Really Random Tugs 34

To close out April, here (and at the end of this post) a photo of Grouper in Lyons a few weeks ago before the Canal was brought up to level and opened for traffic.  Thanks to Bob Stopper.

How lucky can some people get!?@#!  Bowsprite caught this photo last fall as she was leaving New London harbor.  The tugboat is John P. Wronowski.

From Maraki, it’s Heidi eastbound past cow pastures and

fleetmate Rikki S westbound.

How’s this for an unnamed push boat . . . the one that moves

Martha Lewis when needed, and when no longer needed because the skipjack is under sail, just gets hauled up on davits.    I guess technically this prime mover is not a tugboat, she is a push boat.   Here’s a youtube of Martha Lewis getting trucked away, sans push boat, for repairs.  Anyone have updates on her getting into the water this season?  Click here (and scroll) for a photo of Silk, the push boat dedicated to skipjack Stanley Norman.

And from my visit to Chelsea Creek last week, here’s another shot of (for me) the unidentified small tug, and

in gloucester, it’s  Mikey D with Horizon looking over the stern.

Closing this post out, it’s looking eastbound across Grouper‘s bow.  I’ve said it for years and will say it again, I hope some one takes this project on.

 

Thanks to Bob, bowsprite, and Maraki for these photos of really random aka sundry set of tugboats.

Thanks to Barrel 7

Barrel is the pseudonym (nom de blog?) of a gentleman who worked with the USACE for many years in the Philadelphia area.  Click here for the RTC yard history.

Click here for info on the tugboat Interstate.  Can anyone add any info to that?

According to barrel, the YTB here is functioning as a fender between USACE Comber and another vessel. Comber was built in Pascagoula in 1947. 

Any guesses on the Moran tug here?  It’s standing by after a collision between passenger vessel Santa Rosa and tanker Valchem, whose stack is perched on Santa Rosa‘s bow.

Below is a photo of Valchem sans stack and displaying impact point. Click here for some info on the collision.

Now these next three boats leave me somewhat confused.

Were they sold foreign?  Here’s a reference to a hull #504 and 505 built at Marietta Mfc. in Pt. Pleasant, WV.

 

And the last of the push boats for today, it’s Mateur.  Well, it was called that, before it became push boat Effie Afton and then a restaurant called Jumers.  Is she still there and serving food and fun?  Maybe I need to schedule a gallivant to Rock Island.

So let’s end with a vessel I’m more familiar with . . . Pilot, currently up the Hudson a ways from the sixth boro.

And here’s Pilot, showing her to scale with her workmates.

Many thanks to barrel, who sends me these and other puzzles, stumpers, and conundrums.

Up the Last Creek

Uh . .  any guesses which creek that might be?

 

It’s still the sleek lines of the GUP carrier once so familiar to folks paying attention to sixth boro traffic.

Newtown Creek is now going up a waterway for the last time and what a waterway this is.  From here, she’ll be further

dismantled before she’s gently laid to the sea bottom for aquatic growth and diver’s enjoyment.  Atlas is likely the one from 1985 shown here (and scroll).

Many thanks to Mike Hatami for sending these photos along.

For some news from the Miami River, click here.  For two stories about a vessel on that River, click here and here.  With the latter, you’ll need to translate the Spanish.

Unrelated and sent along by barrel, an interesting “second life” conversion here, although I believe the headline was written by someone who does not know a container ship from an OSV, maybe not a creek from a brook.

 

Road Fotos 36

Here are the previous ones.

One of the joys of driving is the serendipity–even if guided . . . thanks, GT–of noticing the entirely unexpected, like the device below.  Any ideas?  If GT hadn’t mentioned this, I probably would not have thought twice about this weathered industrial object.  And it’s for sale.  For the right price, it can be on your boat.

A clue is that the device above is located geographically between the tin building below and Boston, where this road trip ends.   The tin building is Gallery 53 on Rocky Neck.  I’m guessing it once had a seafood related purpose.

A bit down the coast is Salem.  The brick building with cupola in the distance is the old Custom House, where Nathaniel Hawthorne once worked.

I had forgotten that this replica is Hudson River built. There was a trade with China already 200 years ago.

 

I’ll have to come back to the North Shore when all these vessels–Adventure, Friendship, and Fame–are sailing.

 

Continuing southward . . . we arrive in East Boston, and Jake.

Here’s another device on a rooftop.  Fiat Topolino?

If you know the area, you’ll guess I’ve been heading south on 1A, and now I’ve parked and am walking over the McArdelle Bridge.  Anyone know anything about that red vessel that looks a bit like Augie?

My tour of Luna recently is what lured me to this area around Chelsea Creek.  Here’s Luna resplendent.

Anyone know the story of JW Powell?

And the red and the white sailing vessels farthest from the camera here?

Over yonder is Aegean Sea, formerly of the seas of the sixth boro.

This bullnose will likely never again see the water.

And here we are at the end of this stretch of road . . . it’s Roxbury High Fort aka the Cochituate Standpipe.

So here we are . . . it’s a whistle from the SS United States!  Are there any developments in her refurbishing?  For some interior shots of her I took two years ago, click here.   Here are some other photos taken on the SS United States.

As to the particulars on the whistle, here’s what I learned this morning from SW:  “The whistle from the United States is a Leslie Tyfon, size 300DVE-5.  [Click on that link to hear one of these.]  It was purchased in 1986 by my uncle at auction I believe through Marine Technologies  Brokerage Corp. out of N.Y.   We have a letter of authenticity and it is currently for sale to the best offer.  Last recorded offer was $10,000.00.  We feel it is much more valuable.  It was on of three steam whistles from the forward stack of the ocean liner.  My uncle purchased the large forward whistle.  Thanks for your curiosity.”

All photos taken by Will Van Dorp.

Many thanks to GT for the heads up and to Steve for the info on whistle.

Port of Gloucester 2

Visiting Gloucester for me is always restorative.  Here are a few more photos I took Saturday and Sunday of

Artemis, 

Full Moon, 

and Adventure.  That’s a great sequence of names!

Last fall she was sailing with some food cargo here.  And if I had an editor, that editor would be unhappy, because yesterday I suggested I’d seen Adventure in Boothbay last October.  Mea culpa  . . . I saw Ernestina!  Click here for a fairly active blog with updates on the work on Ernestina.

Lady Jane and

Ardelle .  .  . have fishing origins.  Ardelle is of course the older design but a much newer boat, and I DID see her in Boothbay, off the stern of Ernrstina.

Ardelle touched the water in summer of 2011.  See some of her history here.

 

When I took these photos of other pinky schooners in Essex in November 2009, Ardelle existed (maybe) only in plans.

 

 

I’m not sure where Maine and Essex are today–maybe right here–but as much as I enjoy seeing hulls out of the water, I’d rather see them afloat and underway.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who has photos of yet another pinky tomorrow.

For more traditional vessels of Gloucester, see Paul’s post here.

Port of Gloucester 1

Way too many years ago I made a trip back to Gloucester, as posted about here.  So I went back this weekend, had long talks with a few people, but of course that means I didn’t see all the people I would have liked to.  And although putting up these photos seems like walking on a concrete slab before it’s set, here I go, premature or not.

It’s the old 1952 Blue Ocean alongside some newer yachts.  This is the transition in Gloucester.

Here’s looking south toward Rocky Neck.  From left, it’s lobster boat Blivy Fish, Fort Point, and Disch’s old Dredge No. 200.   Click here for a post I did in 2009 showing the No. 200 in the KVK.  After the company owner died, the Disch equipment was auctioned off to the four winds.  One of Disch’s small tugs is on the Lake Erie now.  Fort Point used to be Patrick J. Hunt.

Waiting to go back in soon are Irish Piper and UB88, whose story you can find here on the GMG site.  More on GMG a little later.

F. H. Lane used to paint this scene.  Near the left, you see Our Lady of the Good Voyage, but lower,  more left I see a pinky stern and some interesting vessels made to the prominent dock.  Adventure‘s returned from Boothbay, where I saw both the black-hulled schooner and the pinky here.  More on these tomorrow.

Here’s the reciprocal shot, showing the bow of Adventure, which has a 90th year gala coming up in less than a month,  and a closer-up of the old motor life boat.  Anyone tell anything about her?  I know someone who probably can. Here’s another set of rebuilds.

This mystery life boat looks quite original.

Here’s Wanderbird with a schooner tied alongside.  Unicorn?  If so, did she ever sell?  Is Wanderbird for sale?  Also there, Lisa Ann III and Full Moon.  Overkill‘s in there too.

This beauty aint telling, nothing.

Here’s some info on Ardelle.

And here’s the home base for many things in Gloucester, including lobsters and community.  Cheers, Joey C. and GMG . . . Good Morning Gloucester.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Back in 1987, I took a leave from work (nearby in Newburyport) one morning to see a large Soviet factory ship that had finally been granted permission for shore leave in Gloucester after working offshore for months.  Here’s an article about that time.  Does anyone have photos to share of that?  I recall the chill I got seeing the hammer and sickle on the stack as she was tied up behind Gortons. I didn’t carry a camera much back then.

Thanks to Barrel 6

Click here for previous photos that come here by way of barrel.  The September 1944 tug Wilmington

is now Kathy Lynn.

Dredge Hoffman was built in 1942 and

retired in 1983 . . . I guess that means scrapped.

Clatsop was launched in 1908, then called

Sandpilot, and was scrapped in 1950, before I was born.

Delano Deland was 1919 built, but was transferred to

the USAT and I’ve found no further trace.  Anyone have any ideas?

Many thanks to barrel, who’s sent me more photos like this, and I’ll get around to posting them.

 

Thanks to Xtian

Xtian has been sharing photos here for some time.  Now it turns out he and I were in the tiny dorp of Maassluis within days of each other earlier this month, as evidenced by his photo of Furie, which was in the same spot the day I visited here (and scroll).

I would never have guessed RPA 14 is 31 years old!  Xtian certainly caught the light right here.

Smit Ebro has been on this blog before, as in this post.

Equipment on Husky?Make your guesses and on Monday or so, I’ll explain.

Smit Cheetah and SD Seal . . . doing fire equipment training?

FairPlay 21 … in between Smit Panther 

and FairPlay 24 with still more Smit tugs in the foreground.

Here’s part of the Kotug fleet.  From left, it’s unidentified, RT Evolution, SD Rebel, and RT Adiaan.  Click on each of the three links previous to see how different those three tugs are.

Smit Hudson has been around since 2008.

Click here for the entire FairPlay list.

 

 

 

Many thanks to Xtian for these photos.

Polaris

This was the same morning as the photos in yesterday’s post.

Amy C McAllister was assisting Polaris out to sea, and passing Wavertree‘s wrought iron hull.  Click here for a record on articles about this unique survivor.

 

 

 

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

And since it’s Earth Day, here’s a post from five years ago called Earth on Water Day, especially appropriate since the vessel in the photos above is named for a star in the night sky.

Morning KVK 4

0633 . . . the other morning, a quarter hour after sunrise.

30 seconds later, at a different angle.

It’s really about light.

 

 

 

 

0832  The good light is gone.  Time to move on to something else.   But wait . .  are those the towers of the new Goethals Bridge along the right edge of the photo?

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.

And if you missed the new NY harbor dock book info yesterday, here it is again.  The author writes, “I decided to adapt his work into book form. I left the Martin Golden byline so he would get credit for his work. I think the old names on the docks are  best feature. Most of those terminals have gone the way of the dodo, but old timers can still be heard giving security calls at Standard Tank, Copper Docks and other places not there anymore.”

Unrelated:  Did anyone catch Kirsten Grace leaving the sixth boro this weekend?  Was she towing Newtown Creek to its new life?  As of this posting, Kirsten Grace is approaching Wilmington NC.