Specialized 17

Here was 14, and for a similar vessel to today’s here are some fotos from Birk Thomas from not quite a year ago.   And this post started here, right after I’d driven into Nola from Mississippi on Route 90.  The depicted canine is admiring Poseidon, a 1945 Navy barge that was converted to transport Apollo units for NASA.

Click here for a story about Pegasus, a descendent of Poseidon.

The foto below and the two above come compliments of Jen and Curt Muma, formerly of tugboat Shenandoah.  For info on a former NASA sea ship–Liberty Star— newly assigned to a sixth boro institution, click here.

The next three fotos I am using thanks to and with permission of Boat Photo Museum–newly added to my blogroll.  The February 1970 foto below shows Poseidon and sister barge Orion upbound at Vicksburg pushed by towboat Bob Fuqua (few qwah).  Bob Fuqua would push the barge only as far as Nola, at which point a sea-going tug would take over for the rest of the journey to Cape Canaveral.  Here’s a story from April 1961 about such a handover from towboat Bob Fuqua to tug Sharon Lee.   Click here for a story of the NASA fleet, and more fotos of Poseidon.  Today Bob Fuqua is known as Carrie Mays;  for a contemporary foto, click here.

Here Bob Fuqua pushes sister missile barge Palaemon upbound at Wickliffe, KY, February 1965.

Here, from August 1970 is another shot of Poseidon and Orion underway at Vicksburg.

Just shy of a year ago, the contemporary rocket RO-RO had a close encounter with a bridge in Kentucky, which you may remember.  MV Delta Mariner, as the RO-RO is called, is still at work.  I must just have missed her, as she is is currently upbound the Mississippi north of Vicksburg.  Oh . . . to be back in Memphis for that and many other reasons.  For a sense of Delta Mariner‘s recent itinerary, click here.

Many thanks to Jen and Curt for the contemporary fotos waterside and to Dan Owen for the vintage fotos.