Here are some more fotos by Seth Tane in the late 1970s /early 1980s.
Foto#1. Princess Bay just south of the Old Bay Draw, placing her about a mile of her place of construction. Anyone know what happened to her, last known as Mabel L? She was launched from Elizabethport the same year as Coral Queen.
Foto #2. Jet Trader heads for the Arthur Kill. Today Jet Trader has a new life as . . .
reef, among sunken NYC subway cars and army tanks off Atlantic City. Here’s a foto of her last voyage on the hip of Taurus. Click here to see fotos of motor tankers, subway cars, and army tanks being reefed. Have you or someone you know had the experience of diving on these reefs and care to share the experience?
Fotos 3 and 4. Mystic Sun waited in the Morris Canal for its last voyage to the scrappers in Kearney. Click here for fotos of some of the Sun fleet including Mystic Sun in better days. Can anyone identify the tugboats here?
Here’s the bow of Mystic Sun. Here’s a detailed history of Sunmarine. Mystic Sun started life in 1944, launched from East Coast Shipyards in Bayonne as AOG 38 and was scrapped in 1981, dating this foto. Here are other AOGs in dazzle paint.
Last foto, #5. Mary Gellatly, the tanker incarnation. Click here and scroll for a recent foto of the current Mary Gellatly in the sixth boro. Who was the long-revered namesake? And anyone know the details of the launch and demise of this tanker?
Many thanks to Seth Tane for these fabulous fotos of sixth boro history.
tugster: a waterblog 
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June 3, 2013 at 12:21 pm
Allen Baker
Alex Gellatly, one of the co-owners of Gellatly-Criscione Services, mother is Mary Gellatly.
June 3, 2013 at 1:37 pm
tugpower
The tanker PRINCESS BAY was built in 1920 by the Bethlehem Steel Corp., Elizabeth, N.J. as the ROCHESTER SOCONY for the Standard Oil Co., Of New York. In 1933, ownership was transferred to the Socony Vacuum Oil Co., Inc. In 1955, she was purchased by the Eastern Tanker Corp., owned by Chester A. Poling, & renamed PRINCESS BAY. As PRINCESS BAY, she Sank at Tremley Point, N.J. on December 10, 1969, after fire broke out. She was raised and repaired. In 1982, Poling Transportation Co. renamed her MABEL L. Her present disposition is unknown.
The tanker MARY GELLATLY was built in 1941 by the RTC Shipbuilding Corp., Camden, N.J. as Hull # 134 GEO. WHITLOCK for the Spentonbush Fuel Transport Service Co., Inc., New York. She was immediately transferred to the United States Navy for wartime service as YO-57 until 1947. She was the transferred back to Spentonbush, & renamed J.A. CUMMINGS. In 1965, she was sold to the New England Petroleum Co. (NEPCO), & renamed NEPCO 10.
June 3, 2013 at 2:30 pm
tugpower
Sorry, I didn’t complete the above post. I had a completed post of everything that I had to write about in which, I lost everything, and couldn’t retrieve it back. Moving forward from NEPCO 10. In 1970, she was renamed KAREN TIBBETS, & owned by Boston Fuel Transportation Co. (owned by Reinauer). In 1984, Gellatly Petroleum Transportation & Towing Co., renamed her MARY GELLATLY. In 1990, Sandy Anderson (Anderson Transportation Co., ATCO) renamed her ATCO MARY LEE. Finally in 1992, the vessel was sold to unknown foreign interests, and renamed FAYOU K., and in 1993 NORI. The disposition of the vessel was deleted in 2001.
Who was MARY GELLATLY? Mary Gellatly was the wife of the late Capt. Peter F. Gellatly, and mother of sons Alex & Scott. Capt. Peter had been for many years master of many of these small coastal tankers. I had the pleasure to meet him, and I got to know him as a teenager when he was Captain on Eklof Marine Corporation’s tanker SENIOR. He decided in the 1970’s to venture out with his family and start his own business. Based out of Portsmouth, N.H., the company was know as Outer Islands Marine Corp. With a small shallow draft tanker, vital shipments of petroleum products were shipped to places inaccessible with much larger vessels. Places like Shelter Island, Block Island, Plum Island, New London, Westchester Creek, etc. were some of the areas served.
Capt. Peter & sons manned the tanker operation, while Mary dispatched & manned the office on the shoreside end of the business. The company grew, and acquired larger coastal tankers such as the MARY GELLATLY & PATRICIA N. GELLATLY, and tugs and barges were also being added to the fleet. The name of the company was later changed to Gellatly Towing & Transportation Co. Capt. Peter F. Gellatly passed on in 1983, while his wife Mary is still alive at the age of 89, which I confirmed today in a phone conversation with Alex Gellatly. In 1999, Alex Gellatly joined forces with Mario Criscione Services Corp. to form what is known as today Gellatly & Criscione Services Corp. http://www.gellatlycriscione.com/.
June 3, 2013 at 11:22 pm
Seth Tane
Thanks everyone for all the backstories and great “director’s cut” info…the link to the Taurus towing the Jet Trader to her grave has yet another degree of connection for me: I built the upper pilothouse on the Taurus (along with several hundred other upper houses, aft control stations and tank barge shelters often seen in Tugster posts) here in my shop in the hills of Portland, Oregon with a view of the ships on the Columbia River…
I can recall asking the tugs alongside the apparently grounded Empire State off LaGuardia if they needed any help as I was returning to Hastings on Hudson via the Gate and the Harlem river after towing a disabled recreational craft out island…not yet, came the reply…
I can also remember the voyage on the Princess Bay (just before photo # 1 was taken) from Brooklyn across the lower bay just after I had purchased my tanker for conversion to live aboard studio space and eventually marine salvage vessel when the elderly Captain thought he might pass out after exerting himself checking that the radar was still spinning (tuning problems on the old CRT set) and told me to take the wheel and head for the Kills…long before I had my license or any clue of how to drive a vessel that size, loaded with flammable product, through the fog, at dusk, in NY Harbor…
June 6, 2013 at 10:07 pm
bowsprite
i ♥ NYHarbor!!!
January 14, 2014 at 12:39 pm
pizote2
I was thrilled to come across a picture of the Princess Bay. Perhaps not all of the story has been told, however. My father’s name is John Alban. He worked as a captain on the Poling Bros. 16, came to their office to work as dispatcher and eventually operations manager. He has nothing but praise and gratitude for Chester and Robert Poling. They gave him the opportunity to purchase the Empress Bay (destroyed in an East River collision with the freighter Nebraska), Princess Bay and the Queens Bay (later the Coral Queen). This was done with two other partners, both members of the Poling organization. These boats made their living with countless trips up East Chester Creek. Later he partnered with Sammy and Ed Poling and purchased the tug Esso Vermont and renamed her the Phoenix. Again with same partners he purchased the Poling #10 and renamed her the John P. Alban although he sold her before she ever sailed for them. He eventually divested himself of these vessels and took a position with McAllister, working for them until his retirement at age 80. He and my mother are both now in their 90’s and live in Houston, Texas with my sister. Both are frail but still sharp as tacks. There are times when my wife and I sit spellbound as he shares stories of his time on the water and in the office. Truth be told, he never enjoyed anything as much as giving the captain the week off and captaining the Princess Bay or the Phoenix himself. My brother and I would join him in the summer and it almost became a family outing. I can remember one balmy night when we crossed the lower harbor enroute to Mt. Vernon and enjoyed the skyline and just talked about the boats and the harbor and its navigational challenges, especially getting through Hell Gate. His CG license eventually covered both sides with areas where he was qualified to pilot and “unlimited tonnage” was printed on the license. I don’t think there is anyone alive today who knows as much about the history of and the boats involved in the oil transportation trade in New York Harbor as he does. He was intimately involved in it from the late 1930’s until the 1990’s, as deckhand, mate, captain, dispatcher, operations manager and owner.
I take pride in him as a father and teacher and in his accomplishments. His father was a tugboat captain for Blue Line, took my father with him after he graduated high school, and eventually was a Connecticut River pilot for Poling until his retirement. I made many trips with him up the Connecticut River on Poling tankers with the expectation that I would follow in their footsteps (didn’t exactly happen although I was a manager for West Marine and lived on and sailed a sloop for 10 years with my wife and cats). They worked together as captain and mate on the Blue Line tug “Sachem”. Those were days working on a underpowered steam tug with no GPS, no radar, just charts, a compass and a clock and with a great mental picture of what was going on around you. Not to bore you but it seems that every man in the family was a tugboat captain in the harbor. My father’s uncle was a pilot on the night steamboats that ran from NYC to Hartford and then the captain on the New Haven RR transfer tugs that ran car floats from Brooklyn to New Jersey. Another relative was captain on the tug “Brooklyn (1910-1960). And the list goes on and on. The extended family was involved with the harbor’s history and I’m proud to look back on that. Richard Alban
January 14, 2014 at 1:34 pm
tugster
richard– you would never bore me or a lot of my readers with stories like this. if you have or know the whereabouts of vintage new york harbor fotos that you’d be willing to share, i’d love to help put them in the public domain. knowing the past and being able to picture it is quite important.
August 31, 2017 at 7:30 pm
pkubiak
I worked on the Mary Gellatly, when she was owned by Sandy Anderson, thus her name was the Atco Mary Lee. At that time we were in the hold repairing the inside of the tank. I also spent a little time on her sister the Atco Susan aka Patrick Sky…