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Call this the push knee set. And let’s do it this way . . . given all the features that could be discussed, focus of these for oldest/newest, smallest/largest, and least/most horsepower.
CMT Pike. An aside about CMT Pike is that she was not built with a retractable wheelhouse. When launched, she had a fixed wheelhouse, the “stalk” of which can be seen directly behind where the raised wheelhouse is now. I’ve not been able to find a photo of her in that original configuration.
Shiloh Amon aka Jillian Irene
Lightning
Discovery Coast
Miss Madeline
And finally, a photo from January 2013 and showing one that has been sold out of the sixth boro . . . Herbert P. Brake.
Have you written down your final decisions?
All photos, WVD. All info here thanks to Birk Thomas’ invaluable tugboatinformation
Ready? No cheating.
Just guesses.
Oldest is Miss Madeline, and newest is Shiloh aka Jillian Irene. 1976 and 2022.
Smallest considering both length and beam is Herbert P. Brake, and longest is Discovery Coast although both Discovery and Jillian tie at 34′ for beam. Lengths are 60′ and 96′.
Least horses is Brake, and most is Discovery. They range from 375 hp to 3000 hp.
My most recent Professional Mariner published article can be read here.
Today’s post presents some outtakes and more from the article process. When you look at the tug below, or its earlier iteration,
you might not expect it has this elevating ability. You’ve seen it here in a winter solstice post from nine years ago.
By elevating, the view from the helm can be raised by 15′ . . . fifteen feet!!
External egress when the wheelhouse is down doesn’t work, and looks like this. When you elevate, don’t forget to “release the velcro flap…”.
When it’s up, this is the view down the passage.
Of course, I wanted to see the ram that moved the wheelhouse up and down, and here pointing out function is John Joseph Captain C. J. Steen.
Here’s a crew photo, with (l to r), Jonathan Stasinos, Graham Lebica, Tim Ivory, Glenn Anderson, C. J. Steen, TBS consultant Birk Thomas, and James Stasinos.
Home base, the resting place, these days for another Stasinos tug Meaghan Marie is a pier in Red Hook Brooklyn terminal, but
the goal of course is to stay engaged.
All photos, info . . . WVD, who’s looking for more green and buff.
Here and here are previous posts that feature this vessel, LV-87 Ambrose. The first two photos below come from Birk Thomas in late winter 2012, as Ambrose was finishing up some yard work and then
in March headed back to South Street Seaport Museum.
I took the remaining photos, the one below as the lightship was bathed in fireworks light on July 4 this year.
The next two photos I took last week, trying to highlight Christmas red.
By the way, next week I plan a post of any work vessel–or replica thereof–decorated for Christmas in some way. I have a few already, but if you have such a photo to share, send it along soon. Click here for some Christmas-related workboat photos from two years ago.
Two older sister ships of Ambrose are Barnegat, LV 79, ex-Cape Lookout Shoal, and delivered on 1 December 1904, now languishing in Pyne Point NJ; and
Swiftsure, LV-83, ex-Relief, and delivered on 22 December 1904. I’m wondering if there’s a photo showing both vessels in Camden at the shipyard in –say–October 1904, just prior to delivery. I took both photos in summer 2010.
Going back to this record of New York Shipbuilding history, does anyone know what became of LV 88 Columbia River, supposedly sold to Japan in 1988?
This post shows a photo of LV 84 Brunswick and tells of its demise. Click here for other posts on lightships. One lightship I’d really like to see is this one from 1911 in Surinam.
The top two photos credit to Birk Thomas; all the others to Will Van Dorp.
I don’t make much fuss about Christmas for reasons I explained here 10 years ago; when I really want something and I can afford it, I just get it. Of course, I have no problems with anyone going all out with gifts. Books and experiences make the best gifts. Experiences . . . teach you and you can remember them forever.
Books . . . you read them once and then read them again or give them to someone you think will enjoy them as much as or more than you did. See the book cover below . . . great cover and fabulous book. Inside you find crisp photos, reproductions of painting of McAllister vessels, family stories, . . . even an owners’ family tree that clarifies some of the boat names. The story starts in 1864 as James McAllister (generation 1) stood on the northeast coast of Ireland about to emigrate across the Atlantic.
One of my favorite stories involves the boat below, launched from Newport News Shipbuilding Co. in May 1909 as John Twohy, Jr, for Lambert’s Point Tow Boat Company. Renamed J. P. McAllister, this boat served as a platform for the one-and-only Harry Houdini‘s escape from handcuffs and leg irons inside a nailed-shut, weighted packing case. Here’s a reference to this event in a recent NYTimes, but in this book, you get two photos of the event and facsimiles of the contemporary news story and the J. P. McAllister logbook entry, all attesting to the tremendous research involved in this beautifully produced volume.
One more great story . . . typical of struggles to divide up ownership in any family business. When disagreement came to a head in on a cold Easter Sunday morning in 1904, “the partners decided to work out the percentages once and for all by meeting on a tugboat, taking it offshore, and not returning until they had an agreement.” Now Capt. Jim (generation 2) told his 6 year-old son A. J. to wait at the pier until they all returned. Which happened to be as night fell. Here’s how it’s told: “Capt. Jim … his face covered in blood . . . jumped off [the boat onto the pier where A. J. had waited all day], grabbed A. J. by the hand, and said, ‘That’s it. It’s settled. The issue is settled.'”
Below is one of my many favorite full-page photos in the book. Another photo a few pages later adds detail not unlike Birk Thomas and collaborators do here.
A book like this focuses not only on a family business but also New York City, with all six of its boros, and the country. The photo below shows the McAllister yard behind Ellis Island, real estate taken over in the 1970s for the creation of Liberty State Park. Today’s margins of the harbor are that way only because of thousands of decisions.
The author, Stephanie Hollyman has a website that highlights an impressive breadth of work.
Click here for ordering info.
Since we’re looking at books, here’s one that might be ripe for updating. Another one I’ve reread and enjoyed recently is Buckets and Belt: Evolution of the Great Lakes Self-Unloader by William M. Lafferty, Valerie van Heest, and Kenneth Pott.
Here’s a list of previous Wavertree posts. This post could be called Wavertree down rig, a slow and careful process that is best seen chronologically.
August 2. The rigging remained this way through the morning of the 14th.
August 14. Birk Thomas took the next two.
August 20. I got here while the osprey was still on watch . . .
and looking in control of his realm, but
a bit later, the riggers’ watch began and
the osprey left his station to them, who undid his perch
and on August 23, when I got there, el gran velero aka dirty dog aka Wavertree was stripped down and
a lot closer to being hoisted in dry dock.
I’m guessing triage of spars will happen and what goes back up will be refurbished before going back aloft.
Thanks to Nelson Chin for the photo below, showing a sampling of spars, now all labeled, waiting to go back up next summer.
Thanks to Birk for the August 14 photos and Nelson for the photo directly above; all others by Will Van Dorp.
Call this Simone at the “7” in the sixth boro. Bound for sea.
A large part of what drives my continuing this blog is the satisfaction of trying to capture the magic of the traffic in NYC’s harbor, what I call the sixth boro. And some boats and companies conjure more magic than others in my very suggestible mind. But take Simone, she ‘s not a new boat–1970-launched–but consider her recent itinerary: a year ago she had just returned from Senegal, and a year and half ago she had traversed the Panama Canal at least twice and made trips to California and Hawaii. I’m impressed by that. This is why I left the farm all those years ago.
To digress just slightly, here’s a photo of Simone one day earlier than the ones I’ve taken. Birk Thomas of tugboat information.com took this. This photo was taken just west of the Bayonne Bridge–looking south– and shows better than any photo I’ve seen the immense progress that’s being made of the raising of the Bayonne Bridge roadbed.
Meanwhile, enjoy the rest of these photos of Simone, here heading out with MSC Monica, a smallish and oldish container vessel.
I’d be thrilled to get a job on a Tradewinds vessel, but for now I can watch Simone pass by and say “ah.”
Thanks to Birk for the photo already attributed, and all the others by Will Van Dorp, who says “ah.”
Here was a post from a year and a half ago when I missed Miss Lis.
As for Ipanema in the links above, I’ve been there, and here was the first of 25 posts from there.
World’s End is not some lamentation about the single digit temperatures we’ve seen in these parts; it’s one of the great place names in the Hudson Highlands from 40 to 55 miles north of the the Statue. Enjoy these summer/winter pics of this curve in the vicinity of World’s End. West Point is just to the left, and we’re headed north.
Birk Thomas–of tugboat information.com– took this photo in just about the same place less than a week ago.
I took this two summers ago, and that’s Pollepel Island in the distance.
Same place . . . Birk’s photo from last week. Visibility is so restricted that the Island cannot be seen.
And here are two more shots of the same view in summer, from off Cornell and
Patty Nolan. That’s Buchanan 12 heading north in the photo below.
Photos 2 and 4 used with thanks to Birk Thomas. All others by Will Van Dorp.
Here was 15. The first relief crew post appeared here over seven years ago. The idea is to feature someone else’s photos and/or writing, just because so many of you see, photograph, and write such interesting stuff AND –of course–because collaboration is such powerful leaven.
All these photos today come from Birk Thomas. The event was the departure last week of CV-60 USS Saratoga–Brooklyn built–for the scrapyard. For some intriguing photos of the other end of her life, click here for this navsource site.
Signet Warhorse III is the motive force.
Iona McAllister, Rainbow, and Buckley McAllister assist with the hookup and departure from Narragansett Bay.
Not until last night did I learn that a final aircraft takeoff and landing was happening at this very moment up on her flight deck.
Warhorse . . . what a name!
Note the riding crew on the deck.
Rainbow straightens out the tow. . .
in the early minutes of the tow.
Again, many thanks to Birk Thomas for use of these photos, which not all of you have seen on Facebook.
As Harvey (1931) made its way northward from a dry dock visit, Slater (1944) was a hundred miles upriver, making its way south. The next two photos come from Birk Thomas, taken north of Newburgh NY as sun was lowering onto the hills in the west.
Benjamin Elliot (1960) is the assist tug. Margot (1958) has Slater alongside . . the other side.
John Dunn caught this photo of the tow south of Newburgh, after sunset.
Since Margot cannot be seen in the photos above, here’s her profile as I shot it back in September 2013.
Many thanks to Birk and John for the photos.
When this event happened on Memorial Day in the sixth boro, I wrote about it as “cast.” The New London cast right after the 4th of July was quite different. All these fotos come with thanks to Birk Thomas, now at sea. Ferry New London is automatically part of the local and daily cast .
Thames (rhymes with “james” ) Towboat Company’s John P. Wronowski (2004) was built in Florida.
Gwendolyn (1975) was built in Louisiana.
USCGC Eagle began to take shape in Hamburg in 1936.
USS Carter Hall had her keel laid in Louisiana in 1991.
Adam uses her 450 hp mostly around the Thames Towboat Company yards, where it was built.
Patricia Ann came out of a Louisiana shipyard as a YTB on hull #758 . . to Hercules #766, now in Nigeria.
Figureheads need inspection.
John P. and Paul A. Wronowski (1980 in Connecticut) assist USS Carter Hall into its berth. Paul A. was one of the first z-drive tugs ever built.
Ticonderoga (1936 by Herreshoff in Boston as Tioga) begs to be seen from closer, much closer.
Ferry Race Point is cast, even if she’s really working the run to Fisher’s Island.
Behold Wolf . . . she flies the flag of the Conch Republic, where I found myself exactly a year ago!
Cisne Branco . . . like Eagle was in the sixth boro almost two months ago.
Schooner Brilliant, 1932 in the Bronx, is truly brilliant.
Schooner A. J. Meerwald, 1932 in South Jersey, homeports in Bivalve . . . yes the village is truly called that.
Wisconsin-built YP-700 had its keel laid in 1987.
Another shot of Paul A.
It’s Amistad (Connecticut with a 2000 launch) with its unmistakable rake.
Again . . . many thanks to Birk for these fotos.
tugster: a waterblog 
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