Of course, there are little known gunkholes in the backwaters of the sixth boro where fossils–living and inert–float. This one is off an inlet behind one island and concealed by another, a place easily missed, and if seen, it gives the impression of being off limits by land and too shallow by water, near the deadly bayou of Bloomfield. But with the right conveyance and attitude, it’s feasible if you’re willing to probe. And the fossils have names like . . .
Caitlin Rose. I don’t know much, but built in Savannah GA in 1956? Relentless. She’s before my time here, but I suppose she’s the one built in Port Arthur TX in 1950.
I can’t make out all of the words here.
Ticonderoga is obviously playing possum. Only a month ago she doe-see-doed into the Kills with the ex-Pleon, the blue tug behind her,
a Jakobson from 1953.
Dauntless .. . built in Jakobson & Peterson of Brooklyn in 1936, was once Martha Moran.
From right to left here, Mike Azzolino was built for the USCG at Ira S. Bushey & Sons and commissioned as WYTM-72 Yankton in 1944. Moving to the left, it’s Charles Oxman . . .
was built by Pusey & Jones in 1940 and originally called H. S. Falk., and looked like this below, which explains the unusual wheelhouse today. She seems to have come out of that same search for new direction as David, from a post here a year ago.
The photo above I took from this tribute page.
The small tug off Oxman‘s starboard, i don’t know.
The low slung tug that dominates the photo here is Erica, and beyond here is a Crow.
Someone help me out here?
And as far into this gunkhole as I dared to venture . . . this one is nameless.
Oh the stories that could be told here! I hope someone can and will. Balladeers like Gordon Lightfoot could memorialize these wrecks in a song like “Ghosts of Cape Horn,” which inspired a tugster post here years ago. And looking at the last photo in that old post, I see Wavertree, which leads me to this art- and detail-rich site I don’t recall having seen before.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
tugster: a waterblog 
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September 30, 2016 at 11:34 am
JED!
Chelsea creek off AK?
September 30, 2016 at 11:55 am
tugster
Yessir.
September 30, 2016 at 11:51 am
bowsprite
wow, Historia y Arqueología Marítima’s write up is so impressive and thorough.
September 30, 2016 at 11:55 am
tugster
yes mam.
September 30, 2016 at 1:18 pm
William Lafferty
This is one of your best posts ever, Will. What great finds.
Caitlin Rose was built in 1956 as the Capt. DeYoung by Diamond Manufacturing Co., Inc., a subsidiary of for whom the tug was built, the B. F. Diamond Co. of Savannah, one of four identical sisters. It was sold to Miami owners in the late 1970s and eventually became Capt. Bill in 1995. It showed up in Brooklyn as Caitlin Rose in 1999 and owned by the Harriman Corp. subsidiary Blandford Land Development Corp. (your mysterious funnel marking). I think it left documentation in 2012.
Relentless was built as Esso Tug No. 9 by Gulfport Shipbuilding & Drydock Co., Port Arthur, Texas, for obvious owners, pushed by a war surplus 12-278A Cleveland Diesel. It stayed with Esso and its inheritors, renamed Esso Vermont in 1955, Vermont in 1966, Phoenix in 1967, Anna Mae in 1982, and Relentless in 1998, last owned by United Newport Associates, Inc., of Staten island. It left documentation 31 December 2005.
Your mystery was launched 28 October 1939 as Jane at Wilmington, Delaware, by Pusey & Jones for Curtis Bay Towing Co., Baltimore (same owners as the H. S. Falk), Ms. Jane Spiegelhalter, daughter of the shipyard’s president. The Jane are her sister, Marion, were delivered in December 1939 and made history as the first vessels designed to use as original equipment that new-fangled Kort Nozzle propulsion system along with a specially designed hull based on principles put forth by Russian Vladimir Yourkevitch (who designed the Normandie). Its engine was a 6-cylinder Enterprise (and may still be), rated at 320-bhp. I guess as such the vessel is rather historical. It was later Adam J., Erica (at Boston), and again Jane. It left documentation 31 May 2008, last owned by Island Barge, Inc, New Bedford, and was a very spiffy-looking vessel running for them well into the 2000s.
September 30, 2016 at 1:31 pm
Anonymous
Tug Relentless was last owned by United Pilots in the early 90s.Before that she was the Anna Mae Poling,Phoenix,Esso Vermont and the Esso # 9.While she was the Esso Vermont,she was involved in the collision between the Texaco Massachusetts and the Alva Cape in 1966.She burned up and the crew of 8 all perished.If you look close you can still see the buckled metal on her lower deck.
September 30, 2016 at 7:11 pm
eastriver
Superb, Will. Congrats.