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Concert to help ship stay afloat
By BABITA PERSAUD
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 1, 2001
 Tables and chairs will be set up dockside. Music performed by the Florida Orchestra will be purely patriotic: American Fanfare, God Bless the USA, Hands Across the Sea.
But the biggest prop of the Victory at Sea Concert on Saturday night, the one that will really make audience members feel they have stepped back in time, will be the massive cargo vessel rising out of the waters along Channelside, the SS American Victory.
At 455 feet long, sporting the color of an elephant but much more mammoth, the cargo ship was built at the end of World War II and carried troops and munitions in that war and the Korean and Vietnam wars.
During the concert, while the orchestra plays such songs as The Star-Spangled Banner, American Salute and the Semper Fidelis March, archival images of World War II, the Merchant Marine and the ship will be projected onto the hull.
Compositions by George M. Cohan and John Philip Sousa and Richard Rodgers' famous Victory at Sea have been chosen. WUSF-FM personality Geoff Norcross will narrate. Afterward, a reception with swing music is planned at Channelside's new nightspot, Pop City, within walking distance.
The concert is the first fundraiser for the Victory, "a sort of coming-out party for her," said Maggie Osborn of the American Victory Mariners Memorial and Museum Ship organization, which is hoping to raise enough money eventually to turn the 55-year-old ship -- once stored in a Virginia warehouse -- into a museum.
The ship came to Tampa in September 1999 and has since been sandblasted, repainted and worked on by area shipyards and volunteers, mostly retirees, who come almost every day. It will take about $4-million to get her into pristine condition; half that amount has been raised, mainly through corporate donations and in-kind services.
Eventually, the organization wants to have the ship up and running so it can start day cruises that go from St. Petersburg, under the Skyway Bridge, to Egmont Key, where passengers will relive history.
Vintage planes will fly overhead, re-creating the World War II experience. Actors in costumes on board will fire (simulated) at them, as the Navy Onguard did on real Merchant Marine vessels during the war.
The man who helped bring the Victory to Tampa, Capt. John C. Timmel, went on one such living history cruise in Baltimore. It was the ultimate step back in time, he said. "It was amazing."
PREVIEW
Victory at Sea Concert is 6 p.m. Saturday, Berth 271, behind Florida Aquarium, 705 Channelside Drive, Tampa. Tickets are $25. Parking is free at Florida Aquarium lot. Call (813) 286-2403 or check out the Web site at http://www.americanvictory.org.
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