High and Dry 8

Here was 7.

Below . . . that’s Weddell Sea, last here (second foto from last) in green.  Seeing a vessel like this is not unlike “doctor’s office” nekkid . . . so much more is revealed, and I don’t mean just physical.

To see many more fotos of her afloat, click here.

Amy Moran–telescoped-up-house– was here literally half a year ago.

And four years older and upstate New York-built . . . here’s James Turecamo.

Finally . . . about to be high and dry, here was Barbara McAllister just driving into Dry Dock #1 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard last week.  Click here for a short lecture on Dry dock #1 by a Yale architecture professor.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who hopes to get some great high and dry later this week.

War Wood

Question:  PT 109, where is it today and what was its life span?  Answer below.

At my last count, Kingston, NY was home to four World War II PT boats.  In milder weather than today, PT 728 travels the river with passengers;  the occasion for  this foto, taken in November 2009, was the arrival in the sixth boro of USS NewYork.  PT 728 was built in Annapolis, but others were built in New Orleans and in the sixth boro’s own Bayonne, NJ.

A few days ago I stumbled onto video 1 of 3 of ELCO manufacturing in Bayonne.  Enjoy it here. More manufacturing here.   This clip shows a group of PT boats heading up the Hudson and traversing locks in the Erie and Welland Canals;  great short brief glimpses of locking and of at least one 1945 tug, passenger vessel, and commercial shipping in the Welland Canal.    Finally, here’s a brief report on a New Orleans-built PT boat restoration project.

Thanks to Ken’s comment, I went in search of info on the most famous of PT boats, the 109, associated with the president who was sworn in exactly half century ago yesterday.  PT 109 was an ELCO, launched into Newark Bay on June 20, 1942 and fitted out at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Anyone have any fotos?

Answer:  1200′ below the surface in the Solomon Islands.  Its service life was barely one year, sinking on August 2, 1943.

Foto above by Will Van Dorp, who needs to get more PT boat fotos.

Other Watersheds 6

Allen Baker  has worked on four of the five Great Lakes in recent weeks and shares the next four fotos.  Massachusetts has that low, upswept “laker look” that reminds me of Grouper, which I’ve not received updates on.  Any guesses on location of the shot and launch date of Massachusetts?

For launch date, you were right if you said . . . 1928!  She’s 79′ x 20′ x 12′ and operates with Great Lakes Towing.  And then there’s Manistee, delivered in May 1943 to Reiss Steamship Company.  Since then, her original triple expansion

steam power plant  was replaced by a slightly-more powerful 2950 hp diesel engine and equipped with a 250′ self-unloader.  By the way, Reiss once owned Grouper, also.

Like most lakers, Manistee is long and narrow (621′ x 60′ x 35′), with a bluff bow, maximizing cargo space, and a wheel house forward with a stern “island” over the power plant.   The oldest laker operating on the “big lakes” is St. Marys Challenger, still hauling bulker cargo since its launch in February 1906!!  It still uses a Skinner Uniflow 3500 hp steam engine.

I took the next two fotos in Muskegon, MI, in June 2008, where Paul H. Townsend has been idled since 2005.  A fascinating detail about Townsend is its conversion:  built in Wilmington, CA in 1945, it was lengthened from 339′ x 50′  to 447′ x 50′ in 1952 . . . in Hoboken, NJ.   The wheelhouse was moved forward in a separate modification in 1958 on Lake Erie.  If you click on the link above, you’ll find before/after fotos.

When last sailing, she hauled gypsum or cement, now more frequently carried on barges pushed by the likes of  Samuel de Champlain.  Notice the same fleet colors.  In this 2008 post, notice the second vessel (in a Lake Ontario port)  down in the same colors as Townsend.

A “laker” moved into the sixth boro in the summer of 2005.  Ocean and Coastal Consultants and Bayshore Recycling use Valgocen (ex-Algocen) in the dredged materials decontamination process (See p. 2 in this newsletter.).  Valgocen currently lives along the Raritan River,

startling me every time I notice it.  A laker . . . in an estuary.  But there it is was, repurposed.  The foto below–as the one above– shows it in the St. Lawrence on its way to the sixth boro towed by tugs from Atlantic Towing Limited.  See important update at the end of this post.

Thanks to Allen Baker for the first four fotos, and to Kent Malo for the last two.

And if you hadn’t felt totally confident, Allen’s fotos were taken in the Calumet River, Chicago, an ocean port.

Unrelated . ..  I’ve been reading DieselDuck’s archives, not homing in on any particular post, just enjoying the sweep of their focus.  Check them out here.

UPDATE:  Jeff’s comment got me looking and –sure enough–Valgocen is no more, having reborn as  J W Shelley, back at work on the Great Lakes, as of this writing between Montreal and Lake Erie. Thanks, Jeff.