Tall Ships in Richmond, Alexandria and Especially Baltimore

A scattershot fleet of tall ships from Europe and the Americas — plus one, the Sudarshini, from India — is heading up the North Atlantic coast to arrive in New York Harbor in time for Sail4th 250.

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Eagle and another dozen tall ships will visit Baltimore later this month on their way to New York. Courtesy USCG.

This weekend, June 12 to 14, you can catch several at SailFest, at Richmond’s Dock Street Park and Intermediate Terminal, and others at Sails on the Potomac, on the Alexandria waterfront. But the best place in our region to view and tour the tall-masted beauties is Baltimore, where more than a dozen will stop over between Wednesday, June 24, and Tuesday, June 30.

Along with tall ships, Richmond’s SailFest will feature live music, other performances, historical reenactors, history and art exhibits and, on Saturday night, a fireworks show. Note: though preregistration to tour the ships is closed, a limited number of tour tickets will be released each morning. The web address for details is virginiahistory.org.

In Alexandria, Sails on the Potomac — which likewise promises music, family activities, educational programs and exhibits — will welcome four tall ships: the Providence, a reproduction of the Continental Navy’s first warship; the Sultana, a reproduction of a British Royal Navy schooner built in Boston; the 1901 Portuguese barkentine Gazela, which will also visit Baltimore, from Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia; and the Kalmar Nyckel, the official tall ship of Delaware, modeled on a Swedish ship built in 1627. The web address for details is alexandriava.gov. Note: timed tickets for ship tours are marked unavailable online. Tickets for the receptions each evening aboard the Kalmar Nyckel, priced at $250, were still available at press time.

Including the museum ships in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and the ships and boats regularly docked at the Frederick Douglass-Isaac Myers Maritime Park in Fells Point, Charm City visitors between June 24 and June 30 will have the opportunity to see up to three dozen vessels, depending when they sail in (see sail250md.org for updates). All are free to tour, no tickets required.

Most of the tall ships are their nation’s naval training vessel. Those expected: ARA Libertad from Argentina; ARC Gloria from Colombia; BAE Guayas of Ecuador (Guayas refers to a legendary chief, a river and a steamboat on Ecuador’s coat of arms); Belle Poule (“beautiful hen”) from France, a 1932 replica of a cod-fishing vessel used off Iceland; Gorch Fock II of Germany, named for the pseudonym of writer Johann Kinau, who died in a World War I battle; and INS Sudarshini (“beautiful lady”) from India.

Also: Amerigo Vespucci from Italy, launched in 1931, which made global circumnavigations in 2002 and 2023; BAP Unión of Peru; NRP Sagres III (a town, not the beer) of Portugal; NMS Mircea — honoring a 14th-century Wallachian prince — built in Hamburg, Germany, in 1938 for the Romanian Navy, captured by the Soviet Union during World War II and returned to Romania in 1946; Juan Sebastián de Elcano of Spain, launched in 1927, Elcano being the navigator who in 1522, after Magellan’s death, completed the first global circumnavigation; HMS Gladan (“kite,” as in the bird of prey) of Sweden; and ROU Capitán Miranda of Uruguay, named for a naval academy professor, built in 1930 and converted to a three-masted schooner in 1978.

Visiting from Canada will be the HMCS William Hall, a vessel of the Royal Canadian Navy that was used primarily for offshore patrol in the Arctic. Hall was a Nova Scotia-born naval hero during the 1857 Indian Rebellion.

Down from New London, Connecticut, will be U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Eagle, the training vessel of the Coast Guard Academy, built in Hamburg, commissioned in 1936 as the Horst Wessel — a murdered Nazi stormtrooper — and acquired by the U.S. among other war reparations.

U.S. Navy vessels: USS Arlington LPD 24, a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock, named for the location of the Pentagon and the crash site of American Airlines Flight 77, docked at Baltimore Peninsula; and USS Marinette, a Freedom-class littoral combat ship named for the Wisconsin town where it was built, Baltimore docking place (like that of many of the others) to be announced.

Also on hand will be educational vessels Lynx, configured as a privateer or naval schooner from the War of 1812, and Great Lakes schooner Appledore IV, launched in 1989, from Bay City, Michigan.

In Fells Point, Baltimore visitors may come upon: Pride of Baltimore II at Broadway Pier, a reproduction Baltimore Clipper that is Maryland’s “sailing ambassador”; the Farewell schooner at Browns Wharf; the Jolly Dolphin, a two-masted wooden sailing vessel modeled on Chesapeake Bay oyster dredgers, constructed in Dorchester County, Maryland, and launched in 1958; and the tug boat Kings Point, built in 2015 to move petroleum barges, now mainly used as a training tug for future Vane Brothers mates, at Ann Street Pier.

At the Douglass-Myers Maritime Park’s Cardin Pier, run by Living Classrooms Foundation, will be: Lady Maryland, a 1986 reproduction of a Chesapeake Bay pungy schooner (short for the Pungoteague region of Virginia’s Accomack County); Maryland Dove, representing Historic St. Mary’s City, based on the trading ship that sailed with Ark in 1634 to establish the Maryland colony; Mildred Belle, a 1948 Chesapeake Bay “buyboat,” from which fish, crabs and oysters were purchased directly from fishing vessels; and the 1901 Skipjack Sigsbee, one of the few surviving Chesapeake Bay skipjacks, designed and built to dredge for oysters.

At Pier 13 in Baltimore’s Canton section, with access from Fells via a Sail250 shuttle, will be: SS John W. Brown — named for the labor leader, not the abolitionist — built at Baltimore’s Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard and launched in 1942, one of two World War II

Liberty ships still operational; and NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered merchant ship, launched in 1959, a National Historic Landmark.

Docked in the Inner Harbor as part of Baltimore’s historic ships collection — the centerpiece of which, at Pier 1, is the 1854 USS Constellation, a National Historic Landmark and the last sail-only warship built by the U.S. Navy — are: Lightship 116 Chesapeake of 1930; another National Historic Landmark, Coast Guard cutter WHEC-37, commissioned in 1936 as the Roger B. Taney (renamed due to Taney’s role in the 1857 Dred Scott case), one of two surviving vessels from the attack on Pearl Harbor; and USS Torsk (the Scandinavian word for cod) of 1944, a Tench-class submarine. The lightship and sub are at Pier 3; the cutter is at Pier 5.

An exceptionally beautiful place to stay, walking distance to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, is Kimpton Hotel Monaco at 2 North Charles St. Renovated in May of 2025, the 202-room hotel opened in 2009 in what was once the B&O Railroad’s 13-story downtown office building, constructed in 1906. Though it has the “boutique” feel for which the brand is known, the monumental white marble staircase leading to the second-floor registration desk gives the hotel an un-Kimpton-like grandeur.

A statue of the Roman god Mercury just outside the second-floor “living room” of Kimpton Hotel Monaco in Baltimore. Photo by Richard Selden.

The renovation added stylish touches of modern design to the guest rooms and lobby “living room,” which features a mid-lobby fireplace. Nonetheless, the Tiffany stained glass and stunning Asian carpets are reminders that this is a Gilded Age building. The guest rooms have high ceilings with tall windows, offering views of Baltimore’s cluster of downtown office buildings, old and new.

Facing Charles Street is the Monaco’s restaurant, formerly the B&O Brasserie, rebranded as the Morely — “for those seeking ‘more’ in life, and a literal nod to the ‘more’ in Baltimore.” A good pre-theater choice, the restaurant is only a few blocks from the Hippodrome (“A Beautiful Noise,” June 23 to 28), Everyman Theatre, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company and CFG Bank Arena.