Here are the previous posts in this series.  And here are the posts I’ve done earlier on the 1929 Ward’s Island, whose builder’s plate photo I took in October 2016.  I was told it was removed some time ago and is in a safe place.  Here was my first post on “Ward’s.”

As a baseline photo of the double-ender ferry entered a second life in 1937 as a derrick boat or “crane ship,” I offer this shot I took in Lyons in March 2018.  That’s snow in the foreground.

In one of her most notable roles, she assisted in the clean up near lock E-12 after the Thruway bridge collapsed into Schoharie Creek, an event I recall vividly because I traversed that bridge just the day before.

Note the bow prop.  I wonder if at one time it had a rudder, as

you see in this photo of the stern prop.

The rest of these photos come from Bob Stopper.  Notice the glass has been removed from the wheelhouse, but the flag still flies.

Little by little, its crane abilities are removed and placed alongside the dry dock.

 

Pulling the shafts proved complicated,

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but eventually the once crane ship looks more like a curvaceous barge.

Who knows whether these props will be reefed along with the ship . . . .?

 

A tug is expected to arrive in  Lyons imminently to move this vessel from central–almost western New York–to tidewater, then down the Hudson, and out to the designated reefing ground.

And in other news from Lyons, here’s who showed up late Tuesday afternoon . . . with some new signage on the stack and engine cover.  Compare with here from a month ago . . .