Retro Sixth Boro 14

I hope you all are enjoying these glances back a decade as much as I enjoy putting them together.  If you weren’t paying attention back then, this hints at how much the traffic in the harbor has changed, just as it has on the roads.  If you were watching back in spring 2009, you might have this same appreciation at the changes;  In addition, you might be amazed how quickly time has passed.  Maybe you’ve forgotten about some of these boats.

Pegasus, quo vadis?  I’ve heard some ominous scuttlebutt, the kind you’d hear about any 112-year-old vessel. Your project site is still up.  Here she was in front of the Hoboken Terminal, which opened the same year–1907–as Peg was launched.

 

Starboard view and port .  . it’s the 1968 McAllister Girls . . . if she’s still around, I’ve not seen her in quite some time. In the background over near the Jersey City river’s edge, Clipper City and Pioneer sail toward each other.

Ditto the 1977 Sisters.

Ellen (1967) and Amy C (1976) are still active in the harbor, but it’s been years since APL Cyprine has called here.

The 1978 Mary Gellatly has been sold up down east, and last I knew, working as Alice Winslow for Winslow Marine Inc.  out of Southport Maine.

The K-Sea fleet in the sixth boro in 2009 was quite large.  Norwegian Sea was a workhorse on the Hudson;  now she’s Miss Rui operating for Smith Maritime. 

Houma (1970) has been scrapped.

Taurus (1979) recently reappeared here as Joker.

Onrust was launched into the Mohawk River in May 2009, and I believe she will again be sailing out of Essex CT.  Her splash up and over the riverbank trees was quite spectacular.

All photos a short 10 years ago by Will Van Dorp.

 

NL4

Being in the low countries, I thought I’d ask around if meow man–certainly a sixth boro staple– had ever made an appearance.  And I thought I’d ask in places where I stood a chance to get a response.  Like Lelystad, a city of over 75,000 people at 10 feet below sea level.  My “Hey there.  Do you know meow man?” got this fang-baring big eyed response  . . .

“Miauw man? Ik heb nog nooit van hem gehoord.”   I’ll translate word by word:  “I have ever never from him heard.”

At first I feared my red friend–figurehead of De Zeven Provinciën would catapult out of his enclosure, but he only pulled himself to an above-sea level-perch to ask his big friend . .  .

this guy, figurehead on Batavia.

And the big red guy’s answer was:  “Miauw man? Wie of wat is hij, dit miauw man?”  Word by word, it translates as, “MM, who or what is he, this MM?”  So the Batavia figurehead roared out across the sea looming over the farmland and asked this guy . . .

this really big guy . . . 60 tons known by various names . . . suggested by the pose.

 

And he said not a word, which made me suspect he actually knew something, had associations with MM, and was keeping the secret.

All photos and interpretations of conversations that really really did happen by Will Van Dorp.

Here are previous figureheads posts.  And what follows is a set of photos I took at the December 2008 boat show, all depicting the struggle-into-shape of Onrust’s big cat.

 

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With mallet and gouge, Dave is truly a master sawdust maker.

Unrelated:  I’m not dedicating a post to names at this time, but I just noticed that Herman Hesse was entering port as Irene’s Remedy was departing.

 

Canal Barges

This photo was taken in late spring 2009.  Onrust had been splashed just a day or two before, as recorded in post 1 here and then 2 here.   But look over to the right side of the photo, the two bollards on squarish platforms in the water.

These.  Well, at summer pool . . . when the water level of the canal is up to allow navigation, they look like so, but

when winter comes and the state hydrologist directs draw-down of the pool, the bollards are on platforms that

are actually concrete barges, ones that do NOT rise and fall with changing pool levels.  The snowy photos I took last weekend.

Click here and here for some of the history of these century old barges.

Note the reference numbers below and

below.

Here’s how they look on google satellite view.   For more on the builder behind these, click here . . . G. A. Tomlinson.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Canal Corp Boats 12

Enjoy more blue and gold boats today, and these are called SPS’s . . . as in self-propelled scows.  Generally they have a house at stern and lifting capability forward, as you can see on SPS 52.  The inclusion of these details is where the similarity among these vessels ends . . . as you will notice in the variety of houses below.

SPS 59.

SPS 60 in summer of 2014 and

in late spring of 2009.  For details on this photo, click here and here for photos of the launch on Onrust, assisted by an SPS.

And then–as with the tenders and buoy boats–there are SPS’s with registry numbers but no “numeric name,”  if you catch my drift, like the one below with registry ending in …305 seen here and

here, as well as

. . . 327.

Let’s look closer at SPS 60’s propulsion.

For more info on Thrustmaster propulsion, click here.  For thrusters like these on a huge crane, click here.

I have no idea how many SPS’s operate on the canal or how old these are or when such vessels first served the canal.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Waterford Tugboat Roundup 2013 d

Here’s a collage of images as my last roundup 2013 post:

a half dozen working tugboats and a covered barge as seen looking east from the Second Street Bridge,

a float plane that might have imagined this to be a different type of gathering,

a swimmer in the water either doing a northern style Richard Halliburton re-enactment or setting out to do an underwater survey mission as the lock is –unbeknownst to her–about to open,

(For more complete info on what’s going on here with the swimmer, check this post by bubbling-blowing bowsprite.)

my possible future employer shoehorning an Eriemax passenger vessel into the first lock in the flight,

waterdogs go fishing,

Onrust resplendant,

a Dutch barge,

Urger dried out for some emergency surgery along

with Tappan Zee II,

Eighth Sea and Bill’s exercise machine,

Stu’s Dragonfly,

the pilot’s understanding of the pushoff contest,

and in Troy, some public art designed to assist memory . . .  the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument with goddess Columbia blowing her horn high above Troy, as seen from Tug44.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.  See you in Waterford in 2014, I hope.

Short Black Ships

A week ago, I posted this foto (last one scrolling through) and asked where it was taken.   Answer is Brazil.  And the relationship to this foto is what?  Buchanan 12 was built 1972 in Louisiana, but the black ship in the foreground handmade with woods such as olanje, jaquera, pau oleo . . .

was built in Brasil about 50 miles southwest of Salvador.  It’s a replica of Niña as seen from  . ..  Pinta.  Both hurried through Manhattan earlier this week on their way here in Newburgh until this Sunday.

Next  stop is then Rochester, NY (click for schedule)  . . . which means unstepping the masts and traversing the Erie Canal via Oswego.  From there it’s the Great Lakes and ultimately the Mississippi.

Pinta was launched in 2005 from the same shipyard in Brasil, about 1/3 larger to accommodate school groups.  Here I quote from the site:  both vessels were built by the Assis de Santana family, who have built wooden vessels there for eight generations using 15th century “Mediterranean Whole Moulding [techniques] with mechanically generated geometric progressions known as graminhos.  Shipwrights were using traditional tools, such as axes, adzes, hand saws and chisels, as well as utilizing traditional construction methods; and finally, the tropical forests of Bahia provided a source for the various naturally-shaped timbers necessary to build a large wooden ship. ”  This makes me think of Onrust upriver.

Surely  record of this visit

is being created by local artists.

This tender is said to have been built by an Assis de Santana family member, 14 years old at the time.

The catalyst for this project, John Patrick Sarsfield, has a tragic ending.

A few weeks ago Bounty was up this way.  From the dock in Newburgh looking south as Buchanan 12 pushes her hundreds of truckloads of crushed stone, you can see Bannermans Castle, marking the northern end of the Hudson Highlands.  Here is another “ghosts” post I did about Bannermans about five years ago.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Jets Along the Mohawk

When I was in high school upstate, I had to read this novel about drums . .  and history.

Now imagine this interior monologue . . . our speaker doesn’t read much . . . he works and then goes to the river to fish with his best friend the bottle . . . a riverine Rip van Winkle.  He slings in some bait, he dozes, he hears an approaching engine . . . and he sees this!

He shuts and reopens his eyes . . . and it’s closer.  He rubs his eyes .  .  .  and it’s still there.  He flings the cursed bottle into  . . . nearest recycling bin (of course), swears to mend his dissolute ways, and runs along the bank yelling  “OMG!!  It’s a Douglas F3D Skynight!!”   He just happens to “favorite” that aircraft of all the ones ever developed . . .  because of having built a model of one as a boy.

Our Rip has found new purpose.  The 2012 Erie Canal season has delivered the vehicle to turn his life around!

He vows to walk or run or bicycle along the Erie Canal as far as he needs to in order to see where this jet will land.

Then he hears another noise … another DonJon blue tugboat pushing a scow laden with

OMFG!!  He has no idea, and all the life-remedying he’d promised minutes ago . . . is in danger.    He turns and walks back to where moments before he had enjoyed the bliss of fishing along the Mohawk.  He stopped once and

looked back at Cheyenne and the scow.  “Nah . . . that never happened,” he decided.  Never.

Downriver some 100 plus miles, the day before, another blue DonJon tug had been pushing this dredge spoils scow toward the Bayonne Bridge when the 747/Shuttle flew past.

To be serious, the wonderful fotos above come compliments of Don Rittner, of the Onrust project, about which I did many posts a few years back.  Here are a few representative Onrust links:  2010, September 2009 (see the last foto), May 2009, and 2008.    Use the search window to find many more.  Last foto is by Will Van Dorp.

The aircraft –a Skynight, a Mig-15, and a Supermarine Scimitar–have migrated from Intrepid Museum, which needs to make room for the Shuttle display, to ESAM, an upstate aerosciences museum.   The blue tugboats have all appeared here before; in order they are Empire, Cheyenne, and Caitlin Ann.

In Like A Lion

In less than half day from this writing, March will arrive.  Since I hope for t-shirt mildness by end of March, I’m counting on the month to arrive  . . . like a large feline:  lion plus whatever synergy comes from compounding with year of the Tiger.  (For the record, the tiger portion of that synergy frightens me most.)  As peace offering then, I dedicate this post to the large felines.  The foto of Sea Lion below comes from 2006;  I haven’t seen this 1980 tug in a while.  Anyone explain?

Feline connection with Half Moon?  Some of the hawses, like these two, are

framed by red felines . ..  line lions, I suppose?

Atlantic Leo

Onrust has as figurehead a growling lion today, but this foto from a year ago shows the about-to-hatch beast pre-blond, actually natural wood tones.  More Onrust soon.

Growler . ..  that could be a lion reference.

Eagle Boston, escorted by McAllister Responder, shows registry as Singapore, from the Malay Singapura meaning “Lion City,”   although the namesake was probably a tiger, not a lion at all.  So we should call that nation Tigrapura?

From the platbodem armada headed north on the Hudson last summer, farther is Danish Naval Frigate Thetis, but nearer sailing vessel is Pieternel, registered in the Dutch town of Beneden-Leeuwen (Lower Lion).

Notice the claws hanging from the bow of tanker Puma.

And thanks to my poor eyesight, it’s easy to see the lettering on the Evergreen vessel forward here of Tasman Sea as Ever Feline.  Can’t you make it out?  Squint a bit and it’s skewed as daylight . ..  Ever Feline, also registered in Tigrapura.

All fotos by will Van Dorp, who’s hoping for t-shirt weather and a dip off Coney Island in exactly 31 days.  Anyone care to join in . . .  a Patty Nolan bikini?

Retrospect

is actually a euphemism for “catching up,” which is all that’s on my plate today.  Like a month ago, I intended to put up a link to a west coast tugboat blog.  So here it is:  fremonttugboat.

Otherwise, this post comes from scrolling back through fotos I’ve taken (and not used, I think) since late spring 2009.  Try it yourself:  Put up your number of images (your fotos, else’s, your drawings, else’s) and comment on their place in your life.  Go back your chosen length of time, et voila, you have your very own retrospective!

Communication:  nothing fancy here as the deck keeps eye on work and skipper while the skipper pokes head out the window to see and hear.  Makes for clear communication, without which we in any endeavor  face peril.

Community:  it takes a strong bond between several rivertowns and watersheds to build a boat.  If I squint, I see this motely corps of volunteers literally carrying Onrust to the water on their shoulders.    Ok, I squint hard.

Comraderie:  Harold and a thousand other folks have acted as comrades in my life, and I am grateful to you all.  Gracias y merci buckets!

Contentment:  or “peace” if you will.  What matters it that this man is sitting where he finds it;  it matters not that he’s across from a huge oil depot and a dredged waterway allowing ingress and egress for dozens of billions of dollars or ducats of goods each year.  Here he is content.  Like someone I know who spent weeks living beside refinery and tolerating it by imagining the hiss and roar emanated from a pristine jungle waterfall.

Charm:  the Hudson River Valley happens to be a place of profound beauty and it mesmerizes me.  But the eye of the beholder generates a portion of that charm.  Open eyes will find it anywhere and in everything.  A resident of this Valley published THAT BOOK on this date in 1851 . Know which one?  Answer at end.

Curiosity:  the sixth boro is a complex place geographically, historically, … you or I could continue this list.  Here, like anywhere, it seems the more you notice, the less time remains to wonder about all the new things.  What is this cove called over just north of Fresh Kills?  Writing on vessels from foreground to back say RTC1, Crow, Relentless, and Cedar Marina.  Does a road lead here?

More curiosity:  What is this vessel that traversed to the north in front of Bowsprite’s cliff this summer?  What cargo did it transport?  What time warp did it emerge from?

Craziness: since writing about faces as prompted by the Robert brothers tome, I’ve had a blast with this.  This one . . . an orange boar (not bore) with tusks in place of dolly partons.  May some craziness–and a sense of humor about it– be evident everywhere.

Constancy:  1965  Near the St. Lawrence Seaway my father took this foto of a 13-year-old who became tugster.  I was already out tracking down info for the yet-to-be blog back then, way before blogs, digital cameras, computers of the wonders we know.  Some stuff doesn’t change.  Shouldn’t disappear.

It’s unrealistic to stop after a half dozen fotos, but . . . discipline is imposed.

My last post fer a while . . .gone fishing for something.  See you in a few with new tales.  Sindbad calls us to muster.   I tried unsuccessfully to find a Gordon Bok video-version of this, but this and this . . . a nice  innocent feel too.

All fotos, except the ones by bowsprite and my father, by Will Van Dorp.

Moby Dick. Thanks, Herman.  And apropos of nothing in particular except nature, see this video.

Really Full Frontal

My sentiments of more than two years ago amuse me here, and “full frontal” isn’t even really.  So in connection with a project I’m considering, here’s really  fully frontally.  Let’s start with HNLMS Tromp.  Now in those twin radomes, I see teddy bear’s ears.

BNS Lobelia is harder to read.

Of all the vessels in the Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 1 (SNMCMG1), the most unusual was HNoMS Rauma.  Ever-reliable Jed sends these links here and here on vessel and hull design  Although Rauma traversed the Atlantic with the rest of the group, she seems marginally seaworthy.  But what do I know?    For all the SNMCMG1 vessels, visit Bowsprite.

Peacemaker .  . spider be-webbed?

Crow, (1963, Brooklyn, NY!) as seen at the bulkhead in Waterford last Saturday.

Evening Mist, (1976, Houma, LA), big square house.

Gulf Service, 1979, Amelia, LA) taller, hourglass houses.

And this circles us back to Tromp, here following the egg-shaped Onrust, (2009, Rotterdam Junction, NY), featured many times on this blog.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who leaves soon for Kingston for . . .

“Kingston Waterfront on the weekend of September 19-20. From noon to 6 p.m. both days, the WOW (Working on Water) event includes a tugboat bootcamp, trolley rides, lighthouse tours, sea shanty singers and more including “wandering tug geezers” and a “Working Hudson Picture Show.” The event is funded by the Ulster County Quadricentennial Commission, NYS assemblymember Kevin Cahill, the City of Kingston Quadricentennial Committee, and the Historic Kingston Waterfront Revival (Robert Iannucci and Sonia Ewers). For more information, check out the website here [www.workingonwater.org]. Meanwhile, from noon to 7 p.m. on September 19 at Cornell Park, which is located on Wurts Street, there’s a free outdoor drum music festival. Jack Dejohnette, the famed jazz drummer who played with jazz greats such as Miles Davis, and Jerry Marotta, who has played with Peter Gabriel and the Indigo Girls, among others, are scheduled to perform”  as quoted from   the http://www.ci.kingston.ny.us/

“Working Hudson Picture Show . .. ”  OOps!  That’s me.  Gotta run.  I’ll be at the Picture Show collecting ghost stories.  If you got one, tell it to my video camera, please?