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Here was a Chancellor post I did in 2013, and here’s a photo I took of her on September 15, 2017, and
alas, here are some photos taken September 24, 2017–yesterday morning– by a responder to whom I’m grateful and used here with permission. And yes, that’s Urger in the upper righthand corner.
Boats float, until they don’t . . .
but inattention catches up with all boats. If Ben Franklin had been interested in boats, he’d have said the three certainties were taxes, death, gravity.
I’m not sure who currently owns Chancellor, but this is a sad sight. Click here to see her Bushey lineage.
Here’s a video I did of her and other tugboats at the 2010 Waterford Tugboat roundup. Chancellor first appears 1:40 in… and is the star at the end.
GWA is “going west again,” and here we start at about 130′ above sea level. We’ve just passed the road sign included in a post here in 2006. Ahead of us is lock E-2, the beginning of the flight of five, located in the town of Waterford.
Above E-3, my former vessel waits, along with Chancellor. Those two boats alone have a combined total life of 196 years between them. In the foreground is the business end of a cutter suction dredge.
Recreation boats come from everywhere.
Beyond the guard gate atop E-6 is Grand Erie, who also came from away, the Ohio River in her case.
Locals know how to enjoy the 200-year-old waterway.
Below E-11, we get a green light in the early morning drizzle.
Squeezing a 183′ x 39′ vessel through the locks involves a skilled crew and vigilant lock master.
Drivers on the Thruway at this point are 42 miles from Albany, 190 from NYC.
At E-15, still in the drizzle, a Florida boat —Sharon Ann–waits as we lock through.
Above E-16, the 90-year-old Governor Cleveland attends dredge pipes, maintenance dredging being ongoing. Yes, the canal needs maintenance, and so does the Thruway, any street, RR tracks and infrastructure, my car, my body . . . .
A boxer takes its human for a run . . .
More guard gates–width is 55′–to squeeze through.
Lords of the air watch all along the waterway.
At E-17 we share a lock with Tender #5.
Since we tie off above E-18, Lil Diamond II has to maneuver around.
An SPS lands a crew on the bank for preventative maintenance … keeping dead trees from falling into the water and jamming lock gates.
More recreational boats from far-off ports.
More maintenance above E-19, this time with dragon dredge and the electric tender . . . #4.
Reinforcement of the canal walls is a canal priority this year.
I always imagine the mythical Utica lies beyond the berm marked by the open tower. Central NY was once included in the “military tract,” land distributed to Revolutionary War veterans.
Above lock E-20, we are at the high point of this portion of the Erie Canal,
and Rome was the original high point/ portage in the Mohawk portion of the waterways that pre-date Europeans settlement of North america.
We are now 456′ above sea level, where we’ll pick up the journey tomorrow.
All photos by and any errors attributable to Will Van Dorp.
Unlike the sixth boro waters, freshwater New York changes state. As illustration, here is a color photo I took yesterday, and
below is roughly the same view (looking down from E-5 in the Flight) taken in late September 2016, almost five months ago. What’s departing lock 4 was reported here.
But I digress. Here’s what tenders look like in February.
And the long-suffering Chancellor, after the pool level has been lowered.
Floating and working, it’s the art deco tug Syracuse. She has been working since December 1933!
And can you identify the vessel in the foreground?
Indeed, it’s the 1912-launched Grouper sustaining yet another season in Niflheim.
All photos taken by Will Van Dorp this week except the first one.
From George Conk . . . it’s Ahoskie, taken in Rockland, Maine.
from Jonathan Steinman, it’s Franklin Reinauer at sunrise on the East River, passing under–I guess-the Manhattan Bridge.
From Allen Baker, earlier this week, it’s Eagle, once again in the sixth boro.
From Bjoern Kils . . . it’s Kalmar Nyckle . . . taken by his mom in Lewes, DE.
From Zwaan Casasnuevas, it’s Half Moon in her current berth in Hoorn, NL, one stormy day last week.
From eBay and identified only by date, a view from 1946 featuring Chancellor and an unknown tug, probably NYC. Anyone help with identification?
And finally from the same ethereal realms, it’s an unidentified Dalzell tug,
Thanks to George, Jonathan, Allen, Zwaan, Bjoern, and the webworldlings .. .
Chancellor . . . built pre-World War 2 in Brooklyn. This post is timed to satisfy a request from Bob Price . . . as follows: “as part of a group working to restore the tug boat Chancellor, I am trying to find any extant engineering documentation regarding her construction details. Built by Bushey & Sons in 1938, it is currently in the keeping of the Waterford Maritime Historical Society and my group of volunteers recently arranged to have it moved into dry dock at Lock 3 of the Erie Canal where we laboriously winterized it, pumped its bilges dry and a making plans to create a very thorough hit list of things to do. If you would be so kind as to point me in the direction of any person or entity that might have access to drawings or any engineering related stuff pertaining to the Chancellor I would be most appreciative. Thanks for your time. Bob Price Knox, NY 518.895.8954 The first three fotos below come from Bob.
The next three I took in 2010. Here she’s cruises north on the Hudson headed for Troy.
Here’s she’s downbound following W. O. Decker into the Federal Lock.
Housedown, she prepares to depart the bulkhead in Waterford.
And in my foto from either 2006 or 2007 she goes nose-to-nose with Gowanus Bay.
If anyone knows the whereabouts of construction drawings or other plans for Chancellor, you can also email me and I’ll pass the info on to Bob and his group. Click here to see Fred tug44’s video of Chancellor being pushed upstream by the tagteam of Ben Elliot and National.
Unrelated to stacks: as of this moment–8 am local time sixth boro–Flinterborg is off Sandy Hook inbound for Albany to load the Dutch barges for return. Through Narrows by 9 at this rate?
Stack logo on an independent boat like Shenandoah reminds me of nose art on WW2-era airplanes. I’m surprised nose art– way forward @ waterline — hasn’t emerged as a trend in tugboat painting, given the pivotal (yea . . . pun intended) role of noses in much tug work.
Stack art could proclaim regional pride like Buffalo does,
although the conflict between the Canal’s western terminus city and eastern gateway town needs to be resolved.
Stacks on steamers like Hestia–I’m still working on getting info together on her–eject some many particulates (count them) that anything painted here would soon be . . . coated.
Always iconoclastic Patty Nolan –“mystery tug” shown in the fifth foto down here–borrows an idea from trucks . . . with a stainless steel (?) stack.
Pleasure tugs, of which Trilogy is a paragon of style, might proclaim a family coat-of-arms, faux or genuine.
Mary H carries some sporty lines on her stack.
Empire sports the most squared off stacks I’ve ever seen.
The Chancellor demonstrates classic passenger liner–think SS United States–arrangement: longitudinal.
Last one for now . . . Samantha Miller . . . packs her stacks as widely spaced as possible to free maximal work and supply space astern.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Second in this series, this post attempts to captures quick details on Rondout this weekend,
venue for the latest Working on Water (WOW) festival. Rondout, a creek I’d love to spend much more time on, enters the Hudson about 80 miles north of the sixth boro, strictly delineated. The word may be a corruption of “redoubt,” no doubt a reference to the geography of the high part of town relative to the Creek.
Some vessels there this weekend included Governor Cleveland and Day Peckinpaugh, both having been featured on this blog previously. Much more Day Peckinpaugh soon.
Lehigh Valley Cornell and Barge 79, the peripatetic Waterfront Museum, have also appeared here before.
Bermudan ketch Belle Adventure reflects sunrise.
Bushey-tug The Chancellor was there. Check info and a lovely drawing of The Chancellor here. More The Chancellor later in this post.
Jessica duLong alternated between driving Gowanus Bay (ex-Linda) and talking about her new book My River Chronicles. Listen to a podcast of an 8 September interview with Jessica here.
Canine passenger kayaks inhabited the Creek.
Working tugboat Patty Nolan was there; hull was launched in Superior, WI in 1931, but I’ve been unable to determine if the bikinied figurehead figurefigure was original standard equipment.
For some sights and sound . . . mid-day and duck, watch this. Benjamin Elliott, who arrives at dusk, has appeared on this blog before. Video made from the venerable Pegasus.
All fotos and video by Will Van Dorp. More from WOW later.
My sentiments of more than two years ago amuse me here, and “full frontal” isn’t even really. So in connection with a project I’m considering, here’s really fully frontally. Let’s start with HNLMS Tromp. Now in those twin radomes, I see teddy bear’s ears.
BNS Lobelia is harder to read.
Of all the vessels in the Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 1 (SNMCMG1), the most unusual was HNoMS Rauma. Ever-reliable Jed sends these links here and here on vessel and hull design Although Rauma traversed the Atlantic with the rest of the group, she seems marginally seaworthy. But what do I know? For all the SNMCMG1 vessels, visit Bowsprite.
Peacemaker . . spider be-webbed?
Crow, (1963, Brooklyn, NY!) as seen at the bulkhead in Waterford last Saturday.
Evening Mist, (1976, Houma, LA), big square house.
Gulf Service, 1979, Amelia, LA) taller, hourglass houses.
And this circles us back to Tromp, here following the egg-shaped Onrust, (2009, Rotterdam Junction, NY), featured many times on this blog.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who leaves soon for Kingston for . . .
“Kingston Waterfront on the weekend of September 19-20. From noon to 6 p.m. both days, the WOW (Working on Water) event includes a tugboat bootcamp, trolley rides, lighthouse tours, sea shanty singers and more including “wandering tug geezers” and a “Working Hudson Picture Show.” The event is funded by the Ulster County Quadricentennial Commission, NYS assemblymember Kevin Cahill, the City of Kingston Quadricentennial Committee, and the Historic Kingston Waterfront Revival (Robert Iannucci and Sonia Ewers). For more information, check out the website here [www.workingonwater.org]. Meanwhile, from noon to 7 p.m. on September 19 at Cornell Park, which is located on Wurts Street, there’s a free outdoor drum music festival. Jack Dejohnette, the famed jazz drummer who played with jazz greats such as Miles Davis, and Jerry Marotta, who has played with Peter Gabriel and the Indigo Girls, among others, are scheduled to perform” as quoted from the http://www.ci.kingston.ny.us/
“Working Hudson Picture Show . .. ” OOps! That’s me. Gotta run. I’ll be at the Picture Show collecting ghost stories. If you got one, tell it to my video camera, please?
A truckable tug named Mame Faye and her tow anchor outside the current near the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers. Idyllic . . . serene, sleepy upstate river banks . . . eh? She’ll be back.
Here tugs Empire and Shenandoah tie up on the opposite bank of Mame Faye and along the bulkhead.
Farther east is The Chancellor, with twin stacks arranged longitudinally.
Still farther east inside LehighValley Barge 79, speakers like Jessica DuLong and Don Sutherland mesmerize with their tales and chronicles of the river.
Captains Bill and Pam park their powerful machines to rest and enjoy the quiet of oars moving in and out of the fresh water.
Rain showers come and go and no one cares. Lined up behind Empire are Little Bitt, Gowanus Bay, Benjamin Elliott, and Margot. It’s another lazy day at the Roundup.
What’s this on the foredeck of Bill’s Eighth Sea? Looks like PVC, hairspray, and . . . radishes?
And Captain Fred has gotten involved. This looks . . .
ominous, especially after he went to the supermarket for 50-calibre radishes, the most lethal kind.
As dusk falls, that same Captain Bill boards Mame Faye to maneuver the barge into the middle of the stream, which is now closed to traffic, for it will soon be time to
see the scene change and
How to describe that: part night harbor scene, rock concert, traffic jam, railroad crossing, cacophony, simulated war zone, kaleidoscope, popcorn popper, video game, confetti, aquatic bioluminescence gone wild, volcano, apocalypse . . . Oh, and I’ve always preferred seeing the flashes reflect in water to seeing them in air.
Now who do you suppose Mame Faye was? Elizabeth toots Mame‘s horn here.
All fotos and video by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated . . . the Dutch barge flotilla probably moves through the Hudson Highlands and northward today; if you get good fotos and want to share, email me.
Labor Day approaches, bringing with it TWO seasonal competitions, not the ones involving shoulder pads or aluminum bats; but clashing bows, with rubber fenders or fiber bow pudding. Nose to nose …
in the Hudson late morning on Sunday, September 2, 2007, the 15th annual tugboat challenge, Event #1, maybe a reprise of Lincoln Sea v. Janice Ann Reinauer, or
ancients like Gowanus Bay v. Chancellor up at the Tugboat Roundup in Waterford, Event #2, on the weekend of September 8 and 9. Like rut season for bighorns or moose…
or beauty contests with the likes of Governor Cleveland.
Throngs will descend to the Waterford bulkhead for tours, visits, and fantastic fireworks featuring mortar blasts counterpointed with blasts from dozens of tug horns, shrieks from peanut whistles.
By voting online, you can participate–whether you find yourself in Matadi, Hoboken, Dan Helder, Perth, Vancouver, Medellin, Tokyo, Gothenburg, or wherever else. Yes YOU! You can take part in the competition; there’s no residency or citizenship requirement. Here’s the voting link. (See lower left.) Vote only once–it’s all the software allows, but vote and enlist the votes of your entire tribe.
Note: Sometimes the “fav tug” folks think you’ve voted already because of their software. Try again from a different computer.
My vote goes front and center above.
Photos, Will Van Dorp.
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