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I hope you’re enjoying my juggling of alternating author persona: in this post, I’m back to tugster retrospectives.
Remember this sixth boro boat? It carried a powerful Norse name. It was a favorite of mine too. Back when I took the photo in 2008, I thought I’d never see a pushboat with variable height wheelhouse in the boro again. Little did I know a lot of things. I didn’t suspect that she’d be modified such that her variability of height was removed. Isn’t that like removing the wings of Pegasus? She might appear back in then sixth boro one of these days as Matty T.
I never imagined what fate was in store for Peking! I hope some day to see her in her restored condition.
I never suspected these two would be sold south, nor did I know the namesake of Patrick Sky beside fleet mate Scotty Sky. I didn’t even know these little tankers had worked the Great Lakes or that they came from the Blount shipyard or that I’d someday work for Blount. It’s possible that the little tankers are now gone.
I was astonished by the two submarines that sailed into the sixth boro, this one and a Dutch sub. So far as I know, none have been in the boro in the past decade now.
In 2009, I started going to work in Elizabeth NJ early to watch scenes like this along the Arthur Kill.
I sailed through the Highlands in the crow’s nest of Half Moon, never envisioning it would be sold foreign. Lookouts were posted in both crow’s nests that day, so as not to take chances past Anthony’s Nose and Dunderberg Mountain.
Who ever expected that an airplane would be fished out of the Hudson, and that that misplaced aircraft felled by misplaced birds would be safely immersed in a frozen river with no loss of life or even serious injury. Is there a historical marker praising Sully’s landing anywhere along the riverbanks?
In September 2009 a veritable Dutch invasion by craft traditional and highest-tech lethality would make its way upriver.
Let’s hold it up here. I was just learning about the sixth boro with camera in hand back then, and I’m glad now what I recorded then, because otherwise my memory would have left out a lot. I wish I’d started photographing years earlier.
What interested me in this incoming vessel was its fleet: Spliethoff, and the name–Dijksgracht–makes her a D-type. Her D-type fleetmates can be found here. As to cargo, I imagined she might be bringing wood pulp.
But when she came into view, another secret was revealed: she had a deckload of yachts on a voyage that left Turkey just before Christmas and Genoa just before New Years. It seemed counterintuitive, however, that a yacht carrier was heading north up the North River and Hudson as snow was flying up there. Boats in cold New York/Jersey are hauled out and shrink-wrapped now.
I can’t identify the make of the yachts, but that brand of tank forward is certainly Turkish.
Lines . . . design . . .
these yachts–with their interstellar styling–are not for me, even if I had the budget.
But what astounded me was the speed of the vessel . . . it was doing 17 knots under the VZ and continued with astonishing speed farther upriver.
Who knows . . . maybe there’s a snow regatta upriver somewhere.
If you’re interested, the “gracht” part of this name means “canal,” and trust me . . . pronouncing the “cht” in the western Netherlands dialect involves some “throat-scraping” you might say.
As the vessel passed the Javits Center midday today, I was wondering if any of these will be transported back here for the upcoming boat show in two weeks . . . Too bad there’s not a pier right off Javits.
All photos, WVD.
The Spliethoff Group is comprised of other fleets such as BigLift; you might recall BigLift Baffin was in town a few months back. A smaller class of BigLift vessels all have names beginning with Happy, like Happy River, Happy Dynamic–which I caught hauling yachts out of the sixth boro, and a favorite Happy Buccaneer. Two previous “gracht” vessels on this blog can be seen here. And a previous Dutch general cargo vessel with a deckload of sailing yachts . . . here.
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 title goes back almost a decade, and this schooner has been doing cargo runs on the Hudson for a while now, but I’d not seen it yet.
Fortunate for me, I finally spotted the boat this past weekend, running
from Brooklyn side Upper Bay to Raritan Bay and the Arthur Kill.
I’ve posted photos of autumn sail here and here and in other posts like here, but this one is moving cargo.
As of this posting, she’s in the Hudson Highlands section of the river.
Cargo or not, sailing vessels have an elegance, a je ne sais quoi . . . .
Wind is the other alternative fuel.
All photos, any errors, WVD.
Apollonia has caught the attention of the NYTimes here about a year ago, and here recently in a Kingston NY paper. Here’s a joint venture with a microbrewery up the river in Beacon.
Here was the first post in this series.
If I’m not mistaken, this sand comes from the freshwater sources of sand in SW New Jersey; I posted photos of the loading and transit of such sand here back not quite three years ago.
My vantage point here was Little Island, and in midafternoon, I was shooting more into the sun than I’d prefer.
Yup, that’s Hoboken’s W hotel and the north end
of the bluff where Stevens Institute of Technology is located.
All photos, WVD, who encourages you to visit Little Island if you’ve not yet done so. The highest point, where I took these photos, is about 60′ above the river surface.
And unless I get the robots more photos/fodder, there may be some days sans posts coming up.
Maiden is in the boro, an impressive thoroughbred sailing since 1979! I hope you click on that link for her amazing history. Here‘s more on its current voyage.
The definition of yacht is quite loose. I’d argue that the sloop passing in front of the Statue is someone’s yacht, although it’s not a global circumnavigator like Maiden.
Sportfish Markella was eastbound on the East River . . . maybe trolling for tidal strait tuna . . .
Or this one, Zada Mac, in pursuit of and hoping to snag Hudson River halibut? Yes, those were written in jest.
Mariner III looks delicate and outsized here passing alongside a tanker in the Kills.
Yacht Liberty carries the St. Vincent Grenadines flag, but besides that, I can’t tell you much.
Yacht Full Moon is a 65′ beauty once owned by Jerry Lee Lewis, a stunner now operated by Classic Harbor Lines and
dating from 1950. It was built by Grebe.
All photos by WVD, whose tugster blog is currently operated by riverine robots.
June 2012 was pivotal for me. A photo sent along by a friend alerted me to Canal commerce–Canadian corn– entering the US at Oswego, a place I knew something of from my youth.
If that was a spark, then the breeze that fanned it was an invitation to do my trial article for Professional Mariner magazine, which led me to Kingston NY, the mouth of the Rondout, and a project involving use of a half century old tug Cornell to do TOAR signoffs. My most recent article in the magazine came out today and can be seen here.
On that assignment, I was privileged to have a mentor, Brian Gauvin, do the photography.
Other big events for June 2012 included the movement of shuttle Enterprise from JFK airport ,
ultimately to the Intrepid Museum to be
hoisted onto the flight deck as part of the display, now covered.
My daughter went off to Brasil (again) and the Amazon, leading me to go there myself a year later, fearing she’d never return because she loved it so much there.
I’d given her a camera before she went, and was rewarded with some quite interesting photos, like these small motor boats that looked almost like slippers …
with straight shafts coming straight out of air-cooled engines.
During my trip up to the Rondout, I stopped in Newburgh, where replicas of La Niña and Pinta, crafted using traditional techniques on the Una River in Bahia, Brasil, attracted crowds, one of many stops along the great loop route.
Other festivities on the Hudson that summer . . .
included the sails and music associated with the Clearwater Festival, and of course the small boats moving in some of the venues.
Patty Nolan and Augie were the small tugs, and of course the sailboats including Mystic Whaler, Woody Guthrie,
and of course the sloop Clearwater. The Clearwater organization will not be doing a music festival in June 2022. Mystic Whaler is now working in Oxnard CA at the Channel Islands Museum.
Summer time and the living is easy well, at least it feels that way some days . . . .
All photos, except the first one, WVD. That first photo was taken by Allan H. Seymour.
From the archives of the Canal Society of New York, it’s a set of photos taken along the Hudson showing some unidentified cargo vessels of yore. The large building just off the bow of the T-2 tanker is unmistakably the West Point Gillis Field House. I can’t quite make out the tanker’s name, however.
Ditto here, as to the name of this cargo ship heading upriver at the Bear Mountain Bridge. Is that type called a Victory ship?
Heading downstream, it’s another T-2 tanker. Note the stack is differently marked from the one above. The location is off Iona Island and heading for Jones Point.
And finally, this may be the same T-2 as above. I can’t place the location of read the name.
South of Jones Point between 1946 and 1971, there was this presence. Here‘s a tugster blog post on this gathering.
At its peak in the mid-1960s, almost 200 ships were anchored here.
That’s it here. Maybe a reader can read more out of these images used with permission from Canal Society of New York archives.
Many thanks to Bob Mattsson for doing his best to lighten these photos. Check out his book and models here.
First I need to make a correction: in M2 I stated that Tigre would have traveled through the Panama Canal; she did not because she worked out of the Peruvian Amazon in the area of Iquitos! Thanks to Paul Strubeck for the image below. That would have been an interesting delivery!!
Next, photos and details of the STs Matton built in the first half of the 1940s are detailed in this fabulous site compiled by by Dan Friend.
Now we jump to 1954 and this photo showing a Cleveland 498 engine being lowered into a tugboat simply named Matton, which was reefed in 1990 as Troy.
Moving forward chronologically, William Lafferty has shared these two old Kodachromes taken on a sunny late September 1960 on the Welland Canal and I adapt from his comments: “The 1957 Ralph E. Matton has entered the lock. The tug was powered initially by a Cleveland Diesel 12-278, 2100 hp, later repowered with an EMD 16-567C. It hauled oil barges on the Barge Canal and Great Lakes in the summer, mostly for Seaboard Shipping Corporation and Moran’s Morania division, and fuel oil barges in the winter on Long Island Sound. Its Great Lakes service ended by 1962.”
To add my comment, the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959 effectively ended transportation of cargoes between salt water and the Great Lakes via the Barge Canal.
“Bart Turecamo purchased the Matton operation in 1964 and the 84′ x 25′ Ralph E. Matton became the Mary Turecamo and then Albany in 1972 for American Dredging Company of Philadelphia. In 1994 it was sold to Casco Bay Towing Company, Portland ME, where it was dismantled in spring 2007.”
“Following the Matton tug, the 1923 UK-built Keybar was carrying 2600 tons of pulpwood for a mill in Erie PA. Keybar would then proceed from Erie to Oswego to load coal for Montréal, clearing Oswego 4 October 1960. The handsome Keybar (look at those windows beneath the pilothouse) was launched 19 March 1923 at South Bank-on-Tees, England, by Smith’s Dock Co., Ltd., for Keystone Transports Co., Ltd., Montréal, a shipping firm organized by the Montreal Power, Heat and Light Company, Ltd., to bring American coal to its generating plants. Laid up at Kingston ON after the 1961 season, it arrived at Port Dalhousie ON for demolition on 1 June 1963.”
Matton launched Everglades in 1959. Later, renamed Captain Nelson, she shows up in this submarine assist. That particular submarine suffered substantial damage in a Kittery ME fire, and was subsequently decommissioned.
Everglades was Matton’s only tugboat in 1959, and their only one in 1960 was Challenger. Here she is after 1970 as Captain Brinn. A 2012 image of her in Kingston, St. Vincent as Captain Bim can be found here. This site claims she’s still afloat, but if you follow the location of her icon, she’s in mid-Sahara Desert, so . . . uh, no.
Bart Turecamo was the first tugboat the shipyard produced after Turecamo had taken over the Hudson River shipyard.
She’s still at work in Philadelphia bearing the same name, as seen in my photo from 2010.
After a series of launches for NYPD including the still extant No. 5, the yard released James Turecamo in December 1969, and she’s still works in the Albany area of the Hudson. Has anyone seen James above the Troy Lock?
July 1971, the yard launched Mobil 1, which in 1992 was renamed Tioga and in 1993 was sold and renamed Zachery Reinauer, still extant but I’ve not seen her in a long time.
In Sept 1976, the yard launched Largo Remo for Refineria Panama; it eventually became Tridente and now (?) Vesca R-18. Click on the photo below for more info. Largo Remo is an island on the Caribbean side of Panama.
After Largo Remo, the yard produced only three more tugboats or boats of any kind: Michael (now in Honduras as A. J. Ellis) , Joan, and Mary Turecamo, the latter in March 1983 being the very last. Mary is alive and still working in the sixth boro, as evidenced in my photo from October 2021.
Many thanks to Paul Strubeck, William Lafferty, and the Canal Society for offer of and use of these photos. Any errors in information attributable to WVD, and correction of such errors is appreciated. Changes in font happen because of cutting/pasting.
Remember the Canal Society winter symposium is coming up a week from today; I plan to be there. Also, remember the conference in the early fall 2022.
After today, I have one more Matton post from the Canal Society archives. Below is an aerial shot on the Matton shipyard on the Hudson, the one that closed in 1983 as a Turecamo-owned site. Bart Turecamo had purchased the yard in the mid 1960s , soon after Ralph Matton had died. More info and photos can be found here.
Thanks to William Lafferty, yesterday’s post identified the tugboat with a film crew as the 1895 P. C. Ronan. Below is a clear shot of Ronan‘s bow, with the scow along the opposite side of the tugboat. Clearly, the platform is on the scow, not as I first supposed yesterday, on the tug. I’d also wager that standing on the bow second from left and wearing a captain’s hat is the same gentleman/same clothes and hat as in yesterday’s photo.
At least two decades between the image of a Matton-owned tugboat above and Matton-built Tigre in December 1941.
I’m guessing Tigre never entered the Barge Canal, but obviously would have transited the Panama Canal on the way to Peru. According to Matton shipyard history, she was renamed as Franco, but it’s possible but highly unlikely that the 81-year-old boat is still extant.
Also in the 1940s, Matton had a number of US government contracts: 5 submarine chasers for the USCG and the Russian government, 4 small tugs (ST) to Finland, and 6 YTLs to Southeast Asia and Venezuela. YTL 456 went to the Philippines, if this info is to be believed. For example, it lists Watertown NY as location of a Matton shipyard, and I’ve never read of that.
Shown here in the Troy lock, upbound, Margaret Matton
was launched in 1946; subsequent names include
Fort Lauderdale,
Evening Light, and
Hudson. She was cut up soon after I took this photo in 2006. The Evening Light and Fort Lauderdale photos are used with permission from the Paul Strubeck collection. I’ve heard stories from a captain who once worked as a deckhand on Hudson moving fuel to storage tanks north of Newark NJ on the Passaic, hearing gunfire from the city on the Passaic. Traveling through gunfire on a gasoline barge might make for some insomnia.
The 1951 Edward Matton has appeared here before in part B of this series. She became Morania No. 9 and eventually a NJ reef, with details here in part B.
The 1954 Matton became Kathleen Turecamo, then Troy, then scrapped or reefed in 1990.
The 1957 Ralph E. Matton became Mary Turecamo, then Albany, then scrapped in 2007.
Photo not credited to Paul Strubeck or WVD are used from the Canal Society of New York archives.
More Matton soon.
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