Joseph John Carbo, a retired merchant ship engineer who sailed around the world 14 times and later put his engine room expertise to work as a longtime volunteer aboard the Liberty ship John W. Brown, died Sunday at Gilchrist Hospice Care.

The longtime West Towson resident was 82.

Mr. Carbo, who was born and raised in South Philadelphia within sight of the Delaware River and the ships steaming in and out of port, was the son of a shipbuilder and a homemaker.

During World War I, his father worked at American International Shipbuilding's Hog Island shipyard, and after the war at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

Mr. Carbo graduated from Bishop Neumann High School in 1945. He chose against enlisting in the Army, and an eye problem made him ineligible for naval service. One day, he saw a sign that said, "Merchant Marine Needs Men," and, at 18, he made the decision to go to sea.

After graduating from the U.S. Maritime Service Training Station at Sheepshead Bay, N.Y., at the end of 1945, Mr. Carbo went to work as a mess man aboard the A.H. Bull Steamship Co.'s SS Madawaska Victory, which transported American troops from England and France to New York.

Mr. Carbo advanced to working in ships' engine rooms, where he eventually became chief engineer and found his life's work.

"I like steam. My steamships: Liberty, Victory, C1, C2, C3. Steam plants in Baltimore. You boil water, you make steam. Good," he told former Baltimore Sun editor and John W. Brown volunteer Ernest F. Imhoff, whose book "Good Shipmates" chronicled the volunteer work that restored the John W. Brown, which had been built in and launched from Baltimore in 1942.

"I also sailed to see the world," Mr. Carbo told Mr. Imhoff.

"I'd always get off a ship to go looking around. The Netherlands? Hire a bike and take off. In Naples, see Pompeii. In Alexandria, see the Pyramids. In Antwerp, see Brussels. In LeHavre, go to Paris," he said.

It was while recuperating for three months from an infected cyst in 1949 at the old Marine Hospital, now Wyman Park Medical Center, that Mr. Carbo met Genevieve Mildred Jacobs, a registered nurse.

Eventually, Mr. Carbo returned to sea, but couldn't forget the young Baltimore nurse who cared for him for three months.

"We kept in touch and saw each other over the next few years," Mrs. Carbo said. "Joe went back to sea and would come home between ships."

The couple married in 1958 and settled into their Woodbine Avenue home, where they had lived for the past 52 years.

Mr. Carbo sailed for various steamship companies during his nearly two-decade career, but he especially enjoyed working in the engine rooms of Isbrandtsen Line ships.

"Good captains, good engine room crews," he told Mr. Imhoff.

During his years at sea, one of Mr. Carbo's hobbies was throwing from the ships letters he had written and placed in bottles.

A bottle containing one of his letters found its way to the west coast of Ireland, where an 8-year-old girl from County Mayo, walking the beach one day, found it lodged in the rocks. She wrote to Mr. Carbo, and the two remained correspondents until his death.

In 1964, Mr. Carbo left the sea and returned to Baltimore, where he became supervisor and later superintendent of heating plants for the Housing Authority of Baltimore City.

One day in 1988 while he was enjoying a drink in Duda's Tavern at Broad and Thames streets, Mr. Carbo looked up from his glass of beer and saw an advertisement asking for volunteers to come to work and help get the John W. Brown back in steam and sailing again.

Two years later, after retiring, Mr. Carbo went to the John W. Brown, where he became assistant chief for DeLacy L. "Cookie" Cook, a World War II mariner and retired United States Lines port captain who was in charge of the ship's engine room.

Mr. Carbo was eager to return to the cavernous engine room, which is deep down in the Brown and where stands the ship's huge reciprocating triple-expansion steam engine that is fed steam from two oil-fired boilers.

When the Brown was under way, he was reunited once again with a world whose smells are of hot oil and steam and where it's not uncommon for temperatures to soar into the 90s.

The sound of the throbbing engine that pushes along the vessel at 11 knots makes conversation below a shout nearly impossible.

When Mr. Carbo was on duty, he placed a St. Christopher's medal near the engine room telegraph.

"You only need three crewmen to run the engine room," he told The Baltimore Sun in a 1997 interview. "A wiper, fireman and chief. If you have a fourth, you can play bridge."

Mr. Carbo became a popular member of the Brown's crew and enjoyed engaging in friendly between-deck rivalry.

"I always tell deckhands, 'We replaced sails,' " Mr. Carbo told The Baltimore Sun in the 1997 interview.

Harry C. Gordon, a volunteer deck engineer on the Brown, was a longtime friend of Mr. Carbo's.

"He was a terrific man to work with. His personality was absolutely great, and he was very experienced because of his many years at sea," said Mr. Gordon, a retired York, Pa., manufacturing engineer.

"If you had a problem, you could always go to Joe, and he always had an answer right off the top of his head. He's still the chief engineer in my mind, even though he has passed away," he said.

When Mr. Gordon and his wife, both natives of Ireland, returned for a vacation a few years ago, Mr. Carbo asked them to deliver a package to Therese Gaughan, the girl who found his letter in a bottle and who is now a college student.

"She lived in Ballina, County Mayo, and we met her parents," Mr. Gordon said. "Just two weeks ago, Joe showed me some pictures she had sent. They kept up the correspondence until Joe passed away."

Mr. Carbo refused to let heart surgery, two hip replacements, cataract surgery and his recent struggle with cancer keep him away from his engine room.

He last visited the ship in early February but kept in close touch with his shipmates, who were busy preparing the Brown for its coming cruising season.

Mr. Carbo died a year and a week after the death of Mr. Cook, whom he had succeeded as chief engineer.

"Cookie was a very well-respected and beloved engineer, and he left behind a difficult pair of shoes to fill, but Joe was up to the task," Michael J. Schneider, chairman of Project Liberty Ship, said Thursday.

"He had a broad engineering knowledge and the transition was quite smooth. He was thoroughly engaged with the ship and nothing ever seemed to particularly upset him," Mr. Schneider said. "When presented with a problem, he always had a smile on his face and got on with it."

Mr. Imhoff said that Mr. Carbo told him he "never wanted to be chief'" and just wanted to work in the engine room.

"But when the call came, he did his duty and became the chief," Mr. Imhoff said.

Mr. Carbo was an accomplished woodworker and "loved working with anything mechanical," his wife said.

Mr. Carbo was a communicant of Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church, Baltimore and Ware avenues in Towson, where a Mass of Christian burial will be offered at 10 a.m. today.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Carbo is survived by a sister, Mary Theresa Lupica of Sebastian, Fla.; and his godson, John Brink Van Horn of Ruxton.