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On July 3, 1776, John Adams wrote this to his wife Abigail: ”The day will be most memorable in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival…It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade…bonfires and illuminations (fireworks) from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.”
I wonder if Abigail believed him.
Last night around 1900 hr, Brendan Turecamo (above) and Catherine Turecamo pushed their Macy’s loads upriver. I think two other Macy’s barges were pushed by Kimberly Turecamo and Jennifer Turecamo.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think that the Macy’s 34th Street megastore had embarked on short sea shipping of goods. Do you know that as a teenager, R. H. Macy worked on a Nantucket whaling ship, Emily Morgan, during which time he got a tattoo, which is the star that still today in the company logo.
A motley crew of spectators ventured into the river for the show,
a very motley crew indeed.
Other tugs took some time off as well . . . Maurania III here, and Quantico Creek and the other Pegasus over on the other side of the river. Maybe others too.
The two Harley tugs–HMS Liberty and St Andrews–hung out with 1907-built Pegasus at the sanitation pier.
It appears here that a contingent of the NYC Air Force is escorting in Hornblower Infinity. As it said, it APPEARS that way. Anyone I know working there?
343 summons the safety spirits.
Lots of spectators wait on a contingent of NYC’s passenger/dinnerboat fleet.
Darkness falls. Tension builds as thunderstorms do their own illumination to the north and the south.
Around 2130 h . . . opening salvo.
These fotos do not capture that percussive blasts and echoes off the sanitation pier . . . so use your imagination.
Too bad John and Abigail and all the other signers weren’t here.
Well, maybe they were.
I did hear some creaking and squeaking on the pier.
Happy
Independence
all the time.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
AND Pegasus and you have something else to celebrate. Remember the Partners in Preservation voting lots of you all did back in May? Pegasus and Lehigh Valley 79 ended in 14th place, and I thought that meant they got no money. Au contraire, they DID get a hefty sum . .. $140,000 to split! . . .to be used for preservation, and on a 1907-built vessel, there’s a lot of preservation to be done. So thanks much for voting. If you want to see Pegasus close-up, come down to Pier 25 west side of Manhattan . . .
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.
This isn’t the first tugster post with a single foto . . . and I’m not going to research among the 1762 previous posts how many more there’ve been.
Here and here are two previous figureheads posts, and come later this month, I expect another such post. Here’s a first image that would NEVER pass muster as a figurehead concept.
And here’s a question . . . can you identify the vessel that follows wherever this sea bull leads?
That’s it. Answer identifying the figurehead may be tomorrow.
Don’t forget to make your daily “partners in preservation” vote. Click on the image of the “rapid-aging-software-altered foto of tugster below, register, scroll thru to find “Tug Pegasus and Waterfront Museum Barge,” and vote once a day through May 21. Ask your friends to vote too.
And this software says this is what I’ll look like in 10 years!!!! yikes.
Le vie navigabili . . . is what you could call “sesto borgo” or “the sixth boro.” And it’s navigated by creatures small as these canadagoslings,
greater,
numerous . . . unwanted or
scruffy but perennially utilitarian.
Say hello to 3/4 of the painting crew on Pegasus last Saturday. Vote daily for Pegasus here–so that she might benefit from a huge grant of $250,000–and
starting from THIS weekend, come and visit Pegasus on board at Pier 25 in the boro called Manhattan. The schedule now calls for Pegasus to leave this “canale” within the sixth boro tomorrow . . . Thursday, pick up Lehigh Valley 79, and move back over to Pier 25. In reference to the canales di venezia, Pegasus would look good exploring there . . . By the way, here’s a log of Pegasus’ last visit to the drydock for work.
Here you’re looking east at Manhattan and its tallest building from the Morris Canal in New Jersey. Il canale di morris è una delle vie navigabili del sesto boro.
See you some hours this weekend on Pegasus at Pier 25. And please . . . vote daily, no mater which continent you are on.
Parting shot . . a foto of Pegasus leaving the tour dock in Yonkers 11 months ago.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
By the way, the tugboat shown most completely in the 4th foto is the 1943 46.5′ Linda G. I don’t know where she was built. Pegasus is 96′ and 1907-built in Baltimore. The goslings, hatch of 2012, were about 4″ long.
After a four-day festival of introducing New York folk to historic vessels and (more) . . . Pegasus escorts Lehigh Valley 79 back to Red Hook.
So if I had to list the “more” in question, I’d say . . . history and stories of the port and days gone by and “fire mops” and leaky pipes with names like “old Faithful” , glimpses of present but ever-changing skylines, demonstrations of docking and departures, churning up mud bottoms and making white frothy spray, lurching and rolling and pitching on the Hudson, and
now it’s homewater bound, heading for Red Hook;
but first, a quick stop in Erie Basin for
remaking the tow, shifting Pegasus to the side most conducive
to getting the 97-year-old barge that serves among MANY other things as a circus tent and an art gallery
away from a little more past
and fast to its dock, back to the closest front-row seat to the
sweet face of Bartholdi’s imagination.
Lines get adjusted and readjusted according
to commands from the wheelhouse.
Bartholdi’s lady is always first to raise her hand and ask all about another weekend stop on the tour.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who encourages your support of Pegasus and Lehigh Valley 79.
Today marks the end of the four-day historic ship festival and the official opening of Pier 25. Friday and Saturday I worked on Pegasus. Click on that link and you can find details of her history, starting from her inception as Standard Oil No. 16, including a time when she sported the flying horse on her stack. 1907 was a recurring number in the history-oriented tour: the date of Pegasus launch in Baltimore and the date of the opening of the Kenneth M. Murchison-designed Hoboken terminal of the Erie Lackawanna Railroad.
Drydock tug Hoboken dates from 1963, but
Yankee ferry, the only surviving Ellis Island ferry, entered service in 1907. Click here for much more about the Philadelphia-built Yankee.
Here’s a view of Union Dry Dock & Repair company . . . from Pegasus.
Also giving tours on the water was the historic John J. Harvey. Type Harvey into the search window on this blog and you’ll see more fotos I’ve taken over the past five years.
Folks including me took fotos of Harvey from Pegasus, just as folks on Harvey zoomed in on us. In the cowboy hat, it’s Mitch . . . of Newtown Pentacle.
Over 150 folks enjoyed a FREE!@#@! Hudson River ride on Pegasus Saturday. Lucky them!! I’m just saying . . . this is a rare treat, and you could make it less rare by joining in this way or that. FYI . . . the engine burns about 35 gallons per hour, if I recall correctly.
If you’re in or around the sixth boro tomorrow, you may see this scene above. I took that foto about a month ago.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who yesterday befriended MV Algolake. a bonafide facebooking, literate ore carrier! Be the first among your FB friends to befriend an ore carrier; for me it’s therapeutic, helping me forget the bulk carrier Alice that has made distance between us!!
But first . . . Blue Marlin has sailed!! I went upriver Sunday midmorning, and soon thereafter, she headed for sea. Actually for Bonny Town, ETA July 4, 2011. Click here to see what this Niger River delta town looks like, and then you’ll know why they’re buying tugs–like ex-Curtis Reinauer below–and barges. The link explains the unusual house configuration. If anyone got fotos of Blue Marlin exiting the Narrows or wishes to shares fotos of the journey, please get in touch.
Click here for history, economics, and controversies related to the Niger delta. The Niger River, 14th in the world in length, flows through unlikely places such as Timbuktu–high on my “gallivant list”–and drains 10 nations. Name them?
Yesterday I volunteered on Pegasus for the Riverdale Riverfest. In fact, Robert Apuzzo just sent this foto; I’m the tall guy in faded blue on the “upper deck” in the gap between the stack and the house. I volunteer because it’s fun and important. As “safety officer,” I help ensure no one gets hurt, and since I like to talk, I answer questions. I’ve noticed people like to see the boats but also their own communities FROM the river. Ensuring “guest safety” is vital and sometimes difficult; a tugboat has industrial-strength hazards . . . it moves and steel is hard and forgiving, yet it is a fascinating opportunity: throbbing noise and vibration, power of invisible prop and rudder and versatile line, huge engine, …
Believe it or not, Riverdale IS in the Bronx! Therefore, this water too is the sixth boro of NYC. By the way, in the background are the Palisades on the Jersey side.
Cornell was there also, here coexisting with human-powered vessels (HPVs). I love to kayak myself, but I suspect people in some HPVs underestimate commercial vessel speed and over-estimate their own visibility.
Spud barge Black Diamond served as a makeshift dock, serviceable but labor-intensive but the popularity of festivals like this illustrates the value of serviceable commercial docks in many more Hudsonsonian towns and cities. Imagine not only entertainment but also food coming ashore from boats for several reasons including reducing highway congestion. Vessels in Riverdale included also Mystic Whaler (1967 reproduction of a coastal cargo schooner) and fireboat John J. Harvey. Of course, the distinctive red barge is the itinerant Waterfront Museum, aka 1914-built Lehigh Valley 79.
These festivals showcase the skill of maritime professionals and, though fun, are stressful and laborious.
Just north of Riverdale is Yonkers. This foto of Yonkers as a storm chased us upriver in 2010 shows two frequently inquired about buildings on the this part of the Hudson: the Yonkers Power Station and the “Blue Cube,” which has had lives as diverse as a test lab for PhelpsDodge and a movie studio.
Yesterday a young peregrine (?) feasted on a fish high atop the Power Station.
Traffic headed up and down the Hudson is diverse: trawler Manitou from Ludington, MI,
MV Universal Amsterdam with a load of sugar, escorted here north from the George Washington Bridge by Mary Turecamo and Margaret Moran,
trawler Muddy Waters from Miami Beach, FL,
Thomas Witte towing a tall load of scrap metal for export, and much
much more.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, except the one thanks to Robert Apuzzo.
Pegasus, westbound across the Sound, is back in
the sixth boro as I write, having traversed the American Mediterranean. She basked in attention
of thousands of
folks as well as dozens of vessels who loved her visit. Where?
Mystic! More fotos tomorrow.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who–along with the entire crew– needs some sleep.
A week ago Lehigh Valley 79 closed up business at the dock in Brooklyn, keeping a weather eye open but eager to begin its gallivant northward on the hip of Pegasus. Ultimate destination for 79 is the Roundup in Waterford, or as some say … Waterchevy. Waterwärtsilä?
By Friday morning Earl had weakened, veered, and gotten delayed; both captains’ word was “Travel with the tide. Cold Spring would be destination for day 1.”
We steamed past familiar landmarks and
under the Tappan Zee.
The young pup with chin on window sill found this first trip north agreeable enough.
By the time we approached the Bear Mountain Bridge, the only accommodation needed was to prepare
the towing lights.
<<I guess this stowaway took that as signal to come up for fresh air .>>
By nightfall, barge and tug were secured in Cold Spring, and despite
gale-force gusts funneling down past Storm King all night, all was well at dawn.
From here, Pegasus returned to the sixth boro, and Lehigh Valley 79 was passed like an enormous baton carried on the nose
of Cornell.
The bottom foto comes from Paul Strubeck. All others by Will Van Dorp, who hopes to be at the Roundup soon.
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