My husband and I were in New Orleans in January to get on the cruise ship Carnival Conquest. We both wondered how many miles it is from the Port of New Orleans on the Mississippi River to the open ocean. It was a wonderful experience to get on the ship and travel down the river.

Sandy from Tennessee

Dear Sandy,

It's lucky for you that you missed all the drama associated with the tragedy that occurred on our river on Feb. 21 this year. As I am sure you read, two ships in the Southwest Pass collided in the early-morning fog -- M/V Lee III, a supply boat, and the ZIM Mexico III, a cargo ship. The smaller boat, the Lee, capsized and sank, and five members of the crew perished.

At that time, everyone became aware of the distance from New Orleans to the mouth of the river via the Southwest Pass. From the Crescent City Connection to Head of Passes is roughly 100 miles. Here the Mississippi flows over a sand bank and forks three ways. One is called the Pass a l'Outre, but it isn't navigable. Another less-traveled route is the South Pass. But the one used by the cruise ships, the one you and your husband traveled on, is the Southwest Pass where vessels have a fairly straight shot of 14 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. This is the deepest of the passes, absolutely necessary for the really big boats.

And usually this is no problem. But when the disaster occurred, the pass remained blocked for days; as a result, ships heading upriver from the Gulf just had to wait. One relatively small cruise ship was able to sail up the man-made Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet to New Orleans. But the ship you had just been on, the Carnival Conquest, was far too large and ended up sailing to Gulfport, Miss.

I doubt that many folks on a cruise down the river to the Gulf ever think about what it takes to keep the Southwest Pass passable. We have the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to thank. The Corps is in charge of keeping everything flowing smoothly, and the task is not an easy one. One of the Corps' main responsibilities is to "keep open the largest port complex on earth, measured by cargo tonnage, from Baton Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico." They use depth-finding boats and dredges to keep navigation channels open. The channel in the pass usually ranges from 45 to 65 feet deep, but sediment from the river can build up so fast that the bottom can rise three feet in 24 hours. So the Corps updates its charts daily, and the most up-to-date information is always available.

So the next time you come to New Orleans for a cruise, your trip down the river will be even more interesting.

Hey Blake,

When I recently found my father's discharge papers from the U.S. Naval Service/Coast Guard, they indicated that he attended two years of business administration at something called the Maybin Post Graduate School. He never talked much about it. By my calculations this would have been around 1937. Any idea where it was, and can you tell me anything about it?

Vance Levesque

Dear Vance,

The Joseph A. Maybin Commercial School for Graduates -- in 1935 reputed to be the only institution of its kind in the South -- was located at 1532 Calliope St. The school, in operation from about 1910 to 1951, offered advanced work for graduates in commerce. It was named for a man who was born in Philadelphia in 1795 and moved to New Orleans in 1817.