Vessel

Capt. Steven M. Moodie, a World War II Liberty shipmaster who later became president of the Baltimore-based Calmar Steamship Corp., died of lung cancer March 6 at St. Joseph Medical Center. The Towson resident was 82. With his closely cut silver hair and ruddy complexion, Captain Moodie seemed to be the embodiment of an experienced old salt. He was born in Dundee, Scotland, into a seafaring family. His father was a steamship captain, and an uncle had been master of the famed British clipper ship Cutty Sark, which was built in 1869.

They departed the northwest coast of France two months ago — 26 crew members each aboard two historic French Navy schooners headed to North America. With relatively calm seas, a chef well-versed in French cuisine and plenty of technological updates to the World War II-era ships, the boats made an easy voyage to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. On Sunday, the public got the chance to tour them. The schooners made the journey as part of the bicentennial of the War of 1812.

AAI Corp. of Hunt Valley has developed an unmanned surface vessel that can send devices deep into the ocean to detect mines and other threats. The company, a division of Textron Inc., hopes the U.S. Navy will choose the technology to be deployed on its littoral combat ships. The company behind the Shadow spy plane used to pick up counterintelligence over the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan is taking its technology to the seas. AAI Corp. of Hunt Valley has developed an unmanned surface vessel that can send devices deep into the ocean to detect mines and other threats.

With guns bristling, police officers in full tactical gear sweep across the vast deck of a cargo ship and creep up the stairs to the bridge. Their mission: Take the vessel back from armed intruders. Twice a month, the Natural Resources Police Tactical Response Team practices its craft. Tuesday morning's exercise was aboard the USNS Gilliland, a 956-foot vessel operated by the Navy Military Sealift Command and tied up at the Clinton Street Marine Terminal. "Basically it's a high-rise lying on its side, but it's a lot more complicated," said Sgt. Mel Adam, the squad leader, of the vessel.

Seadog Ventures, a sightseeing cruise line in Baltimore's harbor, is adding a second high-speed vessel for the coming tourist season. Beginning in April, the Seadog VI will join the Seadog III in providing 50-minute tours from Baltimore's Inner Harbor out to the Key Bridge and back. Having a second vessel in Baltimore will enable the company, Chicago-based Entertainment Cruises, to offer more frequent departures, according to Daniel Leaman, general manager of Entertainment Cruises in Baltimore.

For months in the spring and summer of 1814, Commodore Joshua Barney and his ragtag flotilla of gunboats had harassed the mighty British navy on the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. But outnumbered and outgunned, Barney and his miniature fleet were bottled up in the Patuxent River with no escape and enemy forces approaching. So following orders from Washington, Barney's men scuttled the estimated 17 vessels — including his flagship, the USS Scorpion — near a place known as Pig Point.

The last voyage of the Nikolai Pogodin, a Russian freighter plagued by debt and barnacles, ended in the hopeless hour before dawn on the beach at Plot No. 20.The lights of the Pogodin glimmered out in the bay, seeming for a long time not to be moving - but the ship was charging out of the dark night straight toward the beach at Alang. As it came closer, the outline of the hull became visible, set off by the white foam at the bow. Beaching a ship is a ticklish business. The current runs strong.

Q: While a missionary in Peru years ago, I was given a pottery vessel that I was told was a "huaca" (ceremonial cup) used by the Incas. Is it really an authentic and valuable Inca relic?A: Your blackware vessel appears to be authentic; however, it probably was made by Chimu Indians between the 12th and 15th centuries, not by the Incas. The Chimu Indians lived along Peru's northern coast and had a highly developed, distinct culture until their conquest by the Incas, hence the grouping of these wares with Inca artifacts.

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.

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 shipbuilding future of Maryland is 90 feet long and smells of Spanish cedar and fresh paint. Tied to the dock, with tradesmen swarming on deck and below, the Hunting Creek bobs gently on the Wicomico River. Within weeks, the tugboat with the gleaming white superstructure, distinctive green stripe and black "V" for Vane Brothers Co. on its smokestacks will be delivered to Baltimore to begin its working career. The Hunting Creek and its five identical sister vessels, each worth more than $5 million, are the first ocean-going tugs built in Maryland in nearly a half-century.

The book "Guardians of the Capes" asserts that "most of the marine casualties on the bay have been minor in nature. " But 33 years ago, the bay was the scene of a spectacular tragedy. On Oct. 20, 1978, the collier M/V Santa Cruz II, loaded with 19,500 tons of coal, was steaming southbound on the Chesapeake Bay when it collided with a northbound Coast Guard cutter, the Cuyahoga. The collision happened 3.5 miles from Smith Point, at the mouth of the Potomac River, near the Maryland-Virginia border.

Whenever David R. Owen answered the phone, it was always with a crisp and enthusiastic "Bridge," no doubt a holdover from his World War II days when he was an executive officer and navigator serving aboard the destroyer USS Ordronaux. Owen, who died last week, was my Riderwood neighbor for years, and I'd often go to his Thornton Road home for an evening of exquisite vintage port, Stilton and plenty of sea tales — and he had them to tell. Owen had a great capacity for friendship and was a charming and engaging storyteller.

The Eagle never slips into port unnoticed. With video camera-toting parents, teary-eyed spouses and squealing children filling the Inner Harbor's brick walkway to greet the nearly 300-foot-long Coast Guard tall ship, Friday was no exception. "Oh my goodness, there it is," cried Sandy Palmer who flew from New Hampshire earlier in the day with her husband to surprise their daughter, an officer candidate aboard the ship. "This is a dream come true. When she said they were going to have liberty in Baltimore, you couldn't keep us away.

The port of Baltimore has played host to some massive containerships in its time, but none larger than the MSC Sindy, which paid a call Monday at the Seagirt Marine Terminal. More than 31/2 football fields long and capable of hauling 9,200 20-foot containers, the Panamanian-flag Sindy unloaded more than 900 containers and took on more than 500 during her brief stop in Baltimore between calls in New York and Norfolk. By this time next year, however, the Sindy could be no more than an average-size containership coming to call on Baltimore.

A 45-year-old man drowned in a boating accident on the Elk River Saturday, authorities said. Maryland Natural Resources Police said officers were dispatched to the private Chesapeake Isles Community along the Elk River to investigate a capsized vessel and persons in distress. They said vessel had taken on water before capsizing in a mooring area near the community. The operator and three passengers were pulled from the water by witnesses. The operator was unconscious.

A Chesapeake Bay sailing skipjack and a wooden canoe are far apart on the spectrum of watercraft. One is designed for carrying a hard-working crew to harvest oysters, the other for one or two people to paddle quiet waters.But consider the far wider gap between these vessels, hand-made toolboxes and the streets of urban Baltimore, where young people are lured by drugs and guns.That is the span being celebrated next week with the re-launch of the Sigsbee, a 1901-vintage vessel that is the latest project of the Living Classrooms Foundation.

More than 15,000 tons of hope sit dead in the water along a spooky stretch of South Baltimore harbor known as Fairfield.Lashed to bollards down at the gray and battered end of Childs Street is the Sanctuary, an old American hospital ship that was one of the first vessels to visit the nightmare of Nagasaki, Japan, after the atomic bomb. A generation later it was a workhorse of the Vietnam War, treating more than 25,000 casualties over four years.Now it just sits in the Patapsco, 522 feet of potential good will.

A 52-year-old Anne Arundel County man who was about to embark on a fishing trip with five other men died Saturday in a boating accident off Ocean City, police said. A 16-foot Wellcraft occupied by six people flipped over around 9:10 a.m., and the occupants were thrown into the water, said P.A. Thompsen, an officer with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources police. The accident occurred in the Ocean City Inlet, which intersects with the Atlantic Ocean and is known for having "turbulent waters," said Thompsen.

The 27-foot sailboat was David Ward's new toy. He had bought it only hours earlier from a man in Middle River and on Sunday was sailing it, with four friends as crew, to its new berth in a Fells Point marina. Then things started to go wrong. The boat's tiller snapped in the choppy waters of the Chesapeake Bay, and Ward cut the engine while he replaced the broken part. But when he tried to restart the motor, the battery was almost flat — useless. Drifting near the Patapsco River about a mile north of Fort Howard, Ward pulled out his cellphone and dialed the number of a towing company, just as any motorist on firm ground might do. The man who got the call was Capt.