You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Urger’ category.
What’s this? Where? Answer follows. It’s not really sepia per se, just an approximation.
I took this foto a week ago, then stripped out the color. It’s Yemitzis, the former
PRR Philadelphia, launched 1954. Major modifications have happened between the two incarnations.
Here’s another foto I took last week, Resolute. With its ample pudding, it’s a perfect candidate to be sepia-fied.
The top foto was taken by Fred Wehner a few days ago; that’s not Rosie the riveter but Capt. Wendy Marble, working to prep her vessel Urger, for the 2013 season. Here, here, and here are some full color fotos previously featuring Urger, who initially looked like this over a century ago.
Thanks to Paul Strubeck for the foto of PRR Philadelphia.
Of course, every day is water day in the sixth boro of the city of NY, and it’s great that MWA and other sponsors have chosen for five years now to recognize that fact . . . on a big “get out on the water” day . . . because who OWNS the port . . . ultimately WE do, you and I, as citizens of this country. Many organizations manage it, enforce regulations in it, and fund educational activities about it . . . but WE own it, the port, the water . . . and support it with our taxes and our votes.
Enjoy this set of twelve fotos taken over roughly a 12-hour period yesterday. At daybreak, Pegasus and Urger were still rafted up on Pier 25. This foto shows two boats whose combined longevity adds up to over 215 years!!
Resolute was northbound over by the Murchison-designed Hoboken terminal . . . which means a larger vessel needing assistance MAY shortly be headed for sea. Here’s another Murchison-designed mass transit building in what today seems an unlikely location.
North River itself works tirelessly as part of the effort to keep sixth boro waters clean.
Urger poses in front the the Statue. Lady Liberty was a mere 18-year-old when Urger (then C. J. Doornbos) first splashed into the waters of a Lake Michigan bay.
Launch 5 races downriver.
Indy 7 shuttles folk around as Soummam 937, the first Algerian warship ever to visit the sixth boro leaves for sea.
Little Lady II and a sailboat negotiate passage.
Laura K and Margaret Moran escort in container vessel Arsos (check its recent itinerary at the bottom of that linked page) and weave their way to the Red Hook container port through a gauntlet of smaller vessels, including Manhattan.
Catherine C. Miller moves a small equipment barge back to base.
Fire Fighter II hurries north on the Buttermilk Channel to respond to an alarm.
A flotilla (or bobbering or paddling or badelynge) of kayaks crosses the Buttermilk.
Pioneer tacks toward the north tip of Governors Island, leaving Castle William to starboard.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp on Bastille-sur-l’eau Day.
Related: I was overjoyed to read the NYTimes this morning and find this article about a vessel calling at Port Newark!! Bravo. Back a little over a week ago I was miffed about this article . . . about the port in Trondheim, which could just as well have been written about skilled workers anywhere in the sixth boro.
Also, I’m passing along a request from the Urger crew: if anyone sees a foto of Urger crew in any local print publications, please tell me so that I can look for a clipping to pass along to them. Thanks much . . . .
Unrelated: From today’s NYTimes Book Review section, an essay by Douglas Brinkley and Johnny Depp on Woodie Guthrie, who would have turned 100 yesterday.
By the way, from Mitch’s Newtown Pentacle, can anyone identify the tug in this post? I can’t .
Once these were wooden barges, which
were towed around the harbor with a wide range of cargoes. In the foreground … disintegrating … is one a tug that once could have done the towing, now unidentifiable and impotent.
The sixth boro has many such tugs and barges, although given the efficient advance of decrepitude, fewer each season.
Once there was even a sixth boro barge called Periwinkle, no doubt painted in that color, a popular nightspot.
Here’s another barge called Driftwood, whose paint scheme and additional storage transformed a coffee (or whatever else commodity) transporter into an off-off-Broadway-even-off-the-island entertainment palace. Only stories remain and can be told by David Sharps, who
created the Waterfront Museum out of a wooden barge he literally dug and pumped out of the Hudson River mud, saving it from the fate of those barges above. The two fotos above come courtesy of David Sharps. Now the barge, the 1914 Lehigh Valley 79 tours with 1907 tug Pegasus, and other
vessels like the 1901 Urger, featured in many posts on this blog, help us visualize what those ruins in the top fotos once looked like and serve as places of entertainment even today. Here’s one set of fotos of Urger high, dry, but cold.
Anyhow, with five minutes of your time, you can help LV-79 and Pegasus collect a $250,000 grant for ongoing repairs. Just click here–AND each day until May 21 on the icon upper left side of this blog to vote. Partners in Preservation has chosen to award $$ by grant applicants demonstrated ability to use social media. So please vote . . . and ask a handful of your friends to do so as well . . . .
Unless otherwise attributed, all fotos by Will Van Dorp.
(Silent version)
The Roundup begins with a parade between the Port of Albany and the wall below Lock 2 at Waterford. Waterford is the easternmost point on the Erie Canal. From wherever they find themselves, crews and vessels begin to gather around mid-day Friday. Benjamin Elliott headed south from Waterford,
Cornell saved fuel, waited at the wall, and met the parade just below the Federal Lock,
Crow joined in at its place of work,
Governor Cleveland, Grand Erie, and W. O. Decker traveled down from the Waterford wall,
some traveled in pairs like Chancellor and Decker,
Grand Erie and Decker,
and Gowanus Bay arrived from the south.
Some folks and boats worked en route in one way or
another.
Lots of folks and some vessels worked during the Roundup. The fireworks barge would not have been in place without the efforts of Mame Faye.
(Sound version)
Wind roar, spray, hiss, deep pitched throb, horns tuning up, whistles, pipes, percussion, more horns, and whoopnhollering of the crowd on Saturday night.
Fotos and video by Will Van Dorp.
More from the Roundup tomorrow.
Related: World Canals Conference starts next Sunday in Rochester, NY.
Just back from the Roundup, but before I can relax, I want to download my fotos and put a few up. Below is a lineup as seen from the 2nd Avenue Bridge to Peebles Island.
Another lineup, as seen from the fotog boat–Tug 44–loitering just north of the 112th Street bridge. Many thanks to Fred and Kathy.
Left to right inside the Federal Lock, the Erie Canal’s largest and newest tugboat, Grand Erie (ex-USACE dredge tender Chartiers, 1951!!) and Urger, (1901!) a frequent focus of this blog. Type Urger into the search window.
Throngs crowded the waterfront in Waterford this weekend all day.
Just after dawn on Saturday fog rises from the calm waters.
W. O. Decker won the “people’s choice” vote.
Empire wins my prize for the most altered color from last year.
My thanks to the sponsors. I appreciate your sponsorship.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. More Roundup fotos and videos this coming week.
The Yahoo tugboat groups has recently hosted an interesting discussion on “oldest” tugs in the United States, North America, or US-built. Here’s a batch I’ve seen in the past year.
Baltimore . . . 1906, afloat in Baltimore.
Rose . . . 1906, afloat in Camden, NJ.
Jupiter . . . 1901, afloat in Philadelphia.
Pegasus . . . 1907, afloat in Jersey City.
Urger . . . 1901, working near Albany. I took this foto in Lyons in February.
New York Central No. 13 . . . 1887, ashore on Staten Island.
I’d love to see recent fotos of the following: Fanny J, 1874, probably in Haiti; Tramp, 1874; Rustler, 1886; Jill Marie, 1889; and Spanky Paine, 1892. Many boats much younger than all those mentioned here have been scrapped or left to linger in graveyards.
All fotos in this post by Will Van Dorp, taken in 2010. Last time I had a batch adding up to 550 years.
Unrelated but a “must-see” is the current exhibit at Atlantic Gallery called “Water” which features work by 75 artists including Pamela Talese and the peripatetic bowsprite.
Labor Day in the sixth boro . . . and now at Lock 28A, Urger‘s winter port. Near Lyons. Near my “grow-up” years, where I enjoyed my 40th high school reunion last night.
Urger from the other side of the lock. Notice the plastic hoods over vent and mast and
weather cap added atop and bronze plaque removed from the stack.
Nose to nose with Urger is HD-1, the cutter head dredge that sank last July in Palmyra and was raised by Titan.
Closer and
closer-up shot of that head.
Lyons . . . farm country. I just had to.
Here are some fotos I took last spring in the Lyons Canal Corp. yard.
Last foto by Elzabeth Wood; all previous by Will Van Dorp.
Urger proves that age poses no impediment to winning beauty contests. Of course, Urger also demonstrates that money–in this case, government money–helps one compete successfully in such contests. I’m not talking bribes . . . but facelifts, but this former fish tug still turns heads wherever she goes.
Urger grabs my attention for several reasons, not the least of which is my connection with the area of Michigan where she was built; she was operated by Dutch immigrant fisherman near Holland, Michigan, near where I spent four formative years of my life . . . in college.
If I could hear the men in this foto speak, no doubt their accents and laughter would be ones I know well, like those of the barge sailors gracing the Hudson in September 2009.
Grand Haven . . . it’s a lake town I associate with camping in the dunes and wooing the major infatuation of my late teenage years; more recently, a professor/advisor of significant import to me makes her home there. Urger operated out of there in her fishing life.
After 108 years, Urger looks like she still loves the chop of Lake Michigan wherever she gets it, and on her homewaters . . . the Erie Canal . . . she does not get much.
At the Waterford Roundup, deckhand Rick shows off the trophy Urger won as first place Class C back on Labor Day.
This is the top of the 320 hp Atlas Imperial engine that powered the long, narrow hull to that win, almost 20 tons of engine. Notice the engineer’s station upper right side of foto. Check here for basic info on Atlas Imperials; click here for a map of known remaining AI engines.
Engineer Chris is palpably proud to have charge of Urger‘s Atlas Imperial, telling a story of how the secret ingredient is the same caffeine he uses as propellant. Did he tell me that or not? What a humbling name, Atlas Imperial!
Here’s the same engine as seen from the front starboard side, location of the engineer’s station.
The boy standing on the bulkhead on extreme right side of this foto could be 80 years old by now; long may Urger run!
Here’s some Lake Champlain video . . . not mine.
Otherwise, all fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Addendum: Foto from tug44. It came with scant information:
More coverage of the 2009 Tug Roundup in Waterford later, but for now some quick fotos. Maybe the focus on flatbottoms aka platbodems in the sixth boro has influenced my perception, but bottoms were as much a thread this year as noses, last year. Of course, tugs dominated: near to far in this foto: Shenandoah, Empire, Benjamin Elliott, Margot, and Cornell . . . all of which you’ve seen here before. More on them soon.
Grand Erie, an Erie Canal tug–yes, it is–began life as Chartiers, an Ohio River USACE dredge tender in 1951. Get it . . . dredging . . . bottom?
Without the usual W. O. Decker selling rides, folks wanting to see the waterside could catch a half hour on this canalboat. Anyone got an update on Decker? Will it reappear next season?
And then there is Lois McClure, a replica of an 1862 canal schooner barge, with obvious mixed European heritage. Tug C. L. Churchill appears off the port stern quarter.
As tender atop McClure‘s deckhouse is this upturned birchbark canoe.
Complementing all my thoughts about undersides and bottoms was this T-shirt, modeled here by the ubiquitous Karl, who traded a Harvey shirt for a this one from an itinerant dredger crewman.
Until we see fotos soon, you might not believe that Stuart’s mini-tug SeaHorse has a flat bottom. More pics soon.
And since the bow pudding must transform this machine into a tugboat, I can add this to the pattern . . . a very flatbottomed jet-driven tug allegedly named Urger 2. And speaking of Urger . . . .
is it possible that a near clone–its name differing in only one letter–has arrived at the Roundup? More soon.
All fotos but the last one by Will Van Dorp. And that Burger foto . . . will for now go unattributed.
Check out the Waterford Historical Society site here.
Happy Labor Day! An often forgotten fact about this holiday is that it stems from labor disputes. President Grover Cleveland (former governor of New York), 115 years ago, put together a proposal for this celebration to make reconciliation with Labor after the Pullman Strike, in which 13 strikers were killed. The suggested formula for celebrating Labor Day included “street parade to exhibit to the public ‘the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations,’ followed by a festival for the workers and their families.”
What better time then than now to devote some space to some Jones Act issues that affect working mariners in the Gulf of Mexico. Since I’m out of my depth in specifics, I’m ceding this link to a maritime lawyer who has launched a petition drive to save American seafarers’ jobs. Check his homepage here. Read the link here and sign the petition if you so feel moved. It seems relevant to me, since the marine job market is a national one. Fotos of some of these vessels can be found here.
Videos follow at the end of this post, but the tugboat race (Technically called ”17th annual Great North River Tugboat Race & Competition”) quite well fits the description of “festival for the workers and their families.”
What a day to introduce families to the working water, to teach curiosity, to
feel solidarity, to join
in the rewards, to take time off with
fellow students as well as sister and brother vikings, and
just scud across the sparkling waters.
Ellen McAllister made it down the nautical mile in six minutes and seventeen seconds; watch the abridged version below. Countdown starts at about T minus twelve seconds.
After a glide past by the most beautiful 108-year-old ever in the sixth boro . . . Urger–with Jack, Rick, and crew–no doubt serving the function of “urging” the tugs to shove away, push matches ensue featuring Ellen McAllister, Nathan E. Stewart, Meagan Ann, and Pegasus. Enjoy.
See old salt blog’s fabulous shoreside coverage of this event here. Bravo Rick. I love the horns, hoots, and whistles! One group Rick’s video captures is a set of PCV’s, “population control volunteers,” commingling their wake with those in the middle of this race, seemingly determined to do themselves in. See them at the following times: 1:14, 1:24, and 2:05. What’s not funny is that had there –please no please no–been an incident, somehow others might have caught the heat.
Fotos and videos by Will Van Dorp.
Again, if you haven’t voted yet, consider casting one for Cornell for the “People’s Choice” award at next week’s Waterford Tug roundup here.
Recent Comments