1964 Sixth Boro b

In continuing reportage from Steve Munoz:  “On Sunday, July 12th, 1964, my family sailed out of Paerdegat Basin in Jamaica Bay on the Evelyn Mae (below)

and arrived at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, still under construction and not to be opened until late November [1964].

Throughout that afternoon we drifted and steadily rolled in a southeast wind as sailing ships from around the world came up Ambrose Channel.”

Below, behold an anchored Statsraad Lehmkuhl, currently [shifting to 2019] at a dock in Fredrikstad, Norway.

Gorch Fock II was nearby.

Anyone have ideas on what that small boat off GF’s starboard bow might be?

Esmeralda . . . is as of July 2019 sailing off New Zealand.  I love the crew hanging off the vessel, including the bowsprit, sprucing up her appearance before the parade.

Black Pearl passes Gorch Fock II.  I’m told Black Pearl is currently in the Great Lakes, but I’ve never seen  or heard of her there.

Juan Sebastian de Elcano .  .  .  is a Spanish training ship launched in 1927 and whose namesake assumed leadership of Magellan’s journey from the Moluccas back to Spain.  She appeared on this blog here in 2012.

“Libertad fired their saluting cannons off Ft Hamilton.”   Libertad has a special relationship with Wavertree, the South Street Seaport Museum ship.

“A return salute was provided by the USS Willis (DE-1027) at anchor in Gravesend Bay.

My father positioned himself with his Kodak camera, with slide film in it, against the lifeboat and mentally calculated the timing of the saluting cannon of the Argentine full rigged sailing ship Libertad and caught the flash of the cannon seen in the picture in this article. We didn’t see all of the ships enter the harbor that day, but they arrived under full sail, saluted the USS Willis and settled in at their assigned anchorage position in Gravesend Bay. There weren’t many other boats or harbor craft around that day, but in those days we were able to get up close and circle the ships after anchoring and watch the cadets secure the ship from sea.”

USCG Eagle was there, as was

SS Rotterdam entering NY harbor before parade.  SS Rotterdam is currently docked near the Hotel New York in  . ..  Rotterdam.

Note the cranes atop to western tower of the VZ Bridge;  it wouldn’t open for a few more months.

Would that helicopter be an HH-62A?

“Darkness was approaching and we set course back to Paerdegat Basin.”  This is reprinted from NY TUGS magazine, vol2, no2 in 2009.

Many thanks, Steve.  More to come.

By the way, one upcoming post features Evelyn Mae.  Until then, are there any guesses on her date and place of build?

 

 

Sixth Boro Summer

I’ve written about summertime and about summertime blues–about beating them.  But since you can’t ever step into the same river twice, or gallivant in the same primordial first boro, here’s the 2016 version of trying to capture the sixth boro with a camera on a hot summer weekend afternoon, looking for shade–any shade will do– as much as looking for novel compositions.

These days odd juxtapositions can be found on west Manhattan piers and

beyond, like Eagle and the fast bird and Loveland Island with a pilot on board and some folks gathered on the starboard bridge wing .  For a post I did last year with close-ups of details of USCGC Eagle AND for a book I highly recommend reading about her appropriate by the US post-WW2, click here.  Speaking of piers, here’s an interesting article on the engineering and construction of Pier 57.

Or come for a tour on Janet D Cruises . . .

with four sails set.

Long Beach comes to Bayonne along with a Celebrity ship and a PWC . . . pesky workless canoe?

Flagship Ivy clings for a spell to the bottom over by the VZ Bridge.

Margaret Moran heads for the next job–or the yard, with Queens’ current and future tallest buildings in the background,

while YP 704 sails past Governors Island, which has sprouted some new hillocks frequented by lots of people.

Joan Turecamo exits the Buttermilk west with a light (?) dry bulk barge Montville, which probably recently carried coal.

All photos Sunday by Will Van Dorp.  for some contrast, see this winter set and this.   More of the summer selects, tomorrow.

 

Sixth Boro Fifth Dimension HT2

Here was part 1.  Thanks much for the comments.  My conclusion is that most but not all were taken at the 1986 centennial celebration of our lady of the harbor.    I am still seeking a photo of the canal tug Grand Erie, ex-USACE Chartiers, launched in 1951, at the event.

Barque Simón Bolívar,  it would be good to see her back in the sixth boro again.  At this point, she was less than a decade old.   This past summer, she called in various ports in the Caribbean.

Any help here anyone?

USS Iowa BB-61 served as the reviewing stand for the event.  Click here for scans of the day and here for video.  Can anyone identify the tug alongside the battleship starting at about 2:10?

Barque Eagle of course.  Can anyone identify the tugs in this photo?

It’s schooner Pioneer in the background.

The red-hulled vessel at the foot of the tower .  . is that stick lighter Ollie, now rotting away in VerPlanck?  See the end of this post.   Anyone know the USCG tug?

These look like the morning-after spent fireworks shells.  What did it say in front of “industry” here?  And here ends the photos supplied by Harry Thompson.

And here, as a note that I should do a post soon about Ollie . . . is one of the photos I took of her in 2010.  I saw her earlier in 2015, and it’ was even sadder by five years than this one.  Anyone have good pics of Ollie in her day?

Thanks very much, Harry, for getting this show going.

EAGLE Closeup

Let me share photos from three Eagle visits in the past decade.  Here she arrives off the east end of Wall Street.

2005, I believe.

Note the teams hauling on the docking line.

docking at then Pier 17

Charles D. McAllister tucks her in to the dock.

Here she lies at anchor in 2011 with

crew in the rigging doing

work.

departure 2011

And here are details I focused on earlier this week.

To reiterate what I wrote yesterday,read Captain Gordon McGowan’s The Skipper and the Eagle.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

For a similar set of closeups of another German-built sail training vessel–Dewaruci–click here.

KVK Square Riggers

Click here to scan the many posts with KVK in the title.  Here’s a new one inspired by arrivals that had many folks, aship and ashore, paying attention.

Wavertree is suddenly and lavishly being regaled with sights of 21st century merchant vessels

Products tanker Polaris, delivered 129 years after Wavertree

and crew from all over the world are paying attention.

And a mile farther east, at the old gypsum dock, tugboats like Laura K Moran and

Stephen B pass.

If you want to read a good book about when and how the US took possession of Eagle, read Captain Gordon McGowan’s The Skipper and the Eagle. The book has an introduction by Peter Stanford, a foreword by Alan Villiers, and the journey starts out from NYC’s own LaGuardia.

I have many more closeups of the barque;  maybe

I’ll put them up if I get encouragement.  A previous posts featuring Eagle can be seen here.   For a comparison of steering apparatus on Eagle with other vessels, click here.

Here Swallow Ace crew check out an Eagle.

The long street on the landside of this portion of the Kills is called Richmond Terrace.  For photos and explanation of what is and used to be there, click here and here,  from the ever fascinating forgotten-by.com.  Click here to see an image of a square rigger bulk carrier docked in front of Windsor Plaster Mills, now an Eastern Salt facility, in its heyday.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Transformations

Kirbyfication, which looks

like this on Norwegian Sea, is only one transformation, although if you asked me to personify and interpret, I’d say Norwegian looks positively

mortified in these fotos.  “OMG!!  I can’t bear bare   . . .

myself, can’t bear to see this,” she seems to say.

Here’s the changes from Barbara C (October 2010) to

Arabian Sea sand stack decorations (March 2012) to

this past weekend.

Others, like Miss Yvette take things much more in stride from  here (third foto down) to June 2011

to yesterday.

Heron transforms from this March 2011 foto to

this one last week.  And a year from now, as she plys waters off Equatorial Guinea . . . what will that look like?

Sun Road was clearly not always known that way, although

one of my sources was of no value.

For a thrilling transformation story, check out The Skipper & the Eagle, which relates how Horst Wessel became Eagle back in 1946.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

If you like to hear Jefferson Airplane, click here:  their lyric based on a John Wyndham sci-fi novel goes “Life is change.  How it differs from the rocks . . .”

Eagle 2

Uh . . . I miscalculated and got no new fotos of cutter Eagle today, but John Watson made a smart choice

and got these . . . .  Bravo,  John!  Check out this Eagle/Horst Wessel crew reunion blog.  And thanks to PortSide NewYork, this info on visiting hours this weekend aboard Eagle  at Pier 7 Brooklyn Marine Terminal . . . Today . .. .  2 — 5 pm, Saturday . . . 1–7pm, and Sunday  . . . 10 am–7 pm.
1) . . . Name the four sister training barques.    Answer follows.Still,  serendipity gave me other fotos for another day.  Instead, enjoy a few more Eagle  I took yesterday . . . sans ceremonial escort boats and with some facts about the vessel.

2.  In launch order among the five “siblings”, where does Eagle find itself?  By the way, I can’t identify the cruise ship in the distance.

3.  When did Eagle (ex-Horst Wessel) enter US hands and who crewed it to the US?  Note the anchor ball just above a member of the crew.

4.  How many aircraft has this vessel downed in its career and of what air force(s)?

5.  What year was the orange “racing stripe” added?

6.  How many of the sister vessels have NEVER visited the sixth boro?

1.   Gorch Fock (1933 ex-Tovarishch), Sagres III (1937) , Mircea (1938), and Gorch Fock II (1958).  Eagle is second . . . built in seven months and commissioned in September 1936.

2.  Eagle was built in 1936, placing it as second oldest.

3.  It was transferred to US ownership in May 1946 and sailed to the US in June of the same year by a joint German/American crew.  Point of entry to the US and disembarkation of the German members of the crew happened at Camp Shanks, more or less across from Yonkers.  Does anyone know of fotos of Eagle headed up or down the Hudson in 1946?

4.  It downed three Soviet planes and one German “friendly.”

5.  Racing stripe was added in 1976.

6. I don’t know which–if any–of the Blohm + Voss training barques have NEVER visited New York harbor.

The two fotos below show a plaque in what used to be Camp Shanks.  Vessel in the distance below is Wanderbird, also

 a repurposed vessel from Western Europe.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who took these fotos of Eagle five years ago.  Thanks a bundle for the fotos from this morning, John.

Finally, the other Blohm + Voss vessel in New York harbor is Peking, languishing in South Street Seaport limbo.  Peking is 377′ loa x 46 beam’ x  16′ draft; compared with Eagle‘s 295′ x 31′ x 17.’

Click here to read the reminiscences of Emil Babich, who crewed aboard Eagle in June 1946 for Eagle’s FIRST arrival in the Hudson on its way to Camp Shanks.

Eagle 1

Either this foto is science fiction, fotos of Eagle –which arrives on August 5 appearing on this blog already on August 4– or

this is a rehearsal, including crew in the rigging and

vessel lining up for fotos shoots-future, a real 75-year-old barque 

doing dances with a 25-year-old replica, getting ready for

the official entry into the Upper Bay tomorrow.

Actually, I’d prefer you believe the sci-fi explanation, a narrative that allows me to believe these vessels (Peking, for example, was built at Blohm + Voss as was Eagle … ex-Horst Wessel …)  are heartsick to be bound, gagged, and held hostage at these piers . . .  rather than sailing and sallying forth to join the celebration.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.  If you are anywhere near the Narrows tomorrow morning, watch reality catch up with sci-fi and witness Eagle sail her way (if there’s wind) up to the Statue.

Figureheads

One of the year’s disappointments was seeing the figurehead on Eagle, a ship two friends had crossed the Atlantic in. The figurehead is shown below.
I don’t mean to be critical, and I won’t say what it reminds me of, but for a vessel so lavished with funding, the bird lover and the wood carver in me found that gilt body . . . disappointing. Not that I’d go for the fiberglass figure on this Las Vegas pirate ship.

Of course if I were a perishing, superstitious medieval sailor, I know which “klaboutermannikin” I’d rather follow to the afterlife. But I digress. Eagle, built by Blohm and Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Germany in 1936, is the younger sibling by 25 years of Peking. And check out Peking‘s stem, initials “P” and “L” for the P line, a fleet of nitrate clippers owned by Ferdinand Laeisz; now quiet at the dock after an early life shuttling between Hamburg and Valparaiso and other Chilean ports, less than three months for the 7000 miles each way. Imagine this modest figurehead plunging through the tempest around Cape Horn.

Here’s a sampling of figureheads. But my favorite figurehead of the year is shown below, the defiant grey goose standing on Pioneer’s bowsprit while the wooden jibboom was removed for refinishing; by the way, would you believe me if I said Homeland Security ( aka USCG Campbell WMEC 909) backed off seconds later out of respect for the goose?

You don’t suppose the crew of this cutter had been interested in taking the goose as a figurehead, do you?

All photos by Will Van Dorp.