I’d seen McFarland before . . . once at the dock stern out and another time anchored in the middle of the night on Delaware Bay, lit up like a parking lot. I’m so thrilled that I’ll run a series of her . . . .starting with the USACE dredge passing Pac Alnath.
A first sighting for me . . . Charles Burton.
Back to McFarland . . . one of four ocean-going hopper dredges operated by the USACE. Can you name the other three?
. . . Nanticoke and Peter F. Gellatly, both pushing Vane barges.
Huge turntable on McFarland.
Chief . . . I believe the 1979 built vesel.
From this USACE publication, I like this statistic: a full load of dredged materials McFarland carries equals the capacity of 310 dump trucks.
Just before sunrise, she steamed by . . . and passed B. Franklin Reinauer in the city of Benjamin Franklin himself.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
The other three dredges are Wheeler, Essayons, and Yaquina. For comparison info about the four, click here. For Bert Visser’s directory with fotos of all the large dredgers in the world, click here.
For a post on Delaware River tugs from 2010, click here. What I’d like to see one of these days is the loading of livestock down in Wilmington. Currently, Falconia is at the dock; I saw her from the highway on Friday.
5 comments
Comments feed for this article
October 16, 2012 at 3:42 pm
doryman
We see the Yaquina working off the mouth of the river she’s named after often. I’ll try to get a photo of her for you someday. (She dredges two miles off-shore, at the breakwater). She was inside at the new NOAA docks in Newport (Oregon) a couple months ago. Obviously a hard working vessel, especially in contrast to the clean and pretty research vessels belonging to NOAA.
October 16, 2012 at 3:51 pm
tugster
doryman– i look forward to seeing the pics.
October 16, 2012 at 4:00 pm
tugboathunter
McFarland has great lines, although her deck is a bit crowded.
October 16, 2012 at 5:15 pm
Harold E. Tartell
U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS DREDGES Built From 1855 To Present Can Be Found At This Link: http://shipbuildinghistory.com/history/smallships/armycorpsdr.htm
January 26, 2016 at 12:01 pm
Deep-draft USACE Dredges | tugster: a waterblog
[…] remember the day I first saw McFarland, coming up the Delaware, the largest dredge I’d ever seen. Barrel has recently sent along […]