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With greater focus today, let’s start where we left off yesterday . . . here, with that large red mooring ball behind tugboat Maverick.
The mooring was attached to a section of flexible dredge hose that
was getting towed. Any guesses on Maverick’s date launched? Decide that for each of these and arrange them by age, before checking the answers at the end?
Carolina Coast came in light the other day, possibly just off a sugar barge.
Meagan Ann was eastbound, maybe heading north for scrap.
Michael Miller was moving who knows what. As a reminder, have you decided the launch date on each of these as you’re going through? Answers are posted at the end here.
Miss Madeline a bit earlier was working on a dredge project.
Charles A was in from another dredge project.
Susan Rose was pushing oil.
Stephen Dann has since gone to Bridgeport.
Charles James is still the the boro as of this writing.
And that’s where we leave it today.
All photos and any errors, WVD.
Maverick 1967
Carolina Coast 1970
Meagan Ann 1975
Miss Madeline 1976
Charles A. 1979
Charles James 1985
Stephen Dann 1999
Susan Rose 2019
These small craft operate all year round in the sixth boro.
I’ve seen at least two Clean Harbors boats in the harbor, 32 and maybe . . . 33. But the company is hardly local. I once saw one of their trucks on the NY Thruway west of Syracuse. Click here for the history of this Massachusetts headquartered business.
Evidenced by the unique Donjon blue, Sea Explorer is one of the sixth boro company’s survey boats. Of course, Donjon certainly doesn’t operate only locally either.
Here the small boat was eastbound in the direction of the Sound.
Miller’s Launch has a lot of boats, including a handful of launch boats like Nicholas Miller here.
Axopar is a relatively new Finnish boat manufacturer. These don’t appear to be work boats like all the others here, but they are certainly workboat design inspired.
Here are two
separate boats I’ve seen in the boro of late.
Maybe a reader can comment further about these boats.
The first Axopar I saw half a decade ago on the Erie Canal . . . the last one here.
NJ State Police has quite a fleet, but their website has not been updated to reflect the vessel below.
Rounding out this post . . . this Billion Oyster project boat was round the Battery the other day.
For more on the reefs restored in the sixth boro, click here. In. a few years, might the program be renamed the Trillion Oyster project? Wasn’t it originally called the “million oyster” project?
All photos, WVD.
Call this a continuation of yesterday’s post, but this is a model bow set . . . . Given all the features that could be discussed, focus on these for oldest/newest, smallest/largest, and least/most horsepower. Also, one of these does not fit with the others, although all are tugboats.
Douglas J
Doris Moran
Philadelphia
Again, identify the oldest/newest, smallest/largest, and least/most horsepower.
James William Here she appears to be towing a mooring into Erie Basin Brooklyn.
Millie B and Louis C. These two certainly do not fit in with this post, but . . . I’m posting this photo anyhow. Previously, Millie B has appeared here. Louis C has appeared here. I hope you’re getting ready with your answers.
Rowan M McAllister
Adeline Marie
All photos and any errors, WVD. All info here thanks to Birk Thomas’ invaluable tugboatinformation.
Ready? No cheating.
Just guesses.
Answers?
Oldest is Rowan M, and newest is Philadelphia. 1981 and 2017.
Smallest considering both length and beam is James William, and longest is Doris Moran although Douglas J is the beamiest. Lengths are 77′ and 118′.
Least horses is James William, and most is Douglas J. They range from 2800 hp to 4800 hp.
Besides Millie B, the outlier is James William because she has a push-knee bow–rather than a model bow. Also, she’s the only triple screw here.
Call this the push knee set. And let’s do it this way . . . given all the features that could be discussed, focus of these for oldest/newest, smallest/largest, and least/most horsepower.
CMT Pike. An aside about CMT Pike is that she was not built with a retractable wheelhouse. When launched, she had a fixed wheelhouse, the “stalk” of which can be seen directly behind where the raised wheelhouse is now. I’ve not been able to find a photo of her in that original configuration.
Shiloh Amon aka Jillian Irene
Lightning
Discovery Coast
Miss Madeline
And finally, a photo from January 2013 and showing one that has been sold out of the sixth boro . . . Herbert P. Brake.
Have you written down your final decisions?
All photos, WVD. All info here thanks to Birk Thomas’ invaluable tugboatinformation
Ready? No cheating.
Just guesses.
Oldest is Miss Madeline, and newest is Shiloh aka Jillian Irene. 1976 and 2022.
Smallest considering both length and beam is Herbert P. Brake, and longest is Discovery Coast although both Discovery and Jillian tie at 34′ for beam. Lengths are 60′ and 96′.
Least horses is Brake, and most is Discovery. They range from 375 hp to 3000 hp.
Even on overcast days, the sixth boro aka NY harbor offers sights. It’s long been so; here’s much abridged paragraphs 3-5 Chapter 1 of Moby Dick:
[People] stand … fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning … some seated … some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China… [some] pacing straight for the water… Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land… They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand… infallibly [move] to water… Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy [youth] with a robust healthy soul… at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning…. we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans … the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.”
OK, so that might be over the top, but I find at least as much entertainment along the water as in all the other places in NYC. Maybe that makes me a hermit, but that’s irrelevant. Can you name these boats?
At less than 10 miles an hour, trade comes in, commerce of all sort goes on.
different hour different goods,
different tasks,
different energies
and errands
by different
companies . . .
All photos, WVD.
And in order, Jonathan C Moran, Meaghan Marie, Ellen McAllister, Andrea, Schuylkill, Rowan R McAllister, Thomas D Witte, Susan Miller.
Here are previous riverbanks posts, although for some inexplicable reason, they are not indexed in order.
Name the riverbank in the image below?
Above and below, that’s Manhattan, as seen from about 30 miles out. It would take another four hours before we passed the 59th Street Bridge. The darker image in the center of the photo below is Vane’s Brooklyn, which we were following.
The sunset colors below in the photo below taken about an hour after the top photo were stunning.
Three hours later we approached the Hell Gate bridges. See Thomas D. Witte hidden in the lights?
Passing the northern tip of Roosevelt Island, the refurbished lighthouse looked like this, compared with
this image of the very same lighthouse I’d taken only eight days earlier. The Nellie Bly “faces” tribute there is worth seeing by day. The main channel passes to the left in the photo below.
Here is said 59th Street Bridge looking at the Graduate Hotel (No, that’s not a 1967 movie reference.) and some buildings of Cornell Tech.
New on this bank of Manhattan are the American Copper Buildings, here
framing a seasonally-lit Empire State Building . . . ESB. That belt joining the two . . . that houses a swimming pool.
The repurposed Havermeyer Sugar building has just added a new but retro sign, alluding to the former enterprise of the building.
Behold the 120-year-old Williamsburg Bridge
and then eventually the 140-year-old Brooklyn Bridge. The 113-year-old Manhattan Bridge is in between the two.
After rounding the “horn,” we headed up the North River for the Hudson, passing other new buildings framing the ESB. This twisting pair is called The Eleventh. The ghostly white tower is the Bank of America Tower, and below it is IAC.
Notice a pattern here in framing the ESB? The “web” of course is The Vessel, a structure whose origins by water I posted about here and here.
Looking toward the Manhattan side of the GW Bridge, that red speck at its base is the “little red lighthouse” at Jeffreys Point made obsolete by the GW itself.
As down broke, we were north of Poughkeepsie, breaking ice and about to turn into the Rondout.
All photos, WVD, who hopes you’ve enjoyed this phantasmagorical sequence of the five boros as seen from the sixth.
This will be the last post for a few days . . . William F. Fallon Jr. at the Statue.
Thomas D. Witte, dredge Delaware, Durham, and some smaller boats in the Upper Bay.
Marjorie B. McAllister with NYNJR 200 on the Brooklyn side.
Jessica Ann and another RIB appear to be involved in diving ops. Brrr.
Schuylkill moves a tank barge across the boro.
James William tows a mooring into Erie Basin.
And finally, the ever busy Chandra B heads for the Kills.
All photos recently, WVD, who hopes to be back by week’s end.
Daisy Mae . . . time flies and this 82′ x 30′ and 3200 hp boat has been around since 2017 already.
Crystal Cutler, 67′ x 26′ and 1500 hp, I remember when she first arrived in the boro. I mist be getting old here.
Evelyn Cutler, 117′ x 32′ and 3900 . . . I recall when she was Melvin E. Lemmerhirt.
Discovery Coast, 96′ x 34′ and 3000 hp . . . she’s been around by that name since leaving the shipyard a decade ago.
Capt. Brian A. McAllister, 100′ x 40′ and 6770 hp . . . half a decade here.
Brian Nicholas, 72′ x 23′ and 1700 hp, I never saw her as Banda Sea, although I saw many other Seas.
Charles James, 77′ x 26 and 2400 hp . . . I recall her as Megan McAllister.
Navigator, 64′ x 24′ and 1200hp**, arrived here as that. Saint Emilion . . .105′ x 38′ and 4800hp, I’ve known her as Arabian Sea and Barbara C before that, and this blog has been doing this since before she was launched.
All photos and any errors, WVD.
**We know about autocorrect. Here’s a message from Capt. Tugcorrect: “Re 1200 hp, she’s been repowered and info should reflect that she ‘boasts two MTU 12V2000s rated at 900hp each for a total of 1800.’ ” Thx, Tugcorrect.
This monthly practice of looking back a decade gives me an opportunity to dust off a specific part of the archive in tugster tower. Besides sneezing sometimes because of the dust, I also feel amazed about the amount of change, small changes maybe but significant it seems.
Evening Mist has become Everly Mist, and is in a new endeavor. Palva is now Laurentia DesGagnes operating on and out of the Saint Lawrence River where I saw her a few years back. Only Eastern Welder in the background remains.
I made a few trips out to Greenport a decade ago, and walking through a shipyard saw this vessel from Suffolk Count Department of Health and its unusual top deck exhaust. Is that still around? I’m guessing it might check water quality on shellfishing areas . . .
Bebedouro (1974) and Atlantic Conveyor (1985), now both dead and scrapped. Brendan Turecamo still works here all day every day.
Rebel (138′ x 46′) is still on the NJ side of the sixth boro, waiting for an opportunity to get back to work.
Viking (132′ x 34′) has been cut up.
Annabelle Dorothy Moran was on her delivery run, making her way to the Chesapeake/Delaware Bay area, where she still works. Those range markers are no longer in place on the Brooklyn Heights bank of the sixth boro.
John B Caddell was nearing the end of this shore leave, heading for her final one. Note Sarah Ann tending the crane barge and WTC in the distance not yet completed.
Commander, a WW1 USN vet as SP-1247, was still showing its rotondity.
Joan Turecamo, a late Matton product, was still in the boro. Now she winds her way around the curves of the Lower Mississippi.
Sarah Ann and others of the Donjon fleet kept me up most of the night in December 2012, as she stood by a barge carrying WTC antenna sections that were lifted onto Manhattan . . .
across a blocked west side highway . . . lowered onto a vehicle with dozens of axles . . .
and trucked inland
In other night photos, quite rare on this blog . . . it’s Clearwater lifted onto Black Diamond barge with Cornell standing by.
I hope you enjoyed this backward glance as much as I have. I might have to get out and do some documenting of nighttime events on the sixth boro this December.
All photos, December 2012, WVD.
If you’re still wanting a tugster calendar 2023 version, click here for info. You can even order a few or a dozen . . .
As remnants of Hurricane Nicole pass through the sixth boro, we might have a look back to details of aftermath of Sandy exactly 10 years ago, like this undecked pier over on the NJ side of the Arthur Kill, across from Howland Hook.
USCGC Spencer came up for the cleanup, as did
then-USCGC Gallatin, now NNS Okpabana.
NASA’s Enterprise saw some damage as well, leading to installation of a more robust pavilion.
McAllister Sisters assisted ACL Atlantic Concert past the damage to the park shoreline just west of St. George while
National Guard units staged in the then parking lot area.
And I have to digress here to rant about a shoreside issue: hundreds of millions have been spent in preparing this area for the ill-fated “NY Wheel,” and in the process transformed what had been a simple but pleasant park into a wasteland behind an unsightly green wall and guarded chain link. Hey mister mayor and mister SI boro president, clean it up and reopen it for the public. The “wheeler-dealers” and the NYC EDC did more damage here–and allowed it to fester–than Sandy. Is the small wheel next?
APL Cyprine, then flagged US and carrying USMC vehicles, has gone to Alang flying the flag of Comoros. Ditto ACL Atlantic Concert, shown up the column.
Patrick Sky was still working back then, and Happy Delta brought in one of the first loads of NYC sanitation cranes.
That year, by November 9–the date of this photo–we’d already had a dusting of cold, white stuff here.
Cashman’s TSHD Atchafalaya was in the boro. She’s still afloat in Florida.
On black Friday 2012, the high point of my day was seeing Atlantic Salvor return to the boro with Witte 1407 carrying segments of what is visible today as
the antenna atop WTC 1.
All photos, any opinions and all errors, WVD.
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