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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.
A couple days ago in the 77 Days post (which I’ve since learned added up to 79 days) I saw a mariner I know on the boro on a Maersk container vessel.
Most of the time though I don’t know the folks I see working on the water. The folks in yellow and orange coats below are likely longshoremen mustering before ruunning in and driving all the vehicles out that are to be discharged here . . . in the sixth boro.
Note the mariners below preparing the messenger line down to the tugboat.
The deckhand retrieves it, makes it to the tugboat, signals,
and the ONE crew move forward to standby at the forward mooring area.
Meanwhile, the deckhand secures the line.
All photos, WVD.
Hat tip to the people out on the boro in all kinds of weather.
All these photos were taken in the second half of January 2013. This 1973 livestock carrier Falconia was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard getting some work done. I’d love to see a cargo layout for the vessel. Also, just back from the foremast, those are large bales of either hay or straw for the livestock. What would you guess her disposition in second half of January 2023? Answer follows at the end of this post.
The tanker here is today in the Gulf of Guinea on a run between Gabon and Netherlands. Kristy Ann Reinauer was scrapped in 2015.
The green tug Mary Gellatly was transformed into the very busy CMT Mackenzie Rose.
The behemoth Rebel has become Ken Vinik, awaiting a makeover in the Arthur Kill.
The name of the hull–we’d spell it “Sovkomflot“–is one you will not see in the sixth boro these days, and it seems the icebreaking tanker is currently
anchored where it has been for at least the past six months in Murmansk.
The Penn Maritime Coho has become the Kirby Coho, currently in Savannah.
Note the ice and snow on the boats above and below; January a decade ago was frosty! Barbara McAllister has become Patsy K, which I’ve never seen. She’s in Panama City FL right now.
It’s clamming time in the boro, and many of these clam/fish boats come out of this creek in NJ. More Dutch Girl tomorrow.
Grey Shark may be a dead ship or even a scrapped one by now, last recorded in the DR.
And finally, Megan McAllister is alive and well, busy as Charles James.
All photos from January 2013, WVD.
And the answer to the question about the current disposition of Falconia: she’s renamed Dragon and in Midia, Romania on the Black Sea, flying the Togolese flag, and still working, having just arrived in from Libya. For a tour of a much newer and sophisticated purpose-built livestock carrier, click here. More on this category of vessel here, and Dragon specifically on page 49.
For a disturbing report–if you choose to followup here–google Queen Hind livestock carrier, which capsized in Midia in 2019 and resulted in the “lost cargo,” i.e., death 14,000 sheep.
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.
Part B of this post is a corrective. The lead photo I used two days ago was NOT the first photo I took in 2023; rather, the one below was: a pristine 1969 or 1970 Buick Electra (?) parked here by another photographer wanting to get golden hour photos of the sunrise over waters near the VZ Bridge. I knew I had to step back from my vantage-point cliff to get a photo of this museum quality piece of automobile history. If you’ve been following Tugster for a while, you know it’s a waterblog that occasionally strays into automotive land machines, although not self-driving kind of “automotive.”
A while later, with the sun still quite low, I caught Copper Mountain pushing A-70,
likely upriver.
Above and below, it’s Shiloh Amon aka Jillian Irene. Unrelated, has anyone gotten a photo of Marilyn George aka Steven Wayne, ex-Patapsco, currently in the boro just west of Caddells? I’m wondering if Marilyn George might soon be wearing a lion . . . .
Already on the first day of the year, loaded garbage barges move toward the railhead and empties . . . to the marine transfer stations, here with James William in the foreground.
Ava heads out for a just-past dawn job, as
does Jonathan C.
All photos, WVD.
I’m back and just in time for the last day of the year, which –as explained in previous years— in my Dutch tradition is a reflection day, a time to if not assess then at least recall some of the sights of the past 12 months. A photo-driven blog makes that simultaneously easy and hard; easy because there’s a photographic record and not easy because there’s such an extensive photographic record to sift though.
A word about this set of photos: these are some “seconds” that did not make the final cut for my 2023 tugster calendar. The actual calendars are still available if you’ve not ordered one; find the order info here. I’m ordering a bunch myself.
One windy day last January I caught a Pilot No 1–the old New York–doing drills under the VZ Bridge. Just recently I met one of the engineers on that boat, a person with epic stories about the sixth boro.
A warm day in February, I caught JRT Moran assisting QM2 into her Red Hook berth.
March I spent a delightful day on Douglas B. Mackie observing the water side of a Jersey shore beach replenishment project, thanks to the hard-working folks at GLDD.
April . . . I caught Jane McAllister heading out; correct if I’m wrong, but my sense is that soon afterward she made her way down to South America to join the expanding ranks of US-built tugs working on various projects on the south side of the Caribbean.
As a member of the Canal Society of NYS, I had the opportunity to see Urger up close and sun-warmed on the bank of the Oswego in Lysander NY.
A clutch of Centerline tugboats waited for their next assignment at the base just east of the Bayonne Bridge. Note the fully foliated trees beyond them along the KVK.
From the humid heat of western Louisiana and onto the Gulf of Mexico, Legs III–shown
here spudded up just east of SW Pass, afforded a memorable journey on its way up to the sixth boro. Thx, Seth.
Back in the boro, later in August, a Space X rocket recovery boat named Bob–for an astronaut– came through the sixth boro. More on Bob–the astronaut–here.
In September, I finally got to my first ever Gloucester schooner race, thanks to Rick Miles of Artemis, the sailboat and not the rocket.
Icebreaker Polar Circle was in the boro a few days in September as well. Now it’s up in Canada, one hopes doing what icebreakers are intended to do. US naval logistics vessel Cape Wrath is at the dock in Baltimore ready and waiting a logistics assignment.
Ticonderoga certainly and Apache possibly are beyond their time working and waiting. I believe Ticonderoga is at the scrappers in Brownsville.
Passing the UN building on the East River, veteran Mulberry is currently out of the army and working in the private sector. I’ve a request: for some time I’ve seen a tug marked as Scholarie working the waters west of the Cape Cod Canal; a photo suggested it might be called Schoharie. Anyone help out?
And finally, a photo taken just two days ago while passing through the sixth boro during what can hardly be called “cover of darkness” it’s Capt Joseph E. Pearce on its way to a shipyard on the mighty Rondout to pick up some custom fabrication for a Boston enterprise. Many thanks to the Stasinos brothers for the opportunity.
I’d be remiss in ending this post and this year without mentioning lost friends, preserving a memory of their importance to me personally . . . Bonnie of frogma–first ever to comment of this blog so many years ago and a companion in many adventures– and Mageb, whose so frequent comments here I already miss.
I plan to post tomorrow, although I may miss my high noon post time because I hope to post whatever best sunrise 2023 photos I can capture in the morning.
Happy, safe, and prosperous new year to you all. I’m posting early today because I want my readers who live much much farther east than the sixth boro to get these wishes before their new trip around the sun begins. Bonne annee! Gelukkig nieuwjaar!
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.
For scale, the “small” tugboat on the near side of the tanker here is over 100′ loa.
That means … there’s a lot of crude oil capacity in the vessel she’s assisting. however, to complete the scale comparison, this tanker is 816′ loa. The largest tanker currently operating–Euronav Oceania–is 1246′ loa, and the largest ever–Knock Nevis et al.–was 1504′ and that’s just looking at the length. Imagine how these tugboats would look alongside either of these tugboats!
The tug on the far side is 100′ x 40′. Also, keep in mind that when zoomed in on a subject several miles away, distortion happens, refracted light.
The line connecting tugboat and ship is incredibly strong.
To this photographer’s delight, the KVK twists and turns, complicating navigation but allowing photography of first one side and then the other side of whatever traffic there.
In low angle light of dawn, the shadow image replicates whatever creates it without distortion.
All photos, WVD.
As for the vessel SFL Trinity, you can learn more here. And why “S F L,” here is the expansion of that abbreviation.
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.
Since starting the blog, I’ve noticed constant change in the sixth boro, shorelines of the five boros and NJ, and a few other places I get to repeatedly. For example, a year and a half ago Bayonne Dry Dock added their marine travel lift, and anyone looking in that direction gets treated to a rotation of work boats, revealing hull lines and wheels, the usually invisible parts of a boat.
Saint Emilion (SE) spent about a month on the hard; in fact, I caught her in the slings about to lift here a few months back. In the photo above SE shares the yard with NRC Guardian, an oil spill response boat one hopes never to need. Below the other boat is McCormack Boys. Seeing them juxtaposed like this illustrates the difference in scale between a 73′ tug and a 105′ one.
Beam on the two boats is a less dramatic difference of 38′ v. 26′.
Charleston, 95′ x 34′, has interesting five-bladed props, aka wheels. For some sense of the variety of props, click here.
Recently Alex McAllister was out of the water for a period of time, which could be as routine as you own car going up on the lift now and then.
Note the Kort nozzles (ducted propeller) that enclose the props on Alex. Nozzles can also be seen above on McCormack Boys.
All photos, WVD, whose previous high-and-dry posts can be seen here.
I mentioned in yesterday’s post that this is the week tugster launched 16 years ago. Back then and sometimes since, I sometimes describe this blog as a research project without a defined end point or goal; observe, photograph, sometimes chat, analyze, repeat . . . is the method. If analyze means reading, then google or whatever search engine you prefer . . . is your friend.
That there are patterns is clearer now, even with and maybe because of occasional wrong deductions along the way. Despite my frequent use of “random” in titles, my “patterns” geek level has climbed such that a newbie to the site might wonder about the minutae, the invented words and acronyms. Trust me: I still am (mostly) a sociable, balanced person albeit with the more maricentric perspective I strived for.
In case you’re wondering, some video sources these days are What the Ship and marktwained, other maricentric and rivacentric sites. Rivacentric . . . I like that because seeing life from the perspective of rivers is not the same as seeing it from shoreless seas or trails, roads and highways.
I’ve been kicking a rival idea around in my head . . . using the method described above, I’d love to do something–likely not a blog–about various agriculture/food production sectors now compared with how they were 50 or so years ago, the time when I was growing up with agricultural chores all year long on a family farm. My brother dairy farms the “old” way on the land where I grew up, and friends work for today’s east coast megafarms. Then there’s farming with poultry, beef and other meat animals, apples and other fruits, grains and other cash crops, produce, mushrooms, . . . that’s only land farming and the list of farming types can go on . . .
I think about doing this ag then/now project a lot, but I have time to do only one research project, not both.
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