NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) – The Tall Ships are due to arrive in Newport on Thursday, after months of on-again, off-again debate.

Tall Ships Rhode Island 2004 will be a slightly smaller version of past festivals. There will be fewer ships overall and not quite as many of the largest ones, according to The Providence Journal. But this year’s event will bring most of the vessels together in one location, at Goat Island, creating a venue for family entertainment, a food pavilion and fireworks.

Due to post-9/11 security, participants will be subjected to searches. Bomb-sniffing dogs and portal-style metal detectors will be set up.

The festival officially begins Friday, kicking off three days of public visits aboard the Tall Ships, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. On the final day, the event will culminate as it has in the past with a parade of sail.

The largest participant will be Eagle, the 295-foot barque used by the U.S. Coast Guard as a sailing training vessel. Other standouts include the 269-foot barque Mircea, from Romania; the 213-foot barque Tenacious, from the United Kingdom; and the 205-foot schooner Captain Miranda, from Uruguay. Also taking part is the 129-foot Amistad, a four-year-old replica of a slave ship whose story was recounted in a Hollywood movie filmed in Newport in 1997.

Retired Adm. Thomas Weschler, who has helped organize six Tall Ships events in Newport, is credited with taking the helm of the nonprofit group that resuscitated this year’s event.

Originally, the event was going to be held at Quonset-Davisville, but it was canceled because of security costs associated with the commercial port. A couple of weeks later, Newport agreed to host the ships.

Then Conventures, the private company putting on the event, withdrew. The Boston-based company complained of high security costs and said it never received public safety plans.

Weschler’s group was formed and rescued the Tall Ships 2004.

While organizers said it has been challenging pulling the event together in a matter of weeks, they assert that the ships, the public and area communities will be better served by nonprofit management.

AP-ES-07-11-04 1203EDT