This photo on FB “historic Erie Canal” group on December 4.   It appears to show a westbound vessel approaching Lockport on the Barge Canal, no date given, but the cars appear to be mostly late 1950s models, so it could be from the early 1960s. The Rebel is pushing a barge that looks to be a  tank barge lacking a manifold.  Maybe it’s a deck barge or a scow.  A photo from the bow would be helpful.   There’s also a derrick that I thought was along the portside of the barge.  All the tanks on The Rebel confused me. 

Groupsourcing resulted in this fantastic identification from William Lafferty:  “It was a former YSD-11 class seaplane wrecking derrick for the Navy, YSD-28.  It was built at the Charleston Navy yard in 1942.  It was sold in the early 1961 to King & Doan, Inc., of Georgetown, Delaware, and converted to what we see here.  King & Doan was a dredging concern.  The tanks hold lubricating oil and fuel for the dredging outfit, I suspect.  It was sold in 1971 and went to New Orleans for a couple of owners.  Seems to have passed out in the mid-1980s.”

My conclusion then is that this was King & Doan’s trip through the Barge Canal to a dredging operation somewhere on the Great Lakes, maybe a Great Lakes port, possibly in 1961 or 1962.   Googling King & Doan,  I come up with one of my own photos and more context. 

Click on the photos below to get their original source. Photos there include one attributed to frequent tugster-contributor George Schneider. 

 

 

This last one comes from William Lafferty. 

Adding to these connections, George Schneider sent along this photo (scroll) of Raccoon, a USACE debris collector that works in the Bay area.  You may recall the the sixth boro has its own USACE debris collector, Driftmaster, launched 1947, a different design that must surely have been influenced byYSDs.

Unrelated to this post, but to OPP 91 (scroll) and tug Thomas (Weeks) in the Netherlands on a RT from/to Ascension Island.  A Youtube channel I follow recently added a 17-minute video called “Unloading Stone at Ascension Island.”  It tells a different part of a magazine article I did last year here.  

If you enjoy “Unloading Stone,” give Joe Franta a like!