Second Lives 20

Here’s the index on previous second lives posts.  I use “second lives” for what land folk call “adaptive reuse.”  It strikes me that there may be more instances of repurposing re-design and -engineering on water than on land, but that’s may just be my opinion.

But first, I thought to call this “pre-boomed” to follow up on yesterday’s post and the wonderful backstory I got in email yesterday from William Lafferty, frequent contributor here.  Here also sent along the photo below, which shows Twin Tube in 1951, i.e., before I was born and I’m 63.

Here’s part of what William wrote:  “It shows the Twintube just after it entered service in fall 1951.  Twintube was launched 28 August 1951, Captain Blount’s mother doing the honors, and built on Blount’s account.  He used it as a travelling “demonstrator” for his shipyard’s products (it was Blount’s hull number 6) but also used it to haul oysters.  Power plant originally was a rather rare 4-cylinder Harnischfeger 138-hp Diesel.  (Click here for a 1950 news article including a photo of a 6-cylinder marine diesel.)  Harnischfeger (the H in the mining equipment manufacturer P & H) had been set up in 1945 at Port Washington, Wisconsin, by P & H to exploit the workboat and yacht market.  P & H closed the division, then at Crystal Lake, Illinois, in 1963.  In spring 1952 Blount sold the vessel to the Staten Island Oil Company, who converted it to a tanker with a 40,000 gallon capacity in eight 5,000 gallon compartments within its “tubes.”  The rest is, as they say, history.”

By the way, reference to “Staten Island Oil Company” brings me back to one of my favorite articles by the late great Don Sutherland here.

Here’s the index for all my previous Blount posts.

All this repurposing leads me to the second half of this post.  A friend named Matt–former all-oceans sailor–is looking to write a serious history about Cross Sound Ferry vessel Cape Henlopen, ex- USS LST-510.  Note the 510 still carried on its starboard bow.  She was built in the great shipbuilding state of Indiana.

Cape Henlopen preparing to depart Orient Point March 2014

Here she passes Orient Point Lighthouse at the start of its 80-minute ride over to New London.

Matt is interested in interviewing past and present crew and seeing old photos of the vessel in any of its previous lives:   Cape Henlopen, MV Virginia Beach, USS Buncombe County, or LST-510.  If you send your interest in participating directly to my email, I’ll pass it along to Matt.

Many thanks again to William Lafferty for the Twintube story and photo.  I took the photos of Cape Henlopen in March 2014.  Here’s a version of the vessel by bowsprite.