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This cryptic title will become clear in time, but first check out these fotos taken by Jim Ash . . . back more than a decade ago when the long-gone Coral Queen was headed up the creek . . . the creek referred to being also known as the Anne Hutchinson River.
The thing about these creeks is that large vessels–that’s a relative term–can only navigate them only when water levels are up. But if you’re up the creek too long after ebb, you stay where you are until the water comes back. When levels are up, you head downstream, around
any and all obstacles, overtop of submerged but hidden threats you know are there, underneath
the ones that don’t have to lift for you, through
the portals only at that instant when they’re open and you’re lined up, and
toward the open water.
More on this–the specialized creek work of Diane B and . . . the proud, the very few . . . soon. All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
All manner of small vessels traverse the waters of the sixth boro. Twin Tube is truly one ageless fixture of the harbor. If I did photoshopping, I’d have the boom dangle something tantalizing over the Statue’s upstretched hand.
Annie G II . . . makes me wonder about Annie G I. Here she
stands by as crew perform some truck task over on the west side of Governor’s Island. I’ve enjoyed watching the derelict buildings on the Island disappear. A largely unseen harbor project farther south (sorry no pics from UNDER the sixth boro) has been the tunneling of a new deeper “water main” (p. 7 ff) between Brooklyn and Staten Island.
A small USCG boat stops for maintenance on the red 32. Unfortunately, I was on a vessel headed away from the buoy, and a few seconds after I took this, one crewman stepped aboard the buoy, on the other side.
A small USACE vessel speeds to the southeast past Robins Reef Light.
John P Brown pushes fewer than a dozen of the mere 1500 cars per year across the harbor, the miniscule fraction of merchandise that travels between NJ and parts of NYC on non-rubber wheels.
A small fishing boat crosses the bay under the cranes on hovering over Bayonne.
St Andrews runs light past some unidentified tugs obscured in the fog. I spent July 4 docked near St Andrews.
New England style fishing boat heads out of the Bronx while Fox Boys (I think) pushes some scrap probably toward Jersey City.
In fading light, HMS Liberty heads for the Kills. I’ve often wonder what the HMS stood for in this case. . . . Is the H his, her, or something else . . . .
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who wonders whether Sandy will be sandy or just windy, snowy, rainy, . . . tricky . . . .
Thanks for today’s fotos and text go to James Ash, port captain for Poling & Cutler. ”I took [these fotos of Coral Queen] about 12 years ago from the Boston Post Road Bridge in Eastchester ( Mt. Vernon).
The “Rock Cut” is one of the most challenging transits as lining up for the turn around the last corner under the B.P.R. Bridge is a widow maker in a single hull, single screw, tanker built in 1920.
Probably a highlight of my career [is] the 1,200 trips up the Hutchinson River in my time on this vessel.
There was a time when she made two trips per day up this river,
one on each tide. Master mariner Tony McDonald is at the helm on this trip.
I came in for crew change.”
Thanks much, Jim.
Here are my fotos of Coral Queen, which began rebirth through the scrapyard portal a few years back now.
Imagine a tugboat with a bowsprit, at least some of the time? See the link at the end.
First from Robert Apuzzo . . . Crow (1963) in the East River, and
Susan Miller (1981, ex-Uncle Ned) in the Bronx River. Speaking of the Bronx River, here’s its namesake tug and some info on doings in the Bronx River this summer. By the way, you saw Bronx nearly lost in the lush bow pudding of Cornell here last September… scroll through a bit.
From John Watson, the newer (Feb 2011) and bigger (630′) orange juice tanker Orange Stararrives escorted by Laura K. Moran.
Same shot, bigger context.
A distant sound like a train whistle Saturday morning . . . that was the aforementioned Cornell.
A school of Vane boats (l. to r. Elk River, Pataspsco, and Quantico Creek) get their stern-parts bathed by the oracle waters Gowanus Canal.
Eagle Service, fairly fresh off the Great Lakes, heads into KVK about a week ago.
Like Eagle Service, Greenland Sea was originally built as a Bollinger-built Candies boat. . . Grant Candies (November 1996) and Doc Candies (December 1990).
Another Hornbeck boat, Freedom Service (1983) heads into the Buttermilk from the East River.
Buchanan 12 (1972) heads into the East River. See her light here.
Thanks to Robert and John for sharing their fotos.
Unrelated: Here are some fotos from the Seattle Maritime Festival, tug race and more, from yesterday. Wish I’d been able to go. Here and here are some Seattle water fotos I took last summer. For updates on Coot, the tug in W. O. Decker colors, click here. Scrolling through you’ll also find some great tugboat names as well as the hull–high and dry–of a supertug under construction.
Also unrelated but . . a two-minute video honoring WW2 vets. Watch it all, please.
Anna Frater is the bowspritted tugboat; click here to see it. It’s not the first such tug to appear here: check out this tugantine from 2008.
Remember, if you’re in NYC and free tonight . . . Working Harbor Committee is presenting movie and panel: Women at Sea. If I didn’t have to work, I’d be there.
I’ve posted a set of fotos about this vessel here before, but still been unable to learn anything about it. It lies where Westchester Creek (In fact, click on the link and you’ll see another foto of the same grounded vessel!) flows into the East River west of the Whitestone Bridge. And not that I haven’t looked, though it’s clear that my searches have focused on the wrong places. Uncorroborated stories are these: it was coming from South America, the owner abandoned a plan to turn Christina or Cristina into a floating restaurant . . possibly in Philadelphia, it was dropped off there to mark a shoal. A search of NYTimes archives from 1920 until 1980 turns up nothing about either this grounded vessel or
this one, not far away.
When spring actually gets here and work slows down, I plan to put a human powered vessel in this area and look around more. Thanks to Robert Apuzzo for these fotos.
But . . . as often happens, I found some interesting info on other groundings in the harbor in the past 80 years . . . yes, one happened in the East River less than two weeks ago, as of this writing. Some of these include:
May 1927 dreadnought Colorado Diamond Reef* (between Governors Island and southeastern tip of the Battery)
Dec 1936 freighter Malang Roosevelt Island, then Welfare Island
Aug 1951 battleship Wisconsin (actually North River near NJ across from 79th Street)
Oct 1955 battleship Wisconsin Diamond Reef
Feb 1970 tanker Desert Princess (ex-Hoegh Grace, 664′) Mill Rock
Dec 1972 tanker Vitta (659′) south of Ward Island, spilling 150 tons of oil
April 1979 tanker Algol East River off 10th Street. If you have a NYTimes subscription, you can read the article here, telling that six Moran tugs came to the assistance of Algol in sprite of the strike then happening.
Apr 28 2005, a gasoline barge struck Diamond Reef, with some spillage. See here.
Meanwhile, if I don’t find some info on that top wreck, I’ll succumb to all the imagined histories, maybe even embroider them a bit, and call it fiction. Not so bad, eh?
Unrelated: Check out this site dedicated to the waterway leading from Rotterdam to the North Sea . . .Maasmond (mouth of the Maas River) Maritime.
This holy grail of sail is the Van Nostrand Cup, crafted by Tiffany in 1888 at the behest of Gardiner Van Nostrand, ”held since 1891 by the North Shrewsbury Ice Boat and Yacht Club,” put up for competiton only once (1978) since then. Getting it back is tricky. Races can only happen when waters are frozen; you need good ice, though, not just any ice. You need wind but not too much. Last Saturday winds gusted to 50 mph, and then Sunday . . . in spite of this beautiful ice … puffs happened only sporadically. And with good wind, how fast can they go? Answer follows.
John Vargo, here with a formidable hat made of skins of two Great Plains coyotes, talks about the sport as
over on the far side of this lake (which I will refer to as Lake Shangri-la . . . located somewhere between the sixth boro and the St. Lawrence) two old stern-steerers race. If you haven’t seen bowsprite’s video of the last run of Galatea from February 2010, click here.
A little over 100 years ago, ice boats like these were THE fastest vehicle on earth! This youtube video from the 1930s touts the fact that a Chevy can outrun an iceboat, an appeal that seems quite bizarre today.
To me, these vessels seem too beautiful and delicate to be so fast.
Varnish, polished brass, marlinespike are all lovingly cared for on Ariel.
Genevieve is a beauty returned recently from Wisconsin
by Brett, whose passion for iceboats was quite evident. This type of passion and
obsession one who blogs incessantly of water can easily empathize with. Wonder why the nameboard looks so untraditional?
Genevieve was built not far from a certain temple of baseball in the Bronx. Here’s a list of vessels built there, but there’s no mention of their iceboating endeavors. While we’re on NYYL&E history, check out their Bronx-built Linmar and Olympus. Another long-gone Morris Heights-based builder built lightships.
A two-person crew pushes off in light wind before lying in the basket.
Genevieve’s bigger basket accommodates more crew, more pushers.
Waiting for the wind here from near to far: Ice Queen, Whirlwind, and Ariel.
Lake Shangri-la beckons; when the wind blows, these boats are eager to bring the Grail back to New York ice. All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’s grateful for the hospitality.
For a wide variety of European iceboat images and links, click here.
Ice boat speed records: Debutaunte . . . 143 mph? Miss Wisconsin . . . 200 . .. has it been clocked?
Check out John Vargo’s Boating on the Hudson FaceBook page here.
If you were leisurely drifting down the river on your air mattress and you saw this, how concerned might you be? (Doubleclick enlarges.)
But that just wouldn’t happen. Better to see this sight from an even faster boat. What’s this? It’s the race, and again, thanks to Captain Matt Perricone of Cornell, I enjoyed an upper deck view of my favorite Labor Day event. And without much ado or text or research, here are some fotos.
To see the mighty Atlantic Salvor bearing down on you with all its momentum …
humbles and inspires awe.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. As the hour approaches, vessels parade north to the starting line, where they
fan out and turn to await the signal.
Blue dominated among the vessels around us, blue the same color as the smoke.
And afterward, the pushing contests began. Some vessels were fairly even-matched whereas
Others seemed so mismatched almost to require the service
of stunt drivers.
Of course there were winners, and I might get around to announcing some of those, but on a day like this, everyone, spectators included, are winners. Equipment gets dragged back to the yards.
All fotos taken by will Van Dorp.
Vessels included (in no particular order … and correct me if I missed one) Cornell, Atlantic Salvor, Bronx, Mary H, Maurania III, W. O. Decker, Vulcan III, Sea Wolf, Cheyenne, Meagan Ann, Catherine, Susan, and Shawn Miller. Viking took part in the pushing contests but not the race. More fotos tomorrow.
The East River is a helluva strait, literally, if you head east through Hell Gate and between South and North Brother Islands. The Brothers were not only the site of infectious diseases hospitals (ruins of which are visible on the SoBro pix here and more on this in a later post) but also of the 1904 maritime tragedy that cost over a thousand lives, i.e., the burning of the General Slocum.
Continuing east of the Brothers, Rikers lies south of the channel and beyond the DEP facility and north of the channel, “rikers annex,” prison barge Vernon C. Bain provides a model for the ultimate in waterfront living? The mystery lies below: what is the name/story of the wreck in the cove leading to Westchester Creek?
That’s the Whitestone in the background.
My estimate is . . . at least 125′ loa.
That’s Ferry Point Park in the background.
Again looking toward Ferry Point Park.
Maybe it’s an old ferry? Maybe it’s a cheap but dramatic way to mark shoals? Maybe it’s art?
Unrelated: see Sea Fever’s 9/22 post featuring a crew riding Hurricane Ike out off Galveston. Lord have mercy!!!!!
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