Thanks to JG 2

Recognize the tugboat below?  Answer follows.

David McAllister, photo from 2013, has recently changed hands and is currently undergoing “re-power and life extension” as Tradewinds Towing Hannah.

Draco, photo below taken in 2007, shows the vessel that began life in 1951 as Esso Tug No. 12.  I caught her in the sixth boro as Co here (scroll) back in 2009.

Pleon, built in 1953, has appeared on this blog several times recently.

Canal Deluge, shown here in Fournier Towing and Ship Services colors, has since been sold to Trinidad, where she is (somewhat appropriately) know as Boston Lady.

And finally, originally a steam tug built in the mid-1920s to assist ships and break ice on the Delaware river, the 125′ John Wanamaker claimed the title of the last steam tug operating commercially in the US, but after several stints as a restaurant boat, she was cut up in New Bedford sometime around 2007.   Anyone have photos of her last days or her last decades as a restaurant in at least three different New England locations?  For a great story about her–and many other boats– read Jim Sharp’s With Reckless Abandon.  It seems that Jim has owned at least half the historic vessels on the East coast at one time or other. His Sail, Power, & Steam Museum will reopen in the spring.

Again, thanks to JG, these photos from the near but irretrievable past.

Oh, and that mystery tug at the top, she’s of course Pelham, seen in this post (scroll) and many others here.

Thanks to JG 1

Know that boat below?  Answer follows.  It’s recently been in the news.  This trove of photos comes from JG, an out-of-towner whom I sometimes meet along the KVK.  This photo was taken between 2001 and 2007.

Seguin (1972, YTB-816 Campti) has been sold foreign.  Anyone know where? The photo below was taken in 2003.

Hercules (YTB-766, Wapakoneta) has also gone foreign, to Nigeria, as documented on this blog here.

Natick (YTB-760, Natick) was completed at Jakobson’s although construction began elsewhere.  The photo below was taken in 2009.

This photo of Phoenix LT-1975 was taken in 2007 in Constellation Maritime colors.  She’s currently in Maine as Fournier Brothers.

King Philip, shown here in 2007, currently works as Olon in Panama.

Chicopee, shown here in 2007, was built in 1952 by Higgins Industries as Army tug LT-1966.  Anyone know where she is today?

Ludwig E., which became Nathan E. Stewart in 2007, sank in October and was raised earlier this month.  Anyone know if she will be refurbished?

Many thanks to JG for use of these photos.

 

Ports of the Boothbays

I may need some correction here, but it appears Boothbay Harbor is an entity different than Boothbay, and there’s an East and West Boothbay as well.  It’s sort of like the Hamptons in NY and the Oranges in NJ, I suppose.  Anyhow, I saw the scene below in Boothbay harbor and I realized I’d located one of the things I was seeking.  So the connection is the gray/white/red pinky schooner at the end of the wharf:

It’s Ardelle in Boothbay.  I’d seen Ardelle before here in one of my favorite places . . . Essex, MA, home of Lettie G. Howard and many other boats.

The connection is that the person who built Ardelle and others would be–is–an excellent choice to work on  . . .

the hauled out Ernestina.  Watch the short video at that link if you have a minute and a half to spare.

I was just a visitor, so I left the crew alone.

The quicker the work’s done, the quicker it gets

back here to its empty dock at the New Bedford State Pier.  But again, I digress.

A few miles to the east of Boothbay Harbor is East Boothbay, home of Washburn & Doughty, but also Hodgdon Yachts, who went from wooden fishing boats to world-class yachts like Asolare, below.

Monitor, below, is an aptly-named state-owned Department of Marine Resources vessel, passing here near Ram Island Light.

And here I really digress, but seeing isolated lighthouses like this reminds me of the stories I heard long ago of William H. Wincapaw, also known as Flying Santa.

All photos, digressions, and faux-pas by Will Van Dorp.

If you want to share photos of a gunkhole, harbor, port, or wharf before the end of this month, send me an email.  This was GHP&W 24.

Click here for many more posts I’ve done with some connection to the Boothbays.

Port of Point Judith

And this–believe it or not–is Galilee.  Galilee, Rhode Island.

Here’s a close up of Tradition.

Amelia Bucolo intrigues me because of what it’s towing to port.  I’ve no context to tell how common this is.  The builder, by the way, is Gladding-Hearn, 1966.

The rig is unlike any fishing rig I can recall seeing, too.

Is it a market boat?

 

True American is fiberglass.  See the gloves atop the cabin?

 

 

I stopped in Point Judith only to catch the ferry to Block Island, but I’ll definitely be back.

Here’s a similar port post from six years ago.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.

Ports of the Acushnet

I took these photos in early September.  That’s New Bedford on the far side of the Acushnet River;  I was standing on the Fairhaven side of the hurricane barrier.  Acushnet was also the whaleship name in Moby Dick.

Note the Portuguese name:  Sao Paulo, built 1977

A member of the crew looks homeward.

Mary K, built 1990, and registered

in Woods Hole.

Megan Marie, built 1980, is registered in

Montauk.  If you want to watch fish boats, the hurricane barrier is a good spot.

Sao Jacinto, 1977, and registered n New Bedford. And following them out, it’s

Jim Dandy, 1977,  of So. Dartmouth.

Direction, Westport, MA.

 

Michigan, Fairhaven, 1947.

 

Nicole Danielle, Atlantic City, NJ.

Whitewater, Marathon FL!

Here are four vessels of the Eastern Fisheries fleet. 

There are two boats by this name in New Bedford, as is

true of this one.

The registration on the stern says “New Bedford.”

The density of boats on the docks makes credible that this port is rated #1 in the US for catch value, and has been for the past decade and a half.

 

Check out Cape May NJ and Lowland, NC.

 

All photos taken over a two-day period around the mouth of the Acushnet by Will Van Dorp.

Someone more informed than me could identify what fishery each of these vessels engages in.

Ports of St. George

GHP&W 3.   And I don’t mean the northern Staten Island area named for a developer with the first name George.

As the lobster might suggest, this St. George is in Maine, and named for the river which is named for the English explorer/captor of Squanto who visited this area in 1607.   I was confused the first time I arrived here because I was looking for Port Clyde and all the signs said was “St. George.”

But it turns out that within the town of St. George are villages like Tennants Harbor, Martinsville, and Port Clyde.

I hope to return to Port Clyde next year, in part because this is the mainland wharf for the Monhegan Boat Line.  Elizabeth Ann was preparing for the passenger run, but

I didn’t get to see the “world-famous Laura B,” a repurposed 1943 Army T-boat, which after doing WW2 duty in the Pacific, ran lobsters from Maine to Boston and New York. Anyone know of old NYC sixth-boro photos of Laura B delivering Maine fruits of the sea to the city?   Laura B was working, delivering freight to Monhegan.  And these cargo nets filled with firewood await for the next cargo run.

A glance at a map or chart of the peninsulas of Maine is enough to explain the value of craft like Reliance and her sisters.

The work boats in the harbor represent only part of the “gear” needed to fish;  the rest is on paper.

Even on rainy days, I like looking at these boats.  Taking photos of paperwork  . . . never so much.

 

 

From a short conversation of the wharf, I have the sense that the paperwork and regulations keep vessels like these in port many more days than they fish. And global water temperature trends make this an even harder way to earn a living.

 

 

All photos here by Will Van Dorp, who wants to get back up here soon.

 

Really Random Tugs 30

Really random means just that . . . and here are previous posts in the series.

So–thanks to Harry Thompson– let’s start with this assemblage . . . barge Amy B, Evelyn assist on the far side, but prominent is the 1941 Bushey built Jared S–ex-Cheyenne II, Sally Carroll, and Martin J. Kehoe.

The closest I ever got to Jared S was here . . . about a mile in from the mouth of the Genesee River in October 2014.  See the white buoy 20 feet off the bow of the decrepit Spirit of Rochester . . .  that marks the hazard created by the sinking of Jared S.

Also thanks to Harry, here’s a repost of Ocean Queen, cropped slightly tighter than I had two weeks ago . . . but check this link for the particulars.    In that link you learn that she sank after getting rammed near Hell Gate.  Well, thanks to

Robert Silva, here are some photos of Ocean Queen after she was raised.

You can see exactly where a bow struck her.   Thanks, Robert.

I took the photo below last week in Boothbay, Maine, where I checked out the Tugboat Inn.  Of course, I needed to know the story, since the superstructure here looked authentic.  All the info I collected online and from the staff there said the boat was built in 1917–probably in New York–and worked all its life until 1973 in Maine waters as the tugboat Maine.  However, nowhere could I corroborate this.

Thanks to Dave Boone, I received the photos below and learned a different narrative that seems plausible if you carefully compare the photo above with the one below.  The Boothbay pub was once the Richard J. Moran, built at Gibbs Gas Engine in Jacksonville in 1920.  Actually, it was built in Greenport NY in 1917 as Socony 3.  Then it became Maine and still later Richard J. Moran became the name.    Thanks again to Dave Boone for the correction.

But was Richard J.  scrapped in 1950, as these databases say, or did it get renamed Maine at that point and then get transformed into a pub in the early 1970s? To be continued.

The rest of the photos in this post I took last week.

In Rockland on the hard, it’s the mid-1950s Kennebec, and she’s available.

 

Dimensions are 41.9′ x 12.4.’

 

 

Here’s the info, but she might be sold by now.

 

Thanks to Harry, Robert, and Dave for vintage photos.  All other photos by Will Van Dorp.

And if you’re interested in collaboration, I invite your help for November posts.  All month long I hope to feature different ports–harbors–waterways and their workboats, which means not only towing vessels, but also ferries, fish boats, maintenance vessels, even yachts with professional crews.  I’ve been traveling a lot the past few months and have a fairly large backlog of boats from ports–harbors–waterways mostly in New England.  But as a social medium, this blog thrives on collaboration, so no matter which waters are near you,  I’m inviting you to send along photos of workboats from ports I might not get to.  I’d need at least three interesting photos to warrant a focus on a port.  Here are examples I’ve already done that illustrate what I’m thinking to do.

Tis the Season

Tis the season . . .  to keep your eyes and ears on the weather.  In 1938 . . . before hurricanes had names or we had satellites to track them thousands of miles off, a big one came ashore on Long Island, a once-a-century-or-longer storm.   Do you know this structure below?

Here’s the ocean side view . . .

 

and the inland side.  To the right and up the Acushnet River are the ports of

New Bedford and Fairhaven.  Click here for info and photos on the building of the barrier.

The benchmark storm for the sixth boro is Sandy, and an event this past weekend happened on a location wiped out by the storm, Rockaway Beach at 106th Street.  Click here for posts/photos from my friend Barbara that chronicle the before/after in that part of NYC.  Welcome to the first annual Poseidon parade.

 

and a temporary replacement for Whalemina, the glacial erratic rolled away by Sandy.

 

Of the 10 worst hurricanes of the 20th century (judged by impact on the US), almost all happened  in September.  Since that link leaves off Katrina (??), I add this one.

Thanks to Barbara Barnard for the Poseidon Parade photos;  the ones from the Achushnet are by Will Van Dorp, who will have photos from up the Acushnet soon.   Technically, this fits into my “other watersheds” series.

Port of Friendship

I spent altogether too little time in Friendship recently.  Gotta go back. Here are a few of the other photos I took there while getting a close-up of Gallant.

Tiny Barge Transport has cordwood going over to one of the islands in the Bay.

Now if you read this 2008 news article, you get a sense of Friendship.  ““Friendship is good enough for me,” he said. “I stuck my nose into about everything. Never made much money but I kept a-going.”

As a way-out-towner, I can’t tell you much about these boats.

But to be redundant, I’d love to come back.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Port of Camden

Three years ago, Sally W came thru the sixth boro and I had the great pleasure of seeing this beautiful Lord Nelson Victory tug with owners Allan and Sally Seymour.  They’ve kept the vessel in Camden ME since then, and it was a joy to see them recently.

Camden harbor opens to Penobscot Bay, a universe unto itself. Many boats caught my attention, but none so much as Prophet.

Grace Bailey has to be the doyenne of the windjammer fleet.  Built in Patchogue NY in 1882, she transported as much food as she did building materials.

Mary Day and Angelique are two more of this unique fleet.

Camden is also home to this floating laboratory of electronic . . . gizmos.

Abigail & Warren illustrates thehandiwork of John’s Bay Boat Company.

Enjoy more . . .  like Appledore, 

Galatea,

and Timberwind.

 

But the one that captured me . . . that day was Prophet.

Many thanks to Allan and Sally.  All photos by Will Van Dorp.