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Here was the first redux for the Delaware.
Handy Three appeared on this blog almost a decade ago in a different livery and in a different port.
Of course, she’s been a Moran tugboat for a half dozen years already.
In the background above, that’s the 1968-commissioned, 2007-decommissioned USS John F. Kennedy.
Several hundred yards away from Handy Three, Hunter D. I’d never seen this boat previously although for some time a few years ago I’d see her AIS “ghost signals” all over the sixth boro.
She’s still in Harley livery even though on paper she wears a lion.
All photos, WVD.
A relative’s big birthday brought me to Philly for the first time in a long while and afforded a few minutes to look around. Name that carrier? I once walked its decks as a visitor more than three decades ago, and have a friend who served aboard . . . as a journalist in the USN.
On an earlier trip of the Delaware, I recall seeing that faded reddish, peeling gray on Arthur W. Radford (DD968) before it was reefed.
Got the name?
But wait, there’s more . . . including one that should not be there.
I’d heard that Powhatan-class Apache had just been decommissioned and towed there last week, and this was the vessel I wanted to check on. The link in that previous sentence I posted a decade ago, after walking her decks. Recognize the larger vessel to Apache‘s port?
I wonder where Apache‘ll end up, now that her replacement(s) are under construction.
The one below would not have been there if a tow last month has gone without issues, as seen here but you have to scroll. I wonder when she’ll attempt her final journey next.
Yup, it’s ex-USS Yorktown (CG-48), and the carrier is the JFK, another fading Kennedy.
All photos, WVD, who really needs to get to Delaware River ports more often.
What’s happening at this bridge?
Approaching on what appears to be a wooded river is an antiquated cargo vessel.
Know this sylvan location?
Might this be a not-so-obscure location referred to as the UES,
the Upper East Side of Manhattan? That certainly appears to be a section of the river campus of Rockefeller University . . .
Of course, this is the non-river but a tidal strait referred to as the East River, where the first pre-fabricated portions of the new campus were lifted in place only six years ago here.
And of course this is Empire State VI, launched as a cargo ship in 1961, converted on the Great Lakes to be a training ship, and serving as such for SUNY Maritime for over 30 years now, and departing on her last summer sea term for that school. See here.
Old as this training ship is, she turned heads along the East River as she headed out for sea. Many past departures and returns and shifts have been the basis of posts on this blog in recent years. I’d love to see photos of her transiting the Welland Canal and Saint Lawrence back 30+ years ago after conversion to training ship.
Happy, safe, and instructive cruise, cadets. As of posting today, she’s off the east end of Long Island with next port of call–if my info is current–Philly. I wonder if there will be a sail-past of the new NSMV at the Shipyard there . . . . It would make a great photo op, with the old and the new.
All photos, any errors, WVD.
I’ve often posted photos of ROROs and PCTCs, but here’s the old school. Here’s a Ford ship loading Ford cars from the Chester PA plant. MV Lake Benbow was one of the first six Ford-owned vessels transporting Ford products around the world. Click here for her interesting history: built 1918 for the US Naval Overseas Transport Service (NOTS), purchased by Ford in 1925, which operated it until 1937. Given the automobiles awaiting loading, maybe 1935 Fords, this photo appears to have been taken near the end of its time as a Ford vessel.
The Chester plant made Fords from 1927 until 1958. Click here for more photos and info on the Chester plant. When that plant closed, operations moved to Mahwah NJ, where after some years, the same script was followed.
Click here for Ford production location photos both vintage and abroad.
Ford was know to have tried to own all aspects of their operation, from the Fordlandia gambit to northern forests and mines, but other companies like US Steel, Bethlehem, fruit companies and petroleum companies did the same. By the way, now that it’s summer BBQ season, do you know the connection between Ford and Kingsford charcoal?
Again, thanks to barrel for these photos.
She started out as S. O. Co. No. 14 from a shipyard not far from her current Penn’s Landing berth and worked for almost 80 years. For more on that story, read this article from the historiccamdencounty.com.
The next two photos are credited to Bonnie Halda, who took them last week.
Baltimore, completed in 1906, was built at the same yard as Pegasus, 1907.
Except for the two credited to Bonnie Halda, all photos were taken by Will Van Dorp. For a post with more photos of these old-timers and others, click here.
For an even older and much modified one, click here for a post I did on Charlotte, built in 1880 as a sandbagger. Click here for info on Swell, a repurposed 1912 tug operating in British Columbia.
Click here for an index of previous second lives posts. Reinventions are everywhere, but I have a hunch that the Caribbean offers an especially rewarding search area for second acts, third acts, and the number goes on. Take a vessel named Azores. I’d never heard of it before, but . . . suppose I say Stockholm, THAT Stockholm. the one that left the sixth boro in July 1956 and could have been a disintegrating artificial reef lying near Andrea Doria. Rich Taylor took the photo below in St. Kitts early last month. Scroll through here to see her sans bow. Click here to see her in dry dock and showing her unusual stern lines. Here’s a long list of her previous names: Stockholm until 1960, Volkerfreundschaft until 1985, Fritjof Nansen until 1993, Italia I until later in 1993, Italia Prima until 2003, Valtur Prima until later 2003, Caribe until 2005, Athena until 2013 . . . Azores until . . . further notice.
And then there’s this tugboat looking like exactly what she is . . . undistracted by her pink deckhouse, can’t you imagine this as a former workhorse of the northeast? Any guesses?
She was once called James McAllister. And here’s the story . . . built 1930 in Philly. Does anyone have photos of her in Hayes colors . . . purple I presume?
Many thanks to Rich Taylor for these photos of vessels that have lived on and on.
Aircraft about to land . . .
well . . yes, Philly’s airport is only a few miles to the south.
Recognize the aircraft carrier?
CV-67 has been mothballed since 2007. I’m just wondering whether there’s a tally of the number of crew who served aboard CV-67 in the almost four decades it was active.
Now . .. definitely, mothballed.
Until less than a year ago, Kennedy shared waterfront space with the Forrestal. Here and here are posts from February 2014 of Forrestal leaving Philadelphia and arriving in Brownville. Has anyone seen what’s left of the Forrestal today?
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
The photo immediately below was taken in July 2011, just before I published this post from Mayport.
At that time, I’d no idea that some 40 months later I’d cross paths with the same vessel, FFG 42 Klakring here.
Here is NISMF . . . aka
. . the Naval Inactive Ship Maintenance Facility in the Philadelphia Navy Yard,
where in addition to FFGs (frigates) like Klakring, there are DDs (destroyers) as shown in photo #4 and LPDs (amphibious transport docks) like USS Shreveport above and below foreground.
guided missile cruisers and
amphibious cargo ships like USS El Paso,
LKA-117. Click here for info on one of her former captains.
Last vessel for today is T-AGOR-16, USS Hayes, an oceanographic research ship.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who suggests that if you’re in Philly, take a ride to the end of Broad Street and visit the huge business campus still known as the Navy Yard. There’s no better place to walk around!
Eight years ago today I published a post I called Meet Alice. More on that fact later. Today we meet . . . Alakai.
It seems fitting that today we should meet Alakai to the right and her sister Huakai,
now known as USNS Puerto Rico and
USNS Guam. Click here and here for more on these vessels.
No bulbous bow here . . . and that’s a bulker docked off Alakai‘s stern. The catamarans were a very costly mistake for Hawaii Superferry. Here are the ship specifications from an existing Hawaii Superferry site.
Today both vessels await their fate at the Philadelphia Navy yard,
where I took this photo below, which has nothing to do with the HSFs, but I couldn’t pass it up.
Soon I’ll post more from NISMF Philadelphia, a place that should be on everyone’s gallivant list.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who posted “Meet Alice” exactly eight years ago as the inaugural post on this blog. Since then, 2,602 other posts have been sent up from my rabbit’s hole. It’s been a fun gallivant that has shown me fascinating stuff and introduced me to literally thousands of fun and otherwise interesting folks. If I have the stamina and time, there ARE many more places to go and ways to go there, and I hope to do another 2600+ posts over the next days and months and years . . . Thanks for reading and writing back.
Know the location?
I took it from a southernmost point in the Bronx looking eastward toward North Brother Island . . . the brick chimney to the right. I can’t identify either the Weeks tug or the current usage of the red-and-white striped stack to the left.
What caught my attention was the pink breast cancer awareness ribbon on the front of the house of Mediterranean Sea.
By the time I got back to the sixth boro, the pink “M” on Moran tugs was once again white. The only photo of a Moran tug I managed in the whole month of October was the one below, a photo of a photo of a Catherine Moran in the lobby of a restaurant in Lockport. Label says . . . as you can read it . . . “Lockport 1939.” Would this have been the vessel built by Neafie & Levy in 1904?
As to the pink ribbon, I was happy to see it.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
tugster: a waterblog 
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