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A cryptotectonic shift?
An unidentified source within US Army Corps of Engineers, New York District, suggests that two of the four stainless steel cable moorings that keep Staten Island in place may have severed at some point this past month. The previously undocumented moorings, which were installed in the early 20th century, are tethered to Cambro-Ordovician serpentinite and Jurassic diabase and are designed to keep the island from shifting to the southeast. “In infinitesimal increments, the island, as if on its very own tectonic plate, has moved out the Ambrose,” said the USACE source.
A source close to USCG Sector NY but who refused to be identified reported that since the middle of last month vessel traffic service has had to recalibrate their station GPS settings, all to no permanent effect. “Investigations have been ongoing, but the southeast drift is undeniable,” this source opined, continuing, “The USACE findings were entirely plausible, although officially we had never previously heard of these moorings. This is disconcerting because these sub-channel bonds were never taken into account in the decade of dredging leading up to the arrival of the first Neo-Panamax vessel in the port.”
Further investigations by NOAA are said to be studying connections between recent fatal saltwater mammal groundings and this tectonic creep. Two of 13 operational NASA satellites in Sun-synchronous orbit and three of 4 in geostationary orbit have become involved using remote sensing satellites, and confirmed that Todt Hill’s summit of 401’ has subsided dramatically to 396’. Should this slide and subsidence accelerate, a possibility exists that the Island could settle, the equivalent of losing a geological version of hull integrity. NYC DOT bridge inspectors have been regularly tightening turnbuckles on the Outerbridge, Goethals, and Bayonne Bridges to attempt mitigation of this glissade to the southeast. Leaked reports from the Lamont Geological Observatory suggest that Staten Island’s movement is an isolated drift, not happening with other islands of NYC’s archipelago.
Joey Gould, a reclusive independent scholar, had this to say on remediation: “We put ourselves on this slippery slope; with the demise of the NYWheel project, we lost our last best chance to bolster those cables.” A flamboyant man-on-the-street, Commodore Belge, had this to say, “Despite assurances that sufficient towing power exists locally to reverse this slide, if arrayed in the vicinity of Port Ivory, hire me and I’ll fix the issue by getting waivers to the Jones Act, and bring in tugboats from Canada and overseas, and the Isle of Staten’s location will be right as rain once again.”
If these unsubstantiated claims are in fact true, the worst option is to do nothing. Inaction will lead to who knows where. We need to end it.
Hat tip to Jason St. Onge for inspiration. Thanks to Joseph Mitchell for his memorable characters.
All reports here vetted and rejected by the tugster tower conspitheo department.
Click here for a 2019 version. Here’s a 2010. And this may have been a clever fake.
How about a new day, a new month, a new year, and a new hull in the sixth boro! Can you recognize the profiles sans color?
As it passes Norton Point inbound, you begin to make out the color.
Once well inside Gravesend Bay–that’s the west end of Coney Island in the background–the colors increase in their vividness.
Here is the moment when the new ferry,
Sandy Ground, actually enters the Upper Bay portion of the boro, where she will work, if ferry JFK is her model, until the year 2078!! That’s 56 years from now, and I’ve no clue what the sixth boro will look like–or what vessels will traffic it– 56 years from now. Here‘s more context on Sandy Ground, Staten Island.
Once she was inside the VZ Bridge, I ran from South Beach, where I got the photos above, to Fort Wadsworth, and caught Margaret Moran sidling up to Sarah Dann.
I first thought the final portion of the tow would be Margaret‘s, but I was wrong;
while Susan Miller provided a close-up platform, Margaret then delivered
crew to the new ferry, and
lines came across from Doris Moran, the tailboat for the last several miles to Caddell‘s , where the protective gear will be removed and the ferry prepped for service.
By this hour, the fog had cleared just enough that the iconic skyline of Brooklyn and Manhattan was blotted out, giving the illusion that the tow is still at sea.
All photos December 31 morning by WVD, who likes illusions and unreality sometimes.
Healthy, harmonious, hard-working, hearty 2022 from all of us at tugster tower.
And if you’re not going on a First Hike today, check out Trevor’s Seapixonline from New Zealand and beyond. Tell him tugster suggested it.
For some other high profile tows done by Sarah Dann recently, click here.
Look at the Staten Island ferries at St George. “They all look the same,” I once asserted to bowsprite. She set me straight. Right now the second Ollis-class, soon to be newest hull in the boro, is making its way up the Jersey coastline at the end of a towline, its bow and windows boarded up for protection from waves.
So on this New Year’s Eve eve, let’s do an out-with-the-old . . . . John F. Kennedy, currently the oldest–in service since 1965!!–will be the first out. In fact, a fly on someone’s wall says
she’s already out of service. By the way, who were you in 1965, or what were you listening to? Or, what were you driving or drooling over? Watching?
Barberi [1981] will be next out, along
with Newhouse.
And in the with new . . . seen here next to the 1986 Alice Austen.
SSG Michael H. Ollis has been the training vessel for all three ferries of the newest class. She arrived in August here. Whether at the dock being prepped or
running the harbor and practicing arrivals and departures, Ollis and her crew have been busy.
All photos, recently, WVD, who can’t wait to ride the new ferries and who hopes to get photos of the newest, newest hull in the boro tomorrow.
See my story on Ollis on page 18 here.
Today the sixth boro and environs face Henri, whose story is yet to be told. August 26, 2011 . . . I was at the Staten Island Ferry terminal, and these Hurricane Irene signs were up. When Irene’s story was told, it had done unusual damage upstate far from salt water; here’s more. Some repairs took until 2016 to complete. From here I took the ferry to Whitehall in Manhattan, and then over I walked to South Street Seaport, where I wanted to see storm preparations. See the story at the end of this post.
In late August 2011, I was documenting a slow decomposition, getting footage of what became a documentary film called Graves of Arthur Kill. Gary Kane was the producer; I was the director, or something. If you’ve not yet seen the documentary, you can order it by clicking on the disintegrating wooden tugboat image along the left aside of this blog page. Some of the vessels in this post are discussed by multiple sources in the documentary. Keep in mind that these photos and the footage in the doc recorded these scenes a decade ago, almost to the day. Hurricanes, freezing and thawing, and just plain daily oxidation have ravaged these already decrepit vessels for another 10 years, so if you were to go to these exact locations, not an easy feat, you’d see a devolution.
I’m not going to re-identify all these boats–already done elsewhere and in the doc–except to say we saw a variety of boats like this tanker above and the WW2 submarine chaser alongside it.
Other WW2 vessels repurposed for post-war civilian purposes are there. More were there but had been scrapped prior to 2011.
See the rust sprouting out from behind WW2 haze gray.
In the past decade, the steam stack on this coastal ferry has collapsed, and the top deck of the ferry to the right has squatted into the ooze below.
Some steel-hulled steam tugboats we never managed to identify much more than maybe attributing a name; they’d been here so long that no one remained alive who worked on them or wanted to talk about them.
We used a rowboat and had permission to film there, but the amount of decomposing metal and wood in the water made it nearly impossible to safely move through here. We never got out of the boat to climb onto any of these wrecks. That would be if not Russian roulette then possibly some other form of tempting fate.
Most emblematic of the boats there might be this boat, USS ATR-89, with its struggling, try-to-get-back-afloat stance. She was built in Manitowoc, WI, a town I’ve since frequently visited.
Wooden hulls, wooden superstructure . . . I’m surprised they’ve lasted as long as they have.
Since taking this photo in August 2011, I’ve learned a lot about this boat and its four sisters, one of whom is now called Day Peckinpaugh.
I’ve spent a lot of hours this month pulling together info on Day Peckinpaugh, launched as Interwaterways Line 101; the sister vessel above and below was launched in July 1921 in Duluth as Interwaterways Line 105. The ghost writing in the photo below says Michigan, the name she carried during the years she ran bulk caustic soda between the Michigan Alkali plant in Wyandotte MI and Jersey City NJ via the Erie Canal. Anyone local have photos of this vessel in the sixth boro or the Hudson River? I have a photo of her taken in 1947 transiting a lock in the NYS Canal system, but I’ll hold off on posting that for a few weeks when the stories come out. What you’re looking at above and below is the remnants of a vessel currently one century and one month old.
The Interwaterways Line boats were designed by Capt. Alexander McDougall, who also designed the whalebacks of the Great Lakes, like Meteor. Here‘s a whole blog devoted to McDougall’s whalebacks.
This ferry used to run between Newburgh and Beacon; on this day in August 2011, we just rowed our boat onto the auto deck.
At the beginning of this post I mentioned Hurricane Irene and going over to South Street Seaport Museum. Two of these vessels here have seen a lot of TLC$ in the past decade. That’s a good ending for now. Helen, with the McAllister stack, is still afloat and waiting.
All photos in August 2011, WVD.
A final sentiment on Graves of Arthur Kill . . . Gary Kane and I set out to document what was actually in this much-discussed boneyard; we wanted to name and show what existed, acknowledge what had existed but was already gone, and dispel some of the legends of this place. We were both very proud of the work and happy with this review in Wired magazine. If you still want to write a review, get in touch. It would be like writing a series review of Gilligan’s Island, but still a worthy exercise.
The whole trip, dock to dock, lasted almost exactly 24 hours, although given some delays, it could have been a few hours shorter. Call this post “day and night,” or more accurately, “day, night, and day.” Here was part a.
Let’s start some hours later on day 1. Most river traffic does not draw spectators like this did.
Even the family dog came out.
Twelve or so hours after that, a blistering summer sun had given way to the Thunder moon, here lighting a path northeastward from Staten Island. I took this photo before 0500.
After biding time for a few hours here,
Nathan G let go lines and Slater began the final leg of the trip to the yard; Sarah D is over there, but the illusion is almost that Slater is underway on her own power,
watchman mimicking deck gun, pointing the way.
Once in the KVK, a blazing summer sun returned, replacing the Thunder moon.
Pier assignment received, the tugs eased the destroyer escort into the dock.
Many thanks to Bill Stolfi and Steve Munoz for the first three photos; the sixth boro harbor photos by WVD.
As I approached the stoplight, I had to look twice . . . is it possible that
a repurposing of the super bull crane has been implemented? I know it’s sometimes breezy out this time of year, so might this be a sturdier way of supporting traffic signals?
I made the next available turn to check it out . . that is indeed a large structure to dangle a traffic signal from.
Shooting over the fence, I confirmed that it is the one-and-only and twice-named Left Coast Lifter, twice named so in fact.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who will be following this not-so-easily-hid crane. I’ll have to start looking for it from other perspectives.
Adding to its previous unofficial renaming, how about Traffic Light Heavy Lifter, Richmond Terrace Lifter, New York Wheel Alternative . . .? Got a better name?
Below is a late-add photo of the crane as seen from Bay Ridge Flats today . . . evidence of how large that crane is set along the north side of Staten Island.
And let’s start with the more . . . more photos and info on previous posts. CCGS Samuel Risley appeared here. She’s currently approaching the Soo. What I didn’t know when I posted a photo of her on Lake Ontario is that she was returning from her first trip to Greenland (!!), where she was providing icebreaking support for a supply mission to Qaanaaq aka Thule.
Madison R–and I’ll do a whole post about her soon–now calls Detroit her base, I’m told.
Summer fog veils a Canadian cat and an Erie Canal buoy boat above E11.
How many folks pass by Day Peckinpaugh each summer and have no clue what she is (ILI 101… launched in May 1921!!), how long her work history (1921–1995) has been, how wide a range of waters (Duluth to Havana, I’m told) she covered, where her sister (ILI 105) languishes . . . . .
She gets attention.
Here’s the blue-and-gold yard above E3!!
Yup that’s Urger among them. And yes, the pause button on scuttling has been activated.
In the legends of Ford, a sign once marked this power plant adjacent to the Federal Lock in Troy as a Ford facility. Could this have become the location of Ford’s imagined electric car plant?
And this brings us to Troy, these walls where construction workers have staged their equipment.
Scaffold, ladders, floats, and Jackcyn
and Lisa Ann.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s been working his way back to the sixth boro from the heartland.
If you’re local and would like to learn more about the New York State Canals, consider joining the Canal Society and coming to their fall conference . . . on Staten Island. I’ll be involved in two events . . .
Here’s another photo shared by Ingrid Staats. If you’ve been to this blog before, you recognize the bridge, but what are Vega and Altair you might wonder. The ferries are aptly named, since they are two characters in a Chinese love story, Vega the weaver girl and Altair the cowherd.
Here they operated within the fleet of the Bergen Point Ferry, both built in 1946 and discontinued in 1961.
The ferries were sold after discontinuation of the service, and both were lost in 1961: Vega off New Jersey and Altair between Mexico and Cuba deep in the Yucatan Channel. These are small boats to be going to Mexico: 61′ x 38′ x 8′, but another of the set, Deneb, made it and appeared in the Mexican registry.
To drive along Richmond Terrace these days, you don’t get the same sense crossing Port Richmond Avenue that you would have had 70 or 80 years ago . . . click on the photo below for a photographic tour of what used to be a crossing into NJ.
I used to have a photo of the sign still hanging near the ferry until quite recently, but when I gallivanted around there a few days ago, it was gone and my photo is as well, victim of one of my misguided cullings to reduce the memory demands on my computer.
In that recent gallivant, I did look along the west side of Port Richmond Avenue at this church and graveyard.
This is some old NYC history, and
names memorialized in places are reflected here . . . . Prall’s Island today is uninhabited but known to everyone who travels through the Arthur Kill.
Many thanks to Ingrid for use of the Vega-Altair photo. More of her photos to come.
And while you’re at the Reformed Church, go another 100 yards inland and check out Nat’s Men’s Shop and buy some warm work clothes.
As seen from Richmond Terrace, it’s a like a faucet …
Zoomed closer in and seen from this side, there’s a swirl to the flow. We’ve seen sweet commodities; now we’re at salty ones.
Guess the world’s leading producers of salt by monetary value before getting the answer, clicking here, where you’ll find that not all salts look alike. Any idea where this salt comes from? Answer follows.
You can also quantify by tonnage, as seen here. One of my biggest surprises this summer hinged on seeing Manitowoc leaving the Cuyahoga laden with salt mined from beneath Lake Erie!
Self-unloaders like H. A. Sklenar involve fewer parties and less time in port.
She certainly spent a short time in the sixth boro.
You could almost see her rise from the water.
So . . . the source of this salt is Mexico.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, with cooperation from Brian at Atlantic Salt.
By the way, VSCL expands here, with some photos taken at sea.
Recognize this location for sixth boro riverbank living?
The fine print there says USNS GySgt. Fred W. Stockham (T-AK-3017), which was just outside the VZ Bridge a few days ago.
Now it’s over by FDNY Marine 9, as if it were someone’s yacht. The complex finally looked open, so I wandered in and
here’s what I saw . . . right here on Staten Island.
I don’t know who lives here or where the clientele comes from, but I’m positive the President-elect will be checking the residency papers on the opticians selling goggles. Will there be waivers? here.
Actually, I left quickly because this place gave me a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy feel.
Now THIS is a strange juxtaposition in this Potemkin Village.
But don’t take my word and photos for it. Click here or next time you’re in Stapleton, check the place out, before new tenant emporiums arrive.
All photos this week by Will Van Dorp.
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