A thunderous sea battle between tall ships. Pirates swarming around the harbor, singing chanteys and staging sword fights. Military surgeons of dubious pedigree, enthusiastically offering amputations.
What a cable television network will do for a little publicity.
In an elaborate promotion for its four-film series, "Horatio Hornblower," based on the nautical adventure classics of C. S. Forester, the A&E; Network turned Baltimore's Inner Harbor into a stage for a Napoleon-era extravaganza yesterday.
But 9-year-old Justin Cooper, a skeptical son of the age of virtual reality, wasn't convinced. Licking a red lollipop and jumping each time the cannons of a 65-foot British pinnace fired blanks at a 134-foot French galleon, Justin posed a reasonable question: "If the little boat's winning, how come the big boat's not sinking?"
His mother, schoolteacher Maitland Cooper, wished her sixth-grade class could see the re-enactment. "We just taught a unit on 'Modes of Transportation.' This would get their attention," said Cooper, visiting from Richmond, Va.
They were among several thousand people who watched the lunch-hour battle from harborside perches between the National Aquarium and Federal Hill. Before and after the shooting, spectators toured the ships and chatted with nautical re-enactors in period dress.
Other attractions
A couple of decades ago, the harbor was a real-life slice of industrial America, where ships were built and spices packaged. Now that it is a tourist destination with ESPN Zone, Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood, the product manufactured at the Inner Harbor is fantasy.
That was never truer than yesterday. If you got tired of A&E;'s show, you could duck into the Discovery Channel tent and try rock-climbing on a "vertical treadmill," ride a mountain bike simulator or test your reaction time on a computerized contraption. The tent was to publicize the channel's "Eco-Challenge," a 300-mile, multiformat race across rough terrain in Morocco next month.
Or you could stroll a couple of blocks north to Port Discovery, which welcomed its 100,000th visitor yesterday, ahead of the projection made when the children's museum opened Dec. 29.
Christina Gilliam, 8, of Ednor Gardens in Northeast Baltimore was astonished to be presented with a $2,000 U.S. savings bond, museum officials said.
'Understand the past'
The day's big draw was the tall ships, whose choreographed battle was narrated by Rusty White, director of operations for the Nautical Heritage Society, the California nonprofit group that contracted with A&E; to organize the event.
"The best way to get people to understand the past is to help them experience it," said White, 54, of San Diego. "Let them hear the cannons and smell the smoke."
The larger of the ships, the Kalmar Nyckel of Wilmington, Del., is a year-old replica of the first Swedish ship to arrive in America in 1638, bringing 25 colonists who founded the settlement that became Wilmington. It played a French privateer, sailing into the harbor to loot and plunder.
The smaller, scrappier galleon, Pride of MANY -- for Mid-Atlantic Network for Youth -- is moored in Georgetown on Maryland's Eastern Shore and used for educational voyages for young people. It played a British ship defending the harbor from the marauding French.
Hornblower series
No attempt was made to duplicate any scene from Forester's Hornblower saga, a series of novels that give a gripping account of England's war with Napoleon.
White credited Forester's stories with his career choice because he read them by the fireplace as a 12-year-old boy in a landlocked California town.
"It was one of the things that first sparked my interest in the sea," he said.
A&E;'s four two-hour segments filmed in Portugal, Turkey and the Crimea will be aired Sunday nights next month. Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, who pulled Kate Winslet from the freezing ocean after the sinking of the cinematic Titanic, stars as Hornblower.
The sea battles -- staged in seven other U.S. ports in addition to Baltimore -- are part of a $10 million marketing blitz that includes a tie-in to a CD-ROM sea-battle computer game called "Man of War II," a sweepstakes offering cruises as prizes and a publicity package going to 8,000 public and school libraries.
Red tape
The organizers discovered that sea battles require more red tape than during Napoleon's time.
They needed a "marine event permit" from the U.S. Coast Guard, which banned craft except water taxis from the harbor during the fighting. The Baltimore Fire Department granted a permit for the cannons' explosions and the Health Department issued another to cover the cannons' noise.
They had to clear the event with the aquarium to be sure sea creatures would not be disturbed by the booms. The Department of Parks and Recreation gave them another permit for their "encampment," where a motley crew of land and sea dogs answered questions.
The hit attraction there was the surgical tent, where Jeff Miller and Wes Stewart scared children and adults with their medical services. A replica severed foot, hand and arm lay on the grass beside the table on which a convincing dummy lay beneath a blanket, halfway through his turn at leg amputation.
"Who's next?" shouted Miller, advancing on the gawking children, who squealed with laughter and scattered in the cool afternoon.