Tony A sent these first three photos. What are they?
Here’s the answer. I like the statement . . the last one above water! I wonder what else you can say that about. Whalebacks have come and gone, except this one. Click here for a historical essay on whalebacks that makes an unexpected connection to Franklin D. Roosevelt. If your appetite is whetted, here’s another. As the the connection between this style and x-bows, click here.
Click here to see El Cheapo’s 4-minute video on whalebacks, including one that served as a passenger vessel.
Frisia Inn, which was in and out of the sixth boro a week or so ago, is not a whaleback,
but the bow shares some design features.
It has the same bow as CSAV Rio de Janiero, Conrad S, and others.
Turtle back?
For a number of great vintage whaleback images, click here for portions of Neel R. Zoss‘ book, McDougall’s Great Lakes Whalebacks, including a whaleback automobile carrier called . . . South Park.
Many thanks to Tony for the actual whaleback photos. For a good closing story on a whaleback whose remnants lie 400 feet below the surface of the GOM, click here. That whaleback, SS City of Everett, would tow barges and its Captain Thomas Fenlon claimed it could have saved RMS Republic from sinking, offers to do so having been refused by the RMS Republic’s captain.
tugster: a waterblog 
5 comments
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May 16, 2016 at 5:37 pm
Jim Gallant
Thanks for the Whaleback links, Will – I’ve always found them to be a completely fascinating design. No big suprise about the fact FDR’s father brought him to that launching, or even that he got close enough to the action to get into big trouble; nearly all of the Roosevelts were hopeles boat and ship fanatics for several generations. In fact, five members of the extended Roosevelt clan ending up serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, including future President Teddy Roosevelt (1897-1898; under President McKinley prior to Teddy’s Rough Riders campaign in the Spanish-American War), and Franklin himself (serving from 1913-1920).
May 16, 2016 at 5:40 pm
glen
I believe the whole point of “whaleback” is to shed water. At least that is the function of the “whaleback” cabins on my retired uscg 36ft Motor Lifeboat and wasn’t Meteor one of the very early oil tankers??? Keep on shedding!!
May 16, 2016 at 6:53 pm
tugster
given that function, you’d think they’d call it a “duck’s back”
May 17, 2016 at 6:01 am
Daniel Meeter
Will, I can’t help noticing you went from Walvis Baai to whalebacks. Coincidental?
May 17, 2016 at 6:37 am
tugster
AND from Port of Cuxhaven, Germany to Walvis Bay, so-named by the German colonizers. coincidence, insofaras my rational mind knows, yes.