Ships

In the worst economic storm in decades, a Beverly Hills company has an ambitious plan to build a $1.1-billion cruise ship, set to cast off in 2013. But instead of offering four- or five-day excursions as typical cruise lines do, the business plans to sell half the cabins as floating homes. Opulent cabins aboard the ship Utopia now range in price from about $3.7 million to $26 million. But even at these prices, a key draw will be location. During the Cannes Film Festival, the ship is slated to drop anchor near the south of France in the Mediterranean sea. During the carnival celebration in Rio de Janeiro, the ship plans to dock off the coast of the Brazilian city.

SACRAMENTO — A data breach that jeopardized the personal information of more than 700,000 people has spurred California officials to change the way they transport sensitive material. Packages of payroll data, including Social Security numbers, will be delivered by courier rather than dropped in the mail. And officials are examining ways to transmit encrypted data rather than store it on microfiche. "We're looking to improve the process," said Oscar Ramirez, a spokesman for the California Department of Social Services.

The Navy took the unusual step of abruptly canceling construction of its expensive new class of destroyers last month because the ships lack abilities that top commanders believe are necessary to protect U.S. interests, according to the service's senior officer. Adm. Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, said the DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyer does not have crucial missile and air defense capabilities and defending it against submarines would be difficult. The last ship in the class will cost $2.6 billion.

Fleet Week , which has been a New York City tradition since 1984, starts Wednesday (that's today) with a parade of tall ships and war ships that will be docked and open to the public through Tuesday. Members of the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard will be aboard ships and participating in parachute jumps and other equipment demonstrations. There are lots of free activities to go and see. In honor of Fleet Week, Gray Line New York honors all military personnel in uniform with a free tour of Manhattan on its double-decker buses.  The deal: Members of the military (all branches, not just sailors and Marines)

Two Holocaust researchers, who have traveled the world to uncover the fate of 937 Jews who tried to flee the Nazis in 1939 aboard an ocean liner that was later turned away by Cuba and the United States, will bring their project to the West Coast this month for the first time. They are still trying to track down 11 passengers who remain unaccounted for.

Fleet Week , which has been a New York City tradition since 1984, starts Wednesday (that's today) with a parade of tall ships and war ships that will be docked and open to the public through Tuesday. Members of the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard will be aboard ships and participating in parachute jumps and other equipment demonstrations. There are lots of free activities to go and see. In honor of Fleet Week, Gray Line New York honors all military personnel in uniform with a free tour of Manhattan on its double-decker buses.  The deal: Members of the military (all branches, not just sailors and Marines)

The Spanish galleon had just left the Philippine province of Palawan carrying three bronze bells for the newly constructed Catholic missions in California when it was attacked by Moro pirates. Knowing that capture meant certain death, the crew fought off the marauders until a cannon on the galleon exploded, triggering a secondary explosion that sank the ship. That was in the late 1700s. The as-yet-unidentified galleon lay 170 feet deep, hidden in a shipping lane in the South China Sea.

On the high seas, full speed ahead is being replaced by slow and steady. Eager to cut fuel costs, ocean shipping lines have ordered their sea captains to throttle back the engines for what is quaintly known in the industry as "slow steaming." In some cases, freighters are taking as many as 15 days to make a Pacific crossing that used to take 11 days. Sailors grumble that it's making long voyages even more tedious. Some ships are crawling at just 12 to 14 knots, or about 14 to 16 mph. Many cargo ships are capable of moving at nearly twice that speed.

Re "10 Chinese Nabbed After Coming Ashore in O.C.," May 24: To refer to the ships used by Asian smugglers and stowaways as "modern-day slave ships," to quote Immigration and Naturalization Service spokesman Bill Strassberger, is not only inaccurate, it is insulting. There is a vast difference between individuals willingly undertaking a perilous journey by sea "looking for a better economic future" and the Africans who were captured in their homeland, packed into steerage and delivered into bondage in the Americas.

They are not the most beautiful ships to take to the sea, unless you are a retired naval captain with seawater washing through his veins. For Nigerian sea captain Niyi Labinjo, his little fleet of four ships is his life. They're workhorses: ugly tankers a quarter of a century old or older, picked up cheap and designed for small coastal jobs, not to ply the high seas. But these workhorses rarely work. Like many other Nigerian-owned ships, they mostly lie at anchor while vessels flagged in places like Panama or St. Vincent and the Grenadines dominate Nigerian waters.

SAN DIEGO - The $1.3-billion ship is billed as the most technologically advanced of any in its class in the U.S. Navy, with stealth capability and a state-of-the-art communications system. But the commissioning ceremony Saturday that made the San Diego an official ship of the fleet was drawn from rituals more than two centuries old - from the days of John Paul Jones, when the Navy's first commissioned ship was a captured British schooner. And so with the classic order, "Man our ship and bring her to life," sailors and Marines sprinted aboard the 684-foot amphibious transport dock ship.

Sailing aboard the Californian is a throwback to the era of tall ships and re-creates what 19th-century travel by sea was like. The Martitime Museum of San Diego offers three sailings to Catalina Island aboard the topsail schooner where participants take turns standing watch, setting sail and learning other on-board skills. (Yes, there's a motor so you won't be stuck in the doldrums.) But it's not all work. There'll be time to relax on board and to go kayaking in the waters off Catalina with guides and gear provided.

Did you know that strawberries, though considered a fruit, are technically a member of the rose family? Then you are ripe for the California Strawberry Festival this weekend in Oxnard. On 50 acres, the event features two concert stages and an array of strawberry treats, including strawberry beer. There's also Strawberryland for the kids. Info: (888) 288-9242 or www.strawberry-fest.org . . . . Speaking of kids, here's yet another summer activity in family friendly San Diego: Pirate Ship Adventures offers daily cruises aboard an 83-foot sailing ship , including a special July 4 cruise.

On Tuesday morning, 80-year-old Bobby Salisbury took the last of his items from his boat moored at Colonial Yacht Anchorage in Wilmington and stuffed them inside his gray Nissan off-road truck. "I'm the happiest guy today," he said sarcastically. For years, Salisbury has lived at the marina. Then last month, the Los Angeles Harbor Department ordered him and more than 90 other tenants to leave by May 1, calling the dock and 138 slips in Berth 204 too dilapidated to be safe.

For sale: An exotic, once top-secret radar-evading ship, dubbed the Sea Shadow, that was built by one of the world's largest defense contractors during the height of the Cold War. Specifications: about 68 feet wide, 164 feet long and around 563 tons. Price: $139,200 or best offer. If interested, please contact the General Services Administration at its website: gsaauctions.gov. That's the sales pitch from theU.S. Navy, which - after five years of trying and failing to donate the stealthy Sea Shadow to a museum - is now selling the ship for scrap metal in an online auction.

Among the safety precautions given to sailors entering the Newport Beach-to-Ensenada yacht race, the most pointed involve preparing for a night on the open ocean. Check that your lights work. Make sure the batteries powering those lights are fully charged. Best to carry spares. And perhaps most important: Be vigilant in watching for hazards emerging from the dark. As U.S. Coast Guard investigators work to determine what caused the destruction of a 37-foot sailboat early Saturday off the Mexican coast, there's a possibility that no eyewitnesses remain.

The chief executive of a shipping company urged Congress on Tuesday to pass legislation allowing vessels to carry armed security. Testifying before a Senate subcommittee, Philip J. Shapiro of Liberty Maritime Corp. said that although an 1819 statute gave ships the right to defend themselves, they still were subject to laws and inconsistent port rules governing whether armed vessels could dock.

Somali pirates released a Ukrainian freighter carrying heavy arms Thursday and sped away with a $3.2-million ransom as U.S. Navy ships watched, ending a four-month standoff that focused world attention on piracy off Somalia's lawless coast. The Navy said it couldn't seize the bandits for fear of endangering 147 seamen held hostage on other hijacked ships.

Organizers of the famed Newport Beach-to-Ensenada sailing regatta were stunned by the mysterious loss of four crew members aboard a 37-foot boat that disappeared in mid-race, marking the first fatalities in the event's 65-year history. While the U.S. Coast Guard was still investigating the accident, regatta organizers said they believed the boat was hit and demolished by a much larger ship - perhaps a freighter or tanker - passing in the dark early Saturday. The boat disappeared from the online tracking system around 1:30 a.m. Saturday.

The most remarkable achievement within Charlotte Rogan's debut novel, "The Lifeboat," is how neatly it exceeds, and defies, expectations. The plot seems basic: Some people clamber aboard a lifeboat as a ship sinks, and we think we're all set for a tale in which someone inevitably will be eaten for dinner. But Rogan delivers something entirely different (rest easy, no one gets eaten) by using a familiar setting to explore moral ambiguity, human nature and the psychology of manipulation.