Tall Ships

It sure doesn't look like the other vessels docked in Annapolis. The Bounty, a wooden movie-star ship with its tallest mast at 115 feet, is in town for a long weekend of tours that ends Sunday. The visit, like the Star-Spangled Sailabration in Baltimore this weekend, commemorates the War of 1812. The original Bounty's storied mutiny occurred in 1789, and both the war and mutiny hark back to the era when sailing ships ruled the seas. This ship was built for the 1962 movie "Mutiny on the Bounty," starring Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian, leader of the historical mutiny in Tahiti against Capt.

ON THE SITE... Ships begin to arrive for Sailabration : A welcoming wind and warm sunshine greeted the first ships arriving at Baltimore's Inner Harbor just after 8 a.m. for the weeklong commemoration of the War of 1812. After fire in Fells Point, residents eye options for gutted space : Crews began clearing the rubble left behind by a five-alarm fire Monday. No cause of the fire or damage estimates have been determined. Baltimore gay rappers are loud and proud :   For several local rappers who are out, there are lingering stigmas and other obstacles to being accepted by some of their peers in a musical genre known for homophobia.

Gusty northerly winds are meeting the tall ships as they move up the Chesapeake Bay today, and they are also making travels rougher for smaller boats joining the flotilla to the Inner Harbor. A small craft advisory is in effect for the Chesapeake Bay through Thursday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service. Gusts of up to 25 knots -- about 29 mph -- are expected Wednesday afternoon. Steady winds of 15 knots are in the forecast. Waves are about 1 foot high, but can be expected to be higher when winds blow against the tidal direction.

It's a much-battered part of the Baltimore Harbor scenery, bobbing in the water just above the Key Bridge on the way to the Inner Harbor. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of boats - including Tall Ships and Navy warships--will pass by the Francis Scott Key buoy this week on their way to take part in Sailabration, Maryland's Star-Spangled commemoration of the War of 1812 . The buoy sits on the spot where the lawyer and amateur poet Key watched...

It took 200 years, but the oft-forgotten War of 1812 got some attention Wednesday. A flotilla of more than 40 ships representing a dozen nations glided under the Key Bridge and into Baltimore Harbor to launch the commemoration of the conflict that gave the United States its anthem and expelled the British military from American soil once and for all. With the arrival of tall ships and warships at the Inner Harbor, Fells Point and North Locust...

It's raining on the tall ships as they make their way through the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, but spectators won't have to stand in the drizzle to watch the sails in the Baltimore harbor. Once a cold front passes through Wednesday morning, dry weather is in the forecast through the weekend for the Star-Spangled Sailabration, commemorating the bicentennial of the War of 1812 and the Battle of Baltimore. Skies should be mostly cloudy, providing some shade for spectators. The ships are slated to arrive between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Wednesday.

As the schooner Pride of Baltimore II headed up the bay from Norfolk Tuesday, the 1,300-square-foot American flag rippling from its main gaff suddenly snagged and ripped. Fortunately, Pride has a sewing machine onboard. "We have a lot of flags," said Elizabeth Foretek, 26, the ship's bosun. Once the nylon flag was taken down, Foretek and deckhand Kris Jones, 22, set to work repairing it, sitting on the floor of the ship's main common area below deck. They had to mend the flag quickly.

It was an intimidating experience indeed. Downtown on Pratt Street, late at night, surrounded by looming shadows. The sound of approaching footsteps spawned immediate unease. We prayed that our expected ride would appear soon. It was 1964. The Inner Harbor area was a hardscrabble place by day, and a dark and forbidding one at night. By then, the development of the suburbs and the integration of public schools had been steadily changing Baltimore. The tightly knit neighborhoods that had been defined by ethnicity, religion and workplace were inexorably disintegrating.

Harford County Restaurant Week continues through Sunday, and Maryland Wine Week continues through June 18. And here come the tall ships, and hundreds of thousands of tourists. Start picking. The summer edition of Baltimore Restaurant Week returns on July 27, and the event's website is scheduled to go live on Monday . About 65 restaurants have signed up to participate so far, but the number is sure to grow. Dur­ing the 10-day event, partic­ipating restaurants will offer three-course fixed-price dinner menus for either $20.12 or $30.12 (but not both)

As many as 1 million people — far more than fought over Fort McHenry 200 years ago — will cram Baltimore's waterfront and squeeze their boats into narrow crannies around the harbor this week to welcome Navy vessels and tall ships, kicking off the state's commemoration of the War of 1812. There will be no shortage of cannon salutes, screaming jets, period ditties and bonnet-wearing, gun-toting re-enactors for what is called the Star-Spangled Sailabration. But there will be a dearth of open spaces, restaurant tables and, quite possibly, patience.