Yesterday’s mystery location was the Italian port of Gaeta, which happens to be homeport for the Sixth Fleet. Kudos to Jim for guessing in in comments; yes . .. others of you ID’d it via email and thanks. The tugs shown there belong to the “rimorchiatori napoletani” fleet (Salvage Tug San Cataldo (1986), 32,41×8,60×4,25, 3.090 HP/KW ; Salvage Tug Tarentum (1985), 32,41×8,60×4.25, 2.205 HP/KW; Salvage Tug Vesuvio (1983). Here’s the link but you have to scroll most of the way through to find it. Many thanks again to Maureen for passing the fotos along. Actually I should have called yesterday’s post . .. “non-boro tugs 4” but . . . I didn’t think of it then and I’m leaving it.
Fotos below–with the unique “house”–come compliments of Seth Tane, former resident of the sixth boro on NYC. Guess the location?
Here’s a close-up. This tug/trailer reminds me of Dutch barges with the captain’s automobile carried on deck, as seen in this and this post from a little over a year ago. .
Thanks much to Seth Tane for these fotos.
tugster: a waterblog 
6 comments
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June 18, 2012 at 10:49 pm
Ken
what the heck?
June 20, 2012 at 5:00 am
C.E. Grundler
Maybe it’s just me, but this picture has been making me smile all day. You know there must be some interesting story behind this particular arrangement.
June 20, 2012 at 5:49 am
tugster
you’re the expert on stories. you must be able to imagine one . . .
June 20, 2012 at 7:44 am
cegrundler
I don’t know about ‘expert’, but it certainly has me considering a number of possibilities. Yesterday a police detective and I were having a fun debate as to where this unique arrangement would fall when it comes to the legalities of searching a ‘home’ to seize evidence.
I planned to contact you in the near future — the book I’m currently writing involves a heist, pulled off, quite literally, with a tug — and I needed to speak with an expert to determine the specifics of the ideal tug for this scenario.
June 20, 2012 at 7:56 pm
tugster
i just ordered “last exit” although i’d intended to do that long ago. maybe after reading it, i’ll have a better answer. for now, i’d say it should be a tug with a long telescoping crane . like patty nolan or cornell. if it had a telescoping wheelhouse like odin or cheyenne, it’d squeeze under low bridges as well as present differing profiles. that’s off the top of my head. we could “groupsource” this here . . . or switch the discussion over to email . . .
June 21, 2012 at 6:53 pm
HT
This was probably a standard push tug at one time, where the pilot house and Capts. quarters was on the second deck (lower). The tower was added after it was built so they could see over the barge that they were contracted to haul and cut out the original wheelhouse and bunk-room…must have been a long term contract for them to revise a tug. The Capts quarters is now in the trailer,this saved them in stability,and weight.This is just a guess, but it would not surprise me…I have seen companies do stranger things then that!