Luxury Liner

It's not a luxury liner, it's not a slow boat to China, it's not even the Good Ship Lollipop. But on a sunny fall afternoon in Philadelphia, these rowers - skimming across the gleaming waters of the Schuylkill in Fairmount Park - wouldn't have it any other way. And we'll all get more of the same today, as temperatures reach the high 50s.

Damage to the Queen Elizabeth 2 was much worse than expected, Cunard Lines officials said last week, after dry-dock inspections forced the company to cancel all trips through late September. They had hoped to resume next week. The 937-foot cruise ship suffered a series of gashes, cracks and dents extending along 400 feet of the hull, said Leon Katcharian, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator. Divers have found an uncharted rock near the point where the QE2 hit bottom that was scraped clean of vegetation and marked with red paint like that on the luxury liner's hull, officials said Friday.

Lee Marvin is doing more promotion for Cannon's "The Delta Force" than he has for most of his films. He not only considers it "a good flick," but he admits, "I guess I might be protecting myself, keeping the doors open" with the firm that is fast becoming an industry giant. As the 1963 Oscar winner says, "There aren't too many firm film offers these days that guarantee money up front. " Lee is considering doing a sequel to the "Delta Force" adventure about a crack team that rescues hostages after a terrorist skyjacking.

Few symbols of power and national confidence are as concrete as the skyscraper — or the ocean liner. Now all but forgotten, grand ships such as the SS United States epitomized the spirit of the American Century. "It was a time," says Philadelphia author Steven Ujifusa, "when Americans thought big ... and ‘made in the USA' really meant something. " Ujifusa, 33, is the author of A Man and His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States (Simon & Schuster, $29.99)

GIGLIO, ITALY - Maritime authorities, passengers and mounting evidence pointed yesterday toward the captain of a cruise liner that ran aground and capsized off the Tuscan coast, amid accusations that he abandoned ship before everyone was safely evacuated and was showing off when he steered the vessel far too close to shore. Divers searching the murky depths of the partially submerged Costa Concordia found the bodies of two elderly men still in their life jackets, bringing the confirmed death toll to five.

Talk about a "cruise to nowhere. " Nearly 930 passengers scheduled to set sail yesterday afternoon on the luxury liner Regent Star were instead kept land-locked because of a fire that was deliberately set earlier in the day in the ship's storage room, a Fire Department spokesman said. No injuries and only minor damage were reported from the fire, which broke out about 5 a.m. and took just over an hour to control, said Lt. Jack Christmas. It was the second fire in less than a week aboard the 642-foot Regent Star.

SALVATION ARMY'S SHIP HAS FINALLY COME IN The Cunard Line launched a $45 million overhaul of the Queen Elizabeth 2 on Monday by donating 1,500 pieces of furniture from the ocean liner to the Salvation Army. The furnishings - mostly elegant tables and chairs and leather loveseats - are being distributed to Salvation Army thrift stores throughout New York City. The luxury liner, meanwhile, is headed to Hamburg, Germany, where it will undergo a 30-day refurbishment. ADULTS GET TIME OUT FOR NOT-VERY-GOOD BEHAVIOR It was a grammar school dance to reward pupils for good behavior.

From the bridge of the tugboat Cape May, docking pilot Jim Quillen could see the great ship up ahead, looming out of the pre-dawn darkness like a mighty behemoth. Gray smoke spewed from its black and orange stack, and long rows of windows lit up the waterfront as it plodded along the Delaware River at about six knots. Her majesty, the Queen Elizabeth 2, had arrived - more than 37,000 tons of luxury liner, complete with a 7,000-volume library, a casino, four restaurants, eight bars, four pools and a 40-car garage.

Fred M. Stein makes it his business to know that on Constitution Day, Sept. 17, high tide on the Delaware River will occur at 10:47 p.m. And that is exactly the wrong time. So Stein is moving the Pennsylvania General Assembly to take care of the problem. Details, details. Everyone says they're Stein's strength as executive director of We the People 200 Inc. Some suggest they're also a weakness. Fred Stein creates events. His crowning glory will be a parade and festival next Thursday to mark the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution.

Fred M. Stein makes it his business to know that on Constitution Day, Sept. 17, high tide on the Delaware River will occur at 10:47 p.m. And that is exactly the wrong time. So Stein is moving the Pennsylvania General Assembly to take care of the problem. Details, details. Everyone says they're Stein's strength as executive director of We the People 200 Inc. Some suggest they're also a weakness. Fred Stein creates events. His crowning glory will be a parade and festival next Thursday to mark the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution.

Few symbols of power and national confidence are as concrete as the skyscraper — or the ocean liner. Now all but forgotten, grand ships such as the SS United States epitomized the spirit of the American Century. "It was a time," says Philadelphia author Steven Ujifusa, "when Americans thought big ... and ‘made in the USA' really meant something. " Ujifusa, 33, is the author of A Man and His Ship: America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States (Simon & Schuster, $29.99)

For the 76ers, this is it. Beginning with Monday's game in Orlando against the Dwight Howard-less Magic, they have reached the point in their season that Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio reached in Titanic, just before the luxury liner sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic. And the way things look, the Sixers appear more likely to wind up like DiCaprio's character, who, unlike Winslet's, did not come out of the dark, frigid waters. It wasn't that long ago that the Sixers were believed to have the upper hand on the schedule, even though six of their remaining seven games are on the road.

SOUTHAMPTON, England - Somewhere between the black Titanic teddy bears and the pale Iceberg beer, the Titanic Barbie doll and the "Tubtanic" bath plug, the global obsession with the story of the doomed ocean liner began to border on the absurd. A new museum opening Tuesday in the English port city of Southampton has taken this into account, explaining how the world has reported, retold, and sometimes become utterly fixated on the fateful night in April 1912 that saw the White Star liner sink beneath the waves.

GIGLIO, ITALY - Maritime authorities, passengers and mounting evidence pointed yesterday toward the captain of a cruise liner that ran aground and capsized off the Tuscan coast, amid accusations that he abandoned ship before everyone was safely evacuated and was showing off when he steered the vessel far too close to shore. Divers searching the murky depths of the partially submerged Costa Concordia found the bodies of two elderly men still in their life jackets, bringing the confirmed death toll to five.

GIGLIO, Italy - Maritime authorities, passengers, and mounting evidence pointed Sunday toward the captain of a cruise liner that ran aground and rolled over off the Tuscan coast, amid accusations that he abandoned ship before everyone was safely evacuated and was showing off when he steered the vessel far too close to shore. Divers searching the murky depths of the partly submerged Costa Concordia found the bodies of two elderly men still in their life jackets, bringing the confirmed death toll to five.

It didn't take long for my 11-year-old Titanic buff to spot an error in the Franklin Institute's Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, which runs through Jan. 2. "There were 16 watertight bulkheads, not 15," she said in a room filled with blueprints and pictures showing the birth of the epic ship at Harland & Wolff's shipyard in Belfast, Ireland. It turns out both are right. Fifteen transverse bulkheads created 16 watertight compartments, each of which could be isolated with special doors in the event of an emergency.

By now, the sinking of the Titanic is part of our cultural landscape, a story everyone knows, like a fairy tale, Deborah Jean Templin says. But what do people know about the event's aftermath? What did the survivors do with their lives? Templin, a New York-based actress, wanted answers a few years ago, so she began to investigate the paths taken by the people who made it off the ship that night in April 1912. With a theater piece in mind, she began to sketch out the post-Titanic lives of some of the women, hoping to create characters for a one-woman show.

Only a decade ago, a cruise ship was not a particularly promising place to get or stay in shape. The gym likely was small and often deserted - unlike the calorie-packed buffets that were guaranteed to add pounds. It's a different story today. "The new cruisers are boomers who grew up with Jane Fonda and have strong workout ethics, and the industry has had to accommodate them," says fitness cruise specialist Karen Good with Altour Classic Cruise and Travel in Woodland Hills, Calif.

Last fall, a billionaire's dream of building two huge ocean liners for Hawaiian cruises went belly-up. Shipyard owner Northrop Grumman Corp. was stuck with thousands of tons of welded steel and an ocean of unpaid bills. What to do? Northrop Grumman called on friends in Congress for help. And found some. In the harried closing days of the session last month, lawmakers slipped through a provision backed by Sen. Trent Lott (R., Miss.), the powerful minority leader, that instructs the Navy to consider converting the liners to military use. Northrop Grumman argued that because taxpayers had spent $221.

The movies are littered with the corpses of comedies that aspire to get physical in the grossest and most stupid ways imaginable. Stanley Tucci's exuberant and scintillating The Impostors is a tour de farce that restores the true art of physical comedy to the screen. It's been a long time, and the champagne effervescence of this delightful concoction from the actor who made such a striking directing debut with Big Night two years ago proves well worth the wait. The Impostors is a heartfelt homage to the great comedies of the '20s and '30s, which, at their best, offered a seamless fusion of visual humor and sharply observed characters.