Vessel

WASHINGTON -- Fresh from California, where the crash of a ship spilled 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel into the San Francisco Bay, U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings is asking state and federal officials about preparedness should a similar disaster strike Maryland. The Baltimore Democrat, who chairs the House subcommittee on the Coast Guard and maritime transportation, has written to Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley and the commandant of the Coast Guard with questions about how quickly local and state authorities would be notified of a spill, who would respond and how recently they've conducted a drill to practice.

A retired Navy hospital ship, abandoned by its previous owner and ostensibly bound for Greece under a new buyer, must remain in Baltimore's harbor after the Environmental Protection Agency obtained a warrant this week to search it for toxic chemicals and secured an injunction barring it from being exported. The multiweek delay will cost new owner Potomac Navigation Inc. hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. The company bought the vessel Sanctuary for $50,000 through a court-ordered auction in August.

NORFOLK, Va. -- It didn't take long yesterday for the handsome wooden boat to fill with dirty brown water, maybe an hour after the speeches and its well-documented launch, while dignitaries were inside Nauticus museum, having lunch and congratulating each other. But swamp was exactly what the shallop - a replica of explorer John Smith's vessel - was supposed to do, and it came through with flying colors. "It's great to be on a sinking boat," joked Capt. Ian Bystrom to bystanders along the city waterfront.

The Lantern Queen has paddled a long way from Wisconsin to the Chesapeake Bay. The two-story paddle-wheeler was built in La Crosse in 1983 as a replica of a Mississippi riverboat. Over the next decade the boat traveled from South Dakota to Florida to Pennsylvania. Along the way, the Lantern Queen sank, was salvaged, restored and renamed. Now the 90-foot vessel is undergoing another incarnation. A Havre de Grace couple bought the Lantern Queen and have started a cruise business that they hope will help promote local history.

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.

Joe Most hadn't set foot on a submarine for 40 years, but when the former seaman stepped onto the USS Torsk at Baltimore's Inner Harbor during the weekend, the memories came flooding back -- the smell of diesel fumes, the deafening noise of the engine room and the feel of the hard metal bunks.Most, 63, of Fort Pierce, Fla., was among 30 volunteers who went to the Torsk during the weekend to help restore the 55-year-old vessel that is part of the National Historic Seaport.As tourists squeezed by in the narrow passageways, examining torpedoes and marveling at the cramped living quarters, Most and several other submarine veterans labored on the Torsk's wiring, trying to restore it to working order.

KINGS POINT, N.Y. -- The dining hall roof leaks. Decrepit plumbing makes the water undrinkable in some buildings. The temperature in the barracks fluctuates with the whims of clogged radiators."

Mission: The restoration, care and maintenance of the only surviving Civil War-era vessel and the last sailing warship ever built by the U.S. Navy. And the promotion of the vessel as a cultural and educational resource -- all under the stewardship of the Constellation Historical Preservation Corp. Inc. The vessel, built in 1854, was active for 100 years. The ship carried its fight against slavery into the Civil War; aided the 1880 famine relief in Ireland; and was the primary training ship of the U.S. Naval Academy for more than two decades.

Victory Chimes has come home to celebrate turning 100.The 170-foot, three-masted schooner was once a mainstay of the Chesapeake Bay, calling Baltimore home for 30 years as it hauled lumber, fertilizer, coal, oysters and other cargo.Now a passenger vessel based in Rockland, Maine -- and believed to be the largest historic vessel still sailing in the country -- Victory Chimes is one of 47 ships scheduled to take part Thursday in the 10th annual Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race from Annapolis to Norfolk.

TILGHMAN ISLAND -- Battered, but afloat for the first time in three days, the 113-year-old Rebecca T. Ruark was a sight for the sore eyes of Captain Wade H. "Wadey" Murphy Jr., who waited anxiously for hours yesterday as a marine salvage crew gingerly worked to recover the historic vessel from the Choptank River."

The work of surveying and charting the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay, begun in 1807, shifts to a new vessel Wednesday with the arrival of the R/V Bay Hydro II at Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The $2.1 million, aluminum-hulled catamaran will be dedicated at an 11 a.m. ceremony near the Harborplace amphitheater. The craft replaces the 21-year-old single-hulled S/V Bay Hydrographer. To be based at Solomons, the new boat is more than twice as fast as its predecessor, giving it quicker access to Baltimore Harbor, where it is needed most, said Howard P. Danley, chief of navigation services for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

It was an unabashed attack on the high seas that delivered an extraordinary bounty - $100 million worth of crude oil. But the Somali pirates who hijacked a Saudi Arabia-owned supertanker off the coast of Kenya over the weekend - and later seized two freighters in the Gulf of Aden and defied an Indian navy vessel sent to intercept them - have shown a brazenness that should chill commercial shipowners. Combating piracy at sea has become a matter of international urgency that will require a coordinated response on many fronts.

NAIROBI, Kenya - Suspected Somali pirates operating deep in open waters have seized an oil tanker as long as an aircraft carrier, the U.S. military in the Middle East said yesterday. The Liberian-flagged Sirius Star was hijacked Saturday and its multinational crew of 25 taken prisoner by pirates in the Arabian Sea, more than 450 nautical miles from the major port of Mombasa, Kenya. The ship appeared to be headed toward Somalia, the East African country from which many of the region's pirates set out on raids, according to the U.S. 5th Fleet.

We stood between a sentinel of Inuit guides armed with rifles on Akpatok Island, an uninhabited outcropping of 700-foot-high cliffs, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. We arrived here at the edge of the Canadian boreal forest a few hundred miles below the North Pole aboard a small vessel operated by Cruise North Expeditions, an Inuit-owned cruise line. The lure: to experience the grandeur of nature in this desolate, frozen land near the top of the world. On Akpatok, the guides' eyes fixed on the horizon, watching beds of lingering snow for itinerant polar bears.

The vessel's radar picks up objects as small as a fly, sensing potential hazards more than 100 miles away. Its 100,000-plus-horsepower jet engines go from full speed ahead - about 45 mph - to a dead stop in less than a length and a half of the 510-foot ship. And the systems that fire its Tomahawk missiles and torpedoes are wired with high-speed optical fiber. The new USS Sterett, a $1.3 billion missile destroyer, ranks among the world's most technically advanced warships. It officially starts duty in Baltimore in early August, the first major naval ship to be commissioned here in nearly a quarter-century.

A Cecil County grand jury has indicted a New Jersey man on charges of manslaughter in the death of a 21-year-old Philadelphia woman during a boating accident on the Elk River last summer, authorities said. Mark D. Rosati, 51, of Mount Laurel has been charged with manslaughter by vessel, homicide by vessel while under the influence of alcohol, operating a vessel in a reckless or dangerous manner, reckless operation and negligent operation. The Cecil County Sheriff's Office served Rosati with the indictment Monday.

A 26-year-old woman who was washed overboard while sailing in the Chesapeake Bay last night treaded water for more than an hour before being rescued in a search that involved more than 30 emergency personnel and three vessels, an Anne Arundel County Fire Department spokesman said. A man called 911 from a 27-foot sailboat at 9:25 p.m. and said his companion had been tossed into the water by a "severe wave" that struck the vessel in stormy weather two miles east of the causeway at Gibson Island, Battalion Chief Matthew Tobia said.

The Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered commercial vessel, will be docked at Canton Marine Terminals in Baltimore for at least the next year as crews scrub the ship of remaining radioactive materials. The sleek 596-foot cargo and passenger vessel arrived at Vane Brothers Co.'s berth Thursday, after the company won a $588,380 annual contract from the U.S. Maritime Administration to secure the vessel for up to three years. Constructed in the 1950s under President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program, the now decommissioned ship still emits low-grade radiation though the fuel source was removed more than 30 years ago. The $46.9 million ship included a $28.3 million nuclear reactor and fuel source when it was built, said Elizabeth Hughes, vice president of Fairfield-based Vane Brothers.

High winds and torrential rains that topped 6 inches in parts of Southern Maryland stranded motorists, toppled trees and cut electric service to tens of thousands of customers yesterday, while a widening sinkhole threatened to swallow a cluster of homes in Prince George's County. Although forecasters expected sunny skies to replace the clouds today, they warned that rain could return before the end of the week. Yesterday's record deluge, which capped five days of rain, closed schools in Charles and Worcester counties.

For nearly 30 years, the Port Welcome supplied plenty of memories for Baltimoreans who jammed its decks for proms, class trips, office parties, bar mitzvahs, moonlights, and cruises to Betterton, Tolchester and Annapolis. While not the most attractive-looking vessel ever to ply the Chesapeake Bay, the Port Welcome enjoyed years of popularity since its 1959 christening by Maryland first lady Helen Avalynne Tawes. It was built by R.T.C. Shipbuilding Corp. in Camden, N.J., for the Maryland Port Authority, which used it for promotional activities.