If you click here and are familiar with some of the changes on the NYC waterfront, you’ll know some of these landmarks are gone. Debate on choices of what to save and what to preserve are endless. Recognize the vessel below? What was its past and will be its future?
The vessel above and the one below live about 20 miles from Hell Gate. Christeen, below, was built as an oyster sloop in 1883. Click here and here for video of Christeen under sail today.
Here’s a summary of Christeen‘s features. Click here for a quick timeline of 150+ years of water history of Oyster Bay, NY. Of course, Oyster Bay launched many tugboats during the half century of Jakobson‘s tenure there. Scan the list for boats that have appeared on this blog, (Cornell, Margot, Houma, Maryland, Escort, Consort …) too numerous to link to now, but you can use the search window to see them. Jakobson’s even built a small submarine, X-1. Jakobson’s yard is now gone without many traces.
The vessel in the top foto is Ida May as she currently looks, but
she once looked like this.
This is a down-at-the-heels queen whose future
hangs in the balance. More info is available through the
What prompted this post is an article in the NYTimes this morning about Pier D, near 64th Street. If you’ve never seen it,
you won’t. It’s gone. See the article here. I took this foto less than three months ago.
All fotos by will Van Dorp.
tugster: a waterblog 
3 comments
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January 19, 2011 at 1:00 pm
tom
what is happening with the tugboat graveyard? i read somewhere that they are thinking of cleaning that area up.
January 19, 2011 at 2:08 pm
tugster
i believe they are always thinking of “cleaning” up that area but the decaying vessels themselves have become habitat that should be protected. so goes scuttlebutt, at least.
January 19, 2011 at 2:25 pm
Joe Herbert
Hi Will;
1 large Atta Boy to Christeen, All Hands, she looks great.
When you were recently down to the Chesapeake, did you by chance stop at St. Michaels, there were several oyster sloops dating earlier than 1883, I believe there is also an old one in Dorchester too.
Without doubt, Christeen is the oldest on NY Water, but then we as a whole have a miserable job of preservation when you consider what we’ve lost in this area.
The Schooner Atlantic in rotted in Brigantine, that big old bark in Greencastle & Etc. The USS United States rots slowly in Philadelphia, just a thousand yards from the Olympia, whose bottom is hardly more than paper thin.