My trickster truckster hopper is filling and will dump one of these days soon, but this photo fits better in the “seats” category.

But to put this back on the water, here’s the power seat on ex-Catherine Turecamo now John Marshall.  I’d love to see this vessel in her current colors and working in her current environment . . . the tri-state ports along southern Lake Michigan.  I wonder if this is the original 1972 seat.  For the photo, thanks to Mike Fiedler, who also sent along this photo of the helm seat for Lake Express here (scroll).

Here she was in the East River in 2008.

To take on a Peacemaker with a 50-horse Boston Whaler look-alike, your seat must provide a sense of power.

Now this is a well-appointed seat of power, currently a training seat for other seats of power.  It’s Pentagoet (1980), platform for tug and barge skills acquisition at Maine Maritime.

Can you identify this seat of power?  The exterior colors could be a giveaway.

The “sticks” move the rudders on Grand Erie, flagship of the Canal Corp, former Mississippi River system Corps of Engineers pusher tug.

Any ideas of this?  I’ll call it the mystery seat until the end of this post.

Here’s a clue:  those are my shoes and below the seat is a glass floor.

Here is the locus of power award Fournier Tractor (1984), which currently works mostly in Penobscot Bay.  I took these other photos of the Maine boats here almost five years ago.

And the last seat of power comes from George Schneider.  Orange is the color of Edison Chouest.  George writes:  “It was 2011, and I was sent out on the ROV support ship MAX CHOUEST while they did an ROV survey of the wreckage of the DEEPWATER HORIZON.  The MAX, of course, is dynamically positioned, and so the operator needs to have all the DP displays nearby, plus controls to tell the system how to maneuver the vessel.  But being a workboat, it needs to be able to operate forward (in transit) or aft (when doing industrial work).  So the controls move with the operator, and the “Cyber Chair” slides fore and aft within the bridge as well as swiveling.  The whole concept was completely overwhelming to me.”

Thanks to Mike and George.  All other photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s planning at least one more “seats of power” post, so if you have photos of a bridge/helm/wheelhouse seat, please send it along.

Oh, the mystery seat . . . was in a dockside gantry crane operator cabin.