Government Tugs Barge Canal 1

I’ve seen this image printed and framed somewhere . . . in a lower Mohawk town, but I don’t remember where.  The lines are quite similar to those of Urger. As to Schenectady she was ex-Buffalo, George W. Aldridge, and City of Schenectady. Around 1910 the name was shortened to just Schenectady.   Per her state description card, she was 50′ x 15.4′ x 5.9′ tug, crewed by three.   By 1924 she was back in Buffalo doing commercial work. The last mention of Barge Canal work is 1922. 

For anyone who can colorize this, I wonder what the color scheme was.  As to the quayside scene, I gather this is what the Waterford canalside buildings looked like in 1915.

Below is the view of Schenectady from canal side as shown above.  Beyond the Fourth Street bridge, that’s E-2, the first lock of the Flight of Five, numbered 2 through 6.  Yes, that can be confusing.

Here’s the view from the Fourth Street bridge above, with a lot of cargo barges waiting their chance to transit.  And the two men atop the wheelhouse appear to be operating a motion picture camera on a tripod, no doubt filming their and possibly others’ passage through the flight.  That tells me Schenectady was working as a press boat here, not the attraction.

This photo begs the following question:  Which larger boat and smaller motor launch are those in the lower right hand side of the photo?   Double click on this link from the NYS Archives Digital Collections to learn what dignitaries were on the unidentified and very crowded boat partly obscured lower right.  The small motor  launch might be NYS Police, which had been created only a month before by the Governor, who happens to be on the crowded boat below.  It’s hard to overstate the importance of May 15, 1915 for NYS politics and Barge Canal history.

Wouldn’t this be lock E-4, white ink captioning notwithstanding?  Adjacent to lock E-3 westbound, there’s a dry dock.  And it’s been a couple years, might I be remembering this wrong?

And below is a different state boat farther west and at lock E-12,  tug Buffalo, built in 1923 as a steam tug, westbound here with some heaping cargo on a deck barge. Could that be trash?  If so, where might it be headed?  Notive the crewman on the barge about midships?  In 1948 she was sold to a private company. Currently she has a 1931 Cooper-Bessemer diesel engine which ran in 2010.  Before 2017, when she was  sold  to Buffalo interests, tug Buffalo was a fixture at the Waterford Tugboat RoundUps, as captured here by Fred Tug44 at the 2010 Round Up.  I don’t know its current disposition.

Many thanks to the Canal Society of New York for letting me wander through these archives and post my best information.  Any additions/corrections are welcomed.