SS United States: Leading Lady to Damsel in Distress
Once queen of the express liners, and the fastest, safest and biggest passenger liner in history, the SS United States today quietly awaits rescue from a pending cruise to the scrapyard. The Big Ship the Big U, the one that didn’t sink. The S.S. She is waiting for a rescue that may never come from an appointment with the scrap yard looming large on her summer schedule. And that would be a shame according to her many supporters, not the least of which was the late newsman and sailor, Walter Cronkite.
STILL FIGHTIING FIRES AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
How much water has flowed under the bridge since 1938? Well, for starters, the bridge itself - in this case, the Verrazano-Narrows - wasn't even built yet. We had no PCs, no CDs, no LPs, not even TVs in 1938. Manhattan's shore ended at West Street, which bristled with steamboats and their docks. Hundreds of daily arrivals brought people and cars and horse-drawn wagons across the North River, from the Garden State and the terminals of powerful railroads. Containerization, like cartridgization and cassetization, were yet to be thought of, and so were containerports. So was the strip of the Kill known as gasoline alley, and events it would sponsor - the Exxon/Mobil blast a year and a half ago…
MITAGS To Host Conference
MITAGS will host the national conference, “Maritime Careers: Implementing the Action Plans for Recruiting and Retaining Mariners” at Linthicum Heights Campus on May 1-2, 2002. Glen Paine, executive director, Maritime Institute of Technology & Graduate Studies (MITAGS) and Pacific Maritime Institute (PMI), Seattle, Wash., announced that MITAGS would host a national conference for national consensus on mariner recruitment and retention at its Linthicum Heights campus on May 1 and May 2, 2002. The American Merchant Marine has been impacted by a critical loss of professional mariners in recent years. The aim of this conference is to build a national consensus and plan that will project a positive image of mariners and create an appreciative awareness of the maritime industry.
