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Meagan Ann is not new, but that blue coaming on the barge looks to be.
Witte 3301 came into the harbor via Ambrose the other day for the very first time.
pushed by Meagan Ann. Recently launched in Erie PA,
the barge, which I estimate to be about 220′, was brought to the sixth boro by Zeus, returned from the Great Lakes after at least five years up on the fresh water.
Zeus, the first boat this October I see with pink trim,
moved both 3301 and 3302 around via the Saint Lawrence, but then handed one of the barges off to Meagan Ann just outside the VZ Bridge.
Welcome back, Zeus, although soon after dropping off the barges, she headed off to the Dann Marine base in Chesapeake City.
One stop of the new barges was captured by my Halifax counterpart, Mac Mackay here.
All photos, WVD.
How to structure some at photos sent along by eastriver while at sea had flummoxed me too long. But looking through some old titles, a eureka moment happened . . . I’d used this title once before . . . here.
Twilight on a hot asphalt-hauling steel barge
looks pretty good.
When the horizon retreats, twilight has a bigger canvas on which to fling color over a bigger expanse of sea and sky. The photos remind me of ones in this tugster post, also taken at sea under Maxfield Parrish skies.
Thanks, east river . . .
Yesterday, Labor Day, I took no photos, except one of a wood sign carving project in progress.
It turns out . . . Labor Day 2020 I took no photos either; these were sent to me though by Josh Watts, and embarrassingly, I’ve not posted them until now. Sometimes I get into a groove and lose track of things. These are two new generation NYS Canals tugs and a floating gradall, maintaining canal depth. It’s a great shot.
Here’s anorther from that date and that area of the west-of-Rochester portion of the canal, Adams Basin. The vantage point is a house barge from Erie Canal Adventures.
Labor Day 2019 I had the good fortune to be laboring, and taking photos, and doing that in Cleveland. Self-unloading freighter Algoma Buffalo was winding its way down the Cuyahoga
with assistance from two tugs, Cleveland and Iowa, launched 2017 and 1915 respectively!! You caught that 102-year difference in age, right! Also, that waterway used simultaneously for commerce and recreation . . . that’s the Cuyahoga, you know, the one that caught fire a number of times a half century ago. That is a story of concerted problem-solving, concerted means people with different ideas solving problems together.
Labor Day 2018 I was exploring Chicago and saw this massive Muddy Waters mural.
Just beyond this navigation aid, you turn to port and enter the federal lock that leads to the Chicago River.
Labor Day 2017 I was in Manitowoc. Then and many other times I’ve seen and wondered about Halten, a 1966 Swedish Coast Guard vessel (maybe not since painted-over raised letters on the stern say Oslo) that appears to be a yacht that might not move much. Maybe it just moves when I’ve not been paying attention.
Avenger IV passed us on Lake Michigan, where lots of fishing was happening from small boats.
Labor Day 2016 I had just left Ogdensburg downbound, and was passing the Canadian port of Johnstown, where the 1943 freighter Mississagi
was discharging cargo,
and a half hour later, we were still looking back at Johnstown in the beauty of the morning colors.
I could go farther back but won’t now. I’ve no idea why I’ve not taken any photos the past two Labor Days. September 5, 2022, I need to get back to work. Thanks to Josh for the first two photos; all others, WVD.
Looking ahead, just a reminder that after the TugBoat RoundUp, I’ll be road foto tripping a lot, and that might be no posts some days.
Hot to sweet . . . could have been a title too.
I hope obscure titles are not too off-putting, but I just realized that in late August 2019, I encountered Calusa Coast on the Cuyahoga while she was still on her contract to push liquid asphalt around the Inland Seas, aka the Great Lakes. To be liquid, asphalt needs to be over 250 degrees F, so that assist tug Cleveland here is close to some very hot liquid, safely enclosed in steel barge Delaware.
Two years ago, Calusa Coast and barge Delaware were nearing their contract.
Nine months ago, my friend Jack Ronalds caught the unit newly in salt water at the Strait of Canso. Earlier this week, I caught this unit, Calusa Coast pushing
sugar barge (technically, dry bulk barge) Jonathan up from coastal Florida to Yonkers.
That structure midships on Jonathan is a hatch crane.
As of this morning, they are still discharging at ASR, the sugar refinery. I’ve caught Jonathan and Sugar Express there on other occasions.
Come to think of it . . . Yonkers must be hot and sweet there now.
All photos, WVD.
Since we’ve had some extreme weather, how about a different type of extreme . . . with NYC DEP sludge tanker Red Hook approaching the unique Riverbank State Park, one of three state parks within Manhattan, the one with a wastewater treatment plant beneath it. I’ve just read that it’s now renamed the Denny Farrell State Park. Who knew . . . ?
Many thanks to Greg Hanchrow for these photos from a few winters back.
Daniel Meeter, frequent commenter on the blog and so much more, happened to overnight in Huron OH and caught these photos of Kristin Noelle shuffling some dredge equipment around.
I happened upon Huron OH here a few winters back . . .
Jonathan Steinman caught this photo of Atlantic Salvor returning to the sixth boro some time back; Jonathan used to send an occasional photo from the east side of Manhattan, but now he’s gotten really busy on the opposite side of the island. Of course, that’s the GW Bridge in the distance.
Need launch service for supplies or crew change on the upper Mississippi River? This launch can be trailered to the nearest boat ramp and then rendezvous with the client. This photo and the one below comes thanks to Trucker Tim.
Sharon Jon has spent its entire life–older than me by a decade–in the Duluth area; her days may now be done however.
My sister of the Maraki crew got these photos of Bradshaw McKee last week as it backed out of Grand Haven MI.
I’m surprised by this, since I thought that barge was now married to Prentiss Brown, but those two tugs have quite different superstructures, and this is unmistakably Bradshaw McKee. The barge, St. Marys Conquest, began life in Manitowoc WI as a tanker in 1937.
Many thanks to Greg, Daniel, Trucker Tim, Jonathan, and Lucy for these photos.
All photos here thanks to Tim Powell. What I noticed is that these all have a tugboat and a truck; hence . . . trugster. And the last photo here has yet another mode of land transport.
Note the stepvan on the bank?
A. E. Clifford dates from 1947. Click here for previous tugster fish tug posts. Off Clifford‘s stern, that’s Forney, which you’ve seen before here. And off Forney‘s starboard is a Ford pickup. The photos above and below Tim took in Superior WI, next to Duluth.
So here’s the delivery truck for B & M Delivery, a service of B & M Boat Store. Neil N. Diehl has an esteemed namesake.
Need grub along this section of the Mississippi? Just fill out the grocery form. Since this is an inland waterway with locks, you can figure out where the best place for the delivery is. B & M is at mile marker 403 upper Mississippi River. If the delivery truck needs need info about the boat, Dick’s towboat gallery is on the same site.
And if the towboat can’t make it to shore, the truck can tow a launch.
Rigger looks like it could be a pilot boat or a small tug like Augie, but I have no further info. Note the locomotive in the background among the grain silos?
Many thanks to Tim Powell for all these photos. And if you see a tugboat juxtaposed with a truck or train, we can make a “trugster 2” post.
I’m hoping to drive out to the Mississippi River watershed a bit later this year.
By the way, I just checked, and this is tugster post 4959, which means in 40 posts or so from now, a big milestone passes. Hmm . . .
Many thanks to Sandy Berg and SkEye Stream for the photo below, drone assisted in Kingston ON. In the foreground is Group Ocean’s Escorte, a 1967 Jakobson of Oyster Bay product, first launched as Menasha (YTB-773/YTM-761) for the U.S. Navy. Off Escorte‘s stern it’s Sheri Lynn S, a Lake Ontario tug seen here.
Next, let’s go SW from Kingston to Picton, where CSL Assiniboine is discharging slag, a steel furnace byproduct with multiple uses. Now if you’ve never seen the inside of a self-unloading ship’s hold, here are photos of one such arrangement, thanks to Picton Terminals.
Since the photo above shows only a bit of deck and the boom, here’s a photo I took in winter 2019 of CSL Assiniboine,
and two more I took in September 2019 in
the South Shore Canal section of the Saint Lawrence Seaway.
Now let’s get back to Picton Terminals. Sometimes a land machine gets lifted into the hold to assist. Balder back in 2013 brought Atacama Desert salt to Staten Island as a “road safety product” and she carried such a machine permanently in her belly.
Whatever the angle of repose for slag, it was just not slumping here. Making it slump to feed into the self-unloading gates at the bottom of the hold
can be tricky.
Now to move to another continent, Weeks tug Thomas here heads out of Rotterdam last week for Ascension Island. Now THAT is a long voyage, about 4000 nautical miles, a two-week voyage at 10 knots.
Thomas is pulling barge NP 476 loaded with various pieces of equipment, including a Eurocarrier 2110, a multipurpose vessel.
Next down to Gulf coastal waters and some photos I received an embarrassingly long time ago . . . sorry, stuff gets lost in the shuffle . . . it’s Heide Moran with barge Carolina.
Heide is now Dann Ocean’s Helen, and I’ve not seen her in the sixth boro.
Also from eastriver, another tugboat I’ve not yet seen . . . the 10,000+ hp Ocean Wave.
Ocean Wave is one of four Crowley vessels of this class; the others are Ocean Sun, Sky, and Wind. If you look closely at the photo above, a crewman off the port side of the wheelhouse is providing an ocean–or at least–a waterway wave.
Many thanks to Sandy Berg, SkEye Stream, Picton Terminals, Jan vander Doe, Ruud Zegwaard, and eastriver. I have lots more photos that you’ve sent. If I don’t immediately post, it’s because I’m trying to best position them, and that’s what leads me sometimes to lose sight, aka forget.
If you’re looking for something LONG to read, today is August 2, and that was the date 31 years ago that Iraqi forces overran Kuwait, where I was working. This account is an attempt to document my late summer/fall of 1990, the strangest months of my life. I have a more refined version, a pandemic project of revision, that I can send you if you want the latest iteration.
Four years ago, I saw Alder in Duluth, where she had worked since her launch in Lake Michigan in 2004. Believe it or not, I appear NOT to have taken photos of her, as unlikely as that seems. In 2005, Alder replaced the 1944 Sundew, which is still in Duluth, now as a private vessel. I was in Duluth after an interesting ride up from Milwaukee, but I appear not to have been in a mood to take photos of USCG vessels.
Alder is no longer in Duluth; earlier this month she traveled out of the Great Lakes. Jack Ronalds got these photos from Strait of Canso. Here she arrives from the north and heads for the lock, which is Seawaymax size. The pilot boat Strait Falcon makes the pilot exchange.
USCG in foreign territory . . . Click here for the other Juniper-class cutters, of which Alder is the last.
Here‘s a story about one of the pilots in the Strait area.
Getting back to Alder, might this be a tad hubristic?
From here, Alder headed to Baltimore by way of Boston. I’d held off posting this because I though she might pass through the sixth boro, but . . . I’ve read that after rehabbing, she heads to new duty in Hawaii. I wonder who’s replacing her in Duluth.
Many thanks to Jack for use of these photos, and for seeing an eye on the Strait.
Many thanks to Trucker Tim Powell for sending along these photos taken in Superior WI back in May 2008. She was launched in 1944 as ST 7067, later transferred to the USACE. Given the timing, Forney had already changed owners and would soon be painted in Heritage Marine’s gold livery, and renamed Edward H.
She looked quite good in USACE livery.
She’s still ST 707 gray inside.
I believe Forney, now Edward H, has been repowered, so this Enterprise DMG-38 engine is likely no longer in the boat. Does anyone know what she currently has for power, and what became of the Enterprise engine?
It turns out I saw Edward H from the air back in June 2017, although I was unable to identify her (I believe from bottom to top here we have Edward, Helen, and Nels.)
Here’s a similar shot from the other direction. More of this flight I posted here. The pilot had all the skills.
From Ingrid Staats . . . the most famous tugboat, Theodore Two, at least the most famous tugboat that isn’t really a tug boat. Bowsprite caught this famous non-tug here in the sixth boro, a decade ago. Ingrid took these photos in Toronto very recently.
Theodore Two has made quite a few meet-greet stops along its month-long journey from Halifax to Hamilton, salt to fresh water. Notice the bark canoe as tender?
Photos I saw from various Canadian stops (The pandemic prevented her from calling at US stops along the way.) show as many folks coming to meet-greet as used to appear whenever Urger stopped at towns along the Erie Canal.
From eastriver, enter the The Black Belt along the lower Mississippi.
And finally . . . a research question from Eric Wiberg: where is 1945 Bushey tug Chaplain? See text below for more info. Eric has even more info.
Many thanks to Tim, Ingrid, eastriver, and Eric for these photos.
From Eric: “This tug was at the last U-boat attack ever and is believed afloat in US or Bahamas. In May of 1945 a tug named CHAPLAIN crewed by Louis Alfred Coley, Jr. and others was used by U-853 under Oberleutnant zur See Helmut Frömsdorf of Germany as a disguise to hide under and sink the US merchant ship BLACK POINT, off Point Judith, RI, with the loss of 12 US sailors and naval gunners. Because the tug crew carried on towards New York with a light scow, history missed her, until 2018 and Capt. Colley described the events days before his death. Now, a Bahamian / US maritime historian is seeking anyone has any information on this tugboat, completed in Brooklyn NY in early 1945 by Ira S. Bushey & Sons, steam-powered with a Fairbanks-Morse engine of 1,000 horsepower.
Owned by Red Star Companies and Spentonbush Fuel Transport Service; Bushey affiliates. Sold to Farrell Ocean Services, then McKie Marine Co., and Russell Tripp (Bay State Towing Co.), retaining name CHAPLAIN in all three sales. Russell Tripp sold her to Constellation Tug Co. of Beverly and Boston, MA, who renamed her CARINA. She was sold to a company in the Bahamas in 2005 as CARINA. Names: CARINA believed to be in Bahamas 2009-present, owned by Kermitt Waters, Liberty Oil & Gas exploration, Las Vegas, NV and West Palm Beach, FL, aggregate trades Arawak Cay Nassau. Ex-OCEAN KING, Jeffries Point East Boston, Jan. 1951 to July 2004, ex-MARGARET SHERIDAN (New York), Jan. 1946 to Jan. 1951, ex-CHAPLAIN (New York) early 1945- Jan. 1946. Specs: IMO: 5260382, GRT: 179, LOA: 95’ X beam of 25.25’. The author is from Bahamas and has been scouring the waterfronts there since c.2015 to no avail and have contacted Liberty Oil & aggregate traders there to no avail. It is possible she has changed names again. Believed to still be US-flagged, she is probably in northern Bahamas or Caribbean, east Florida or US Gulf.”
She may have been renamed.
Click here for the previous 85 posts with this title. Lead photos today come from former owner of this push boat in West Burlington, Iowa.
The vessel, then known as Izona, has since traveled the Interstates and two-lanes to Highlands, NJ, towed by the much-loved Peterbilt of John Zook, of Lewisburg, PA.
Maybe you saw them on the roads, or since then, at a marina in Highlands NJ?
“Mister __” is a common name for tugboats. Here, from a secret salt is Mister C.
Hobo has appeared here before, but never with this outstanding fendering created here. Hobo is a 1953 product of Caddell Dry Dock. She’s now living the good life, in the hands of Donna and Charlie Costa.
Emery Zidell is a Centerline tugboat, currently in the sixth boro. She’s the older twin of Barry Silverton, a more frequent visitor to the boro. Photo comes from Capt. Anon E. Mous. Zidell is married to Dr. Robert J. Beall.
And finally, currently underway in the western center of Lake Erie, it’s Sarah Dann, pushing this huge crane on a barge from Manitowoc WI to Kittery ME, almost 3000 nm.
Get ready to see Sarah Dann and “Big Blue” in the Welland Canal and Saint Lawrence. You might see them passing Strait of Canso too.
Below, Jeremy Whitman caught a fabulous photo of the unit passing the 10th Street lift bridge in Manitowoc WI. Thanks much, Jeremy.
Here’s part of the story from John Buellesbach and MKE Marine Reports in “Around Wisconsin” “Konecranes of Finland partnered with Illinois-based Broadwind to build several large cranes for the U.S. Navy at the Broadwind Heavy Fabrications yard in Manitowoc, former site of Manitowoc Shipbuilding. The first, a portal jib crane for the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, was completed in early May. It weighs 2.7 million pounds, has a lifting capacity of 140 tons, and stands about 160 feet tall. This custom designed crane incorporates unique features that allow it to be operated on the multiple rail section sizes, straight or curved, located at the naval base.”
ETA in New Hampshire is around the 18th. Track them on AIS.
Thanks to Jeremy, John, the Powells and the Costas, Great Lakes mariner, and other nameless contributors.
By the way, does anyone have photos to share here of CMA CGM Marco Polo and from the same day, Kurt J. Crosby?
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