IsThere a chip with multiple (4 or 8?) serial ports??

I need to build devices for a Marine application that will receive
multiple (4 or 8) serial signals. Typically the signals are 4800 baud,
N,8,1 with a burst length of up to 80 characters, and a repetition
rate of 1 to 2 per second. (These are NMEA signals). They are
uncoordinated signals from individual devices such as GPS receivers,
Engine monitoring instruments etc...

I'm looking for a chip with multiple serial ports (actually receive -
only would be OK here). I want to interface such a chip or chips to a
PIC which will do a small amount of supervision, possibly filtering,
and use it's main hardware UART or USB or a CAN controller to output
data to a computer.

I've searched thru MicroChip and some on Google etc. What I'd LIKE is
a serial-port chip designed to interface to a microcontroller by SPI,
serial, I2C etc. AND which has 4 to 8 serial ports.

Anyone seen such a beastie?? Any other suggestions other than many
single-channel USARTs (Ughh..)

Thanks!

.

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