A View of Ships and Boats

Wordless foto essay on vessel fronts.  See  a bowsprite rendition here.

OK, I guess I can’t be wordless with this one above.  Clue:  vessel above is the same as vessel below.

I took this one of Woody Guthrie and Clearwater three months ago at Croton.

Foto of Woody Guthrie‘s improvised figurehead was sent to me by Steve Schwartz.  Thanks much, Steve.  All others by Will Van Dorp.

Pier 25 Marine Art Show

Pier 25 is unmistakeable on the Hudson side of lower Manhattan.  I posted fotos of Lilac moving to Pier 25 aka “historic ships pier” back a year and some months ago.   On some of those fotos, you can see bowsprite catching lines from the Miller’s Launch crew assisting Lilac’s arrival.  Bowsprite also goes by the name “Christina Sun,” who is half of the art show proclaimed on the dockside sign below.

Here she was hanging the show last weekend.  If you’ve looked at her site much, you’d have seen her rendering of RB 45614 (below) on her artblog here.

The other half of the art show (up til the end of August!!) is Frank Hanavan.    I’ve painted with Frank, like here on this bowsprit at least six years ago, and posted on this blog here back in 2007.  This foto and the next by Maggie Flanagan.

But besides painting in places that require a harness, Frank also paints

en plein air with an easel. In fact, this piece, part of his show, he did ON Pier 25 back in May when Picton Castle docked there for a few days.  Click on that link  (scroll through) and you’ll

see what message was printed on the square sail on the foremast.  Frank’s art is all contained in one room on Lilac, but

bowsprite’s 38 prints are spread through Lilac, leading the observer on a treasure hunt . . .  even through the engine room!

But I can’t look at a piece like this and NOT remember the delightful story on her blog about excavator dredge J. P. Boisseau with remembering the whale that appeared in Lower NY Bay, no doubt coming to check who was scratching the harbor’s bottom . . . and why.

Lilac is a unique vessel open to the public Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.  Hours are here.  In fact, this Saturday evening, besides art, you can also see the world premiere of a documentary about MV Liemba, the nearly century old steam ferry (I believe very recently dieselized but still running) on Lake Tangayika.  For a press release about the film from Lilac Museum director, Mary Habstritt, click here.

Historic ships, art, film, music, drinks, warm summer evening on the Hudson in Lower Manhattan . .  . . . .  see you there!!  Bring some $$ too and take home some beautiful marine art for your walls.

Here’s Frank’s official site.   And here’s Christina’s online “sketchbook.”

Unrelated:  Here’s a 13-minute interview I did with John Doswell of Working Harbor Committee (WHC) back in 2010.  I’d never heard it until today.  And remember  . . . here’s info on the WHC-sponsored 20th annual tugboat race coming up in NYC’s sixth boro in less than three weeks!!

Saving Marion M and Others

Is Marion M (Greenport, NY 1932) on her own power projecting that potentially gorgeous deck before her?  Might she be?

I’ll be straightforward for once:  Marion M has been moved away from South Street because the museum needs space.  She is for sale. You/your organization can get information on purchasing her by contacting Captain Jonathan Boulware, Waterfront Director, South Street Seaport Museum.  His tele and email are:  212.748.8772      jboulware@seany.org.

Some specifics on her history accompany bowsprite’s rendering here.  Wooden tugboat W. O. Decker (1930) demonstrates that she has the stuff  still in her.  Decker stays at South Street Seaport Museum.   Here and here are two of my many favorite bowsprite illustrations of Decker.

All these fotos come compliments of Jonathan Boulware, who took them in late June, as

Decker towed Marion M out to

her holding area on the KVK . . . where you can pick her up.

I wanted to add a few more fotos of Helen McAllister . . .

who also has at least one

more life ahead of her.   Here’s how she might look under her own power headed your way.

And with all this movement, what might Peking be thinking, saying . ..  .?

Uh . . . she can’t talk, can she?

Again, Marion M can be yours.  Contact Jonathan Boulware, Waterfront Director, South Street Seaport Museum     212.748.8772      jboulware@seany.org      I’m told she’s listed in WoodenBoat‘s “Save a Classic” section, but I haven’t seen that yet.

I’d love to see her gussied up to 1932 standards.  I’d even put greenbacks and sweat equity in the project.  I’m reminded of what the “crazy farmers of Villiersdorp” managed to do . . . or the Onrust project in Rotterdam Junction.

Unrelated but NYTimes article about resurgence:  Cross-harbor rail about to expand exponentially on the sixth boro!!

Swan is Down

(Note:  Doubleclick enlarges.) The title . . . those were the exact words John Watson emailed me last night.  If the message had been “hawk is down”  . . . or “condor …”  it would have alarmed me, but instead I charged my camera so that right after work I could zoom over to Fort Wadsworth for these shots.  By one, I found Alert loaded onto barge BFT No. 38, which

was already on Swan.  Gabby Miller was present, of course.  Lined up on the Brooklyn side was a cast of characters identified as

Cavalier, Pioneer, and Mars . . . in custody of Charles D. McAllister.

The three Crowley tugs glided onto Swan‘s back, extending beyond the hull on

both sides.

For outatowners, that’s Manhattan in the distance looking across most of what’s called the Upper Bay.  The Lower Bay is behind me, as is the Verrazano Bridge.    On the right is the boro of Brooklyn.  The red tugs are Charles D. McAllister and McAllister Sisters Girls.

If you wonder about my shifting POV, the tide turned from ebb to flood during loading, and with it a bank of fog crept in and out, several times.

Next on board . . . Socrates, who in spite of the fog, found

a place midships, starboard.

This left space for

Heron!  It’s not quite Noah’s ark, but I’m hoping Bowsprite will find a spare moment to drawing this vessel with its cargo almost as diverse as that of Pi Patel.

Loading completed, Susan Miller glides by.  No doubt Swan has already begun to deballast to rise back up, and tomorrow the menagerie onboard Swan will be high and dry.  After that, next stop, Nigeria.

I include this foto for outatowners.  The vessel farthest left and most distant is Swan;  I took it on the ferry about halfway back to Manhattan.   Land to the right of King Emerald is Staten Island.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Some related posts include Mighty Servant loaded last December, Blue Marlin loaded a year ago, and Socrates last summer . .  seventh foto down.

Random Ships 20

Yesterday close ups . . . today zoomed outs, like this.  There’s something eerie about a bulker named Tigris (2003) headed up the Hudson, for Yonkers and then Aruba, but I’m glad bowsprite caught this foto, which suggests how narrow the North River here is. I’d seen Tigris but been unable to get a foto.

Likewise, Ocean Morning . . . I saw her on AIS over in Port Newark, but  . . . only thanks to John Watson do I have a foto of her leaving here for Boston.

Great Eastern (2005) I caught several times . . . and by now, like Ocean Morning, she’s in Boston.

Yuan He (1994) also heads from here to Boston;  this German-built vessel seems

to be showing her segments overly so distinctly I could be convinced she’s about   . . .  to molt!

Maersk Willemstadt was here last week and is already outbound from Savannah, Miami as next destination.

Likewise, Turandot (1994 , is Georgia bound tonight.  Turandot, like other WW vessels, carries an operatic name like Don Juan and Traviata.

Conti Larimar (2011) may still be

loading scrap in the sixth boro.

What ship is this?  Maria T

is actually a barge, a dry cargo covered barge whose contents are suggested by the name . . . LaFarge, and if that sounds French . . . well, it is.   And I believe it’s pushed by Doris Moran.

Passing in the KVK here are Advance Victoria, escorted by  Gramma Lee T. Moran, and

Valle di Granada, 2006, 2002, and 2005, respectively.

And to conclude, dramatic vessel with a forbidding name . . . Cape Wrath (1982), named for this wet and wild desert . ..  of sorts, getting serviced over at GMD Bayonne.

Fotos 1 and 2 as attributed;  all others by Will Van Dorp.

What Digester Eggs Hatch

Bowsprite made my jolly Easter even jollier with her post here, rendering the silvery ovoids of Newtown Creek aubergine.  These digester eggs are an essential part of keeping the harbor clean.  See this DEP link as a starter.  Boston has similar structures on Deer Island, which are part of the same process.

Here’s another shot of Newtown Creek’s facility, as viewed from Peter Cooper Village across the East River.

And yet another view . . .  as seen from a boat on the Creek, the loins of 19th century industrial New York.  Yes, that’s the now-scrapped Kristin Poling  back in 2010.

As bowsprite points out in her post . . . yes, there is a proverbial “recreation area intertwined with a waste disposal equipment” around these eggs . . .  a boat launch, a minipark with historical info on local names like this.

This DEP vessel Red Hook  is the newest addition to the NYC DEP fleet, which I wrote about quite some time ago here.   If you’ve ever seen a vessel of these colors in the sixth boro, you’ve witnessed NYC fertilizer production at work.

Enough seriousness . . . .  this post has to be leading into a gassy direction.  Imagine this as a multi-hued digester filled with so much lighter-than-air vapor that it came loose from its Newtown Creek moorings.

What if engineers could isolate the light gaseous by-products of digestion so that passenger

craft like this one that circled the harbor last weekend could be exotic-fuel powered?

More digesters in evolution?

And this bit of blue jetsam along the KVK . . . might it expand to digester size . .  and if so . .  what might hatch from this?

OK . . . back to my serious world.  All silliness aside, New York City school kids DO come down to the park around the eggs to see and learn . . . using this “scavenger hunt guide.”

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Along Bayou Lafourche

At my age . . . I’ve come to some places where –at each–I could spend a lifetime;  choices need to be made.  And if I can’t spend that much time at each, the alternative might be to just keep moving . . . since it’s too hard to figure out how

to get access.  Those do look like parts of the superstructure of USS New York, which makes the Avondale Shipyard over there somewhere.  In the sixth boro, tugboat Dorothy Elizabeth and prison barge Vernon C. Bain come out of Avondale, along with this huge international list.

Bayou Lafourche along 308 sports signs like this, birthplace of lots of Vane Brothers tugs, a Gellatly & Criscione, and several Penn Maritimes.

A couple of twists and turns later, there’s this Bollinger yard, home to the Sentinel-class of Coast Guard cutter.  Consider this, two major US shipyards in a town of  less than 3000!!  Here’s more info on those cutters.

Continue south for 12 miles and you’ll see North American Shipbuilding, one of several Edison-Chouest Offshore facilities.  Provider was delivered in 1999.

Manufacturing and then . . . those are banana “trees.”   And in this tropical waterway, a cornucopia of boats can be found like

Victor J. Curole, (1979)

as well as

Capt. Thuan, (1987)

Squeegee and Sponge,  (turns out they’re oil recovery vessels or were at one time, 1966)

Wyoming, (1940 fishing vessel)

nameless and Big Tattoo,  (1981)

a floating home?

Mia Molloy bow and

stern,

Winds of Change . . . (2002) which appears to have a pusher knee integrated into its bow,

Mr Russell,  (1995)

and I’d love to know more about this one,

Capt. Manuel,  (1982)

this nameless variation on Lil Rip,

lots of dipnetters,

nameless, Carissa Breigh, (1980)  and Junie Bop, (1981)

Lugger Tug,  (maybe 1981)

swarms of swamp fans,

… let me stop here on this post which breaks my record for number of fotos . . .  nameless, but I can almost make out the spelling of TUGSTER on the stern.  Is it possible I’ve found myself and my place to settle here?  She looks to have some pedigree . . . 1940s lines?  Can anyone help with a bit of history here?

Time for tugster  (1952) to stop this trip and contemplate and refresh with some Bayou Teche biere pale . . . .   For more on Bayou Teche, the place, click here.

I intend to return to the Bayou soon, spend more time, and  . . . who knows what might transpire.

All fotos here by either Will or Christina, partners in this jaunt-within-a-gallivant.

For a waterman’s view of the general area, click here.

Nola Traffic 3

From the air you can see the traffic . . . the sinuous lines it scribes into the legendary river.

From the bank, you can see sometimes three tugs abreast (l. to r. Bobby Jones-1966, David G. Sehrt-1965, and Born Again-1974) pushing more than a dozen barges slipping around the turn between Algiers and the 9th Ward.  And when I say slipping, I mean even big vessels seem to slide through this crescent. That erosion in the foreground bespeaks higher water.

Uh . . . a variation on seasnake?

Crescent’s J. K. McLean (2010 at C & G Boatworks of Mobile, AL) and New Orleans (1998 at ThomaSea) maneuver in front of 1995 American Queen.

Close-up of McLean.

Empty Barge Lines’ Grosbec (1980).

Olga G. Stone (1981) pushing oil downbound.

Miss Abby (1960 ?) upbound.

Slatten’s Allison S (1994) light and headed upstream past Bollinger’s.

Ingram Barge Company’s Mark C.  A few years back, I saw Ingram boats all the up in Cincinnati, OH and Pittsburgh, PA.

Another Ingram vessel featured a few days ago . .  . David G. Sehrt.

Vickie (1975) pushing  . . . crushed concrete maybe . . .

Port Allen (1945?!!)

Chelsea (1989)

I’m back at work in environs of the sixth boro, and this is the last set about Nola strictly defined.  Tomorrow I hope to put up some fotos from a jaunt-within-a-gallivant southwest from the Crescent City, a truly magical place to which I really must return soon because there’s much I’ve yet to understand . . . like why

the nola hula only appears to salute certain vessels.

And is it true there’s a nun driving a tugboat somewhere on the Lower Mississippi?  Here’s a ghost story, and if you have a chance to find it, listen to Austin Lounge Lizard’s  ”Boudreaux was a Nutcase.”

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who also has tons of fotos from Panama to put up.

Nola Traffic 2

This foto in no way conveys the intensity of this moment:  that car crept down Iberville Street at dusk blasting out a shock wave of engine roar that rivaled the scream of  747 engines.

Here too the noise of beaded necklace flinging Shiners on Tchoupitoulas Street.

The shadow of Christ emerges on this end of St. Louis Cathedral as night falls.

Tugster dips his toe in the Mississippi near where Capt. John hugs the wharf just northeast of JacksonSquare.

This statue is called Old Man River, and I’m intrigued though

these words (by Robert Schoen?) leave me as mystified as the sculpture.

Traffic at the intersection of St. Ann’s and Chartres includes this mule (?)  and a texting swamp man.

Down by the river, bowsprite begins to weigh her appreciation for 1937 ferry Louis B. Porterie, one of the free ferries operated by

LA DOTD, the second “D” being development.  Here’s a better foto of the ferry, which whirls and spins between the French Quarter and the neighborhood intriguingly-named Algiers.

I looked in vain for formerly-sixth boro Glen Cove but did find a Kirby tug,  Miss Susan.

More of this type of traffic tomorrow.   All fotos by either bowsprite or tugster.

Nola Traffic 1

I’m deep in the “fog of travel,” a phrase I learned from David Hindin.  So only the facts, here:

Crescent’s Alabama.

Marquette’s Blake Denton and Ingram Barge’s David G. Sehrt, sporting her triple stacks.

Silver Fox motivated (I think) by Todd G.

BW Havis, as seen from Algiers.

Bisso’s Capt. Bud Bisso.

Greg Turecamo.

Ralph E. Bouchard.

Anna Victoria pushing heavy against the current painted with silt from a dozen of so Midwest farm states extending all the way to Montana,.

Traffic moves all day and night, just like the bon temps in Nola.

Coral Mermaid.

Chandlery boat Brandi.

And . . . just the facts . . . some legendary aquatic creature doing the nola hula for a sea-bound MSC Nederland.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.  More soon.

If you didn’t see it yesterday, check out bowsprite’s nola.