Here was the first in this series, the result of watching an old movie featuring Yul Brenner and Marlon Brando. What I let fall through the cracks is this identification from someone who sent this foto, the source of which I didn’t know until now. The tug–supposedly in Tokyo–was actually Wilmington Transportation tug Long Beach. Click on the foto to see the source. So is this Revell model the same boat?
New business . . . the other night I watched another movie Losers for its tugboat content . . . and here are some screen captures. In the movie, this scene was SAID to be Los Angeles.
Here’s a closeup from the movie. Note the “stairstepping” of wheelhouse windows.
Here’s my foto taken in March of those same “stairstepped” window line as seen from inside.
Here’s the classy wheelhouse complete with
this fancy tiller belonging to this aquaclydesdale formerly known as Tuscarora.
Actually, she works in San Juan now. The movie folks changed the port name, but not
the vessel name.
If you are interested in learning more about a film project in NYC’s sixth boro, I am passing along notification that a TV reality show producer named Lance Schultz will be in town on Tuesday, April 30 interviewing candidates for a series. I am in no way involved and won’t be there. The person to contact is John Doswell john [at] doswellproductions [dot] com . . . John will be able to fill you n.
Check out more of Zane Johnston’s flickr fotos here. Non-film fotos by Will Van Dorp.
tugster: a waterblog 
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April 28, 2013 at 12:27 pm
tugpower
LONG BEACH along with several, other DPC tugs,older tugs, & two newer ones, before being sold to Foss Maritime in 1998 were owned by the Wilmington Transportation Co., of Los Angeles.
Foss Buys Wilmington Transportation
September 4, 1998
Foss Maritime, the oldest tugboat company on Washington’s Puget Sound, has purchased the oldest tugboat company in Los Angeles Harbor. Wilmington Transportation Co. was founded in 1884, when L.A. was known as El Pueblo de Los Angeles. It operates tugs and fuel barges at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach. Terms of the purchase weren’t disclosed. Foss operates 110 tugs and 105 barges in Alaska, Puget Sound, the Columbia and Snake rivers, San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles Harbor.
Wilmington Transportation was owned by the Wrigley Family of chewing gum fame. The Revell model of the LONG BEACH was very popular back in the late 1950’s early 1960’s. I built several of them over the years.
TUGBOATS TAKE A BOW AT EXHIBIT : PHOTOGRAPHS AND MEMORABILIA AT SAN PEDRO’s MARITIME MUSEUM REFLECT THE ‘UNIVERSAL APPEAL’ OF THE POWERFUL LITTLE VESSELS
July 28, 1994| GORDON DILLOW LOS ANGELES | TIMES STAFF WRITER
They’re short, squat and not very glamorous, seemingly mere attendants to the great ships that ply the open seas. But without them, many of those great ships would be so much floating junk, unable to maneuver into ports to unload their cargo of goods and passengers.
They are tugboats, the powerful little vessels that spend their lives pushing or pulling vastly larger ships where they need to go.
“Tugboats seem to have a universal appeal,” says Jackson Pearson, assistant curator at the Los Angeles Maritime Museum in San Pedro and a former tugboat captain and harbor pilot. “They’re like little Davids moving big Goliaths. They aren’t glamorous, but they’re vitally important.”
Actually, maybe tugboats are glamorous–if by glamorous you mean having a television series based on your exploits. Most Americans may be too young to remember, but from 1954-57 the syndicated TV series “Waterfront” dramatized a tugboat called Cheryl Ann and its skipper, Capt. John Herrick, portrayed by Preston Foster, who chugged around Los Angeles Harbor encountering smugglers, saboteurs, escaped convicts and other waterborne bad guys.
Pearson, the real-life skipper of the tugboat that portrayed the Cheryl Ann in location scenes for the TV series, doesn’t remember running into any smugglers or escaped convicts when he was a tugboat captain.
“It wasn’t quite as exciting as it was on TV,” Pearson says.
But Pearson does have fond memories of tugs, so he and others at the Maritime Museum have put together an exhibit of photographs and memorabilia highlighting the Wilmington Transportation Co., the longest-operating tugboat company in Los Angeles. It is one of a series of “salutes to the maritime industry” planned by the museum.
Founded by Phineas Banning, known as “the father of Los Angeles Harbor,” Wilmington Transportation Co., or WTCO, has operated tugs in Los Angeles Harbor for more than a century. Banning started a harbor tug and barge business in 1877, later incorporating it under the WTCO name.
Later, the company, then run by Bannings’ three sons, purchased Catalina Island and used the company tugs as both tugboats and passenger ships taking tourists to the island.
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In 1919, the Santa Catalina Island Co. was bought by William Wrigley Jr., who got the tugboat company as part of the deal. WTCO remains a subsidiary of the Catalina company and still operates a fleet of six tugs in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. It is the oldest of four tugboat companies in the harbor area.
The tugboat exhibit will remain on display until the end of the year. The Maritime Museum on Harbor Boulevard at 6th Street is open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.