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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?
Friday afternoon I timed a foray on the harbor perfectly with respect to light. Here’s a previous “golden hour” post, from over four years ago. And although I’m not a literalist with much, the “hour” the other afternoon lasted less than 20 minutes.
16:24 . . . guided by the new wind turbine, Hanjin Albany and two unidentified tugs catch the beginning of the gilded light. I’m not sure what Hanjin Albany carried in or intends to carry out.
16:25 . . . in a different area of the Upper Bay, APL Turquoise and Charles D. McAllister (or is it McAllister Responder??) have not quite entered that enhancing light.
16:37 . . . same APL Turquoise and Charles D. (I’ll assume) are now fully adorned in gold. Solomon Sea pushes a set of scows with golden sand.
Too short this light lasts; in 30 minutes it’ll be winter night.
16:36 . . . Giulio Verne in a different part of the harbor bathe in lesser amounts of this light.
Solomon Sea‘s sand piles could not be more embellished.
But by 16:42 . . . the brilliance diminishes already unless
here, at 16:42 and beyond Staten Island’s shadow, Samuel I. Newhouse and RBM 45612, still linger in the golden light.
All fotos during this 18-minute interval, by Will Van Dorp.
Wow! Almost 40 years ago, another 18-minute unit was significant.
In November the winds brewed up a season that has given people of all boros enough snow to raise the stock value of shovel manufacturers: a crewman shoveling yesterday at the ferry fuel barges. Doubleclick enlarges.
It covered everything like the deck of small tanker Patrick Sky,
glazing surfaces on tormented Carina here taking on supplies from the deck of Twin Tube.
McKinley Sea still carried her
snowy trim, and
as did Laurie Ann Reinauer.
Even crew on tanker Lian An Hu cleared sixth boro snow.
And this ferry captain scraped clear the cowl after Newhouse was secured in Whitehall.
More NYC sixth boro snow fotos tomorrow. For now, the final foto below comes thanks to Kyran Clune. Guess the ferry and the location? Answer tomorrow along with another foto of the same vessel.
All other fotos by Will Van Dorp, the morning after a storm that dropped 19′ on Central Park. Uhhh . . . make that 19″ or it might be enough fell that a 19′ snow creature could be built beside Cleopatra’s needle. (Nice catch, John!!)
According to NYTimes, January 2011 has already seen 36″ fall; the previous high was 1925 with 27.4.
Practitioners of the culinary magic called “nouvelle cuisine” have created the “amuse-bouche,” some mini-morsel intended by the chef to surprise and … well, amuse you. Back when I lived in francophone Africa and spoke only French in all the moods and situations of my life, I learned the crasser word “amuse-gueule” (gueule being snout v. bouche being a human mouth).
Today’s short post offers a visual version: amusement for the eye (yeux) and brain . . . . Remember doubleclick enlarges.
Exhibit 1: Atlantic Salvor delivering many tons of snow to the far north. Barges of snow for Buffalo, maybe; backhaul is what bowsprite would call it. On the other hand, if it’s downbound, maybe it’s harvested Hudson River ice traveling southward like they used to do.
Exhibit 2: And taken the same week, might this be the set for the new Spiderman musical? Think of all the injuries possible if actors were swinging from the gantries over the harbor. Has a play ever been staged in the auto section of the ferries? Hmm . . . someone should try it.
Top foto comes thanks to Dock Shuter, who contributed fotos once before here. The bottom foto is by Will Van Dorp, who’s out seeing how cold he can get today and needs a little fire on this icy day.
Bowsprite’s rendering of the orange aka ġeolurēad Staten Island ferry John F. Kennedy feels like a sip of warm cider on a cold autumn evening. The Staten Island ferry adopted this color–clever . . . they picked a color that both promoted visibility/safety and nodded to heritage–in 1926. Before that, the color was basic white. So here’s my question: are there large ferries elsewhere that are not mostly white? And this takes me way out on a limb, but can anything be read into the fact that a national eating/drinking establishment uses a similar orange color?
Cross Sound Ferry’s Cape Henlopen is mostly
a color that would blend into snow and fog. That’s Joan Turecamo in the background, off New London.
The same is true also of Susan Anne, here off Plum Island.
Yes, that’s Manhattan in the background. Can you guess this ferry white vessel?
It’s Twin Capes . . . a Delaware River and Bay Authority vessel, on a special mission in the sixth boro. DRBA has its own vessel named Cape Henlopen, a geographic feature located in Delaware.
My other ferry experience this year introduced me to the Washington State Ferry system, with green trim, but otherwise
mostly the color of snow and fog.
Here is a Tugster post on Champlain ferries.
All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.
Please send fotos of non-white ferries . . . or non-sixth boro orange ones or banana yellow or plum . . . . two-tone green?
So it doesn’t take long: Capt. Bill Miller sent this undated foto (late 1940s?) of what could be the green CNJRR ferry Cranford (launched 1905 from Wilmington), which ran in the harbor from Jersey City. Cranford has served as a reef since 1982. A slightly older vessel formerly known as Lakewood (1901) served as the last CNJRR ferry until 1967; then renamed Second Sun it served as education center for the Salem nuclear power plant until 1992, when it had a third life as a fancy Philly waterfront eatery called Elizabeth, which transitioned into a Hooters venue until 2002. Today, the vessel is probably the only Hooters-logoed reef in the universe. How can I nominate ferry Elizabeth for induction into the Hooters Hall o Fame . . .
Related: The Washington State Ferry system uses 22 vessels to move 23 million passengers per year; the Staten Island Ferry uses 10 vessels to move 20 million passengers per year. Hmmm!
Unrelated: a stealth sub losing its stealth on a Scottish mudbank.
Rain kept me from taking the ferry the morning of the crash. If I had, I’m not sure I’d have been on the one that left Whitehall at 9, but I could have been. My wishes for speedy and complete healing to those hurt. That’s Andrew J. Barberi left and (I believe) Spirit of America right.
Some surprises came out of the incident and this NYTimes article Sunday morning: Barberi has a Voith-Schneider propulsion system! I did two posts about a tug named Orion with this “egg-beater” drive here and here back in 2008. When I hunted deeper, I found that four other ferries have the same propulsion: Molinari, Newhouse, Noble, and Austen! Click links for their namesakes; start with Austen and work back.
Looking still farther, I learned that Barberi was not the original name for the boat. Aldo Moro was. Do you remember his fame and fate? What’s not clear is when the switch in names was made.
I’ve wanted to use this quote a long time . . I guess today works: ”The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of hundreds of others, in seeing the hundreds of universes that each of them sees.” Marcel Proust said that. I’m working on new eyes every day; prop wash that I see each time this passenger approaches the ferry dock never suggested Voith-Schneider drives to me. Who knew?
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
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