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Like me, you probably feel you’re drowning in reminders these days of a certain large vessel that sank exactly a century ago at 41°27’34″N 50°8’22″W. Am I the only one who has never seen the 1997 James Cameron movie? Should I see it? Otherwise, I like Cameron’s work and exploits. The April 16, 2012 issue of The New Yorker has this especially good piece by Daniel Mendelsohn. Click on the foto below to sample the article.
The New Yorker magazine credits the foto below (and above) to “National Museums Northern Ireland/Ulster Folk & Transportation Museum,” but not to its photographer. Hmm.
Mendelsohn’s piece ends with a reference to Morgan Robertson’s 1898 novella . . . Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan. That’s uncanny stuff. 1898.
I’m hoping you’re intrigued by the title of this post. If you haven’t seen the video below (click on the image below to play it), you’ll learn how Titanic, Thresher, and Scorpion are connected through Robert Ballard. Sections of the first 10 minutes of the video are “gushy,” but you’ll be glad you stayed with it. An important strand in the second half of the video is Ballard v. RMS Titanic . . . a salvage company. William J. Broad, science writer, picks up on that dispute in a NYTimes article here, embedded online in this cover. Writer me in on the side of Robert Ballard and James P. Delgado.
In searching for ephemera you might not know about this story, I came across Knorr, the Woods Hole vessel Ballard used for his 1985 search for the three vessels in the title. Here’s another link for Knorr. A search turns her up less than a hundred miles SE of Montauk, obviously surveying, below.
An automobile in the ill-fated hold . . . might once have looked like this. A search on e-ships turned up no vessel called Titanic at work today, but then there is this . . . a yacht named Titanic! Click here for the wikipedia entry for the 1971 launched Titanic.
Yesterday’s NYTimes ran this Q & A on various historical connections between Titanic and New York. A future connection lies with a vessel called Balmoral, over the wreck tonight and due in the sixth boro later next week . .. maybe Thursday.
Two vessels forever connected to the tragedy are the one that responded poorly and the one that saved lives. Within a decade, both were also on the seabed, victims of U-boat attacks.
For a comparison of Titanic with her two sisters, check out the inimitable bowsprite’s post here . . . And for a sense of the “titanics in unlikely places,” check Rick’s Old Salt blog.
Postscript: Thresher, like Squalus, left from here.
Good bye to this, and
hello to Blue.
and soon into the wild blue . . . as did USS Nipsic in 1870. In January 1870, she left Brooklyn Navy Yard under command of Thomas O. Selfridge Jr. . . . to Limon Bay.
….
January 1909. New Jersey-built Ambrose LV-87 in second year on the job. Photo by N. L. Stebbins. Click on the next two fotos and you’ll get to their context. Click here for many more Stebbins fotos.
January 1912, a mere 1202 months ago. Ambrose at work with White Star Olympic passing in background. Olympic at this time was less than a year on the job and already suffered one collision. Four months later, of course, her younger sister ship would begin its ill-fated maiden voyage to New York.
I recall seeing this foto before I moved to New York and imagined that “channel 87″ was the means to contact the vessel. Oh well . . . live and learn, eh?
March 2012. Ambrose in her 46th year post-decommissioning after having served the USCG (and precursors) 59 years. Photo by Birk Thomas. In lower right hand corner, that’s Atlantic Salt’s Richmond Terrace mountain.
St. Peter’s neo-Romanesque sanctuary has dominated the east end of the KVK for over a century.
Structure just forward of Ambrose here is Sono’s “postcards,” a 9/11 memorial.
This may be my last post for a while . . . am gallivanting south soon.
Many thanks to Birk for these fotos.
Related: Click here for a Reginald Marsh mural of a black-hulled Ambrose. Here are some crew shots from the late 1950s.
Unrelated: Crossing the Darien isthmus right now is Ever Deluxe, which appeared just barely in this post from almost three years ago . . and NYK Diana, a Howland Hook regular.
Well, maybe not that different, since I’m not reinventing myself. But enjoy these fotos, and while looking at them, fugure out where you’ve seen this tug before on this blog. Look carefully. It took me about 30 seconds to recognize the red tug below as a more pristine version of a tug that appears here periodically. Fotos were taken in the 1980s by Seth Tane, who generously shares them here.
In its current state, this tug, using the same name, has considerably more equipment on board. What hasn’t changed is the profile of the Palisades in the background of some of these fotos, taken in or near Hastings-on-Hudson, NY.
This tug today still operates commercially, pulling loads like the one below.
A major change in the tug relates to visibility; the portholes would make me claustrophobic. However, since the mystery tug was built on the Great Lakes, maybe portholes conserve heat better in winter. Tug Daniel A. White, below left, has more conventional glass. Anyone know what has become of Daniel A. White?
If you guessed Patty Nolan, you were correct. Here’s her current work page, showing her original form. Click on the following links for a sampling of Patty Nolan fotos from the past few years, like modelling 2011 summer beach fashion, at work in the East River, moving snail-like with house, and finally . . . for now . . . Patty Nolan outlaw fashionista.
Thanks much to Seth for these fotos from the early 1980s.
Below is a foto (poor quality) that I took in December 2000. I clearly had forgotten how barren the Jersey City shore just north of the Morris Canal looked a mere 11 years ago, almost reminiscent of a desert town. This foto was among a batch my sister handed me at Thanksgiving, but those foto gave me
an idea. Maybe you have fotos in a drawer, a shoebox, and album, etc. that show some part of the sixth boro and/or vessels there. And if I may so brazen, tugster would LOVE to see any fotos you might come across and are willing to share.
Here was Something Different 4.
The foto I posted yesterday dazzled my image of Shooter’s. Sure . . . I knew it once saw shipbuilding operations beginning with David Decker’s yard, but I never imagined the scale. And when that industry collapsed, the island was reduced to a speed bump. Obliterate it was the solution proposed by a politician half a century ago.
If I try to put myself in the head of a Standard Shipbuilding employee there 90 years ago, I imagine he would wonder how many vessels the Shooters yard would be turning out a century hence, what cargoes they’d carry, and to which ports. Possibly he also wondered what part of the operation would employ his sons. Never in his wildest dreams–I suspect–would he imagine a scene like the one passing earlier today.
He would never envisage such a ship from China with cargoes like the dominoes stack here. Click here for fotos of Shanghai a little over a century back.
Xin Chang Sha, although barely a medium-sized container ship–is twice the loa and carries eight times the cargo deadweight than a Shooters vessel such as the 1919 San Teodoro.
On a given Saturday morning from sunrise to noon, Xin Chang Sha is one of . . . half a dozen vessels bound for sea through the KVK.
Doubleclick enlarges. This foto taken at the pool, just east of the Bayonne Bridge, looking toward Shooters.
Besides being a bird sanctuary, the island margins are also home to over a dozen ruins deemed “nationally significant” by the NPS Archeology Program for abandoned shipwrecks.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Indulge a bit of shameless self-promotion here: If you haven’t voted yet in the Village Voice poll upper left, please do so and ask a few of your friends to do so too. Just click on the link and then–after putting in your name etc. paste in tugster.wordpress.com in #5 (best neighborhood blog) and #24 (best photo blog). Thanks.
Answer can be found at the end of this post. I was thrilled to find this sixth boro foto today. Shot appears to be towards the northwest, but I’m not certain yet. It appears to be a merge of two fotos. On lower left side of my original foto the handwritten number “1906″ is visible. A date? Maybe not. Doubleclick enlarges.
Now we sweep from right to left. I see at least a “stick deck barge” and an Erie covered barge on this side of the pier, which has a crane on it. Then a ?? 200′ unfinished steel vessel, something beyond that, and a four-masted schooner farther still at a dock.
Middle sections shows steamer Ursula and an unidentified (by me) vessel “south” of the cove off its stern. I can’t quite make out details in the cove. There was an Ursula that operated at one point between the Battery and Glen Island (near New Rochelle.) Another shot of Ursula appears in this 1919 foto. Beyond the many buildings on this part of the island . . . at least two hulls surrounded by scaffolding?
More manufacturing buildings and a larger “wooden stick barge.” Lettering on the white building says “Standard Shipbuilding Corp.” That should be the clue that identifies this place. But did they operate here only between 1917 and 1921? Could 10,000 workers have operated here daily?
It’s Shooter’s Island as I could never have imagined it!! Click here for some Standard/Shooters built vessels. One of these Standard/Shooters vessel–SS San Tiburcio–was mined and sunk in 1940 and now attracts divers, as here. Of course, the most famous Shooter’s product must be Meteor III, launched Feb 25, 1902 (click here for a very detailed NYTimes account of the event) which eventually was broken up at a site not far from Shooters. More on that later, I hope. An interesting note on the christening of Meteor III . . . the act was done by Alice Roosevelt, who later . . . 1959, also christened the USS Theodore Roosevelt SSBN-600. Can anyone point me to fotos of Meteor III aka Aldebaran when she came back to the sixth boro for scrapping?
Foto thanks to Ed Fanuzzi, whose father worked on ships on Shooters. I’ll never be able to look at Shooters the same again.
Has anyone published a Shooters Island shipbuilding book?
Next week I might pass through the Erie Canal town of Lyons, NY, where Grouper again appears forgotten, bereft of a future. Last spring had brought some hope, but . . .
These fotos come from Jason LaDue, who knew her while he was growing up in the vicinity of the Soo. Foto below by Troy Wilke. Jason writes, “That rare (and large) Kahlenberg smoked 
like no other but always delivered the power. I was onboard her several times when moving saltwater vessels to and from the Algoma Steel facility in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario.”
Next year 2012, Grouper has a one CENTURY anniversary, 100 years of life, the last decade and a half of which she seems in a coma. Here was my original Grouper post, followed by 67 comments!
These fotos by R LaDue show what spirit this vessel had as Iroquois
in the Soo Tug Race, 1989.
Many thanks, Jason. I plan to use more of your fotos soon.
Na Hoku (“stars” in Hawaiian) 1981, ex-Chris Candies. Sunset Park in the background.
Aegean Sea 1962 (ex-Francis E. Roehrig, Jersey Coast, John Barker) Greenpoint in the background. Click here for more Huxley Envelope/East River shots.
Peter F. Gellatly. Delivery exactly two years ago, 17 November, 2009. Leaving Newark Bay and headed into the KVK, eastbound.
James Turecamo 1969.
Miriam Moran 1979 on Citron 2007 bow. James Turecamo westbound.
Kimberly Turecamo 1980 (ex-Rebecca P.) and Serifos 1995 named for an Aegean Sea island.
Duty 2006 headed south for another load of coal.
Margaret Moran 1979 assists Ital Moderna 2008.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’s looking for fotos of Eldia, as she was towed from Cape Cod into the Kills and ultimately Witte’s yard in the mid-1980s. Eldia blew ashore at Orleans in a spring storm 1984 (Click here to see how photogenic she was thought to be on the beach.) and ultimately was towed to Rossville. Someone out there MUST have fotos of her as “dead ship” coming into sixth boro waters.
Please vote as often as they allow for tugster Village Voice web awards. Read the directions upper left and click on the icon. And . . thanks!
For me it starts here . . . in Kennesaw, Georgia. No . . . not the Passaic River . . but my interest in visiting Paterson, NJ, which I did last Saturday. And I got there from Manhattan, by train, in 44 minutes. But I digress: three years ago in Kennesaw–visiting family at Christmas, I was talked into visiting a Civil War museum that featured this locomotive. In the fine print, I read that it was built at Paterson’s Rogers Locomotive and Machine Works, which I’d never heard of.
Behold the totally freshwater wild Passaic, only about 20 miles from the sixth boro! This view is less than a mile’s walk from the Paterson passenger rail stop.
I’d heard people ridicule the Great Falls, but judge for yourself. I took this foto from an arched steel walkway with wooden treads, so icy Saturday morning from a glaze of spray that froze that I skated my way across. Shangri-la in Paterson!!
Here’s a shot from below the Falls. Just to the left of the foto is the power house, where water power gushes through raceways to turn the turbines that powered this birthplace of American industry. Besides
manufacturing 12,000 locomotives, factories within a quarter mile made the seminal revolver called Colt Paterson and a certain engine called J-5 Wright Whirlwind that ran on a “spirited” 33.5-hour flight.
A certain Catholic school teacher named John P. Holland also worked in Paterson, after moving there from Ireland. And his toys made Capt. Nemo’s fantasy a reality.
The Paterson museum houses not one but two early Holland subs, both inside now after some years outdoors (one of them) and at the bottom on the Passaic (the other).
I currently work in Elizabeth, NJ, on the Arthur Kill. Today there appears widespread amnesia about Elizabeth’s connection with subs, but 95 years ago, folks there made quite the ceremony to honor Holland.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. And guess who visits Paterson today? Salazar. Maybe he’ll have time to take a boat ride from there down to the sixth boro?
Imagine Great Falls after Irene’s dump? See it here.
To see other watersheds I’ve visited, type watershed into the search window. Here are a few: St. Lawrence, Delaware, Columbia . . .
This just in: an exemplar of French femininity is occupying Bedloe’s Island, and has done so for . . . 125 years!! And today . . . something just had to be done about it. Rubber bullets? No. Tear gas canisters? Nah. Ghostbusters? Daryl Hannah?
Bring in Aphrodite, former motor yacht of a Wall Street financier. And as a testament to the tension between Liberte and Aphrodite, keep a fireboat near by.
Bring in bright lights to shine in the occupier’s eyes.
And when things begin to smolder, Hornblower Hybrid notwithstanding,
turn on the pumps, all
the pumps, and
intimidate with the largest vessel in that part of the harbor following an erratic course.
Cool it down with tens of thousands of gallons per minute.
Well . . . actually . . . let me join . . . bonne anniversaire, Mademoiselle Liberte, she who never sits down at her job. I’m glad you’ve faithfully occupied that island, once used otherwise, all those years and spawned replicas all over the world.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Notice who is and is not represented in the parade.
Ooops! I forgot, click here for “torchcam” and see things from the enlightener’s point of view.
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