Pride of Baltimore  The Pride of Baltimore was a reproduction of a typical early 19th-century "Baltimore clipper" topsail schooner, a style of vessel made famous by its success as a privateer commerce raider and small but nimble warship in the War of 1812 (1812–1815), against British merchant shipping and a vastly superior world-wide British Royal Navy. Commissioned on May 1, 1977 by the 44th Mayor of Baltimore, William Donald Schaefer, in an elaborate public ceremony in the historic Inner Harbor watched by thousands of Baltimoreans and Marylanders, she spent nine years at sea logging over 150,000 miles, equivalent to six times around the globe. On May 14, 1986, the first "Pride of Baltimore" was lost at sea in the Caribbean Sea, and her captain and three of the crew died. The "Pride of Baltimore II" was commissioned as the successor and memorial to the "Pride" in 1988, sailing in the same Goodwill Ambassador role for the city of Baltimore, but its role has now expanded to also representing the State of Maryland and the "Land of Pleasant Living" in the Chesapeake Bay region. "Pride II" has sailed nearly 200,000 miles and visited over 200 ports in 40 countries in its now near three decades of voyages. The "Pride of Baltimore" was built as an authentic reproduction of an early nineteenth-century "Baltimore clipper" topsail schooner. She was not patterned after any particular vessel, but was rather designed as a typical "Baltimore Clipper" of the type in its heyday. She was indirectly named for the Baltimore-built topsail schooner "Chasseur" sailed by the privateer captain Thomas Boyle - "Chasseur" was known as the "Pride of Baltimore" and participated in the War of 1812 (1812–1815). One of the most famous of the American privateers, Captain Thomas Boyle sailed "Chasseur" out of Baltimore's waterfront historic neighborhood of Fells Point, where she had been launched from Thomas Kemp's shipyard in 1812. On his first voyage as master of "Chasseur" in 1814, Boyle sailed east to the British Isles, where he harassed British shipping and sent a notice to King George III by way of a captured merchant vessel declaring that the entire British Isles were under naval blockade by "Chasseur" alone. Despite its implausibility, this boast caused the British Admiralty to recall many warships of the Royal Navy back to the home waters from the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and more intense real blockade on the American east coast to guard merchant shipping in convoys.