Casco Bay Bridge News

We rolled into town on the last train north, arriving Portland, Maine at 2:00 a.m. Half an hour later we were at the dock, hauling our kit - and when Marine News travels light, we're like Hannibal crossing the Alps - over silent tugs resting abreast: Captain Bill, Justine McAllister, Stamford. On the phone a few days before, Capt. Brian Fournier had said something about leaving a light in Stamford's forward port cabin, and there, finally, it shone. But something brighter had caught our eye, and could we believe it? Last time we saw something like it, it was in Aberdeen, Scotland. Now, from Stamford's starboard rail, it loomed and glistened four hundred feet away - rising nearly as high - a pair of deep-sea drilling platforms, afloat waters barely up to their ankles.

The Navy vessel Keokuk participates in a multi-agency oil spill training exercise in Casco Bay, Maine, October 4 while a Coast Guard helicopter flies over the area to assess how much oil is in the water. Ten years and one week prior to the exercise, an oil tanker struck the Casco Bay Bridge and dumped 180,000 gallons of oil into Portland Harbor. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Lauren Downs.