a 1625-era Dutch pinnace, was built in Wilmington, Del., in 1998, to commemorate those who crossed the Atlantic from 1637-1638 and settled in the Delaware Valley. The Kalmar Nykel will be open for tours from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Sultana will be open from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets to visit both ships are $10 per adult and $8 for children 3 to 11 years old. 410-268-7601, ext. 104.

Five tall ships and a government research vessel are slated to dock in at the Inner Harbor during visits late this month and in early May as part of the Volvo Ocean Race stopover in Baltimore, according to Sail Baltimore, a local nonprofit group that welcomes visiting ships. The vessels, along with the racing craft, are expected to draw as many as 500,000 visitors, said Laura Stevenson, executive director of Sail Baltimore. The organization was founded in 1975 and has hosted more than 400 visiting ships and 35 maritime events.

It's hard not to catch the fever when Baltimore's harbor fills up with sleek sails. In a few days, we'll be home to the Volvo Ocean Race, and I'm sure I'll be among those who will have a long look at our Patapsco and the Baltimore Waterfront Festival. Now, 30 years after a similar event, I'll divulge the details of my own personal festival the summer of 1976. In those days I was reporter at the old News American. Then, as now, I never left the city on newspaper assignments and only covered stories as far away as taxicabs or, more likely, a Maryland Transit Administration bus could take me. But that summer, as Baltimore's new and largely unbuilt-up Inner Harbor was showing signs of a terrific rebirth, Baltimore netted a big catch -- the tall ships Danmark, Amerigo Vespucci, Gorch Fock, Esmeralda and Eagle called here after appearing at a huge bicentennial celebration in New York's harbor.

Despite a day darkened by clouds and dampened by rain, thousands of people, many dressed in red, white and blue, thronged the Inner Harbor yesterday for the city's Fourth of July Sailabration, which brought tall-masted ships from across the globe to the Baltimore Harbor. In celebration of the 150th year of Baltimore's Constellation - the Navy's last all-sail warship and the last Civil War-era naval vessel still afloat - ships from Nova Scotia, Romania, Uruguay and other foreign countries docked in the Inner Harbor and opened their decks to visitors.

Ron Krieger was savoring the harbor view from his downtown Baltimore hotel yesterday morning when a tall-masted ship glided into the picture. The sight of the Brazilian Cisne Branco, white and graceful like its namesake (white swan), captivated the tourist from Florida. The tall ship and six others from as far as Romania are sailing into the Inner Harbor and Fells Point this week, where they are expected to provide an inviting centerpiece to mark the start of what tourism officials hope will be a banner summer for visitors.

Ask any local, and he or she will probably tell you that it's normal to see a bunch of boats floating at the Inner Harbor. But when the boats are so huge that they begin to compete with the skyline, then you know something's up. Starting Sunday, the waters of the downtown port will be teeming with a selection of the world's tallest sailing ships as the city gears up to celebrate Independence Day. The ships, ranging from the 170-foot Pride of Baltimore II...

Tall Ships Down, by Daniel S. Parrott. McGraw Hill. 224 pages. $24.95. There is something endlessly fascinating about shipwrecks, as this book so admirably demonstrates. To think that a man-made object as large as a ship, sailed by a trained crew, fitted out with the latest technology, can suddenly come to woe and vanish beneath the waves almost defies explanation. Well, maybe. The ocean bottom is littered with wrecks, some of which came to rest there as a result of sudden freakish weather conditions, roaring storms or rogue waves.

IF YOU want a benchmark of where the west side is in terms of its development, think of the Inner Harbor before Harborplace opened in 1980, putting Baltimore on the cover of Time magazine. Or, better yet, before the Tall Ships sailed into town as part of the country's bicentennial celebration in 1976, drawing a million visitors to the waterfront. That, at least, is the view of Ron Kreitner, Mark Sissman and Mark Wasserman -- three key players on the west side who also played important roles in the Inner Harbor.