All photos and sentiments, WVD, who thanks you for reading this, especially today, the 14th anniversary of this blog, which began here over 4700 posts ago. Since then, you all have made over 13, 400 comments. Comments are always welcome. Thank you.
And since it is Thanksgiving, here’s a Thanksgiving story from Thanksgiving Day 1952 and a photo with at least three people on the boro from 21 years later of the boat that almost burned, Dalzellera.
“During 1952 and 1953, the Dalzell Towing Co. was completing the diesel conversion of their “new” Dalzellera, which was formerly the Central RR of NJ (CRRNJ) tug Bethlehem, a steam tug built around 1915. It was Thanksgiving Day, November 27, 1952, and there weren’t many people at the Dalzell yard just west of the Bayonne Bridge on the Kills as my uncle, Bob Munoz, pulled into the yard on a tug, possibly the Dalzellaird. He pulled alongside the Dalzellera and tied up the boat. As he crossed over to the Dalzellera to go ashore he noticed that there appeared to be extreme heat coming from the galley at the after end of the house. The boat was all locked up for the long holiday weekend, but with some help Bob found some tools and broke the padlock off the hatch door. Upon entering the extremely hot galley, he realized that the galley stove was inadvertently left on and set for maximum heat. He immediately shut it down and ventilated the galley. It appeared that the stove was being used to keep the workers warm that were finishing up the tug and preparing her for service, but forgot to turn off the stove before leaving for the long holiday weekend.
However, when the yard staff returned back to work on Monday morning, he caught hell for breaking the lock on the hatch; that is until he told his story about preventing their “new” boat from catching fire before she even docked her first ship.
Shortly after this incident, Bob worked on this boat as mate and captain for about 12 years.
Photo by Steve Munoz, who sent along the story.
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