You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘gallivant’ category.
Such great names on steel vessels that . . . ply our waters
Indefatigable vessels like Hyundai Grace, which left Shanghai on 6 February, entered the Narrows on 2 March–when I got these shots–and by 1 April will
be back in Korea! And what bright orange tanker could ever carry claim for being stealthy . . .
this one with a stack logo like this wedge.
I’m starting to get a hankering to travel . . . to follow FSL Tokyo out the Narrows,
drawn by places like these . . . Handytankersmarvel of Majuro!
While I still have the stamina, I’m going to put my gallivant shoes on and follow Hellas Endurance.
I’m especially intrigued by this one . . . Grande Guinea is a Grimaldi Line RORO, this one named for a sub-Saharan city whose history is linked to that of Timbuktu, a place until recently I’d always hoped to get to, a place that later served as namesake for a coin.
I’m not sure when next I’ll post. All fotos in the past month by Will Van Dorp.
Here was 14, and for a similar vessel to today’s here are some fotos from Birk Thomas from not quite a year ago. And this post started here, right after I’d driven into Nola from Mississippi on Route 90. The depicted canine is admiring Poseidon, a 1945 Navy barge that was converted to transport Apollo units for NASA.
Click here for a story about Pegasus, a descendent of Poseidon.
The foto below and the two above come compliments of Jen and Curt Muma, formerly of tugboat Shenandoah. For info on a former NASA sea ship–Liberty Star– newly assigned to a sixth boro institution, click here.
The next three fotos I am using thanks to and with permission of Boat Photo Museum–newly added to my blogroll. The February 1970 foto below shows Poseidon and sister barge Orion upbound at Vicksburg pushed by towboat Bob Fuqua (few qwah). Bob Fuqua would push the barge only as far as Nola, at which point a sea-going tug would take over for the rest of the journey to Cape Canaveral. Here’s a story from April 1961 about such a handover from towboat Bob Fuqua to tug Sharon Lee. Click here for a story of the NASA fleet, and more fotos of Poseidon. Today Bob Fuqua is known as Carrie Mays; for a contemporary foto, click here.
Here Bob Fuqua pushes sister missile barge Palaemon upbound at Wickliffe, KY, February 1965.
Here, from August 1970 is another shot of Poseidon and Orion underway at Vicksburg.
Just shy of a year ago, the contemporary rocket RO-RO had a close encounter with a bridge in Kentucky, which you may remember. MV Delta Mariner, as the RO-RO is called, is still at work. I must just have missed her, as she is is currently upbound the Mississippi north of Vicksburg. Oh . . . to be back in Memphis for that and many other reasons. For a sense of Delta Mariner‘s recent itinerary, click here.
Many thanks to Jen and Curt for the contemporary fotos waterside and to Dan Owen for the vintage fotos.
Riverbanks 1 and 2 appeared more than four years ago. And it’s interesting to see what associations I made then. This is a look at riverbanks elsewhere, outside the sixth boro context. Take Baton Rouge and sixth-boro built USS Kidd, possibly an indicator of low-water Mississippi watershed.
In Memphis, it’s the formidable levees
and winter-idled riverboats. Click here for an excellent although slow-loading PDF on the scale of the Mississippi watershed and the several-century evolution of its levees.
The confluence of the Mississippi and the Ohio happens at Cairo, IL, where barges line the banks, like the 170′ Michael G. Morris (1999) on the Mississippi side and
the 183′ American Pillar (1976) on the Ohio River side.
Lines within lines of barges . . like the ones here pushed up the Ohio by Laurie S. Johnston, 6200 hp.
Note the barge-rich banks of the Mississippi in the area of the Route 66 bridges aka Poplar Street and McArthur Bridges.
Here a loading (?) operation takes place just north of the E St Louis foot of the Poplar Street Bridge.
And here in Lower Speers, PA, along the Mon . . . a clutch of towboats spend time in the yard. Here Capt. Deane Orr (135′ and 1952) and Burning Star (40′ and 1965).
Moving downstream in the yard, here are Arkwright, R. Randy Palmer, and Marcus Anthony.
And Sara Elizabeth and Wes McDonald.
And a the downstream end of the yard, it’s the 103′ 1953 Titan.
Finally, upstream of the Consol boats, it’s tiny Busy Bee, Allegheny, and some unidentified CTC vessels. Finally, from the CTC site, click here for an interesting video produced by the Waterways Council on the relative merits of water transport.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
x
This is the Speers-Belle Vernon crossing of the Monongahela River aka the Mon, which in Pittsburgh–which I visited in June 2008 here– flows into the Ohio, which at Cairo flows into the Mississippi. The lighter bridge carries “rubber wheel” I-70 traffic, and the darker one carries Wheeling and Lake Erie “steel wheel” traffic.
Charleston WV-based Lawson W. Hamilton Jr. moves
a light barge downstream while
Darlane B moves a tow heavily laden with coal upstream.
Former names for the 1975 Mississippi-built vessel are East Wind, Ryan Patrick, Bud Spanier, Stone King, and Harry Collins.
At the dock is Consol Energy’s Burning Star. More Consol vessels soon. Here are some Consolidated Coal bulk carrier fotos from Auke Visser’s site.
North of the bridges, Lady Louise (ex-Chief Powhatan II) stands by at
a coal-handling facility in Monessen.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. Related posts can be seen here and here.
Name that river where the hunters are putting in their boat on a ramp that’s showing some roughness? If the guy taking fotos turns around, you’ll see
this arch by Saarinen. So it’s a low water Mississippi, making the levees seem even higher than the posted 38′ to the street. By the way, I hadn’t expected to be so impressed as I was by the arch and the underground museum.
This January along this part of the Mississippi had below freezing temperatures, not the weather to run show boats by these delightful names. To ride either Becky Thatcher or Tom Sawyer, we’ll have to return in summer. A few days ago in New Orleans, it was 77.
And that’s fine. Summer would be a better time to go slowly through the Illinois River Valley, and enjoy sights like the 170′ pushboat America. A few miles upriver–we didn’t get there–is also the former showboat Goldenrod, which I need to return to the area to see.
I hope to have more pics of America soon.
Another ferry–Golden Eagle Ferry–rests on the bank not far from to the south. Click here for more ferries of the Middle Mississippi River valley.
Right in the middle of Kampsville is the “108 bridge,” sort of like the US Route 10 Bridge between Michigan and Wisconsin. But I digress.
Actually this is Miss Illinois, a 1998 Chattanooga-built tug connected by rotating kingpin to a barge ferry
The barge stays pointed the same direction all the time, but Miss Illinois pivots on the pin each time it shuttles to the other bank.
And the water is icy!
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
A quick reprise first: back in Nola, here Connie 2 assists B. John Yeager dock a tow along Algiers. Route 90 bridge in the background.
Here’s the mystery vessel from the last post: the retired MV Mississippi IV in Vicksburg, positioned here in 2007 when an even larger replacement came on line.
In Memphis, it’s Richard headed southbound under the I-55 bridge.
From Fort Defiance Park in Cairo, Il, that’s the Route 60 bridge over the Ohio . . . at the very end of the Ohio. The confluence is behind me. Tug is ADM’s American Pillar. Note the barges and tugs along the far bank.
Less than a quarter mile away, along the Mississippi bank, it’s AEP’s Michael G. Morris. The bridge is the Mississippi crossing of Route 60.
And in between the two previous fotos, here’s the commingling. Notice the Ohio on the left is muddier than the Mississippi on the right. Coming thru is Okie Moore’s Diving and Salvage’s Stephen Foster, pusing crane barges and Captain Val, based along the Missouri.
And finally for now, it’s Gateway Express as seen from the top of the St Louis Arch and
from the St Louis bank.
Many more to come from points in between . . . from Will Van Dorp.
Quick and succinct: the way to enter Nola from the east and north is Rte 90. About 30 miles east of Nola I passed this mystery vessel Poseidon, which looked like a house-forward bulk carrier with a quonset hut over the hold now blown away by a storm. Anyone know the history?
As sun rose somewhere in a cloudy drizzly day, the first vessel to pass–upbound–was BBC Brazil.
Then a steady stream of traffic moved on the great river . . . some of them included Amalienborg,
B. John Yeager (?) with at least 13 barges, which round Algiers Point in the most
curious way, which involved backing down, sliding over to the Nola side, and what must have been lots of nail-biting.
Big Sam and a small tow.
From the Algiers side, I checked out Barbara E. Bouchard‘s new pins.
Also on the drydocks at Bollinger’s was Mully and Admiral Jackson.
Alice‘s sister Caroline Oldendorff passed . . . upriver.
And Alley Cat headed downstream herding more barges than would seem possible.
Nola is so much more than all that, and Checkpoint Charlie is a start of that other so-long list, but do check in at Charlie’s when next you’re here.
More soon. All foto by Will Van Dorp.
“The road” begins with the first step out of the house, and here . . . before leaving Brooklyn . . . I saw it and knew exactly what it was . . . Michael J McAllister towing a hefty load of containers between the sixth boro and Norfolk.
And I knew the tug because Birk Thomas had just sent me this one–taken Saturday?–of Michael J. Thanks much, Birk.
Farther down the road but still in NYC, I followed this truck, which introduced me to these metal sculptures of Fritz Cass.
A few hours out . . . I had a glimpse of this truck . . . clearly delivering catfish, although . . . Great Dane!
Great Dane FISH. Maybe they deliver dogfish as well.
And before we got to Harrisburg, this beautiful (late 40s??) Plymouth suggests we’ve . . . turned a corner in time maybe.
And now . . . from Tennessee, where it might the 30s . . .
I took this foto in August 2010, here with my back to Anthony’s Nose. Any guesses about the vintage of this chubby people mover?
Here’s a foto I took yesterday in Greenport of
this Morehead, NC veteran of WW1!!!
At the same locstion, I took this foto. Anyone know what manufacturer this beauty is, frontal and
stern view.
And from inside the post-Sandy rebuilt Scrimshaw restaurant, I’d love to know what vessel
this figurehead once graced.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Looking at this set of fotos, words beginning with “w” came to mind. Like wind-swept, an apt way to describe this land’s end called Halibut Point in Rockport, here looking toward Maine. That’s “halibut” as in “haul about,” because as you sail round the point, you’ll encounter different winds. The rockpile is quarried chunks never loaded onto to ships, never built into construction sites.
Wind again comes to mind in this assemblage of traditional and new-fangled means of harnessing it. One is up, and two will follow. Schooners are Highlander Sea and Adventure.
Wavemaster is NOT the familiar name for the 47′ MLB like these, but it should be.
Wake . . . follows codzilla…
OK . . this one’s a stretch, but whenever I see a small RIB like this of the Massachusetts Environmental Police, I think sirens . . . not whistles, but then
there’s a Rupert, a 50′ RIB, and if the previous was whistles, then this is whistles and bells. If anyone’s thinking to give tugster a gift for Christmas, this is tops on my wishlist.
Viking Starliner wandered through the sixth boro the other day, possibly in for some work, but then it headed south . . . Florida-bound?
And finally this, a winter-cold sunrise, taken a week ago with a hint that December is not far off, a year winds down, waning hours of light.
And just apropos of absolutely nothing, had we had a few more hurricanes, we’d have gotten to hurricane William this year.
Recent Comments