Channels 2

Over six years ago, here was the last time I used this title.  At 09:23 this morning, E. R. Denver was at Howland Hook as an outbound tanker eased by.   E. R. seems to have been created by erasure from MaERsk.

. . . nine seconds later, it’s

Mount Everest.

This is serious, precision navigating,

with even less tolerance of errors because of the channel work, and

surrounding traffic, like Kristy Ann Reinauer and Paul Andrew and dredge units.

This short stretch of Arthur Kill, where serious dredging is enlarging the channel, were featured here and here (a blast!!) back last October.   I’m not given to playing video games or using simulators, but if such a thing were available, I can imagine spending time playing “games” imitating professionals piloting different types of vessels through ports of the world in every sort of conditions.  Hats off to the professionals.

All fotos today by Will Van Dorp.

x

People on the Boro 14

It’s been over a year since I’ve used this title . . .  I worry sometimes that someone I catch in the act of working might feel intruded upon. Such is the farthest thing from my intention.  I’m certainly not the first or last to state there’s dignity in labor, whether it’s performed indoors or out.

Here Doubleskin 37 approaches NYK Rumina (named for the goddess of breast-feeding mothers!!!) as

day breaks to refill

the bunker tanks;  Coral Coast (1970, McDermott, and attractive) in pushgear.

Green Bay shuttles between dredge and

shore, throaty as she pushes water.

Paul Andrew seems headed for a shore base as well,

as Sarah Ann heads for Newark Bay

with a deck barge.

Scott Turecamo pushes New Hampshire into the interior of Arthur Kill land.

And Maria J moves a crane barge in

the same direction.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’s mindful that for every member of the crew outside, there are possibly four inside.

Arthur Kill Orange 2

For a bit more context than yesterday’s post . . . I visited the AK twice yesterday . . . before my “shift”  started and at a break eight hours later.  Doubleclick enlarges fotos.

At 0651, I caught my first glimpse of Bayonne’s new landmark.

I know about the “green flash” at dawn and dusk;  I don’t know if there’s a counterpart term for this yellow spear pointing to the sun’s track.

The foto below of Howland Hook was taken less than a minute after the one above;  looking southwest v. east makes an amazing difference.   And this difference is much more noticeable on fotos than to naked eye.  I like the pink clouds in the orange morning.

Watching this diving bird (grebe) was part of my prep for a long work day.

At 1442, I took a break, and headed down the street to revisit the AK.  Marie J Turecamo (1968, ex-Traveller) was southbound on the Kill as Matthew Scott headed for the dredge.

And another type of orange flowed onto the scene . . . 830′ x 144′.

Eagle Beaumont, escorted by Bruce A. McAllister (1974, ex-Ellen F. McAllister) and McAllister Responder.

Thirty-six feet of her below the surface of the AK,

regally she passed, a huge cistern

to be avoided by all traffic

all around.

By this point, I was about halfway through my break.  More tomorrow.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Arthur Kill Orange

Call this a 4000+ word post.  Arthur Kill is the complement of the much referred-to KVK, and it’s gorgeous, here at sunrise, just before 7 am.

I hope you agree what they say about the picture-word number correspondence.  If so, this post has about 4,058 words.

Coot?

Here’s a dismal afternoon, 14:45 brightened by Eagle Beaumont.

More fotos of Arthur Kill orange tomorrow.

Lunch at Arthur Kill

For a walking  lunch, the  crescent along the Elizabethport side of  Arthur Kill ‘s northeast end tip satifies.  It’s no picnic, but many worse places come to mind. 

Yesterday I arrived, sandwich in hand, at 1:07, to catch Evening Tide headed for Newark Bay following

Evening Mist.  1:09

By 1:32 I had reached the end of the park and glanced at Mariner’s, where Maryland lay.Pegasus rounded the bend at the east end of Shooter’s and passed me at 1:36

1:40    Turecamo Girls and

(1:41)  Gramma Lee T were returning from a ship assist I must have missed.

1:43  Meanwhile, Patapsco and McAllister Responder headed southbound into the Kill.  1:44

McCrews, which I’ve never seen before, headed into Newark Bay.  1:44

All fotos yesterday by Will Van Dorp.  Now I mentioned the “crescent” earlier because this “park” where I walked was once a shipyard.  Crescent Shipyard made submarines;  fotos here.  It went by other names before and after, but of them all, now there is no trace.  Seems a shame.

Dawn 2

From Howland Hook to the parking lot at my job takes about 10 minutes.  On a clear morning, a quick stop across from the port gives me ballast I need for whatever I might face at work.  What I wrote about dawn here a year and a half ago still holds.    The ship here is NYK Rigel, which I wrote about here last year.  It departed the sixth boro last night after the “tornado.” It spent about a day in Howland Hook after having left Qingdao, Ningbo, and Shanghai … in mid -August.  Today, those containers are starting to fan out across the eastern US via truck and rail.

The gantry operator has a fantastic vantage point but a schedule that prevents him from stopping to enjoy it.

I linger across the Kill and watch the light play first here, then there, on

countless surfaces.  Differing areas light up almost like the

sounds made by fingers crawling around the keyboard of a piano.

Even later in the day, reduced light is not a deprivation; darkened or even bleached out

light invokes magic.

Here’s a light post from last spring.

All fotos today by Will Van Dorp.

Really Random Tugs 2

The “really random” posts are just that.  I believe what follows, is.

Thanks to Jeff Schurr and Dave Boone, behold Bloxom in her better days, in this case during her life as a Pennsylvania RailRoad tug.  Bloxom has been on this blog here and here and other places.  Anyone else know Bloxom PRR fotos?

Also thanks to Jeff and Dave, Ned Moran below in work mode compared with a foto of the vessel (scroll down to the last one)  I took a few months back.   I have to say there’s so little left of the vessel now that it’s hard to corroborate their being the same vessel.

Mighty Joe (ex-Maria) in the Hughes Marine portion of Erie Basin yesterday.

This is my first ever sighting of Marquette’s  Layla Renee, defying a current trend as a Gulf boat working up here.

When I last posted a foto of  a Marquette boat, I also included one of Colleen McAllister.  Yesterday she looked powerful pulling a deepladen dredge scow.

Last three fotos here taken by Will Van Dorp, last week.  The next two come from Cheryl, an important friend from way back.  Both were taken in Holland, Michigan.  First, it’s James Harris, one of 10 Army STs built in the first half of 1943 in Sturgeon Bay, WI; and

Haskal, about which I can find no info.  The design of  Haskal looks older than that of  James Harris.  Anyone help out?

Again, thanks to Cheryl, Jeff, and Dave for contributing fotos.

Unrelated:  I’ve added a new link to my “resources”   a list of all (maybe) US-flag operators of tug and tow boats.

Graveyard 2

Thank you all for reading and commenting.  Let me pass along some of what I’ve learned.  Also, check out frogma’s latest.

Below, from Jeff S:  ”The passenger vessel with the lifeboat on deck is the famous New Bedford built at Bethlehem-Quincy in 1928. See hull # 1417.  She was loaned to Britain in WW 2 and served as a hospital ship at Normandy landings.”

Guess the total number of ships/boats of all kinds involved in Operation Neptune, the Channel-crossing component of Operation Overlord.

According to the link above, Op Neptune involved more than 6000 vessels.   It’s interesting to imagine the fate of all those 6000.  Here’s a Normandy crossing tug I wrote about in 2007.  I wonder if any Brooklyn-built boats have remained in France?     Jeff goes on to say, “Earlier in the war New Bedford participated in ”decoy” convoy RB-1.   I think she has been at Wittes since about 1967. ”

Here’s another fabulous story:  YOG-64 was delivered to the US Navy in May 1945, arrived in the Pacific just after the end of the “9th inning,”  served in various capacities at Bikini Atoll during Operation Sandstone, judged decontaminated and decommissioned, spent two decades hauling fuel as M/T Francis Reinauer, and has rested here since the mid-1980′s.  Anyone know of a foto of Francis Reinauer?

An as-yet unidentified tug whose upper portion of the house has now slumped back into eternal oblivion.

A very strange comment I got by email asked why I had sunk the red tugboat in yesterday’s post.  I’m innocent.  Nor did I have anything to do with with sinking.

A mile or so south of Witte’s yard is another graveyard aka tidal reef.  Most prominent there is this ferry:  Astoria, sister of Ferry Maj. General Wm. H. Hart, formerly docked at South Street Seaport.  Here’s a foto of Astoria I took last summer.

Here frogma documents entropy.

Here’s a favorite quote from a Rebecca Solnit essay:  ”To erase decay …and ruin is to erase the understanding of the unfolding relation between all things.  To imagine [creation and destruction] together is to see their kinship in the common ground of change, abrupt and gradual, beautiful and disastrous, to see the generative richness of ruins and the ruinous nature of all change. …  Ruins stand as reminders.  Memory is always incomplete, always imperfect, always falling into ruin;  but the ruins themselves, like other traces, are treasures; our links to what came before.  … A city without ruins or traces of age is like a mind without memories.”

Serendipitous during our paddle “north” was a glimpse of W. O. Decker headed “south.”  We debated calling them but decided that we would cross paths if that was intended.  By the way, if the identification of Ned Moran in Graveyard 1 is correct, then Decker and Ned Moran date from the same year!   Maintenance IS everything.

On our return, we saw Decker waiting (haulout?) at the yard in Tottenville.  Decker is older than Bloxom and Hila and fortunate to have staved off ruin, traces of aging, and entropy as well as it has.  May she bob and pitch for many more years.

I wish I’d taken the profile of this vessel . . . . From this frontal shot, it looks a lot like Day Peckinpaugh.  Jeff identified it as “canal tanker Michigan.  Built by McDougal Duluth S B in 1921 as Interwaterways Line Incorporated 105, shortened to ILI-105 in 1935 before becoming Michigan. She carried caustic soda, vegetable oil , liquid sugar and such on the Erie and Welland canals. Twin screw.”  For the record, Day-Peckinpaugh was ILI-101–the prototype–built in the same year.  Thanks much, Jeff.  See an image of ILI-105 in her prime here.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Some links to check:  ForgottenNY and Undercity and somehow I missed –if traces of it are still there–Fireboat Abram Hewitt thanks to Opacity.

Rossville itself has an interesting history spanning Raritan Indians, Ross Castle, Blazing Star tavern, and the Underground Railroad.

Graveyard 1

I read about this place almost 20 years ago in this NYTimes piece and clipped it, saved it, still have it somewhere.   The Witte family, Norman Brouwer, and Arthur Kill–all mentioned in the article–were just names then. Yesterday, thanks to fellow-waterblogger frogma (See her “graveyard posts here and here) and the generosity of  Sebago Canoe Club kayak Captain Minh to lend me a kayak, I got there.  Remember, double-click enlarges fotos.

To learn the specifics on 1944-launched Bloxon below, click here.  Anyone know of fotos of Bloxon and Hila in their heyday?

More of Bloxom‘s context.

The wooden hull steel deckhouse World War 2-era tug ATR-89 Hila.  An anonymous commenter last summer wrote:  ”WW2 built ATR….this one ATR-89. Became HILA out of Jacksonville in 1949 and passed into Liberian registry by 1954.broke down in late 50′s on a voyage from Miami and eventually ended up at Wittes.”  Anyone know of fotos of Bloxon and Hila in their heyday?

1926-built ferry Seawell’s Point (right) and unidentified vessel (See Graveyard 2 for identification)  left seen frontal and from

from the opposite side.  The lifeboat still waits a declared emergency.

Wooden wheelhouse offering as template for craftsmanship of another time.  Notice Bonnie beyond the H-bitt on lower right side of foto.

A different view.  Is this what remains of the Meseck twins?  Great fotos of Carrie T. Meseck (later Susan A. Moran) at steamshipphotos.com

According to a December 2006 comment by “the dude” on the fabulous Opacity site, the tug below is “Ned Moran sailed for Moran Tugs 1954-1963, the tug with a brt of 206 tons had 1040 ipk, she was 20.48 x 8.28 x 4.27 mtr and build during 1930 at A.C.Brown & Sons in Tottenville, she sailed first under the name Federick (sic) E Meseck in New York and was purchased by Moran during 1954 where she served until 1963 when she was sold to Witte’s Staten Island yard.”  To be noted, Moran purchased Meseck Towing Company in 1954.  I’d love to see fotos of Ned at her zenith.

More trip fotos soon.  Here’s a foto of Courier aka Bayou Plaquemine from two years ago.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.

Tip of the hat to Miru Kim, O’Boyle, and Opacity.

And a propos of nothing, see surfing the dunes of peru here.