You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘ferry’ category.
Spirit of America . . . operates as an icon among icons.
I need to force myself to look hard to see the obvious differences between Spirit and S. I. Newhouse, and others.
Recently, though, Spirit has intruded into my photos more than any other one of the ferries.
Molinari . . .
John F. Kennedy and Spirit . . .
Either Newhouse or Barberi . . .
Positively identified as Newhouse.
And this is the old terminal, actually called Battery Maritime Building and unofficially the Governors Island ferry terminal today. And how’s the progress on its roof? What’s going on there? Read all about it here and here. Glass boxes seem currently in vogue in NYC.
Click on the image below to see Battery Maritime Building and more of the sixth boro almost a century ago.
For info on all the classes of Staten Island ferries, present and past, click here.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, except the nighttime photo by Seth Tane.
And finally . . . here’s a bowsprite image used in a marinelink.com article without credit! And by bowsprite’s report, she’s received no response from marine link.com when she’s contacted them about . . . crediting her art. Hmmmm… See her original published image from four years earlier here.
Eight years ago today I published a post I called Meet Alice. More on that fact later. Today we meet . . . Alakai.
It seems fitting that today we should meet Alakai to the right and her sister Huakai,
now known as USNS Puerto Rico and
USNS Guam. Click here and here for more on these vessels.
No bulbous bow here . . . and that’s a bulker docked off Alakai‘s stern. The catamarans were a very costly mistake for Hawaii Superferry. Here are the ship specifications from an existing Hawaii Superferry site.
Today both vessels await their fate at the Philadelphia Navy yard,
where I took this photo below, which has nothing to do with the HSFs, but I couldn’t pass it up.
Soon I’ll post more from NISMF Philadelphia, a place that should be on everyone’s gallivant list.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who posted “Meet Alice” exactly eight years ago as the inaugural post on this blog. Since then, 2,602 other posts have been sent up from my rabbit’s hole. It’s been a fun gallivant that has shown me fascinating stuff and introduced me to literally thousands of fun and otherwise interesting folks. If I have the stamina and time, there ARE many more places to go and ways to go there, and I hope to do another 2600+ posts over the next days and months and years . . . Thanks for reading and writing back.
Here was 13.
Can you guess the origins of this freshwater vessel?
I’d think the underwater structure here is something of a clue.
I’ve no idea how many years ago this house was added.
Here’s another clue, although it might be quite the distractor.
I like the off center crane.
Check 1929 on that above clue.
This is a plan of the ferry WARD’S ISLAND, designed by Eads Johnson, and built for the New York State Department of Mental Health in 1929 by Electric Boat Co., Groton, CT (slow year for submarines?). Steel, diesel, 101 ft. x 32 ft. Retired in 1937 by construction of bridges.
Many thanks to Norman Brouwer for the above drawing and identification. Photos by Will Van Dorp, who needs to find out what propulsion engine (s) the derrick vessel has today. I’ve also not found a photo of Ward’s Island prior to her conversion. Photos were taken along the Oswego Canal.
I will continue to post when I have wifi. And when I’m back home, like this morning, I even have time to comment on the photos I post. These photos were taken between Waterford and Fulton this past week. Notice the family coloration resemblance?
I could comment if I knew more about what I’m seeing, but Tappan Zee V is one I’ve heard about but can find no further info on the internet to corroborate. Notice it presents a different interpretation of NY state colors.
Reliable . . . again, I know she has a twin and has been on the hard for an unspecified period of time . . .
Syracuse is the twin of Reliable, and what I learned about her–other than that she still works–is
here. She’s in her 81st year and was built in the Canal shops in Syracuse. Maybe Reliable was built there too?
And the final photo for now is self-propelled derrick barge Ward’s Island, which–I’m told–began life as a sixth boro harbor ferry serving–you guessed it–Ward’s Island.
I really hope some of you help out with more info about these boats.
Behold ex-LST-510, USS Buncombe County, preparing for a routine landing over in Connecticut.
Bowsprite drew it, so it drew me . . . I had to go see again, even though some years ago I’d ridden her. If you look at her peers launched at JeffBoat in late 1943 and early 1944, you’ll agree she’s a survivor.
She follows the route that could have been a bridge from Long Island to Rhode Island!
I believe this lighthouse, passed here by MV John H, is still for sale . . .
x
Click here to see frogman’s encounter with Plum Gut between Orient Point Light and
Meanwhile . . . here’s 495 . . . the water way.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Click here for more info on the Cross Sound Ferry, mentioned here on tugster a few months back in connection with a certain 2003 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.
Finally . .. unrelated but very important, vote here as often as you can given all your devices and browsers to get funding for USS Slater, about to come downriver for repairs.
Care for a shot of Melville? ““Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries–stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.”
Paraphrase that a bit, take liberties, and you might come up with: “When you gallivant, chances are you’ll end up in the water.” If Melville were around the sixth boro these days, he might add something about the likelihood of seeing folks with digital cameras and–if among those gallivants there’s a bowsprite–inks/charcoal pencils too.
The whale lives
here, 100 miles plus east of the sixth boro’s easternmost reaches and if you go
up these stairs marked by a rendering of the orange ferry John F. Kennedy, you’ll
see this . . . 38 pieces of bowsprit’s art on display.
The exhibit called “Working Girls of New York Harbor” is up now til the end of May.
And if you feel a thirst that water fails to quench, the exhibit is located one floor above stainless steel vats filled with thousands of gallons of fermenting, living brews.
Here’s the front of the exhibit postcard, with evidence that bowsprite has turned her gaze and inked what she saw in increasingly distant waters.
Oh . . and the opening’s tonight in Greenport. Gotta run. More Greenport soon.
All photos here by Will Van Dorp.
What attracted my attention was the gull, shrieking with anger. Click here (and follow) to see all the previous posts I’ve done about this once-proud ferry.
“How could you allow this prolonged death?” said the gull.
And as much evidence as you may have that I’m fascinated by ruins, I’m with the gull on this one.
It’s painful to watch this agony, especially as the sequence of links following from the first one above shows how spectacular this one once was.
Get it over already.
I’ve taken the following photos from the following books, which I own. If you’re interested in the sixth boro past, you should own them too.
Thomas R. Flagg . . . New York Harbor Railroads, vol 2
Here was the interior before it was converted to a restaurant.
And the engine room.
Raymond J. Baxter and Arthur G. Adams . . . Railroad Ferries of the Hudson
The two books I cite are certainly a worthwhile purchase for anyone who looks at today’s sixth boro watersides and imagines the past.
Here was the first in this series, from quite a while back. The next two photos below were taken late last week by Brian DeForest.
Miss New York, Blount built in 1993 leaves the Statue quite dramatically.
Ferry Lt. Samuel S. Coursen, Mathis built 1956, was named for this West Point grad.
That’s Explorer of the Seas in the background.
Water Taxi and NYC Audubon operate this winter cruise to watch the water mammal between the boat and my lens.
Seals in the harbor are the real people movers.
And finally, let’s move from those mammals to one painted on the ferry Major General William H. Hart, Staten-Island built 1926 . . . now rebranded as SS Meow Man.
On pages 450-1 of Peter& Norma Stanford’s A Dream of Tall Ships–which I reviewed here– there’s a description of this vessel’s hand-over from the USCG to South Street Seaport, where for a period of time it served as a marine trades training school, partly funded by Brooke Astor. Here was a post where I used a slightly different version of this Hart photos.
Thanks to Brian for use of the first two photos. All others by Will Van Dorp.
You might be wondering about the connection between the vessel below and my previous post . . . here about the delivery of the 1997 Rockefeller Center tree.
It turns out that in 2003 the vessel below –North Star– formerly offshore supply vessel known as Rio Hanna (1968) and Pelto Seahorse
carried these Rockettes and a very happy crewman
along with the 2003 Rockefeller Center Christmas tree from New London to a pier near Intrepid, where the ramps were positioned and the truck rolled off on its way east to deliver the tree. Read all about it here in the New London Day of November 12, 2003. The fifty-year-old 79′ Norway spruce came from yard of Frances Katkauskas in Manchester, CT.
Here the crew pose for a foto near the Circle Line pier after delivering the tree.
Many thanks to Guy Torsilieri for providing the lead and to Richard Sise of Cross Sound Ferry for providing these photos. These fotos were taken the year I moved to NYC but three years before I started this blog.
If anyone has other pics to share, I’d love to put them up here. And 2014 . . . sounds like another tree-by-water delivery is overdue.
I was 11 and waiting for the school bus to take me home from school.
Will Van Dorp took this foto this afternoon.
Recent Comments