Baltimore

Industrial port and largest city in Maryland, on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, 50 km/31 mi northeast of Washington, DC; population (2000 est) 651,200. Industries include shipbuilding, oil refining, food processing, and the manufacture of steel, chemicals, and aerospace equipment. The city was named after George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore, the founder of Maryland. It dates from 1729 and was incorporated as a city in 1797.

Features Baltimore is situated 320 km/198 mi from the open sea, at the point where the Patapsco River enters Chesapeake Bay. The city stretches along the shoreline of the river's estuary, and has a long waterfront (70 km/43 mi) which made possible the development of its port.

By 1800 it was the third most important port on the Atlantic seaboard, and remained so until the opening of the St Lawrence Seaway and the Erie Canal (1817–25). In response, Baltimore sponsored the first US railway, the Baltimore and Ohio (1830), as a challenge to the canal routes leading to New York and Philadelphia. Baltimore now has access to a dense network of road and rail links, including a road tunnel under the Patapsco which joins the northern and southern sides of the harbour.

Baltimore is the seat of several colleges, including Johns Hopkins University (1876). The extensively refurbished inner harbour area has several museums, the National Aquarium (1981), and a 30-storey World Trade Center. It is also home to the first commissioned warship of the US Navy, dating from 1797, and the USS Constellation (1854), the last surviving ship to have served in the American Civil War.

Famous people At Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key wrote the poem ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ while the fort was being besieged by British troops in 1814. The writer Edgar Allan Poe and the baseball player Babe Ruth lived here, and their houses are both museums. Baltimore is the birthplace of the journalist H L Mencken, the molecular biologist Martin Rodbell, the philosopher John Rawls, the civil-rights leader Marshall Thurgood, the diplomat Alger Hiss, and the rock musician Frank Zappa. The philanthropist George Peabody made a fortune from a dry-goods business in Baltimore in the first half of the 19th century.

Baltimore

Fishing village in County Cork, Republic of Ireland, on Baltimore Bay 13 km/8 mi southwest of Skibbereen; population (2002) 383. Boats and yachts are built here, and there is a sailing school and annual regatta. It is the port for Sherkin Island and Clear Island. On the promontory overlooking Sherkin Island are the ruins of O'Driscoll Castle.

There are frequent boat trips to Sherkin Island, which is mainly dependent on tourism, with its rocky coves and sandy beaches. The island also has the ruins of Farranacouth Abbey, a late 15th-century Franciscan friary, and another castle associated with the O'Driscolls.