This is a singular image, a 1969 tugboat in a century-and-a-half-old graving dock in Brooklyn. Some of you maybe saw it on FB, but not everybody wades in FB waters. What makes this photo so powerful to me is such a combination of composition, subject matter, and light that different people will look at this and see not all the same things. Some might see beauty, and others defeat . . . or power, or fatigue, expense, challenge . . . . It strikes me as not unlike this Mark Twain passage on conflicting ways of seeing a river. And I’ll stop myself here.
Click here for a favorite I took of the 1969 YTB-803 Nanticoke, now Robert E. McAllister.
Thanks again to Donald Edwards for permission to use this exquisite photo.
And while we’re on a Mark Twain morning, at the end of this post is a clue to my summer/fall employment.
tugster: a waterblog 
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May 5, 2016 at 11:34 am
JED!
FABULOUS snap. I had the pleasure of working YTB803 NANTICOKE in her first life when stationed in Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, 1997-2000. LOVE the lines of a YTB. I’m forced to pause every time I get a good look.
May 5, 2016 at 4:05 pm
ws
This is hallowed ground from the Civil War.
-TWIC card required
-Building 92 is open to the public.
-Pretty soon the Cemetery on Williamsburg Street will be open too.
-It’s Too bad the Navy Yard Cocktail lounge is now a hipster coffee shop:
May 5, 2016 at 4:10 pm
Jim Gallant
Thanks, Will. You’re right, not EVERYBODY wades in FB waters, I’m one of those with dry feet! Thanks for being an outlet for those of us not on there.
May 5, 2016 at 4:50 pm
tugster
Sure, Jim. You have dry feet and often cleaner feet as a result of not wading there. On the other hand, FB is a resource as long as you stay disciplined.
May 5, 2016 at 5:07 pm
tugster
I’ve not been over there in a while: http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/35/4/dtg_gentrifynavycocktail_2012_02_03_bk.html
May 6, 2016 at 12:27 am
sfdi1947
Been in that ole rat hole a time or two! Broke a blade off the Starboard wheel down a B.A.T. thought the stern was going to jump ship, shared the hole with the Charlie Adams (1971) was an interesting two weeks.
Then in 2002 we paid a contractor for a bottom paint job. I think we poured 1000 gal. of coffee into those painters.
May 6, 2016 at 10:06 am
mageb
Did you say you were working on that tug or traveling for the summer on Seaborn.
Yes, there’s Peter Knego and his continual travels. You can read about them on Maritime Matters. He even randomly photographs the carpets.