Maritime Industry

IF repossessing a used Chevrolet can be tricky, consider retrieving the Aztec Express, a 700-foot cargo ship under guard in Haiti as civil unrest spread through the country. Only a few repo men possess the guile and resourcefulness for such a job. One of them is F. Max Hardberger, of Lacombe, La. Since 1991, the 58-year-old attorney and ship captain has surreptitiously sailed away about a dozen freighters from ports around the world.

On the last morning of her life, 26-year-old Piper Inness Cameron was doing exactly what she had always wanted to do. She was working on the deck of a tugboat and counting the days until she, like her father, would be piloting one. There were 41 to go. Then, at 11 a.m. Feb. 20 while moving through Santa Monica Bay about two miles off Marina del Rey, something went wrong. A line linking the tug and the barge it was towing suddenly struck Cameron and slammed her into a railing.

After a lonely three-week voyage across the Pacific, the multinational crew of the British-flagged container ship Hyundai Tokyo arrives at the largest U.S. port complex and proceeds to do irreparable damage to the stereotype of the hard-living international merchant seaman. The 28 sailors are as well-mannered as young men meeting their girlfriends' parents. The favored drink is Gatorade. The big snack: Blue Bunny Caramel Chocolate Nut ice cream cones. The most popular purchase is from Victoria's Secret -- not the catalog for those long nights at sea, but Amber Romance body spray or Love Spell, which they mail to wives back home.

Her gig: Founder and chief executive of International Trade Education Programs Inc. of Glendale, a 10-year-old nonprofit that educates high school students about the maritime industry and encourages them to seek careers in trade, transportation, logistics and related professions. Her methods: Rowen, 74, has used her connections from eight years as a harbor commissioner at the Port of Los Angeles to bring high-level executives into the classrooms of Banning High School in Wilmington to teach and share their work experiences.

Exports were up at the Port of Los Angeles in October for the first time this year, as Chinese consumers led a drive to buy U.S. products and factories stocked up on raw materials. The improvement over October 2008 is the first sign from the troubled Southern California port complex that global economic conditions may be starting to recover. At the Port of Long Beach, exports were down, but not nearly as much as they have been for most of the year.

The president of a national union of merchant fleet officers, his brother and two other people were indicted on federal charges of election-rigging, embezzlement and fraud, prosecutors in Miami said. The 13-count indictment names Michael McKay, 58, national president of the American Maritime Officers Union, and Robert McKay, 55, the union's national secretary-treasurer. Union employee James Lynch, 55, and former employee Phillip Ciccarelli, 64, also were charged.

On the high seas, there is no Wal-Mart or Costco to turn to when the need arises for 100 rolls of toilet paper, 100 pounds of pork heads or a few spare rockets. That's why there is Harbor Ship Supply Group. The San Pedro company, known as a "chandler" on the docks, is part supermarket, hardware dealer, department store and delivery service for items needed on a long voyage.

Re "Toward cleaner ports," editorial, Dec. 18 You mischaracterized the maritime industry's reaction to the appointment of Geraldine Knatz as new head of the Port of Los Angeles, as well as its continuing support for balanced and effective environmental programs. Our organization praised the appointment of Knatz, who is committed to improving air quality while ensuring Southern California remains a center of international trade. Ocean carriers are using and testing various technologies to lower emissions; marine terminals are making enormous investments in environment-friendly cargo-handling equipment; and terminals are working collaboratively to keep the ports open at nights and on weekends.

WASHINGTON -- Thousands of ships and port facilities across the country will tighten security against potential terrorist attacks under regulations issued Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security. The regulations, which will become final later this year, require that more than 5,000 port facilities and 10,000 vessels assess their potential vulnerability and develop plans to plug security holes, including establishing baggage, cargo and passenger screening similar to that at airports.

The Senate on Tuesday passed legislation aimed at promoting more competition in the highly regulated ocean freight business. The Ocean Shipping Reform Act breaks with current cartel pricing by groups of ocean lines, known as conferences, by allowing carriers to negotiate confidential deals with individual shippers.