GLOUCESTER, MASS — Gloucester has sent men to the sea in ships -- whalers, schooners, dories and more -- for nearly four centuries. A seaside memorial enshrines the names of more than 5,300 mariners who never returned, lost to howling nor'easters and monstrous waves, including the doomed swordfishing crew portrayed in the film "The Perfect Storm."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's mournful poem "The Wreck of the Hesperus" and Rudyard Kipling's adventure story "Captains Courageous" are set here. Winslow Homer and Edward Hopper brought their easels to paint local seascapes. T.S. Eliot came crabbing.
Now the storied seaport and art colony is hoping for a new kind of distinction -- as a high-risk terrorist target.
Gloucester's mayor, Carolyn Kirk, is seeking some of the $832.5 million in Homeland Security funds set aside to protect America's most vulnerable and important urban centers.
Kirk's case relies mainly on the potential danger posed by two liquefied natural gas terminals that sit seven and 12 miles out in the Atlantic.
There is no evidence that the rugged town of 32,000, perched atop the dramatic rocks of Cape Ann, is actually in the cross hairs of terrorists. But there is a more immediate threat: Gloucester is so broke it has cut police officers, shut fire stations, laid off teachers and closed a school.
"This town is beat up, broken and hurting," said Miles Schlichte, the deputy fire chief, as his truck bounced down potholed streets. "If Homeland Security money can help us, it shouldn't all go to New York or Los Angeles or Boston."
The town's plea is a sign of how America has changed since Sept. 11, 2001. Then, the threat of fresh terrorist attacks seemed urgent. Now, the nation is climbing fitfully out of a deep recession, and states and cities are struggling. Terrorism has become a source not only of worry but also, potentially, of budgetary relief.
Strapped local and state governments must compete for $4 billion in grants to prepare for terrorism and other disasters, a bonanza that increasingly drives urban priorities.
"Every mayor, every city council, every sheriff is trying to play the homeland security card these days," said Stephen Flynn, president of the Center for National Policy, a Washington-based think tank that studies domestic defense. "Everyone is saying our stuff is more vulnerable or more critical than the other guy."
The problem, he said, is that nearly any community can argue it has crucial infrastructure but not the resources to deal with an endless array of potential threats, from bioterrorism to earthquakes.
"There's no meaningful debate on the likely risk, and the pot of money is too small to protect everything," Flynn said. "It's the worst of both worlds."
One of the largest grant programs is the Urban Areas Security Initiative. It will funnel $832.5 million this year to 64 "high-threat, high-density urban areas" presumed attractive to terrorist plotters.
The money is divided using a formula that weighs the likely threat to each area against the vulnerability of its infrastructure and the potential consequences of a major attack or other disaster
"We focus these grants on the cities that face the highest risk," said Clark Stevens, a Homeland Security spokesman.
Nearly two-thirds of the money goes to the top 10 targets, including New York, Los Angeles/Long Beach, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
Only seven cities were deemed highest risk until recently. But Dallas/Fort Worth, Philadelphia and Boston were added in December after several years of lobbying by governors and members of Congress from the affected states.
Kirk, Gloucester's mayor, initially hoped her town might join the second tier of 54 high-risk cities, which includes Miami and San Diego, or get a different grant.
In 2008, shortly after she was elected, Kirk wrote a letter to ask federal officials for $1 million to help her town meet what she called a "dramatic increase" in security needs.
In addition to the two offshore gas terminals, Kirk cited the Seabrook nuclear power plant 17 miles north in New Hampshire, dockside freezers that use ammonia for refrigerant, a cruise ship terminal, and bridges and rail lines.
Even whale-watching boats for tourists, Kirk wrote, are "a potential marine disaster."
"They pretty much ignored me," she recalled in an interview. "I was really disappointed."
Gloucester-area residents have raised money through unorthodox schemes before. Since international waters are relatively close by, smuggling is a local tradition.
During Prohibition, ships landed barrels of whiskey and rum here. In World War II, sympathizers supposedly sold diesel to Nazi submarines offshore. In later years, trawlers ferried arms to the Irish Republican Army, while narcotics proved so lucrative that one neighborhood is still known as Heroin Heights because drug money allegedly built its homes.
