Adiós, Argentina! Au revoir, France! The tall ships that have drawn large crowds to the Inner Harbor since last week began leaving Baltimore on Monday, with the remaining vessels expected to depart Tuesday.

More than 30 ships from Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Italy, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Uruguay and the United States filled Baltimore’s waters from June 24-30 for Sail250, a multistate event celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The Sail250 stop in Baltimore also featured flight demos, flyovers and other performances by the Navy’s Blue Angels, the United Kingdom’s Red Arrows and the Patrouille de France.

The Blue Angels fly over Baltimore’s harbor in preparation for a Sail250 air show. (Jerry Jackson/The Banner)
The Patrouille de France fly near Fort McHenry during practice for their Sail 250 performances. (Jerry Jackson/The Banner)

People gathered at Fort McHenry on Saturday and Sunday to watch a dazzling air show over the fort and the Patapsco River. Jets roared over the nearby Locust Point and Riverside neighborhoods over four days.

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Sail250 Maryland patrons could tour the various vessels for free from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Waterfront festivals near the tall ships drew crowds to the Inner Harbor, Fells Point and Baltimore Peninsula.

Organizers estimated anywhere between 200,000 and 250,000 people would attend the events, which overlapped with an Orioles-Nationals series at Camden Yards. At times, the Inner Harbor crowds recalled the glory days of Harborplace.

Crowds pack Baltimore’s Inner Harbor on an overcast Sunday for Sail250. (Jerry Jackson/The Banner)

Sail250, however, was not expected to draw numbers comparable to the roughly 1.5 million people that Operation Sail, a multicity ship tour for America’s bicentennial, brought to Baltimore in 1976. Organizers of Sail250 Maryland & Airshow Baltimore did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday evening.

But Chris Rowsom, director of Sail250 Maryland, told WBAL-TV that the semiquincentennial program was a hit in Baltimore after prior stops in New Orleans and Norfolk, Virginia.

“I would say conservatively we are talking about half a million people in town over the course of five days, and by the time we are done, we may even see that it’s more,” Rowsom told the news station. “On Saturday, we had over 70,000 people on board ships, so it was incredible.”

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One of those ships was Italy’s Amerigo Vespucci, a 329-foot, full-rigged, three-masted sail-training vessel that docked at Tide Point. On Sunday evening, a small crowd gathered beside the ship to hear a dusk performance of classical music by Italian-born pianist and composer Cristiana Pegoraro. She performed works by Beethoven, “America the Beautiful” and her own compositions.

Tall ships in Baltimore for Sail250 are lit up at Tide Point after sunset on Sunday. (Jerry Jackson/The Banner)

The concert was just a few hundred feet from the Baltimore Immigration Memorial, which honors the nearly 2 million people who arrived in Baltimore by boat between the early 1800s and 1914.

Pegoraro told the gathering she would always cherish the memory of performing on the dock as part of the Sail250 celebration.

The ships are heading to New York, where they’ll be docked from July 3-8 before completing their journey in Boston. The stop in New York overlaps with Independence Day and a possible special event by a major pop star at Madison Square Garden.