Sixth Boro Fifth Dimension 2

This “fleetless” 2013 fleet week in the sixth boro is an ideal time to look back at previous fleet visits, using these vintage fotos taken almost a third of a century ago by Seth Tane.  Here’s my “fleeted” fleet week fotos from 2012.

Foto #1.  USS Mount Whitney arrives in town with airship escort.  Which lightship might that be off LCC-20′s port bow?   My thanks to Jed for identification of LCC-20.

Foto #2.  Victory ship USNS Twin Falls as campus for Food and Maritime Trade high School rafted up along the North River with Liberty ship SS John W. Brown, a floating nautical high school.   Which pier# or street were these docked at?  Can anyone share fotos taken inside these unique school vessels?

Foto #3.  Comparing with this foto of Wire WYTL 65612 taken less than a year ago, it appears changes have been made over the past 30 years to her house.   Also, notice the “previous” version of the  Staten Island ferry terminal off her starboard.

Foto #4.  Seatrain Lines vessel Transindiana after some altercation.  Transindiana was initially built as a WWII USN transport vessel.  Enjoy these other Seatrain fotos.

Foto #5.  Intrepid initially arrives in the North River to begin service as a museum ship.  The foto is taken from a vessel on Pier 9 in Jersey City.

All fotos thanks to Seth Tane.  And, I again invite your comments and reminiscences.  If you missed it, here was the first installment of this series.

Road Fotos 32

Catching up on old business . . . the vintage sixth boro NYC fotos in yesterday’s post come compliments of Seth Tane, currently living in Portland, Oregon but a working resident on New York waters 30 years ago.  Tugster will feature more of those fotos in upcoming posts to illustrate the dramatic change that three decades have brought both on the water and along its margins.

I hope that anyone having similar images of waters and waterfronts will volunteer them into the public domain, either on tugster or on any other site.

Click here for Seth’s site–also linked below to the left–and here for a Portland media review of a show his work participated in recently.

Below is reserve Portland fireboat Campbell, launched 1927.

The next few fotos show vessels on the only recent rainless day at Swan Island on the Willamette.  In the drydock is USNS John Ericsson T-AO-194, named for the one-time NYC engineer and inventor.

Nearby were DoD vessels Pacific Collector  (in its third life after launch in 1970) and Pacific Tracker (in its third life after launch in 1965).

I’d like to know more about this drydock, but it’s clearly built on three re-purposed identical hulls.  I couldn’t identify the tug in the drydock.

Backing up the channel here is CS Tyco Dependable, a cable ship.

Later, Dependable was ensconced beside Global Sentinel, another cable ship.   Click here for Tyco’s fleet.

And here’s a mystery vessel looking for identification . . . at least 130′ long–I think–and just downstream from the St. John’s Bridge.  I saw no name or number anywhere.  Might it be an LT like Bloxom–cover vessel on documentary Graves of Arthur Kill–launched out of West Virginia in 1943 and 44?

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’s physically returned from the wet coast.

T-ATF 172 USNS Apache 2

How about a quick walk-through of Apache?  Here’s part 1, if you missed it. And here and here are links to the shipyard where she was built.  The masts (main to fore) are just under 90′ and just over 60′.

Apache and sister vessels’ mission is towing and submarine support.  This is no design for towing alongside or nose-in-notch.

Here’s a slightly different view of the “fish” I posted last week.  Tally marks show instances of participation in submarine salvage and rescue exercises.

Also, an update/answer to a question in that post:  the vessel in the second foto is former USCGC Salvia, now a training hulk.  The rusty boxes foreward and abaft the stack  are fire boxes, making Salvia a ”fire boat,” NOT as in one that fights fires, but rather, one where fire fighting training can happen.

Here’s a different view from yesterday’s of the bridge.  The unit foreground and right is the ECDIS, which complements the traditional paper chart/dividers approach to navigation.  Imagine on the bridge and elsewhere in the vessel equipment that didn’t exist back in July 1981, when she was delivered.

The wooden wheel surprised me, but wat surprised me even more was

an indication of how responsive it could be.  As I understand it, those are degrees of heading.  Altering course two degrees to starboard takes very little turn of the wheel.

Here’s a view of the foredeck from the “walk-around,” which I assume has another name.

The “cardiac gym” is located between

the stacks.  This is the portside stack.

The afterdeck is long and open, as on an offshore supply vessel, making Apache versatile.  It can tow, but it can also replenish at sea from a helicopter hovering over the white box and

carry containers bolted down in this adjustable grid.  Each stud here (most 24″ apart) can be replaced by an eye.

Apache has a 10-ton capacity crane and

two winches, one for wire and another for synthetic line. .

Power is supplied by twin GM EMD 20-645F7B engines providing a total of 7200 hp to the Kort-nozzled 9′ diameter  controllable pitch props.

Food–shown here in the deck mess–on the vessel is supplied by the Steward department:  steward cook, cook/baker, and steward utilityman.

All fotos here by will Van Dorp.

For more fotos of Apache, click here for fotos by Rod Smith from 2010.

As I understand it, Apache will soon be leaving for the Panama Canal with a sub in tow;  Apache hands the sub off to a sibling T-ATF on the Pacific side of the Canal.  I’d love to see fotos of her traversing the Miraflores locks. . .  I’d love to go back, but . . .

Postscript to yesterday’s post, which started with a foto of ex-T-ATF 166 Powhatan (now Turkish Coast Guard Navy  Inebolu A-590):  you know that a Turkish F-4 was shot down over the Mediterranean late in June.  Guess who retrieved the jet and victims from the seabed?  Robert Ballard’s EV Nautilus and . . .   TCG Inebolu.  

Bosphorus Naval News looks to be an interesting blog, which I’ve now added to my blogroll.   A trip to Istanbul may be in my future??

Again, many thanks to MSC Public Affairs Officer Susan Melow for setting up a visit and to Apache Second Officer Michael R. Rankin for guiding the tour.

I’d still love to see some fotos from Apache’s visits to Kingston, NY, in the late 80′s and in 2000, per Harold’s comment yesterday.

T-ATF 172 USNS Apache 1

Click on the image below and you’ll see how I posted it just over five years ago.  So what do the big blue tug Powhatan below, Ellen McAllister, USCG Katherine Walker, ATB Brandywine, ATB Dublin Sea. and the Staten Island Ferry Spirit of America (as well as ferries Molinari and Marchi) all have in common?

For starters, the Menominee River in Wisconsin.   And from that, given corporate acquisitions, an “in-law” relationship exists with Fincantieri vessels including Costa Concordia as well as the caissons that’ll try to re-float her.

But closer to home, the list above was built at the same Wisconsin shipyard as seven fleet ocean tugs, four of which are active in Military Sealift Command today.  Click here for the 2012 MSC vessels poster, one fifth of which is reproduced below.  MSC operates over 100 vessels today using 5500 civilian mariners.  Civil servant mariners!!

The DonJon Marine Powhatan above has since 2008 become Inebolu A-590 of the Turkish Navy.

The Powhatan-class T-ATFs hare huge, by New York tugboat stands:   226′ loa x 42′ x 15.’

And they do long, large tows.  Here about a year ago, Apache begins to tow a decommissioned USS Nassau to join the reserve fleet  in Texas.  Click here for more context on the foto, taken from USNS Grapple, another MSC vessel that may appear on this blog soon.

Thanks to Birk Thomas, I have a few more fotos of Apache in New London.  Note the towline . . . attached to a sub in this 2010 foto, and  . . .

light in 2011.   Here’s a question I do NOT know the answer to:  Apache visited NYC before 2001, but I don’t know when.  Does anyone recall this?  Have a foto of this?

In the next post, we look inside Apache.  Next question . . . does this marlinespike seamanship have a name?  Would this have been original to this 1981 vessel?  By the way, Apache’s 31st b’day (technically d’day . . . D for delivery)   is late July.

Only the first and last fotos are by Will Van Dorp. The second and third from last are thanks to Birk Thomas.  All the others come from Military Sealift Command.   Many thanks to Susan Melow, MSC Public Affairs Officer,  for setting up a visit and to Apache Second Officer Michael R. Rankin for guiding the tour.

Click here to see Apache towing USS Forrestal.  Here she is in St. Petersburg.  Finally, here she deals with Atlantic Ocean pirates.

Finally, once again, does anyone remember when Apache visited NYC?  Is there an archive online for vessels visiting during Fleet Weeks going back to 1982?