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November, port month on tugster, ends here, making this GHP&W 30. Here’s how the month began. One thing I learned putting together this post is that Port Richmond and Mariner’s Harbor appear not to share a border, at least according to the wikipedia map. Between the western edge of Port Richmond and the eastern edge of Mariner’s (the west side of the Bayonne Bridge) is a neighborhood called Elm Park. I’d never heard of it. Also, look at the northeast tip of Port Richmond . . . it’s in the water only and includes the Caddell yard. Furthermore, Port Richmond never seems like much of a port if you see it by road only. Click here for photos of the land portion of Port Richmond. Click on the map to make it interactive.
A google satellite view shows the northernmost margin of land is port-intensive. Click here for many vintage photos of Port Richmond, pre-Bayonne Bridge, back when Port Richmond was a major ferry/rail link.
Although the late fall midday sun backlit these shots, let’s cruise the waterside of Port Richmond, starting at its northeastern point, where the Wavertree (1885) project is ongoing.
Delaware River & Bay Authority’s Delaware is undergoing some major repowering work.
Frying Pan . . . light of the night vessel from up at Pier 66 is having some work done.
In the belly of Frying Pan, where the engine and machinery used to be, a night club sometimes comes to life. Click here for some renderings of the vessel by the elusive bowsprite.
Miss Liberty, built 1954, is nearly finished with this dry-docking. Notice here she is high and dry? Well, just 45 minutes later, she had been
splashed and was being towed to a wharf by Caddell’s own L. W. Caddell (1990).
Continuing to the west, it’s the yards of Reinauer and Moran. From l to r, here, it seems to be Meredith C. Reinauer (2003), Laurie Ann Reinauer (2009), Reinauer Twins (2011), and Dace Reinauer (1968 but JUST repowered). . . and Joan Turecamo with (?) Brendan Turecamo. The McAllister tug between the Reinauer ATBs . . . I’ll guess is Bruce A. Marjorie B. McAllister.
This photo, taken a half hour earlier and before Joan Turecamo (1980) tied up, shows Kimberly Turecamo (1980), the very new and beamy J. R. T. Moran (2015), and Brendan (1975).
On the west side of the Moran yard, it’s Cable Queen (1952). Click here for photos of this cable-layer at work through the years.
And for the last shot of Port Richmond–although this may be straying westward into Elm Park waters, it’s Metropolitan Marine Transportation’s newest Normandy.
All the photos today by Will Van Dorp.
So as I said at the beginning of this post, so ends the “gunk holes, harbors, ports, and wharves” series. However, precedent on this blog makes it really easy to do a Port Richmond 2, 3, 4 . . . . etc. post. also, if any of you feel like contributing a set of photos from a port of gunk hole, no matter how large or obscure, I welcome it. Besides, there’s always then possibility of doing an “upland” version of any port, focusing on land-based businesses serving the work vessels.
And as for December, let me reprint this idea for a December theme:
How about antique/classic workboats, functioning or wrecked. Of course, a definition for that category is impossible. For example, NewYorkBoater says this: ‘The definition of an antique boat according to Antique and Classic Boating Society is a boat built between 1919 and 1942. A classic was built between 1943 and 1975 and the term contemporary, are boats built from 1976 and on.’ Hmm . . . what do you call an old vessel built before 1919 . . . a restoration project? antediluvian?
If you take another transportation sector–automobiles, you get another definition: 25 years old or more. And for the great race, here were the rules for this year: “Vehicle entries must have been manufactured in 1972 or before.” Next year’s cut-off will likely be 1973.
So my flexible definition is . . . photo should have been taken in 1999 or before, by you or of you or a family member, and in the case of a wreck, probably identifiable. Exception . . . it could be a boat built before . . . say . . . 1965.”
Many thanks to all of you who sent along photos, contributed ideas, and commented in November.
or I can call this Port of Albany 2, or better still Ports of Albany and Rensselaer. Albany’s fireboat Marine 1 has been on this blog here. Anyone know where it was built?
The port has not one but . . .
but two large cranes.
And bulk cargo is transferred through the port in both directions, whether it be solid or
dusty.
Over on the Rensselaer side, scrap seems to be a huge mover.
North of Port Albany is USS Slater, about which lots of posts can be found here. But it’s never occurred to me until now that the colors used by Slater camouflage and NYS Marine Highway are a very similar gray and blue!
Kathleen Turecamo (1968) has been in this port–135 miles inland–for as long as I’ve been paying attention, which is only a little over a decade.
This September, NYS Canal Corp’s Tender #3, which probably dates from the 1930s, traveled south to the ports of Albany and Rensselaer.
The port is also a vital petroleum center, both inbound and out.
With the container train traffic along the the Hudson and the Erie Canal, I’m only less surprised than otherwise that Albany-Rensselaer currently is not a container port.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Here’s general info about the Port of Albany, although a lot of info there seems a bit out of date. For a blog that visits visits the ports of Albany and Rensselaer more regularly, check here. Here’s the port of Albany website.
And last but not least, check Mark Woody Woods’ broad sampling of ships heading to and from Albany-Rensselaer.
I’ve a friend in the NJ town who pronounces her place of residence as if it started “H O B U . . . .” The NJ city has a population density of 39,2012 people per square mile. Many of them came down to the water in July 2014 for the City of Water Day, when I took these photos.
Anyone know the vintage of this small yard tug?
Many notable people are associated with Hoboken, but my association is with my parents, who both first set foot in the USA in Hoboken on the Holland-America pier, now long gone.
As weird fate would have it, they traveled immediately to North Carolina, where their sponsor lived, which –as the seagulls fly–is about 30 miles from Hobucken, NC, where this USCG station is located.
I don’t know if my parents ever visited Hobucken. There’s the fish fleet just past the Route 304 bridge.
I’d love to stop by the town someday soon.
By the way, it has a population density of 25 people per square mile.
Two Boys intrigued me, a 1966 44′ retired USCG boat.
Anyone know if there’s a connection between the two place names?
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Know this water, more of a waterway than a harbor? The distant buildings are a clue. See the one just left of the center of bridge center, needle thin?
Here’s another clue . . . the structure near the right side of the photo, like an old time gas station pump?
Or this one left of the crane, looking like the business end of a blue crab whose pincers are down?
Or this wreck? What WAS this boat? I’ve asked a million people who all say they also asked a million people. Anyone know?
And seriously, the first photo showed the Throgs Neck Bridge, the second the LaGuardia airport traffic tower, and the third . . . Arthur Ashe stadium. The photo above with the mystery wreck in the Whitestone Bridge . .. the second one in when you travel from Long Island Sound into . . . the East River
And that needle thin tower in 432 Park, said to be the tallest residential building in the hemisphere. Click here for views from the tallest bathtub in that building. And in the foreground of the photo below, truly a place of superlatives . . . . Rikers Island, i.e., one of the largest incarceration places in the world. No gunk holing is tolerated anywhere near this place.
Rikers has literally overflowed its banks. This is the off-Rikers portion of NYC Corrections, the Vernon C. Bain Center.
Click here for a tugster photo of part of the Rikers fleet. And here for Bain’s NYC floating prison predecessor.
By now, most of you know this is the East River and we’re traveling west. Here the DEP sludge tanker Red Hook prepares to depart the Hunt’s Point wastewater treatment plant. Click here for some tugster posts on treating waste and keeping sixth boro waters as clean as possible despite the teeming millions that live along the banks of these waters. And if you’ve never read my Professional Mariner story on the latest generation of these tankers, you can do so here.
Between Rikers and Hunts Point, there are the North and South Brother Islands; see my post from South Brother here from a long time ago. The safer channel goes around the north of North Brother, but in daylight, most vessels can shoot between the two.
I’ve never set foot on North Brother, but I imagine it a terrestrial version of the “graveyard” on the Arthur Kill.
A “night wharf” on Wards Island for the sludge tankers lies here just east of the Hell Gate and RFK bridges there.
This strait–between Roosevelt Island and the upper east side of Manhattan–in the tidal strait that’s known as the East River can see some fast currents. Somewhere off to the right is the vantage point Jonathan Steinman takes his East river pics from.
This is not a cargo pier. These vessels are repairing the bulk heading.
Anyone know the identity of these two “houses” nestled up there in the eastisde of Manhattan cliffs?
These barges called the Water Club . . . I’ve never been there. Any personal reviews?
Newtown Creek awaits its fate here at a dock in Wallabout Bay right across
from the rock wharf where Alice Oldendorff has discharged millions of tons of crushed rock over the years.
After we duck under the Brooklyn Bridge, we near the end of the East River,
where South Street Seaport Museum has been fighting the noble fight to
preserve ships and the upland including the wharves.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Sorry if I confused a few of you with the acronym GHP&W. You see how it expands above. I suppose this is a sixth boro gunkhole of an upscale sort, and I’ll let you guess where at first. And given the date today, my misleading clue is “turkey sailboat.”
I’ll use relative cardinal directions: looking north,
west,
east,
back west,
looking southwest,
And five minutes later . . . looking west,
west,
and east. That’s Brooklyn over on the far side.
And . . . while staying in the channels, you could get to a Manhattan dock in less than 20 minutes from our initial photo.
Here’s a chart view and here’s
more context. See the two green diamonds at lower left of this image? The lower of the two is Teal Bulker, which you saw above. The blue diamond down there is a NYWaterways boat, just 17 minutes from Pier 11. And just north of the complex is a beach that might hint at what sixth boro coastlines once were.
All photos by Will Van Dorp. Oh, and that clue intended to distract, here it is, and it has nothing to do with Thanksgiving.
On a personal note, I’d like to thank all of you for reading tugster and contributing in so many ways. To everyone that I’ve crossed paths with in the past year and the foregone 2950+ posts, thank you.
Happy Thanksgiving today and every day. Life is precious and unpredictable.
Any guesses as to location? And might this be a mark by the assistant to a time traveler from the future? And was he silent sidekick to Luke the spook?
The bridge still looks familiar to someone from the 1930s, although I’d love to see photos of Shooters from then, and
of course the bridge is getting unfamiliar.
GHP&W 25 is not far from the cliffs, so it’s clearly sixth boro. By the way, I miss seeing the cliffs’ perspective like here and here.
Ellen McAllister and Specialist way in the distance are familiar, as
is Port Elizabeth, so
no doubt about it, this is Mariner’s Harbor . . . stern to Richmond Terrace, the mark in the foreground with Capt. Willie Landers in the middle and Maersk Denver over in Port Elizabeth.
All photos here by Will Van Dorp.
Related: Is this the story of Capt. Willie Landers’ namesake?
I may need some correction here, but it appears Boothbay Harbor is an entity different than Boothbay, and there’s an East and West Boothbay as well. It’s sort of like the Hamptons in NY and the Oranges in NJ, I suppose. Anyhow, I saw the scene below in Boothbay harbor and I realized I’d located one of the things I was seeking. So the connection is the gray/white/red pinky schooner at the end of the wharf:
It’s Ardelle in Boothbay. I’d seen Ardelle before here in one of my favorite places . . . Essex, MA, home of Lettie G. Howard and many other boats.
The connection is that the person who built Ardelle and others would be–is–an excellent choice to work on . . .
the hauled out Ernestina. Watch the short video at that link if you have a minute and a half to spare.
I was just a visitor, so I left the crew alone.
The quicker the work’s done, the quicker it gets
back here to its empty dock at the New Bedford State Pier. But again, I digress.
A few miles to the east of Boothbay Harbor is East Boothbay, home of Washburn & Doughty, but also Hodgdon Yachts, who went from wooden fishing boats to world-class yachts like Asolare, below.
Monitor, below, is an aptly-named state-owned Department of Marine Resources vessel, passing here near Ram Island Light.
And here I really digress, but seeing isolated lighthouses like this reminds me of the stories I heard long ago of William H. Wincapaw, also known as Flying Santa.
All photos, digressions, and faux-pas by Will Van Dorp.
If you want to share photos of a gunkhole, harbor, port, or wharf before the end of this month, send me an email. This was GHP&W 24.
Click here for many more posts I’ve done with some connection to the Boothbays.
Let’s go farther south–i.e., up the Elizabeth. Covered barge . . .
pushed by Gram-Me. Coal?
Capt. Woody and Alexis of w3marine have the best logo. See it better here. Fleetmate Ocean Endeavor was in yesterday’s post.
Lorette is one of two Norfolk tugs that used to be Moran boats.
As you can see by the livery, Ellie J is also a Norfolk tug, but although
similar, Stevens Towing’s Island Express is not.
Here’s a small portion of McAllister Virginia‘s fleet: Nancy and Eileen. The last time I saw Eileen she was returning a Staten Island ferry post rehab.
Vulcan construction has its logo on a number of tugs here, including Arapaho,
Aries,
Capt. Ron L, and
VMC Chattanooga.
Alexander Duff is a Vane tug.
Kodiak, here I think leaving the soybean depot– used to be Vane’s Capt. Russi.
Kodiak has been in the sixth boro on a few occasions. Here’s more of her current fleet: Maverick, ?Southern Star?, and Challenger.
Hoss, like the boats immediately above is also an Intracoastal Marine boat. Hoss is a close relative via Wiley Manufacturing of the sixth boro’s Patricia. Sun Merchant, which I saw here in Savannah, is a Vane boat.
Corman Marine’s Captain Mac is yet another tugboat in the Elizabeth owned by a construction company.
Camie and Cajun look alike but may be owned by Robbins Maritime and Bay Transportation, respectively.
Three Sisters seems to be owned by a family-oriented company called Smith Brothers.
Elizabeth Ann, operated by Atlantic Gulf Towing, used to be known as El Hippo Grande, a truly satisfactory name for a workboat.
And finally, we seem to have two Skanska-owned boats, Ranger and
Cap’n Ed.
All photos here by Will Van Dorp, who imagined there’d be only about 10 photos in this post about a short section of the waterway in the Norfolk/Portsmouth VA area. For the entirely delightful travel through the area, I am very grateful to the USMMA Sailing Foundation.
A request, though. Over by the Norfolk Dredging yard, I saw their small tug Palmyra through the trees and could not get a good shot. Has anyone taken one over the years? If so, could you share it on this blog? Send me an email, please.
Finally, some of you got an earlier version of this last night when I pushed the wrong button. Sorry about that. I could give other reasons for that error, but it was a slip and I had not intended you to think I had started using placeholder gibberish as captions.
Cheers.
It’s still November 2015, so for me, it’s day 22 of this focus.
Let’s head south again from Hampton Roads, where a lineup of MSC vessels includes a supply vessel called Supply.
I guess this would be a small Navy yard tug. Click here (and scroll) to see a variant with roll bars. Here it closes the security gate after a Moran tug has come inside.
More security is provided by WPB-87329 Cochito.
In order from near to far on this foggy day are LSD-46 Tortuga, DDG-103 Truxton, and USNS T-AH-20 Comfort.
Emily Anne McAllister (2003) waits at the Norfolk International Terminals.
And there’s a long list of commercial tugboats, more than I want to squeeze into this post. So let’s start with Ocean Endeavor (1966),
Night Hawk (1981),
Dauntless II (1953),
Choptank (2006),
Payton Grace Moran (2015),
Goose Creek (1981), and finally for now
Steven McAllister (1963).
All foggy/rainy photos above by Will Van Dorp.
One of these days we’ll meander farther south on the Elizabeth River aka ICW. In the meantime, if you have photos of work vessels from any port huge or tiny, get in touch; there are still a few days of November left.
And since we’re a week or so from December, my idea for next month’s collaboration is “antique/classic” workboats, functioning or wrecked. Of course, a definition for that category is impossible. For example, NewYorkBoater says this: “The definition of an antique boat according to Antique and Classic Boating Society is a boat built between 1919 and 1942. A classic was built between 1943 and 1975 and the term contemporary, are boats built from 1976 and on.” Hmm . . . what do you call an old vessel built before 1919 . . . a restoration project? antediluvian?
If you take another transportation sector–automobiles, you get another definition: 25 years old or more. And for the great race, here were the rules for this year: “Vehicle entries must have been manufactured in 1972 or before.” Next year’s cut-off will likely be 1973.
So my flexible definition is . . . photo should have been taken in 1999 or before, by you or of you or a family member, and in the case of a wreck, probably identifiable. Exception . . . it could be a boat built before . . . say . . . 1965.
Let’s start at the sixth boro’s own Kearny Point. Federal Ship Building & Dry Dock used to be there. On December 1, 1943, a time when that place was turning out a vessel a week or so, hull #303 was delivered as USS Stern, DE-187. After eight years as a USN vessel, she was transferred to the Netherlands as F-811, HNLMS Van Zijll, her identity until 1967 when she was returned to the US and scrapped.
John van der Doe, frequent contributor on this blog, sailed on F-811 around the world in 1954–55, as he says “employed with the US Naval Task-force Pacific fleet 4 or 6 (forgot the number) during the Korean war.”
Port Said, 1954, north entrance to the Suez Canal. The large statue shows Ferdinand de Lesseps. A few years later, the statue was dynamited as celebration of the nationalization of the Canal.
Aden, stop for bunkers.
Hong Kong, awaiting orders.
Yokosuka, Japan, here and
here. That background landscape is still recognizable today.
Papeete.
Click here for some more of that era.
Pacific side of the Panama Canal, now 1955.
Original “mule” style. Click here (and scroll) for photos of the mules from 2012. I wonder what the next generation will be.
And here’s a photo of the Kearny-built vessel taking on stores in Ponta Delgada, Azores.
Later, Jan took this photo in then-Leningrad. I believe that’s St. Isaac’s Cathedral.
Many thanks to Jan for these photos from long ago and faraway.
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