AN empty oil tanker makes a forlorn setting for a ghost story, and at Pier 9B in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the other day, the winds of April wailed a haunting accompaniment to a tale of maritime woe. Inside the tanker, the Mary A. Whalen, Carolina Salguero raised her raspy Brooklyn voice above the clang of iron chairs being blown over on the deck.

“Now I’m going to cry,” she said, as she finished giving a tour of the ship that has been her home for most of the past five years. “I just hope that we’re not going to be the Penn Station of the waterfront. The tragedy of Penn Station was that nobody talked about historical preservation until after they tore it down.”

Some ships run into icebergs and become 3-D movie extravaganzas; others disappear silently into the abyss of paperwork.

Ms. Salguero, 51, bought the 613-ton ship for her nonprofit organization, PortSide NewYork, in 2006 for $16,500, with plans to serve visitors and the companies working in the harbor. She envisioned a future of educational exhibitions and cultural events, as well as weddings and other fund-raising activities. A local opera company staged Puccini’s “Il Tabarro” for large crowds in 2007, but never again.