You are currently browsing the monthly archive for August 2021.
Some of these photos are from late August 2021, and others are from August 2011, and many of you can tell the difference.
Above that’s Meredith C. Reinauer, and below . . . Tasman Sea.
And this is Teresa with her hot oil barge Acadia.
Following Tasman Sea, that’s Jane A. Bouchard.
And that’s it. All photos, WVD.
The photos with Tasman Sea and Jane A. Bouchard are from a decade ago. The last I knew, Tasman is tied up at a dock in Houma, LA. Jane A. is part of the Bouchard fleet tied up in Staten Island, awaiting sale. Seeing the skyline of lower Manhattan might have been a clue. More on that in posts in the next week or so . . .
Teresa has been one of my unicorns . . . and this is the first time this 1999 tug and barge have appeared on this blog, to the best of my memory. And Meredith C. is, IMHO, a beautiful tugboat.
Welcome back from Summer Sea Term this year. An FDNY boat provided a water display welcome on the far side of Governors Island, but my vantage point, as suggested by a SUNY grad, was Brooklyn Heights. This was the view from the Esplanade and Pierrepont. To see my perspective on previous occasions, click on the tag above. From the Heights, the overcast and almost precipitating morning dimmed the many gantry cranes in the distant port.
When she was delivered in 1962 as a break bulk freighter SS Oregon, she would have been typical of freighters on the high seas. Since 1990, returning aboard from summer sea terms has been a rite of passage for thousands of SUNY grads. I hope I have my dates right; if not, I’m sure you’ll correct me.
Passing the ferry terminals at the tip of Manhattan must have looked quite different back 30 years ago; the sight from 100 years ago would have differed dramatically. . .
as would any FDNY or NYPD escort vessels.
Back then, in the foreground, there would be commercial activity and warehouses, not
parkland with
an ever-growing cover of urban forest
almost obscuring the training ship as it passes beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
Welcome back.
All photos, WVD, with thanks to Steve Munoz to try out this view.
Another training ship came through here just a week or so ago. Here are a few more from other maritime academies.
Random maybe but mostly Nord Summit appears here while lightering in the Upper Bay for about a week before heading upriver to Coeymans.
Obsidian was in the boro a bit, but has now headed for the Gulf port of Houston.
Foreshortening makes it appear these cranes would crash.
Had you noticed Emma Miller, little lube ship in the top photo?
Pacific Moonstone was in town a few weeks back and I’ve been waiting to use this photo.
It looks like Atlantic Salvor off the port side with a dump scow.
Now you know I had to include a tanker called Starman next to STI Brixton, and what I think is Andrea alongside.
All photos, no container ships, WVD.
She’s not young,
but if this info is to be believed, she’s 147′ x 50′ x
16′ max draft and powered by three engines totaling 16,500 hp
and can carry $829,321.70 of fuel at current NJ prices!!
!@#$ !@!!,
she’s a big vessel,
as an understatement.
she has much more than 16,500 hp attitude! And she’s unmistakably an Otto Candies boat, lines that can be seen in lots of former Candies boats.
I missed her in May when she brought in a dead ship, and I don’t know why she’s in town, but I’m glad I caught her.
All photos, WVD.
A similar vessel was featured in this post from 2014.
Hot to sweet . . . could have been a title too.
I hope obscure titles are not too off-putting, but I just realized that in late August 2019, I encountered Calusa Coast on the Cuyahoga while she was still on her contract to push liquid asphalt around the Inland Seas, aka the Great Lakes. To be liquid, asphalt needs to be over 250 degrees F, so that assist tug Cleveland here is close to some very hot liquid, safely enclosed in steel barge Delaware.
Two years ago, Calusa Coast and barge Delaware were nearing their contract.
Nine months ago, my friend Jack Ronalds caught the unit newly in salt water at the Strait of Canso. Earlier this week, I caught this unit, Calusa Coast pushing
sugar barge (technically, dry bulk barge) Jonathan up from coastal Florida to Yonkers.
That structure midships on Jonathan is a hatch crane.
As of this morning, they are still discharging at ASR, the sugar refinery. I’ve caught Jonathan and Sugar Express there on other occasions.
Come to think of it . . . Yonkers must be hot and sweet there now.
All photos, WVD.
This title means odds and ends . . . so this is a post that represents my clearing my decks, or rather desk or electronic folders.
Compare the two screen grabs below, first recreational boats filling the Sound but heading for safe haven in advance of Henri last weekend.
Monday morning . . . the same view. Of course, pre-AIS, small craft would do the same thing, just there’d be no trace of it.
Occasionally while looking at AIS, you might see a sub.
Might there be a portal in that location between Montauk and Block Island? If you see subs one day and Viking Starship another day, there may be cause for wonder . . ., and yes, I’m joking.
Any idea what these tracks are?
Above and below are tracks left by the same vessel, Ferdinand R. Hassler, a NOAA vessel used for hydrographic charting, among other tasks. Thanks to Hassler for reliable charts. I’ve yet to catch a photo of her.
Below is a photo from the 2014 Hudson River tugboat race, an event that will again not happen this year. The big gray tug is Anthony Wayne. A sister tug sold last week at auction for, as I recall just under $1.5 million. Anyone know who the winning bidder was?
And finally, excuse the backlit photos, down along the BAT side of the Upper Bay, this assemblage has been anchored. The tugboat is Ocean Tower, and she’s alongside
what looks to be a scow, a crane barge, and a crew boat. The barge with the landing platform
is Dutra’s Paula Lee. Anyone know where they’ll be working?
And while we’re doing all kinds of stories here, do you know “Bring Your Dreams,” aka BYD Motors? Well, they have a connection with a NYC port here and here. BYD . . . you know that’s just begging for parody, like the one about F. O. R. D. . . .
All photos, and odds and ends, chosen, WVD.
I knew TS Kennedy was in the Upper Bay, but I thought I’d just catch her at anchor. Then I saw a puff of smoke and
she came around and
met us on a parallel course.
I know this is a digression, but don’t these lifeboats look a bit like well-rounded automobile bodies?
I got these pics I could as we passed
backlit thought they were on a hazy day . . . .
The 1967-launched ex-Velma Lykes, ex-Cape Bon, ex-TS Enterprise was first converted to a training ship about 20 years ago.
My first surprise was the flag banner, although I remembered then that there had been this arrangement. General Rudder had been through the sixth boro about a month ago.
I got these photos mid-morning yesterday, and
later in the day, not quite sunset, I checked their location on AIS and had my next surprise . . .
they had raced eastward on the Sound and were nearly past Orient Point making 16 kts!
Happy training. This ship will be replaced in 2023….
All photos, WVD.
These two boats have a lot in common: built a year apart in the same shipyard and more.
Without being aboard, I’d say they were products of the same designed and may appear to be twins,
A surprising feature they share is the telescoping upper wheelhouse that
allows visibility when needed.
I say they appear to be twins, but if the tale of the tape is correct, Marjorie is about five feet longer, two feet skinnier, and a hundred horses more powerful.
Both were originally Exxon tugboats until the Exxon brand was removed from the boats after a certain large tanker had an unfortunate encounter with Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound.
That flexibility was no doubt a selling point for the design.
All photos, WVD.
Since we’ve had some extreme weather, how about a different type of extreme . . . with NYC DEP sludge tanker Red Hook approaching the unique Riverbank State Park, one of three state parks within Manhattan, the one with a wastewater treatment plant beneath it. I’ve just read that it’s now renamed the Denny Farrell State Park. Who knew . . . ?
Many thanks to Greg Hanchrow for these photos from a few winters back.
Daniel Meeter, frequent commenter on the blog and so much more, happened to overnight in Huron OH and caught these photos of Kristin Noelle shuffling some dredge equipment around.
I happened upon Huron OH here a few winters back . . .
Jonathan Steinman caught this photo of Atlantic Salvor returning to the sixth boro some time back; Jonathan used to send an occasional photo from the east side of Manhattan, but now he’s gotten really busy on the opposite side of the island. Of course, that’s the GW Bridge in the distance.
Need launch service for supplies or crew change on the upper Mississippi River? This launch can be trailered to the nearest boat ramp and then rendezvous with the client. This photo and the one below comes thanks to Trucker Tim.
Sharon Jon has spent its entire life–older than me by a decade–in the Duluth area; her days may now be done however.
My sister of the Maraki crew got these photos of Bradshaw McKee last week as it backed out of Grand Haven MI.
I’m surprised by this, since I thought that barge was now married to Prentiss Brown, but those two tugs have quite different superstructures, and this is unmistakably Bradshaw McKee. The barge, St. Marys Conquest, began life in Manitowoc WI as a tanker in 1937.
Many thanks to Greg, Daniel, Trucker Tim, Jonathan, and Lucy for these photos.
Today the sixth boro and environs face Henri, whose story is yet to be told. August 26, 2011 . . . I was at the Staten Island Ferry terminal, and these Hurricane Irene signs were up. When Irene’s story was told, it had done unusual damage upstate far from salt water; here’s more. Some repairs took until 2016 to complete. From here I took the ferry to Whitehall in Manhattan, and then over I walked to South Street Seaport, where I wanted to see storm preparations. See the story at the end of this post.
In late August 2011, I was documenting a slow decomposition, getting footage of what became a documentary film called Graves of Arthur Kill. Gary Kane was the producer; I was the director, or something. If you’ve not yet seen the documentary, you can order it by clicking on the disintegrating wooden tugboat image along the left aside of this blog page. Some of the vessels in this post are discussed by multiple sources in the documentary. Keep in mind that these photos and the footage in the doc recorded these scenes a decade ago, almost to the day. Hurricanes, freezing and thawing, and just plain daily oxidation have ravaged these already decrepit vessels for another 10 years, so if you were to go to these exact locations, not an easy feat, you’d see a devolution.
I’m not going to re-identify all these boats–already done elsewhere and in the doc–except to say we saw a variety of boats like this tanker above and the WW2 submarine chaser alongside it.
Other WW2 vessels repurposed for post-war civilian purposes are there. More were there but had been scrapped prior to 2011.
See the rust sprouting out from behind WW2 haze gray.
In the past decade, the steam stack on this coastal ferry has collapsed, and the top deck of the ferry to the right has squatted into the ooze below.
Some steel-hulled steam tugboats we never managed to identify much more than maybe attributing a name; they’d been here so long that no one remained alive who worked on them or wanted to talk about them.
We used a rowboat and had permission to film there, but the amount of decomposing metal and wood in the water made it nearly impossible to safely move through here. We never got out of the boat to climb onto any of these wrecks. That would be if not Russian roulette then possibly some other form of tempting fate.
Most emblematic of the boats there might be this boat, USS ATR-89, with its struggling, try-to-get-back-afloat stance. She was built in Manitowoc, WI, a town I’ve since frequently visited.
Wooden hulls, wooden superstructure . . . I’m surprised they’ve lasted as long as they have.
Since taking this photo in August 2011, I’ve learned a lot about this boat and its four sisters, one of whom is now called Day Peckinpaugh.
I’ve spent a lot of hours this month pulling together info on Day Peckinpaugh, launched as Interwaterways Line 101; the sister vessel above and below was launched in July 1921 in Duluth as Interwaterways Line 105. The ghost writing in the photo below says Michigan, the name she carried during the years she ran bulk caustic soda between the Michigan Alkali plant in Wyandotte MI and Jersey City NJ via the Erie Canal. Anyone local have photos of this vessel in the sixth boro or the Hudson River? I have a photo of her taken in 1947 transiting a lock in the NYS Canal system, but I’ll hold off on posting that for a few weeks when the stories come out. What you’re looking at above and below is the remnants of a vessel currently one century and one month old.
The Interwaterways Line boats were designed by Capt. Alexander McDougall, who also designed the whalebacks of the Great Lakes, like Meteor. Here‘s a whole blog devoted to McDougall’s whalebacks.
This ferry used to run between Newburgh and Beacon; on this day in August 2011, we just rowed our boat onto the auto deck.
At the beginning of this post I mentioned Hurricane Irene and going over to South Street Seaport Museum. Two of these vessels here have seen a lot of TLC$ in the past decade. That’s a good ending for now. Helen, with the McAllister stack, is still afloat and waiting.
All photos in August 2011, WVD.
A final sentiment on Graves of Arthur Kill . . . Gary Kane and I set out to document what was actually in this much-discussed boneyard; we wanted to name and show what existed, acknowledge what had existed but was already gone, and dispel some of the legends of this place. We were both very proud of the work and happy with this review in Wired magazine. If you still want to write a review, get in touch. It would be like writing a series review of Gilligan’s Island, but still a worthy exercise.
tugster: a waterblog 
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