Retro Non-Sixth Boro 74

June 2014 began a memorable season for me:  I fought for unpaid leave from a career gone stale and stressful and took a seasonal job as deckhand on the NYS Canals system.  To the canal admin nomenclature, I was a “marine helper.”  In my mind, I was running away, joining the circus, skipping school, hitchhiking across the country or across the universe without a guide  . . . or stowing away on a whaling ship and then like Melville*, jumping overboard to swim to some unknown South Pacific island.   

Of course, to be honest, I’d grown up crisscrossing that very canal, fished its banks, but remained ignorant about its actual path.  So after signing articles not far from this dry dock, 

I drove a canal car to Little Falls, where I met the boat.  Urger.  It’s likely the crew checked me out as they approached, maybe even with more than a little skepticism.  After all, I was just a stranger on the bulkhead. 

I boarded, stowed me gear in a bunk, and soon afterward, helped cast off lines to make our way westward to Oswego on Lake Ontario, two days and a dozen locks away.  We had a schedule once we got there.

This was only 10 years ago, but in that decade, a lot has changed on the Canals.  Seen from one perspective, sponsoring agency has changed, and canal maintenance has become more efficient because of investment in modern equipment of all sorts:  tugs, dredges, cranes, etc.   But some old equipment with a wealth of history is gone.  Tug Erie, 1951 build, above is still active, but 

crane ship Ward’s Island, 1929, above is a reef, as is Reliable, 1935, below.

 

Tender #10 above is idled, as is Tender #1, below.  New and efficient small tugboats have arrived. 

The 1961 R/V Kaho had just gone out of service in June 2014, with the replacement R/V Kaho being christened in Oswego only two months later.   Off Kaho‘s stern is Donald Sea, said to be somewhere in the sixth boro at the moment, but I don’t know where.

The image below of Urger, 1901, just above O-8,  . . .  in limbo at a Canal facility along the Oswego River.  Thankfully, she’s out of the water.

Much more canal history can be found here, here, and elsewhere.

All photos here, any errors, WVD.

*Melville too grew up along the waterway, not far from where the current NYS Canal flows into the Hudson River.