Some Southern Hospitality for a Stranded Ship : Aid: The vessel is a Yugoslav asset frozen in the U.S. Residents of Charleston, S.C., prove generous.

Anchored in the summer haze off Ft. Sumter where the Civil War began, the 500-foot Kapetan Martinovic and its stranded crew are a monument of sorts to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The orange-and-black freighter is one of seven ships detained last year when the federal government froze $450 million in former Yugoslav assets. Since last fall, it has been rusting at anchor.

“We don’t know when we will leave with this crazy war in the old Yugoslavia,” said Luka Brguljan, the ship’s captain. “I hope it will be soon. The war must stop.”

The war back home, however, hasn’t affected the crew of 13 Serbs, Croats and Montenegrins. “We live like brothers,” without the ethnic rivalries like those tearing apart their homeland, the captain said.

The crew hasn’t been paid regularly since January. Milena Shipping Co., the vessel’s owner, says the embargo has cut off its funds. It argues that it moved from Yugoslavia to Malta before the embargo and its ship should be freed.

While Milena argues with the government, Charleston, a city that learned about charity after weathering Hurricane Hugo in 1989, has adopted the Kapetan Martinovic’s crew.

Residents and businesses have donated food, water, fans, telephone calls and laundry. This week, after the crew slept for months in sweltering heat, local businesses donated $1,400 to recharge the ship’s air conditioners.

Crew members try to come ashore each day, if only to rest in the shade at White Point Garden, the oak-shrouded park at the end of the Charleston peninsula where silent guns point toward Ft. Sumter.

Charleston resident Jan Vogel met several crew members there and befriended them.

“The ships are being used as pawns and the people forgotten about,” she said. “They don’t have money to spend in Charleston. They come to town and there’s not a lot for them to do.”

However, Charlestonians made it possible for the crew to attend soccer games, the Spoleto Festival U.S.A., picnics and movies. The local Rotary Club even honored them at a luncheon.

“We have made very good friends here,” said Brguljan, a Montenegrin who is the third captain to command the ship while in Charleston.

“It’s the same warm Mediterranean atmosphere as in my country,” he said, standing on the sea wall at the Battery with the ship riding in the distance.

“Charleston is known for its hospitality,” said the Rev. Jim Morgan, who runs the Charleston Baptist International Seaman’s Ministry. He too has helped the crew.

The Kapetan Martinovic was held in Savannah, Ga., for five months last year and ran up $150,000 in dock fees before it was allowed to sail to Charleston where it could anchor for free.

The crew was changed in January to relieve the tedium; more crew members may return home later this month. Crew members also hope to be rotated to other jobs in a few months, the captain said. The skeleton crew is required to maintain the vessel, while a crew of about 30 is needed to sail it.

Although crew members are not paid, some of their families have received monthly stipends.

Crews of the other seized ships haven’t been as lucky.

Brguljan was in Baltimore last year when the freighter Durmitor was detained. It’s anchored in an industrial area out of public view and there was no outpouring of help, he said.

It’s the same in New Orleans where two more of the company’s vessels sit and wait. The company has a fifth ship in Newark, N.J.

Two other Yugoslav ships are detained in New Orleans and Norfolk, Va., said Bob Levine, a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department, which administers controls on foreign assets. He did not know their owners.

Milena’s attorney, Jack Clegg, has sued to free its five ships and also wants the federal government to help maintain them.

“If you freeze an asset, you freeze it,” he said. “You don’t allow it to deteriorate.”

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is expected to rule within several weeks.