AS many as four people were feared drowned when a water-taxi filled with tourists capsized in Baltimore harbour in a brief but fierce storm on Saturday, rescue officials said.

One person was confirmed to have died and three were missing, presumed dead, after a freak wind flipped the 36-foot boat over during a ?microburst? thunderstorm on Baltimore?s scenic Inner Harbour, city officials said.

Twenty-one people were rescued, pulled out of the cold water and plucked off the hull of the overturned boat by Naval reservists who were credited with preventing more deaths. Two people, one of them a child, suffered cardiac arrest and were taken to Maryland University Hospital. The dead person was said to be a woman in her 30s.

There was no hope of finding any more people alive, said Baltimore Fire Department spokesman Kevin Cartwright. ?Unfortunately no one spending an hour to an hour and a half in this water would be able to survive.? The part-time sailors saw the boat capsize in the storm from the dockside US Naval Reserve Center and immediately launched a rescue boat. Two of the reservists jumped into the water to rescue people unable to scramble onto the upturned boat.

?It?s a very tragic incident but there could have been a greater loss of life,?Baltimore Mayor Martin O?Malley said. Petty Officer Edward Mendez, one of the Naval reservists on the rescue boat, explained : ?The boat tried to turn but the wind took him. There was nothing he could do. It just took him right over.?

The boat was operated as a water-taxi by the Baltimore-based nonprofit Living Classrooms Foundation, an educational organization that serves at-risk youth. It was ferrying out-of-town tourists around the harbour in unseasonably warm weather when the storm struck.

The captain of a second Foundation boat radioed the water-taxi to warn about the fast-approaching storm and the boat was turning to head for shore near Fort McHenry about 4 p.m. when it capsized, city officials said. They said it was the first incident of its kind in Baltimore harbour. The boat was recovered and towed into a city Fire Department dock, where it will be inspected as part of an investigation by National Transportation Safety Board officials.

Bryan Sears