Lucy Reinauer, according to Birk’s site–has an interesting history, acquired by one of her owners from lottery winnings.
She came off the ways in 1973, from Jakobson, source of many older boats in the sixth boro.
Franklin is a few years older, built in Louisiana, and formerly called Ocean Tower and Matthew Tibbett‘s, both names now used on other boats.
Meredith C. Reinauer is a 7200 hp behemoth, here pushing
RTC 150.
All photos by Will Van Dorp
tugster: a waterblog 
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
March 14, 2017 at 6:30 pm
Richard Naruszewicz
I worked on her for 5 years when she was the Texaco Diesel Chief. We ran anywhere from St. John’s Canada to Texaco Port Arthur Texas and everywhere in between. She pushed the 160,000 barge Texaco 807. Originally Crude oil and #6 oil then switched over to clean oil. Morania had it for a little while also. She has a lot of history behind her.
August 2, 2017 at 6:37 pm
Bob
The tug Franklin was never the Ocean Tower. But the Mathew Tibbetts was the Ocean Tower then Franklin. Renamed Mathew Tibbetts when the current Franklin came out in the early 80s.