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That stretch of waterway can be pretty busy, though not nearly as busy as the automotive traffic arteries of the five boros. Count them below . . . seven tugboats contained in a single photo frame!! You can try to name them. Let me know if you need help.
One by one, though, they are more interesting to look at. Can you arrange these by size, power, and age?
Barney Turecamo.
Allie B.
Mount St Elias.
Discovery Coast.
Mary Emma.
All photos, WVD.
Largest is Barney Turecamo at 116′ x 36′. Shortest by a foot Mount St Elias at 95′ x 34′, and Discovery Coast is 96′; least beamy is Mary Emma at 31′.
Most horsepower is Barney Turecamo at 5100. Least is a tie between Discovery Coast and Allie B. at 3000 each.
Newest launch is Discovery Coast at 2012. Oldest by two years is Mary Emma at 1975, and Allie B. at 1977 1976. I only recently learned Allie B used to do the sugar run into Dominos on the East River.
The sun was setting when we met Allie B
and her tow: Weeks 533 with Robert as tail boat. I’d seen the big crane only a week or so earlier doing some lifts in the sixth boro. This blog has featured this crane in a number of sixth boro jobs and moves going all the way back to hoisting US Airways 1549 out of the icy Hudson 14 years ago.
At this point, Allie B and tow were westbound at the west end of Buzzards Bay
on their way to the Cape, or so it appeared later. And yes, as contradictory as that previous sentence sounds, I meant it that way.
Had our meeting been a half hour later, I’d not have these photos.
Allie B has fascinated me since her epic 2009 voyage, when she took barge Brooklyn Bridge to the Black Sea.
Like I said, it was a fortunate meeting as we all sailed in the last minutes of brilliant light before the long winter’s night.
Enjoy the light show.
All photos, WVD.
From right to left then, that would be Allie B, Sarah D, and Weeks 533.
The two tugs assisted the crane barge that lifted a large electrical component onto a many-wheeled trailer inside the Red Hook container port. I’ll post my photos of the truck on my next truckster! post.
Well over a decade ago, I traveled up to Quincy MA to see Allie B move a long time piece of the landscape out of Quincy and over to the Black Sea port of Mangalia, Romania. What piece of landscape, you ask? It was the Fore River Goliath Crane, now painted yellow and set in a yard operated by Damen, although it seems it may now be inactive again.
Landing the crane at Red Hook yesterday, lifting the cargo, and departing all happened quite fast, less than 90 minutes from arrival to departure.
Happy solstice. Next stop summer.
All photos, WVD. Hat tip Cyclone Shark.
March 2009 . . . Stephen Scott here passes Port Ivory, near my old job, pushing RTC 70. I’m still looking for Stephen Scott photo is her new profile, sans upper wheelhouse. Port Ivory was an intriguing place name for me when I first moved here; once a North Shore Branch of the SIRR even had a station there.
Kimberly Poling already had the color scheme, but adding a few more teal stripes to her current appearance is a big improvement.
Lettie passed by once while I scheduled my lunch break. As of today’s posting, Lettie G is in Mobile AL!! If she continues, she could end up back in Lake Erie by way of the great loop. Is that what’s happening? A few months I caught her at the top end of the Welland Canal here.
More Port Ivory area, Specialist was around, then called Specialist II.
So was the huge K-Sea fleet, which included Falcon.
This post should be called “sixth boro and beyond,” since I took this photo of Justine with RTC 120 up near Saugerties. Back then,
was that a red canoe along her portside rail?
Side by side in the Rondout 10 years ago were Hackensack, the 1953 colorful one, and Petersburg, 1954 vintage and still in the general area. Last I knew, Hackensack was in Guyana pushing molasses barges.
And going farther out, it’s Allie B pulling Goliath on a cargo barge Brooklyn Bridge out of Quincy MA, with assistance from Vincent D. Tibbetts Jr and Justice.
Here’s a closer up of Liberty. For the entire reportage on that journey to Mangalia, Romania (!!), click here. Damen operates the crane in their shipyard there, the largest shipyard in the Damen collection.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who hopes you enjoy these looks back as much as I do.
No, I haven’t left the sixth boro. Just yesterday I crossed paths with Allie B here at Atlantic Salt, purveyor of a safety product and patron of the arts.
It took a gray day for me to notice that the house colors along the KVK are reminiscent of those in coastal Canadian maritimes towns. Allie B has been one of my favorite tugboats since I saw her depart on her epic tow here and here back in 2009.
Then I passed Evelyn Cutler, here with Noelle Cutler at Caddell Drydock. Those are basic Wavertree masts in the background. I first saw Evelyn
Here’s a first good photo of Dylan Cooper, the Reinauer tug that arrived in the sixth boro later last year.
I hope to get another of her here in a few years when that bridge is completed.
I believe Eric is the newest of McAllister tugs in the sixth boro. And yes, here Eric is using her 5000+ hp to assist Atlantic Star, ACL‘s brand spanking new CONRO vessel into port yesterday on her maiden voyage. I hope to have a post dedicated to Atlantic Star completed for tomorrow.
Eric is a product of the same Rhode Island shipyard that produced Dylan Cooper. In the distance that’s one of ACL’s previous generation of CONRO vessels, Atlantic Concert. Here’s an entire post dedicated to Atlantic Concert from 2009.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, with thanks to NY Media boat.
And yes, I still have more of Barrel’s vintage USACE photos to share.
Here’s the index to all previous posts in this series.
For today, all come from Jed . . John Jedrlinic. Any ideas on the locomotion of the person nearer than Diane Moran, photo taken in Miami in February?
The Thomas Dann photo is from almost a year ago.
Ditto . . . Schuylkill, taken in Norfolk last May.
Ditto . . . Jed took this photo of the 1960 Marion in St. Maarten.
Mr Chester and
Miss Niz . . . Miami, February 2015.
Allie B has been a favorite of mine since I caught photos here and here or her departing for the Black Sea this time eight years ago.
Finally, the closing shot is Diane Moran without the guy on the jet ski.
Many thanks to Jed Jedrlinic for these photos.
As you know, I do this blog because it’s fun. I’ve met a lot of great people, and recently, with the evolution of so-called “social media” have become friends with some hunks of steel aka ships. Well, although I “befriend” a ship, it’s more accurate to say . . . the crew of the ship. And I’m overjoyed to learn of others’ routines, lives, and journeys . . . as offered by FB. Here’s a foto recently posted by the crew of Algolake, a Great Lakes bulker. This post I dedicate to the crew of Algolake, my FB friends. To hear the vessel, click here for youtube of her leaving Duluth. The foto below was taken FROM Algolake.
And, I take a lot of fotos. The first two below I took in the St. Lawrence Seaway in July 2008. Algoport entered the port, and then
moved downbound for its next load. At the time, I recall looking up more info on the vessel, learning that it was built in Collingwood, Ontario, in 1979, and then ran only one foto, seen in this post. Imagine my surprise then, when a few days ago, because of my FB friendship with Algolake, I ran into info about Algoport sinking in the East China Sea, while under tow by Pacific Hickory, for a new “forebody.” Here a youtube slideshow with more info on the demise of Algoport, now gathering marine encrustation (?) 16,000 ‘ below the surface, a wreck no wreck diver will ever see.
Another story: in March 2010 I took these fotos of USS Sanctuary in Baltimore harbor. She served as a hospital ship during WW2 and the Vietnam War. Yesterday, a friend mentioned in passing that this vessel
was on its way . . or already arrived in Brownsville, TX
for recycling. A little hunting leads me to believe her demise/rebirth . . . will involve ESCO, a dismantler or recycler. Foto 7 here leads me to think at least part of the tow was performed by Allie B. Also back in March 2009, I gallivanted up to Massachusetts to see Allie B leave on a fairly long tow to Romania. Some posts on that can be found here, here, and elsewhere.
Ships, like everything else, have lives. Lots of folks, like me, are fascinated by the “end” of the life of various ships. Some sink. Some get reefed and then some of those “reefs” dived upon. Some get recycled. Others get scrapped or broken. If, like me, you’re interested in these things and have the chance to see Park Bong Nam’s documentary “Iron Crows,” by all means . . . go.
I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this interest many of us share on the end of ships . . . breaking, recycling, wreck diving, wrecks in general, . . . and the eerie beauty of rusting derelict ghost vessels.
Algolake . . fair winds, interesting ports! And keep the great fotos coming.
As I post, Allie B steams eastwards 96 hours out of Boston bound for Gilbraltar and Romania. One site I read recently refers to the type of information that follows as heritage; other domains might call this previous lives or even aliases. So, before carrying the Allie B name, the vessel bore these colors as Express Explorer. Search “consort” and escort” on this blog to find other Express Marine boats.
Identical lines, same steel, different colors . . . she was Janet Graham of Gulfcoast Transit Company.
This was the original vessel–Gulf Inland’s Gulf Whale–launched in 1977 by Quality Equipment, Inc. of Houma, Louisiana. Right here read vessel names and history of Gulf Inland Towing and other fleets subsumed with it under a different name today.
So here’s my question: if a crewman with perfect memory who worked on Gulf Whale in –say–1978 walked through Allie B today, what details of the vessel might appear unchanged after 32 years? What components still remain from the original launch other than steel plate?
All fotos and most info here compliments of Harold E. Tartell.
aka closer-up shots from Saturday’s departure. Might we have to wait til the Gilbraltar port call to get the next closeups? And is the person on the barge just forward of Tibbetts the last one to set foot there until Europe? If I could get a cheap ticket to Gilbraltar in two weeks or so . . .
Liberty glided to starboard
and then port
to line up through the bridge. (Yes, I was shooting through chainlink.) Does Liberty have z-drives?
Less than a quarter-mile from the “slip” Allie B showed signs of settling into the harness.
Brooklyn Bridge‘s cargo has robust bracing forward
and aft. And are those bundles corrections to balance?
Not every early March day lends itself to so much outdoor activity.
Towmasters’ comment leads to a link about another crane named Goliath in Belfast’s Harland & Wolff, builders of the Titanic. Belfast landmarked the crane to ensure that it stayed in the port. And that led me to a link to about Kockums Crane here and a poignant site in Swedish (if you don’t read Swedish, you can surely read the fantastic fotos) about a crane that, like Quincy’s, went away.
If you’re interested in a soundtrack to this series, try Downeaster Alexa even though it laments a different Northeast maritime industry; it just happened to play on my radio Saturday . . . as if anything “just happens.”
All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.
Imagine you worked at the shipyard for 10 or more years. You put in the strength of your best years with friends who did the same. You were young then and eager to get out of bed in the morning to hurry to the job you loved: building LNG tankers, huge vessels that sailed the world’s oceans and delivered fuel and withstood the challenges of the roughest seas. Then the shipyard gates closed and the 300-foot-high Goliath idled and rusted. Weeds grew up where 32,000 workers once built ships. Today, between the fence and the tow, several acres of unsold automobiles stood parked there, awaiting buyers.
Here’s Allie B about a half hour before departure today.
And this is how a voyage of more than 4000 miles begins: assist tugs Liberty and Vincent D. Tibbetts Jr. ease the barge Brooklyn Bridge into the Fore River, and Allie B moves the tow seaward.
Liberty and Tibbetts guide the tow through the 3A bridge between Quincy and Weymouth and
and then you hurry to Great Hill to watch your crane disappear towards Peddocks Island,
and Hull Gut, past the other islands of Boston harbor, and then
to sea, over the horizon, to build great ships elsewhere. And you may never see it again. How would it feel?
See sackrabbit’s fotos here, and check back there for updates over the coming month.
All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.
tugster: a waterblog 
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