NEW ORLEANS, La. – If Maine Maritime Academy’s training vessel, the State of Maine, were tied up in its tranquil home port of Castine right now, its regular crew would be performing routine fall maintenance tasks, teaching a few courses and going home each night to their own houses and families.

Instead, the ship is berthed for the indefinite future here at the heavily industrial Seventh Street Wharf at the Port of New Orleans, its crew working 24-7 to provide clean, safe, comfortable living quarters, hot showers, flush toilets, laundry services and three meals a day to a diverse group of about 210 people involved in post-hurricane recovery efforts – officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Coast Guard officers, Blackwater security staff, National Geospace Intelligence Agency officials, longshoremen from the commercial cargo area and many others.

In addition, the ship offers a free lunch to city police and anyone working in the port area, whether or not they’re staying on board.

“We’ve never been in the hotel management business before,” Capt. Larry Wade joked on Saturday, just before a hearty lunch was served to about 150 hungry guests. “It’s been a learning experience for all of us.”

Wade, 63, a longtime resident of Bradley, has been the ship’s master and a full-time employee of MMA since 1997, when the State of Maine became the official training vessel for the college’s four-year merchant marine preparation program. Each year, first- and third-year students take the 16,000-ton vessel on an international training cruise for two months, under the tutelage and watchful eye of about 50 regular, school-employed officers, alumni and other crew members.

But the ship is really only on loan from the U.S. Maritime Administration and can be called into service as needed for combat or homeland disasters. On Saturday of Labor Day weekend, Wade said, that call came in: The ship would deploy to the Port of New Orleans ASAP to provide emergency housing and meals for a period of one to six months, all costs to be paid by FEMA.

“Sunday, I called a meeting of all the ship’s crew, and by Tuesday we pretty well knew what we were doing,” Wade recalled. Orders went out for enough food, water, paper goods and other necessities for a 60-day period, and requests for additional crew were issued through the seaman’s union.

The ship sailed from Castine that Thursday with a full crew of 47 – about half regular MMA crew and the rest hired on from all over the country. It stopped in Boston to take on fuel and a supply of new bed linens and arrived in New Orleans on Friday, Sept. 16, just hours ahead of Hurricane Rita.

By the time Rita rampaged through New Orleans – tearing down trees, ripping off roofs and reflooding areas of the city just beginning to emerge from the damage inflicted by Katrina a few weeks before – the State of Maine’s staterooms and bunk areas were largely filled with disaster workers.

Wade said these new guests had typical problems – couldn’t get their stateroom doors to open, couldn’t turn on lights, needed another pillow and so on.

“With students, the response is ‘Buck up, buddy – live with it or fix it yourself.’ You can’t do that with these people,” he observed wryly.

Third Mate Jeff Musk, 24, a 2004 graduate of MMA who grew up in Bath and now lives in Florida, said that on a typical seafaring job, he would take shifts at the helm and be in charge of cargo security. But with the State of Maine tied at the wharf for weeks on end and its only cargo a human one, his job description has changed.

“Now I’m more like a bellhop. It’s a little aggravating, and it’s not what I’m trained for, but it’s what we’re here to do,” he said, as he guided visitors around the ship.

In a below-decks control room next to the massive, deafening diesel generators that keep the ship’s lights bright, the showers warm and the air conditioning cool, Assistant Engineers Ray Moody of Monroe, Dave Howard of Bucksport and Jesse McIntire of Bangor said they had mixed feelings about leaving the comfort of their homes to come to New Orleans.

McIntire, 24, was clearly torn about leaving his wife, Dara, and the couple’s 1-month old daughter, Orianna, whose photo he had pressed under the glass of his desktop. “I want to send them my love,” he said.

Moody, 53, was missing his wife, Cindy. Participating in the State of Maine’s deployment to the Gulf Coast was “mandatorily voluntary,” the MMA employee joked, but he quickly added, “This is our ship, and this is a good cause.”

Howard, 41, said it was hard to be away from his wife, Karen, and their three children: Patrick, 14, Kate, 11, and Ryan, 18 months.

“It is very difficult to leave them and to convince them that this is a worthy cause,” he said. “But the ship was going where it was going, and we all have a tremendous connection to each other and to the ship. It would have been very hard to stand on the dock and watch this ship sail without me.”

Wade stressed that all crew members had the option of staying in Maine and would have taken no cut in pay or employment status had they chosen to do so.

“But the entire crew feels an affinity for this ship. It is in many ways a difficult ship to operate, and though most mariners would be able to run her, it’s so much easier when people know the ship,” he said.

In the crowded but cool mess hall, workers from Coastal Cargo, which loads and unloads ships at the Seventh Street Wharf, sat together enjoying pizza, pulled-pork sandwiches, vegetarian lasagna, soft drinks and remarkably fresh, crunchy vegetables from the salad bar.

Crane operator Curtis Darcey, 35, said that since most area eateries remain closed because of storm damage, many of the company’s employees enjoy the State of Maine’s no-cost lunch. Though he lives just across town in an area that had relatively little damage, Darcey said the ship’s offerings offer a welcome change to the sandwiches he might pack from home.

“I have no idea who’s paying for it,” he said, “but we’re grateful, I can tell you that.”

At the same table sat Andrew Joseph, 50, whose home in the 9th Ward was destroyed in the flooding after Katrina. He said he and his wife were stranded on the roof of their house for nearly four days before being rescued by helicopter and then taken to a shelter in El Paso, Texas. Their two American pit bull terriers, Solomon and Ice, were taken later to an animal shelter in nearby Gonzales, along with a litter of 8-week-old pups.

Joseph said he and his wife returned to New Orleans and reclaimed the two adult dogs a couple of weeks ago, but the pups had disappeared. He went back to work at Coastal Cargo, but the couple’s home, their car and all of their belongings are a total loss, he said.

Joseph said his wife, a registered nurse, has been hired as a temporary clerk by Coastal Cargo and will come on board this weekend to stay with him until times get better. Solomon and Ice will stay with friends.

“Without this ship right now, we’d have no place to stay,” Joseph said, rising from the table to get back to work. “There’s a lot of people in the same situation, and for us, this boat is a godsend.”

Capt. Larry Wade of the training vessel State of Maine maintains a daily log on the Maine Maritime Academy Web site, www.mma.edu.

BANGOR DAILY NEWS PHOTO BY GABOR DEGRE

Jesse McIntire (left), third engineer of Bangor, and Dave Howard, first engineer of Bucksport, stand in the control room of the Maine Maritime Academy training ship State of Maine. The ship is on a disaster relief mission in New Orleans.