My approach to reporting on the archives so far has been to sort the images there, as you noticed if you’ve been following along.
This follows a different tack: a set of photos I wasn’t sure where to sort. First, a July 1920 photo showing excursion steamer Ossian Bedell and steamer/barge Saratoga in Buffalo Dry Dock on Ganson Street. The 1901 Ossian Bedell was named for its owner, operated between Buffalo and Grand Island, where Bedell had a hotel. More information on its ownership changes can be found here.
Saratoga, according to Benson is described as follows: “Saratoga was the first of the USRA steamers built at Erie, Pa. by Dravo. She carried a crew of twelve in freight service, a homeport of Baltimore, Md, 400 hp, and a tonnage of 272 gross and 152 net. Her dimensions were 147.5′ x 20.1′ x 10.5′ Her first owner was the USRA, followed by the New York Canal and Great Lakes Corp. in June 1921.
William P. Palmer, 1910 to 1978, was a steel laker loading sugar here from a canal steamer and her consort barge. Presumably, Palmer would then take that sugar elsewhere on the Great Lakes, and that it would have arrived by sea from the sugar lands, and in NYC, it was transshipped to these unnamed canal boats.
The large tug here is GLDD’s H. A. Meldrum; working alongside are John Pearce and a third unidentified tugboat. Meldrum was a 70′ x 20′ wooden tug built in Buffalo in 1899; eventually she made her way to the sixth boro, sinking in Barnegat Inlet in March 1970.
GLDD currently has a cutterhead suction dredge New York, but this is likely not it. Judging by the bollards and lamppost design, this was along the Barge Canal, but I can’t quite place the geography. The date must be in the 1930s, given the automobile to the right.
Here’s a closer up of the center of the photo, showing the string of barges being towed. Dog of New York is a classic name.
Supreme was a 1931 Sparrows Point MD tanker built for Gulf Refining. She was 212′ x 37′ and propelled by a total of 700 hp.
She appears to be eastbound shown here departing lock E-23. In 1960, she was renamed Pacific, and in 1970, she was scrapped. I know that names are just names, but I’d love to know if she ever transited the big canal into the Pacific.
I’ve no information on what is identified as steam tug V. R. Baldwin, headed northbound here in Albany with seven barges. I love the carved eagle atop its wheelhouse.
All photos used courtesy of the Canal Society of New York. Any errors . . . WVD.
tugster: a waterblog 
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March 25, 2022 at 1:45 pm
Bob
The anchors on the Supreme look way too large for the ship, especially if it spent most of its time in the canal.
March 25, 2022 at 4:19 pm
William Lafferty
The Saratoga did migrate to the New York Canal and Great Lakes Corporation with a brief and unusual interlude owned by the Virgin Islands Transportation Company, St. Thomas, 1926-1928. There must be a story there. It was sold to Blue New Transportation Company of Wilmington, Delaware, in 1933 and cut down to a barge. It foundered in heavy weather on the Delaware River off Bowers Beach on 14 November 1935 carrying 223 tons of coal.
The William P. Palmer arrived at Buffalo from the Atlantic coast on 19 June 1921 after sailing for the Southern Steamship Company of New York for the previous dozen years. Built at Cleveland in 1900, it left the lakes in 1909. It is quite possible that it also brought sugar to New York for carriage on the canal before in that trade. The Palmer grounded hard at Fairport, 17 November 1936, and after survey was dismantled the next year not far where from where it is shown in the photograph.
Your unknown tug with the Meldrum is the John Perew of Buffalo’s White Star Tug line, owned by Capt. Joseph Blake, named for a fellow Buffalo mariner, built by Hingston & Son, launched May 1900. Hingston built the Meldrum the previous year. It lasted a long time, dismantled at Buffalo in 1949.
The dredge is GLD&DCo’s New York, built at Buffalo in 1904 and rebuilt as a hydraulic dredge in 1909, dismantled at, I think, Chicago in 1953.
I think your Baldwin is the Wm. H. Baldwin, built 1901 at New Baltimore, New York, by Baldwin and would have been owned by the Cornell Steam Boat Company on that date. It was abandoned in 1943.
As for the anchors on the Supreme, it was built for Gulf to transport refined petroleum, mostly gasoline, from its Toledo and Cleveland refineries to ports on Lakes Michigan and Erie, primarily, during the warmer months and winters from Staten Island to points on Long Island Sound and as far north as Boston, mostly heating oil. It would need substantial anchors for those services. The Pacific was dismantled in 1970.
March 26, 2022 at 8:30 am
tugster
William– your comments here are invaluable. Thabnk you. Will