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Seth Tane took this photo on the Columbia in 2000. This was my sense of tugboats back then. I had little sense of their age, power, crews, skills needed for operation, etc. Take a guess on those features of this boat, and I’ll provide you some answers at the end of this post. Note that this tug and barge are at a log dock, a trade unknown in the sixth boro or the NE US.
Here’s a shot I took in 2002 while hanging out on what I called back then the “waterfront” and saw this vessel. Again, I had no idea of those same features as they pertained to this vessel, nor of the logic of this design. Test yourself, and then some info can be found at the end.
I took this photo in 2004. My 15 years in coastal NE had given me an interest in schooners but I’d never sought an opportunity to crew on one, until my move to NYS, first on and then off the live-aboard.
Note the warehouses still standing where Brooklyn Bridge Park is now located. Volunteer crewing on Pioneer and the other boats at South Street Seaport Museum kept me on the Upper Bay for long hours, and I saw lots of new things,
some things whose uniqueness I didn’t even fully appreciate. Anyone know what’s become of that tugboat Rachel Marie? I don’t.
Some things intrigued me,
and other things like this derelict sugar mill and sunken lightship were soon to disappear.
I started to see interesting tugboats in unexpected places.
Little did I expect then the changes that would happen. Know the boat above and below?
All photos, WVD. Answers below.
Craig Foss, 1944, 116′ x 30′. Here are more particulars, but as good as the boat appeared the top photo, she was purchased by unqualified parties, detained, and eventually scrapped. You need to read the story here; some crew were lucky to have survived.
The second photo shows Coral Queen, a motor tanker that carried petroleum from 1920 (!!!) until 2011. That is a long working life. Here are the particulars from Birk’s data base. From Auke Visser’s site, here are more particulars. And finally, from my Barge Canal series last year, here are images of her generations of fleet mates; her design relates to her work as a tanker in the “inter-connected waterways,” the Great Lakes and salt water connected by the Barge Canal.
The 1885 Pioneer still seasonally sails with professional and volunteer crews, and the 1893 Lettie G. Howard does the same on Lake Erie mostly.
I’ve no idea what became of Rachel Marie.
Meow Man traces are still around.
The sugar mill area now has an Amazon facility, and the old shipyard is the Red Hook Ikea parking lot, and the sunken ship reefed, the piers scrapped.
Grouper, frozen in ice, is still waiting to be scrapped, but as of March 2, 2023 is still entirely intact. The orange livery has disappeared from the sixth boro; that boat June K is now Donjon blue.
Ultimately, the more I found answers to questions I had, the more I was drawn in to learn more, a fact that keeps me looking and asking. I really never expected to be in the boros and fascinated by the sixth boro as long as I have been. Recently, I had a conversation with a friend from another NYC life and she reported never to have heard of the sixth boro. I guess that’s as shocking as hearing that someone’s not heard of the legendary Meow Man, the saltwater equivalent of Kilroy, or the US version of Maqroll, whose exploits need to be written down. As of the date of these photos, tugster the blog had not yet been launched.
I’m not sure when I’ll post anything next, but it could be tomorrow.
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!
Urger got some love yesterday, and tugster was there to document it.
Wait . . . is that Urger?
No . . . that’s tug Seneca
and there is the Capt. Wunder getting some visitation in and
telling stories about the days he was her captain, but
“there’s more,” he said.
The older step-sister is here too.
The tugs were a place of pilgrimage.
Recall they are now seldom-seen but certainly not forgotten.
Want to make a poster? Write my email and ask for a full-size version of this image. Once you get it, send it far and wide to enthusiasts who lament her isolation as well as enthusiasts who can take her out of isolation.
All May 9, 2022 photos taken by WVD with arrangements by the Canal Society of NYS. Please share this post far and wide to the family of Urger and Seneca fans.
Here’s a history-packed and very detailed photo. In the foreground you see James K. Averill and Amsterdam. In the next row back, that’s Urger behind Averill and a boat I can’t identify [name board just to the right of Averill’s stack shows a name that ends in –le No 1 ] behind Amsterdam. Also, in the foreground, there’s good detail of the ratchet and chain system to open the bottom-dumping doors of the scow.
Averill, 50′ x 14′ x 4.5′, was a wooden-hulled tug built in 1912. It worked for a D. G. Roberts of Champlain NY until 1925. Champlain is a town on the NY/QC border. Her original power may have been a 200 hp coal-burning 1905 Skinner & Arnold steam engine. and a Murphy Donnely Co. boiler. She was repowered and given new superstructure in 1930, but I don’t know what the new power or the previous superstructure were. Notations on her info card says her coal storage capacity was seven tons and she burned on average a half ton of coal per eight-hour day.
This dry dock photo shows a “cutaway” of her frames and stringers.
Initially, I looked at this photo and assumed Averill had experienced a catastrophic fire, but with her all-wood structure, a fire would likely not have gone out before entirely consuming the vessel.
Another look at Averill, here off the stern of Tender #3,
says to me that this was the dismantling of Averill, which happened some time after October 1960.
All photos used thanks to the Canal Society of New York. The top photo above appears in Enterprising Waters, by Brad Utter.
It appears this tug and derrick barge are working over by the power house at the Vischer Ferry 2000′ twice-bent Dam opposite lock E-7. This is the dam where Margot and Watermaster have broken up ice jams the past few winters.
Here’s a closer up and
an even closer up, confirming that it’s Canal tug Amsterdam and Derrick Barge (DB) 8. And sorry . . . this is a call for group sourcing. Many thanks to Canal Society president Craig Williams, who started filling in details as follows: “Amsterdam… was B. B. Odell Jr., built in Schenectady in 1901 (50.4′ x12.4′ x5.9′). In the Department of Public Works report for 1945 (1946) Amsterdam is described as having been built, along with the Averill, ‘for the old Erie Canal, [and is] no longer efficient to operate and [having] deteriorated to the point it is no longer feasible to operate them.’ ” A post on Averill is in the works.
Urger, on the other hand and shown here as a steam vessel and with a different superstructure configuration, has appeared on this blog many times and will appear some more next month, or so is the plan. Urger was converted from steam to diesel in 1948.
I can’t be certain, but Urger here appears to already be dieselized in the next photos.
Below is a closer -up of the photo above showing the jackstaff on the bow topped with a wind direction indicator.
Here are two more tugs we might find more about. . . . the story of Queen City is [again from Craig] “very complicated. In 1946 it was reported as ‘so weak it will no longer hold patches’ yet they overhaul its engine in 1948 (for use on another boat?). It is replaced in the early 1950s by one of the 1950s tugs [of the] Pittsford, Lockport... [class]. Merchant Vessels for 1926 says that the Queen City was built in Buffalo in 1906. The State reported that year that they had rebuilt the tug, completely replanking the hull, new decks and pilot house, and the boiler and engine ‘thoroughly repaired’ Was it then probably considered a new tug?
The Merchant Vessels for 1902 credits NYS with a Queen City, nearly the same dimensions as having been built in Poughkeepsie in 1889. Curiously, the State Superintendent of Public Works describes painting the Queen City in 1881. There is a 1879 Lockport newspaper article that mentions the State hiring the tug Queen City to help tow boats at Lockport.” Maybe a name like Queen City gets recycled?”
As to Flower City, “According to Merchant Vessels it was built in Buffalo in 1909 though it doesn’t show up in the State’s annual reports until a note for 1912 that it worked throughout the season (sort of implying something new). It was condemned in 1937, replaced by a State Department of Corrections tug Refuge. Don’t know if it was dismantled at that time.” Actually, I’d love to learn more about tugs operated by the State Department of Corrections.
All photos used thanks to the Canal Society of New York. Many thanks to Craig Williams for filling in detail for these government boats.
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.
B. No. 90 is clearly a Bouchard barge, this one eastbound at lock E-17. Pushing it might be the 1946 Evening Light, but that’s just speculation. Evening Light has appeared in this series a little over a month ago as Margaret Matton et al.
I added this because this IS a miscellany post. I’d love to hear from folks familiar with the Barge Canal more than a half century ago, but how common were “loopers” or just long-distance recreational boats back then.
OTCO Newark was a 1943 barge. I can’t tell from this photo which of the OTCO tugs was moving it.
Colonial Beacon was a 246′ x 40′ tanker built in 1927 by Sun Shipbuilding of Chester PA. A history of her ownership extends through Ecuadorian interests in 1981. After 1981, I’ve no idea what became of her. With all that black smoke, would she have been steam powered at this point in this undated photo?
We end this post with a 1910 64′ x 17′ tug named Waterford built in Whitehall NY in 1910.
Socony 104 dates from 1920.
Here’s Waterford towing two barges of lumber quite late in the season. Can anyone place this lock? Lock E-3, perhaps and downbound?
All photos used courtesy of the Canal Society of New York. Any errors of interpretation, WVD.
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.
This is a Carlotta in 1921. I’m curious about the large structure on the after deck. Is that cargo being carried?
Here’s a Carlotta 13 months later, looking the same except that large stern structure is missing. The 1913 MVUS shows a steam tug Carlotta 56′ x 13′ x 5′ built in Boston in 1879, but registered in Buffalo as of that date.
Aimed at canal passersby, this billboard
was located in Little Falls, most likely above lock E-17. Steam tug George E. Lattimer was built in 1899, 59′ x 16′ x 7′ in Buffalo.
This view of lock E-17 shows a formidable structure, especially without trees on Moss Island.
I had to throw this photo in. I took it in October 2014 of the 1901 formerly steam-powered 73′ x 15′ x 9′ fish tug Urger at the same location slightly different angle, showing a tree-covered Moss Island and virtually no windows in the powerhouse to the right of the guillotine lock door.
Jumping back nearly a century, with lots of steam and drama, Geo. E. departs the lock and the rockpile that was Moss Island back then.
Steamer Merchant tows a string of barges round a bend, which I believe is somewhere west of Brockport.
From Roger N. Benson: “A third-class wood steamer Lily was built in 1882, hailed from Buffalo NY. Lily was 103′ x 22′ x 9′. She was registered for the Barge Canal on May 13, 1922.” Those dimensions make her a fairly large tugboat for the Barge Canal.
The rails would likely have come from the Lackawanna Steel Plant, which that same year was acquired by Bethlehem Steel. The area of the plant is currently the site of a wind farm called Steel Winds.
Here an eastbound Lily approaches lock E-11. Interestingly, since the caption says the covered automobiles are Maxwells, they would be coming from one of the Midwestern plants, obviously not the original Tarrytown NY plant. Maxwell was declining at the time and as of 1922 would just have been taken over by Walter P. Chrysler, before he created the Chrysler Corporation.
I have to end with this photo I took in October 2014; it’s the same photo of Urger as above, just with the golden morning light color restored.
Thanks to the Canal Society of New York for use of these photos; the two versions of the Urger photo, WVD.
Not all tugboats on the Barge Canal in the first half decade were steamers, but most of them were. More on the early diesel tugs in another post. The photos in this post are arranged chronologically. In these days before metadata was even imagined, I’m very grateful for photographic prints that have dates written on them. Thanks to the unnamed photographer(s) who seemed to be documenting the commercial traffic of the era. One interesting feature of the photos for me is that they documented the surroundings as well: buildings and lack of them, nature and lack of it, other infrastructure and lack of it . . .
I find it odd that the caption identifies Jessie–the towed vessel but not the tug doing the towing, Harold. And Jessie, whose name is not legible, appears to be a boat-shaped lighter or a bumboat; maybe it was one once and now the engine has been removed to make way for cargo. That stone building just beyond Harold‘s stern is still extant, as part of Lockport locks and Canal Tours.
August 3, 1921 in Wayne County, it’s Geo. S. Donaldson somewhere between Palmyra and Newark, an area I know very well, but given how much the canal sides have changed, I can’t tell if the tow is east or westbound or exactly where it is. Benjamin Cowles towed gravel from a pit somewhere near Palmyra on the pre-Barge Canal waterway. He went on to form Buffalo Sand and Gravel.
The next day, the photographer, maybe the same one, captured Benj. L. Cowles eastbound at Lyons E28A. Here‘s some case law referring to this tugboat. Given the caption, let me quote from this article about ownership of the transmarine fleet: “Submarine Boat Company operated the Transmarine Corporation (Transco) or Transmarine Lines a shipping company from 1922 to 1930, with 32 ships and 29 barges they had built. Providing East Coast, West Coast, Texas, Cuba and South America with cargo shipping services. [They had] the 206 dwt barges working on the [Barge Canal] with five tugboats. Barges moved cargo from New York City to Buffalo, New York in seven to nine days.”
Since Lyons and Clyde share a border, the same photographer may have taken this photo on August 4, 1921. Note that on the forward portion of the wheelhouse, there is a Cowles Transportation sign.
On August 10, it’s Lotta L. Cowles east of Clyde.
Here’s Crescent two weeks later than her photo above, and no Cowles Transportation* sign is to be seen, and at lock E-23, about 50 miles to the east of Clyde. Maybe the sign was being repaired or repainted.
Here is one of the most amazing photos I’ve happened onto. According to the caption, the locking operation is in the hands of no less a celebrity than the NYS governor Nathan L. Miller. Maybe current NYS governor Kathy Hochul might see fit to operate some locks this coming summer as she runs for her office.
NYC as well as Buffalo have an Erie Basin, and this is the one in Buffalo. That Erie Canal is now encompasses a marina and has high-end real estate on the inland side. I believe Belle dates from 1880, and I’m not sure if the boat alongside is Helen E. Taylor or Helene Taylor.
More to come, as I continue to alternate b/w photos with color ones.
These photos are used with permission of the Canal Society of New York. Any errors of interpretation, WVD.
*Ben Cowles was an accomplished person. Born in Buffalo in 1863, as a young man he left Buffalo to work in the sixth boro for at least 15 years as a ferry and tug captain. At age 38, he returned to Buffalo (the 8th largest US city in 1900) and was appointed harbor master. In 1905, he founded Cowles Shipyard. Besides building boats, he bought old Lake Erie steam fish tugs and adapted them for use as tugboats on the canals. For a short period, he had a business partnership with the Mattons of Cohoes. At its peak, Cowles Transportation owned/operated 16 tugs, 11 barges, and 3 lighters. (Low Bridges and High Water, Charles T. O’Malley)
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