Call this “thanks to Steve Munoz 20:  the 9th Annual North River Tugboat Race September 2, 2001.”   As Steve writes,  “The tug race on 9/2/2001 was  nine days before 9/11/2001. I was on board the tug Janet M McAllister for the race. My son was on board a Seabulk oil tanker docked in Bayonne and he could see the Twin Towers from his cabin porthole. As the tug headed up the Upper Bay I was going to take a picture of the Twin Towers and decided not to since I had so many already. Little did I, or anyone else, know that they would not exist nine days later. I wish I had taken a picture.

[Participating] include tugs McAllister Bros, Janet M McAllister, Empire State, J George Betz, Mary L McAllister, Irish Sea, Dory Barker, Powhatan, Dace Reinauer, Beaufort Sea, Resolute, Growler, Z-TWO, Janice Ann Reinauer, Katherine, Amy C McAllister, James Turecamo, Kathleen Turecamo, Emil P Johannsen;  also, includes fireboats John D McKean, John J Harvey.

I’ll not identify all the boats here.  As you know, some of these boats, like Dace Reinauer, look quite different now. Also, many boats here, like Janet D. McAllister and Powhatan,  are no longer in the sixth boro,

Z-Two is now Erin McAllister, and in Providence RI.

Emil P. Johannsen is laid up, I believe,

in Verplanck NY.

 

Beaufort Sea has been scrapped.

There were tugboats to port and

tugboats PLUS a fireboat to starboard.  Two things here:  I love the water thrusters deployed from Z-Two.  And Powhatan is now a commissioned Turkish naval vessel known as TCG Inebolu;  as such it was involved a month ago in the tow of a Bangladeshi corvette, BNS Bijoy, which had been damaged in the explosion in Beirut harbor.

 

 

 

Again, many thanks to Steve Munoz for taking us back to September 2, 2001 with these photos.

A different series of tugboat races happened decades earlier, as attested here.  An indicator of how different the world then was is the fact that back then, a rowing contest was included, and crews of ships in port took part.  Those days of break-bulk cargo had ships in port for much longer periods of time,  and “port” included places along the Hudson.