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Harold Tartell and Jan van der Doe were 100% correct in their identification of the white-striped red self-unloading vessel in Road Fotos 11. It is the Arthur M. Anderson. I didn’t get to see it close up, but through the magic of YouTube, it’s rubbing-or-scrapping distance here. At about a minute into the video, you learn how the can be that close.
One of the joys of gallivanting is meeting new folks; this was especially true here. One person on this waterfront had a focus I recognized; he carried a zoom camera and looked at the same things I did. Seeing me take a foto of Arthur M. Anderson, he said its name (which I’d not been thinking of). Then he added, “And farther down there, it’s American Integrity.” Check out Ken’s blog here. Here are some highlights of Ken’s blog: American Century, the Westcott delivering mail to a passing vessel, Stephen B. Roman, a 1000-footer dwarfed by “big mac“, and check this one . . . the Huron Lightship . . . which I spotted from the Blue Water Bridge but couldn’t quite figure out. When I have more time, I plan to digest Ken’s archives, now added to my blog roll.
Here are my shots of Westcott and Hogan. I’d love this job although it has risk.
My zoom camera quit as this vessel approached, frustrating because I’d recognized the Algoma bear logo. And I’d assumed it was a bulk carrier too, as I thought that was Algoma’s only business, but Algosar is a tanker. See her history here.
Just south of the Ambassador Bridge, Dutch-flagged Moezelborg transfers cargo near the now-abandoned Boblo Island Detroit dock building. Boblo lives on but only in the way that this whole list of defunct amusement parks does. When Moezelborg left the international port of Detroit, she headed north, west, and south for the next international port of Chicago.
Here’s another shot of the two steamers that served Boblo Island, SS Columbia and SS Ste Claire. I wanted to get better shots but even as I got this–along with my anonymous partner–we were threatened with arrest for trespassing, which I firmly believe we were NOT doing. Here and here are more links for Ste Claire. The second one is a video of a tour of Ste Claire, interesting video but unfortunate audio.
I hope to return to Detroit in August, and at that time, hope to arrange for a boat tour of the waterfront, possibly to get better shots of these vessels.
I have returned to the sixth boro, but part of my heart got left behind in Detroit, a place of both rust and new molten steel.
Here, fun but otherwise a propos of nothing except a post on the official end-of-hurricane-season, check out “bone in its teeth” blog.
Thanks to Jason . . . first two fotos by Franz Von Riedel. During the early 1980s, the North American Towing Company bought the Green Bay, renamed her the Oneida and moved her to Duluth, Minnesota. This foto comes from her time working the Twin Ports (smoking away) until roughly 1987, when
Wellington Towing purchased her for work around Sault Ste Marie. Great Lakes Towing bought out Wellington Towing about 1990 with the tug going to Cleveland as the Alaska. This is a 1998 Alaska foto by Franz.
Here she was in Lyons in 2000, foto by Jason LaRue.
At this moment , November 2011 she awaits her one-century mark in Lyons, NY. As the crow flies, she’s only a dozen miles from Lake Ontario.
I’m hoping the Kahlenberg fires up soon. I’m routing for you.
Bottom two fotos taken yesterday, November 28.
More Detroit fotos soon.
Judging by the vessel in the foreground and the sign beyond, you’d surmise these fotos come from the Canada-Mexico border. If so, can
you locate this by the glass and steel in the background and the church in the middle? You probably know a song that refers to the church . . .
the Gordon Lightfoot song from 1975.
Totally unrelated, the Dossin Great Lakes Museum is well-worth a visit, even though I can’t say I’m thrilled by this part of the display.
Traffic I saw includes Manitoba and
Stephen B. Roman. (Yes, he be roamin’ a lot.)
Answer next time: The ore carrier near River Rouge in the distance is Arthur M. Anderson. Any idea of its claim to fame?
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, still on the road.
Here was Road . . . 9.
On the road, limited time and juice present themselves. So, just . . . a relic,
a huge Hamiltonian tug pushing a barge of aluminum ingots,
a museum foto of a pre-WW2 RORO,
an an industrious groundhog.
Guess my location?
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. There’s much more to these fotos, but . . . will blog again when I can.
Here was #1 of this series, started earlier this month, featuring quite random fotos and thoughts. Here’s a shot looking toward Shooters and Elizabeth, NJ. In the foreground just off the street and that bell tower and to the left of the cement silo are three . . actually four identical brown brick structures; the fourth one is mostly obscured by the silo. I have no clue, although they look like pylons to a structure long gone. Help?
To give a sense of scale of vessels in the KVK, I’m fairly tall, measuring 1.8796 m by last calculation. If I could stand on the waterline, the spritz here would come up past my knees.
Standing here, I could barely reach up past the bottompaint green into the MOL blue.
Tides were quite extreme last week, although I haven’t researched beyond that. The indicator was
stuff like this long submerged engine showing off its transformation.
In a bit, I’m hitting the road . . . gallivant time, so many places to see along so much highway and way too little time. The blog may vacate for a few days . . . But on the 26th, whether I post or not, this blog has its fifth anniversary. This is post #1608 in the past 1825 days. Post #1 was prompted by my huge stone-bellied muse. Thanks so much for reading; I’ve had a blast. I’m eager to get gone and then get back.
PS: If you haven’t voted or asked a half dozen friends to vote for this blog as “best neighborhood blog” and “best photo blog” (#5 and 24), please do so now. A few of you have written to say you like thinking of the sixth boro as one of the overlooked neighborhoods of NYC, the place said to be comprised of five terracentric boros.
Are there shadows when you can’t see them? Others forces exist though invisible like tides, winds, markets, seasons, combustion, zeitgeist, …
inertia, gravity,
attitude, determination, pheromones,
friction, electromagnetic fields, stardust,
love potion #9, entropy, tea leaves . . ..
Why things happen . . . a soup of forces govern this, too many to keep track of, unless you have to. 
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who has forces tugging at his heels today.
Maersk Kentucky turns at least 90 degrees to starboard after passing under the Bayonne Bridge. Beyond Shooters Island lies the city of Elizabeth, NJ. More close-ups of Maersk Kentucky–eleven years running and a fifth of a mile long— tomorrow, but for now, she draws more than 30 feet max . . . and notice the mud trail she stirs up.
Here’s a satellite view of Shooters Island; I believe the vintage foto of Shooters I posted the other day was taken from midway between the A pushpin and the New York ramp of the Bayonne Bridge. Click on the satellite foto to see where things lie in relation to Manhattan. Most of the container traffic through the port of “New York” operates through Port Elizabeth.
Again, here’s a tightly-cropped foto of Shooters around World War 1, and here’s a
foto I took from mid-Bayonne Bridge pedestrian way this morning, where I got my exercise.
As I walked over, Maersk Kentucky traversed beneath, tugs Resolute at the bow and Elizabeth McAllister near the stern, making the turn and then
heading into Newark Bay, a half an hour
or so behind Sea Land Eagle, roughly the same size as 1997-delivered ‘Kentucky. The land in the foreground is Bergen Point.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Related: See Johna and Vladimir’s homage to the Bridge here.
The foto I posted yesterday dazzled my image of Shooter’s. Sure . . . I knew it once saw shipbuilding operations beginning with David Decker’s yard, but I never imagined the scale. And when that industry collapsed, the island was reduced to a speed bump. Obliterate it was the solution proposed by a politician half a century ago.
If I try to put myself in the head of a Standard Shipbuilding employee there 90 years ago, I imagine he would wonder how many vessels the Shooters yard would be turning out a century hence, what cargoes they’d carry, and to which ports. Possibly he also wondered what part of the operation would employ his sons. Never in his wildest dreams–I suspect–would he imagine a scene like the one passing earlier today.
He would never envisage such a ship from China with cargoes like the dominoes stack here. Click here for fotos of Shanghai a little over a century back.
Xin Chang Sha, although barely a medium-sized container ship–is twice the loa and carries eight times the cargo deadweight than a Shooters vessel such as the 1919 San Teodoro.
On a given Saturday morning from sunrise to noon, Xin Chang Sha is one of . . . half a dozen vessels bound for sea through the KVK.
Doubleclick enlarges. This foto taken at the pool, just east of the Bayonne Bridge, looking toward Shooters.
Besides being a bird sanctuary, the island margins are also home to over a dozen ruins deemed “nationally significant” by the NPS Archeology Program for abandoned shipwrecks.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Indulge a bit of shameless self-promotion here: If you haven’t voted yet in the Village Voice poll upper left, please do so and ask a few of your friends to do so too. Just click on the link and then–after putting in your name etc. paste in tugster.wordpress.com in #5 (best neighborhood blog) and #24 (best photo blog). Thanks.
Answer can be found at the end of this post. I was thrilled to find this sixth boro foto today. Shot appears to be towards the northwest, but I’m not certain yet. It appears to be a merge of two fotos. On lower left side of my original foto the handwritten number “1906” is visible. A date? Maybe not. Doubleclick enlarges.
Now we sweep from right to left. I see at least a “stick deck barge” and an Erie covered barge on this side of the pier, which has a crane on it. Then a ?? 200′ unfinished steel vessel, something beyond that, and a four-masted schooner farther still at a dock.
Middle sections shows steamer Ursula and an unidentified (by me) vessel “south” of the cove off its stern. I can’t quite make out details in the cove. There was an Ursula that operated at one point between the Battery and Glen Island (near New Rochelle.) Another shot of Ursula appears in this 1919 foto. Beyond the many buildings on this part of the island . . . at least two hulls surrounded by scaffolding?
More manufacturing buildings and a larger “wooden stick barge.” Lettering on the white building says “Standard Shipbuilding Corp.” That should be the clue that identifies this place. But did they operate here only between 1917 and 1921? Could 10,000 workers have operated here daily?
It’s Shooter’s Island as I could never have imagined it!! Click here for some Standard/Shooters built vessels. One of these Standard/Shooters vessel–SS San Tiburcio–was mined and sunk in 1940 and now attracts divers, as here. Of course, the most famous Shooter’s product must be Meteor III, launched Feb 25, 1902 (click here for a very detailed NYTimes account of the event) which eventually was broken up at a site not far from Shooters. More on that later, I hope. An interesting note on the christening of Meteor III . . . the act was done by Alice Roosevelt, who later . . . 1959, also christened the USS Theodore Roosevelt SSBN-600. Can anyone point me to fotos of Meteor III aka Aldebaran when she came back to the sixth boro for scrapping?
Foto thanks to Ed Fanuzzi, whose father worked on ships on Shooters. I’ll never be able to look at Shooters the same again.
Has anyone published a Shooters Island shipbuilding book?
Next week I might pass through the Erie Canal town of Lyons, NY, where Grouper again appears forgotten, bereft of a future. Last spring had brought some hope, but . . .
These fotos come from Jason LaDue, who knew her while he was growing up in the vicinity of the Soo. Foto below by Troy Wilke. Jason writes, “That rare (and large) Kahlenberg smoked 
like no other but always delivered the power. I was onboard her several times when moving saltwater vessels to and from the Algoma Steel facility in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario.”
Next year 2012, Grouper has a one CENTURY anniversary, 100 years of life, the last decade and a half of which she seems in a coma. Here was my original Grouper post, followed by 67 comments!
These fotos by R LaDue show what spirit this vessel had as Iroquois
in the Soo Tug Race, 1989.
Many thanks, Jason. I plan to use more of your fotos soon.
tugster: a waterblog 
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