were joined by the sleek and swift Baltimore Clippers that were
built to elude the blockading warships of England and France during
Napoleonic wars. The original clipper ship model is said to have
originated in St. Michaels in Talbot County where shipbuilding has
been handed down from father to son since 1670. During the era of
the clipper ships, their fame spread throughout the world as they
carried the goods and products of the nation over the sealanes of
the world. Today, the harbor still flourishes as more than 5, 000 ships
each year sail into the port of Baltimore flying the flags of 109
nations.

Despite its current prominence and its historic past, Baltimore was
not the first port of the State of Maryland. It was in fact one of the
State's last ports to develop. Before its designation as an official port
of entry in 1706, many other ports in the State were nourishing. To
the north, the ports of Joppa, Deposit and and Havre de Grace were
busy centers of commerce in colonial days. To the south, Annapolis
harbor was crowded with ships and busy with the growing trade of
the new world. To the east, Oxford, Cambridge and Salisbury con-
tributed to the growth of the State's economy through the efforts
of their ports and their merchants. But over the years Baltimore's
Strategic inland location and its natural and manmade facilities com-
bined to set the pace for its growth into the State's major port and
one of the top ten ports of the world. So it is most appropriate that
you have chosen this maritime state as the scene of your 1963 National
Propeller Club Convention. We are maritime people here, and we
are happy to have you.

Close to half a million Marylanders made their living from the
products and by-products of waterborne commerce. Thirty thousand of
them alone are employed at the great mills of the Bethlehem Steel
Company at Sparrows Point, the largest in the free world. It is here
that great bulk carriers unload their cargoes of iron ore from
Venezuela to go into the production of more than nine million tons
of steel each year. Some of this steel goes only as far as Bethlehem's
shipbuilding yard, virtually next door to the mill, where it is used in
the construction of tankers and merchantmen. Still other Marylanders
make their living in the plants of such industries as the American
Sugar Company, whose tidewater plant here is the largest in the
world for the refining of raw sugar imported by ship, and from the
new plants located in the Marley Neck area of Anne Arundel County.
These great new plants are here in Maryland because the port is
here and they served by the Maryland Port Authority's new Hawkins
Point pier. This $1. 5 million pier encompasses 137 acres of land, is

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