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Every day is Thanksgiving, but we dedicate one day to talk about it.  One undeniable detail of the US popular T’giving narrative involves a transAtlantic vessel, Mayflower.  Some of this info about the Mayflower might be new. Less than a decade after arriving in North America, it may have been dismantled and used in a barn building project.  Reference to Mayflower, original and replica, can be found in these previous blog posts.

Of course, instances of earlier thanksgiving in the US exist, like this one from 1607 and involved a vessel named Virginia, in Maine.   My point is . . . it’s a story of migration by ship.

That’s the connection:  this blog features ships, and this post is a sampling of vessels that’ve called in the sixth boro in recent weeks and months, like The Amigo, a 2012 Croatia-built asphalt/bitumen tanker. Cargo in the tanks needs to be kept well above the boiling point to maintain liquidity.

MSC Shirley is a 2000-built Polish-built container ship with a capacity of 2024 teu.

Seaways Redwood is a 2013 South Korea-built crude tanker.  South Korea currently builds the highest percentage of global shipping, although other Pacific Asian countries are in second and third places, as you’ll see in this sampling. 

Grande Texas is a PCTC built 2021 in China, off Ningbo.  She has the capacity of 7,600 ceu (car equivalent units).

Ardmore Dauntless and Ardmore Enterprise, both built South Korea but in 2015 and 2013, respectively.  Enterprise has slightly larger capacity. 

Aruna Berk is a drybulk carrier launched in China in 2011.

Thor Maximus is a 2005 Japan-built drybulk carrier.

ONE Wren is a 2018 Japan-built 14000 teu container ship.

Atlantic Spirit is a McKeil tanker, launched in 2011 from a shipyard in China.

McKeil is a Canadian company.  McKeil tugboats work mostly the Great Lakes;  one company tug visited the sixth boro a few years back here. 

Thundercat is a 2008 crude carrier built in China.  

Given a 1980s cartoon series, I had to chuckle at this name. 

Key Ohana is a 2010 Japan built bulk carrier.  

MSC Agadir is a Korea-built 8886 teu container ship dating from 2012.

Note the scrubbing add-on for emissions.  MSC Shirley, above, also has an exhaust-filtering system.

Northern Jaguar is a 2009 8400-teu container ship built in South Korea.  Small size as it is relative to the ship, the rudder and prop spray size relative to a single container is gigantic;  think of following that down the highway as you would a trailer-mounted container.

Jag Leela is a 1999 South Korea built crude tanker. She appeared on this blog back in 2010 here

Poorly-lit but I include this photo anyhow because it shows Ever Forward, the newest and likely the best-known ship in this post, due to her not moving forward earlier this year.  She’s currently heading south in the Red Sea, getting chased by a friend named Mike

All photos and any errors, WVD, who offers this as an assortment of commercial vessels in and out of the sixth boro. Post 98 in the series appeared here way back in April.

None of these vessels will ever maintain the lasting hold Mayflower has on the US psyche, but the fact is that much of what folks will list as what they are thankful for involves conveyance of vessels like these in and out of the sixth boro.  That’s part of why I do posts like this one.

Happy thanksgiving today.

 

You likely heard about the Hong Kong floating restaurant that sank recently while being towed “somewhere.”  No one was hurt, and it sank in a deep part of the ocean, so it will remain at the bottom, maybe as a venue for the mer-creatures.  Second lives for vessels as restaurants, etc., are tough.

Here was the original Something Different 4.  Click on the image below and you’ll get an 8:37 video of the ill-fated Jumbo as it was extricated by tugboats from its erstwhile piece of then harbor in Hong Kong.  These two images are video grabs, hence a bit blurry. 

If I follow this correctly, this version of a floating restaurant with seating for 2300 diners was built in the late 1970s by Chung Wah Shipbuilding.  The 260′ establishment,  part of Jumbo Kingdom, had closed due to Covid.

Floating bars and restaurants are nothing new.  Here was a post with an image of a similar floating restaurant in mainland China.  Manhattan has Pier 66, among several others. It was going to have one called Water Table, until that boat–Revolution–was catastrophically damaged.  

 I’ve eaten at a place similar in Rotterdam, simply called De Chinese Boot;  aside from slightly different spelling, you just read Dutch language there.

I still have WiFi because we’re still at the dock. 

 

This photos and text come from JS, a frequent commenter on this blog.   He took the photos on a voyage that left NYC in July 1966 and returned to LA in December.

JS:  “President Pierce (C-3) is being dragged stern first from the dock by an Indonesian tug to mid channel in a shifting procedure.   I took the snaps standing on the dock of a rubber port in Java.  We loaded latex rubber.  The port was Belawan Deli. No one went ‘ashore’ but we did trade newly purchased Seiko watches for Bali heads to smuggle home and  sell in antique stores.That place was a short day or two sail from our loading general cargo in Singapore.”

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Tugster:  I’ve no idea what has become of this steam tug. Here’s some info on Djatisari.

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Here’s some info on Florian Ceynowa.

JS continues:  “It’s me on the right (2nd electrician, promoted from wiper), my uncle Al (John Noble‘s neighbor) and Steve Duhamel, the bull wiper.  He was great at moving 55-gallon drums anywhere in the engine room.  Also, note the longshoremens outhouse overhanging the stern rail of the Pierce.”

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JS:  “Fish loading was from an anchorage in either Port Swettanam, or Penang, Malaysia. Local longshoremen winched them from boats alongside, stacked them in our t’ween deck reefers, and we discharged half the load into uncovered trucks on a cold Yokohama dock weeks later and the rest stayed on for U.S.”

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“Whole frozen tuna gathered by the tails, being winched from fishing boats holds.”

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“After a 6-month ‘jungle run’, conditions on board had become lax. The ship was in disarray, so perhaps the patrolmans report was a bit severe.   We were paid with cash and we happily descend the gangway in a “suitcase parade”.

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Many thanks, JS.  I’d love to see more pics and hear other stories like these.

The world was truly a different place a half century ago.

 

The title is such a mouthful that I’ll soon reduce it to GHP&W. Although this blog began with photos and observations of mostly working vessels in the great harbor associated with New York City, the watery part of which I call the sixth boro, the blog followed a course suggested by these vessels to other GHP&Ws. And given then the global nature of water traffic, it seems logical to devote at least a month to other GHP&Ws.

I’ll kick off with this post about a port I’ll likely never visit, the former Aral Sea fishing port of Moynaq in Uzbekistan.  The photos come from Getty Images by Bjorn Holland and Kelly Cheng. Surprisingly maybe, I live in a neighborhood of NYC where Uzbek is the dominant language, which was part of my motivation to read a Tom Bissell book called Chasing the Sea:  Lost among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia.  I highly recommend it.
Embed from Getty Images

Embed from Getty Images

So here are some detail areas of a huge aerial photo print I saw the other day.  Can anyone point to detail that confirms a date?  My guess is somewhere in the 50s or 60s.   The first photo below shows the southeast point of Bayonne NJ.  The peninsula bisecting the top and bottom is MOTBY.  Governors Island is upper right and the Statue is upper left with the southern tip of Manhattan along the top.

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Below is a closer up of the lower right corner of the photo above, showing that tugboat, some barges, and two sets of  trucks  at the cement dock.

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Note the Statue and Ellis Island.  To the left of it is now Liberty State Park.  The Caven Point Pier crosses the center of the photo and the current Global Terminal is still waiting for fill.

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Below is the just capped landfill that is topped by the Bayonne Golf Club.   Lower left is quite the gunkhole with disintegrating watercraft I’d love to see a closeup of.

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Remember that all the B/W “photos” above are parts of the same aerial shot.

Let’s have a fun month with lots of GHP&Ws.  And not to be too prescriptive, I’d love photos from a variety of GHP&Ws in Asia and Africa, mostly lacking in my previous 2900+ posts.  Of course, here and here are a few posts I’ve done on African ports; here,  Asian; and here and here, South American.

While I’m asking for collaboration, I have a chance to replicate a trip on a major African river that I originally did in 1973-74;  what I seek is leads to a publication that might be interested in the story and photos. The trip is pricey, and if I can sell a tale with photos, I can offset some of the expense. Anyone have ideas or connections?

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