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This is the third of three digressions before getting on with the account of my trip west.
The saga of SS Binghamton started in 1904,
and I last saw it from land on January 6, 2017, when demolition was said to have started. Demolition had started but defined as “asbestos abatement” by the alien looking figures clustered near the tender and the stack.
As a relative newcomer in the sixth boro, I first set foot on the ferry in 2011, when some thought a chance still existed to save her or parts of her. I’ve also been holding off doing this post in hopes that more photos of the demolition process would surface. I hope I can still do another post if such photos emerge. I would have been there, but I was on my trip west.
The next two photos I took on July 16 from the water, the last it turns out.
Paul Strubeck took the photo below as he passed by about 10 days later when the stack had just been removed . . . as in a decapitation.
Only a few days later, Glenn Raymo took the next two shots from the Walkway over the Hudson, rubble going up the river.
Here’s a TV commercial once intended to attract patrons to the now gone restaurant.
Thanks to Paul and Glenn, more of whose work is available here.
GWA stands “go[ing] west again,” the next set of posts all attempting to catch myself and maybe you up, if you’re following along, with random and I hope interesting photos from the past almost three weeks. I realize that catching up is impossible, and in this case while I had vacated the sixth boro, big stuff happened.
A word that comes to mind is protean– named for Proteus. Type “define: protean” into google and you’ll appreciate why it’s difficult to catch up. But here goes.
Within a half hour of departing Warren RI, we pass Naema and
Lionheart. Do check the links. Either would be worthy of a post in itself.
And still north of the Rte 138 bridge, we see NOAA R/V Henry B Bigelow.
On the cusp of Block Island Sound, we encounter inbound Atlantic Pioneer, where you’d expect her returning from a run. Here’s a post I did almost exactly two years ago when Atlantic Pioneer components still needed to be combined at the shipyard.
A bit further, it’s Carol Jean and Islander, both Block Island bound, although one will arrive much before the other.
By now, we’re into Long Island Sound and being overtaken by darkness. That’s Atlantic Navigator II as a speck heading toward us.
This dawn photo found us within NYC and approaching the East river. It’s Fort Totten, designed for the entire US by Robert E Lee. Here could be a dilemma: there’s no debate that I know of of striking his name from the credits for this fort.
We pass HuntsPoint Produce Market,
the floating pool,
Marty C–a Weeks tug I’ve never seen,
the “north end” of Roosevelt Island with the Blackwell Island Light,
Gabby L Miller pushing past Cornell Tech‘s yet-to-be used buildings,
the Brooklyn Navy yard with Asphalt Sailor and –I believe– the old Great Point,
swimmers in the water doing a Manhattan circumnatation,
and–let’s end it here for today–a yacht named Vava II. Here’s info on her owner.
Protean . . . day 1? It’s not even over, and I think so.
Lots more to come.
Here are more photos from May 1. Betsy Ross is a product of Yank Marine in Tuckahoe, New Jersey.
Here, r to l, are three generations of sixth boro people movers . . . Betsy Ross, Garden State, and the new NYCFerry known as H202 for now. Garden State was launched in 1994.
H202 crosses the bow of the mighty Helen Parker.
By an hour later, Betsy Ross is already roaring back from across Raritan Bay.
Closing shot is H202 wheelhouse as seen from the upper passenger deck . . . approaching the Marine Parkway Bridge.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who is preparing to head back northward on the ICW, which I’ll call Gallatin’s Ditch.
I read the sign and decided to
wait until the greeters had left and then
bought a round trip ticket at Pier 11 for less than what I’d pay for a bagel and coffee
and got on the next ride to the Rockaways. If you want to know specs and dimensions and such right now, click here. Or wait, and guess who built the power plant and what the passenger capacity is, and I’ll tell you some of that at the end.
After a stop at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, we zoomed out towards the VZ at 25 knots, past Coney Island,
through the goalposts at Marine Parkway, and
to the new Rockaway dock,
where shuttles gathered or distributed potential passengers.
Then it was back to Pier 11 in the
pea soup thick
fog.
So the power plant is Baudoin Marine. Passenger capacity is 150. The captain requires a 100-ton license. Here’s the NYTimes story.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s headed for the confluence of the Saluda, Congaree, and Broad soon.
Lomer-Gouin and
Alfonse Desjardins are twin 1971 ferries, or traversiers operating between Quebec City and Levis, but the organization has ferries between many other points on the St. Lawrence as well.
The word traversiers is easy to trace and associate, but the derivation of ferry is from Norse.
These are no double ended ferries like those big orange ones in the sixth boro.
And the bow seems designed to ride up on and crush the ice.
Now I don’t know if there are still openings, but the sixth boro will soon have a more inclusive set of ferry stops as well. I believe you can find the notices here.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who was too late for the ice canoe races this year, but next year, I’ll be there. You have to see the photos in that link.
Hats off to the small boats that work all year round . . . crew boats,
patrol boats,
fishing boats,
line boats,
pilot boats,
dive boats,
more fishing boats,
more crew boats,
government boats,
more —soon to face major cuts--government boats
more line and boom boats,
and here’s a special . . . a historic life boat, long atop Binghamton, which is still intact as far as I know, and a bit longer ago had
guys in hazmat suits doing the last ever lifeboat drill aboard the 112-year-old condemned ferry.
And finally, of course there’s the New York Media Boat.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who gives a hat tip to all the crews in small boats on the big waters.
A week and a bit ago just after noon one day,
I caught CMA CGM Moliere heading for Port Elizabeth
and the next morning just before 9, I caught her bound for sea.
I’ve no idea how many boxes were shifted, but that’s not a lot of time in port.
All photos here by Will Van Dorp, who thinks you might be interested in reading this Workboat article about the new fleet of passenger boats heading from MetalShark to the sixth boro soon.
Let me start with the oldest ones not yet published. There’s something timely about Tracy, the vessel below. I took the photo from mid river between Ogdensburg NY and Prescott ON. Are you hankering for a project? Details below.
The next day I got this photo as we entered Oswego. RV Kaho was christened in this post I did a little over two years before. Its mission is research on habitat and fish in Lake Ontario. Here’s an article on that christening that mentions the meaning of the name in Ojibwe.
I shot this last week as it was tied up at the dry dock in Bayonne, and wish I could have gotten closer. Ferdinand R. Hassler was christened in 2012. Its namesake is this gentleman, distinguished in two countries.
Line has had light work this season in its role as a 65′ ice breaker. Here’s an article I did on this 54-year-old vessel a few years back.
I’m not sure where 343 is these days; Feehan seems to be covering the North River these days. Click here for photos of Feehan as she transited from Lake Ontario to the sixth boro.
Fire Fighter II passes the hose rack–not water hoses–on the KVK.
And here’s a twofer… a Staten Island ferry and a small USACE survey boat, I believe.
So here’s why the top photo of Tracy is timely; it’s for sale. The minimum bid is $250,000 Canadian, which is a mere $189,880 US, given today’s exchange rate.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
If you depart at 0400, there’s not much to photograph. Light beckoned as we approached Newburgh/Beacon.
I saw Mt. Beacon as I never had before;
ditto Storm King in sunrise that even dappled
the wave tops.
Once around Gee Point, we saw the statue (to the left on the ridge)
of Kościuszko’s, fortifier of West Point.
Once south of the Bear Mountain Bridge, passengers traveled upstream
for seasonal seesighting.
Scrap was sought.
Sloops sailed and
work boats waited their time.
More statues sighted, and
vessels waited their time.
And we had arrived at a place where at least two boros approached each other.
Will Van Dorp, who took these photos, is back in the boros for a while.
Here’s the series that this follows, a series that shows how busy this craneship still is at certain times of the year. Of course, this could also be called what do you do with an obsolete New York City ferry, a vessel delivered by Electric Boat on October 14, 1929 and replaced by a bridge in fewer than 10 years.
Yes, this is the bow of the craneship, and until I spent a day on board last fall, I assumed the bow wheel was non-functioning if even present.
Excuse the rain spot.
Closeups of bow and
stern.
Here’s a shot from the deck of Wards Island from the incredible warm late November day last year when we pulled a day’s worth of buoys from Oneida Lake, and at the
end of the day, getting a glimpse of the builders plate in the engine compartment.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
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