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Yesterday, Labor Day, I took no photos, except one of a wood sign carving project in progress.
It turns out . . . Labor Day 2020 I took no photos either; these were sent to me though by Josh Watts, and embarrassingly, I’ve not posted them until now. Sometimes I get into a groove and lose track of things. These are two new generation NYS Canals tugs and a floating gradall, maintaining canal depth. It’s a great shot.
Here’s anorther from that date and that area of the west-of-Rochester portion of the canal, Adams Basin. The vantage point is a house barge from Erie Canal Adventures.
Labor Day 2019 I had the good fortune to be laboring, and taking photos, and doing that in Cleveland. Self-unloading freighter Algoma Buffalo was winding its way down the Cuyahoga
with assistance from two tugs, Cleveland and Iowa, launched 2017 and 1915 respectively!! You caught that 102-year difference in age, right! Also, that waterway used simultaneously for commerce and recreation . . . that’s the Cuyahoga, you know, the one that caught fire a number of times a half century ago. That is a story of concerted problem-solving, concerted means people with different ideas solving problems together.
Labor Day 2018 I was exploring Chicago and saw this massive Muddy Waters mural.
Just beyond this navigation aid, you turn to port and enter the federal lock that leads to the Chicago River.
Labor Day 2017 I was in Manitowoc. Then and many other times I’ve seen and wondered about Halten, a 1966 Swedish Coast Guard vessel (maybe not since painted-over raised letters on the stern say Oslo) that appears to be a yacht that might not move much. Maybe it just moves when I’ve not been paying attention.
Avenger IV passed us on Lake Michigan, where lots of fishing was happening from small boats.
Labor Day 2016 I had just left Ogdensburg downbound, and was passing the Canadian port of Johnstown, where the 1943 freighter Mississagi
was discharging cargo,
and a half hour later, we were still looking back at Johnstown in the beauty of the morning colors.
I could go farther back but won’t now. I’ve no idea why I’ve not taken any photos the past two Labor Days. September 5, 2022, I need to get back to work. Thanks to Josh for the first two photos; all others, WVD.
Looking ahead, just a reminder that after the TugBoat RoundUp, I’ll be road foto tripping a lot, and that might be no posts some days.
Hot to sweet . . . could have been a title too.
I hope obscure titles are not too off-putting, but I just realized that in late August 2019, I encountered Calusa Coast on the Cuyahoga while she was still on her contract to push liquid asphalt around the Inland Seas, aka the Great Lakes. To be liquid, asphalt needs to be over 250 degrees F, so that assist tug Cleveland here is close to some very hot liquid, safely enclosed in steel barge Delaware.
Two years ago, Calusa Coast and barge Delaware were nearing their contract.
Nine months ago, my friend Jack Ronalds caught the unit newly in salt water at the Strait of Canso. Earlier this week, I caught this unit, Calusa Coast pushing
sugar barge (technically, dry bulk barge) Jonathan up from coastal Florida to Yonkers.
That structure midships on Jonathan is a hatch crane.
As of this morning, they are still discharging at ASR, the sugar refinery. I’ve caught Jonathan and Sugar Express there on other occasions.
Come to think of it . . . Yonkers must be hot and sweet there now.
All photos, WVD.
The idea for this series is that while watching a movie, I see tugboats in it unexpectedly. This happened last night as I watched Kill the Irishman, a 2011 movie based on events in Cleveland OH during the mid-1970s, when a mob war led to 37 bombings in Cuyahoga County. I was outside the US during that time period and had no recollection of it, nor do I recall this movie from a decade ago.
The protagonist is Danny Greene, who first worked as a longshoreman on the Cleveland docks. While taking a break from discharging grain, he points out this container ship being escorted and tells his fellow dockworkers that containerization will take away all their jobs.
Is this a model? I don’t recognize the livery on either tugboat or containership. Haven’t all escort tugs in Cleveland always been GL tugs?Were there ever containerships of this type in Cleveland in the 1950s or 1960s? Danny was born in 1933, dropped out of high school, did a few years in the military, and came back to Cleveland in the 1950s, I’d calculate.
At one point in the early 1970s, Greene gets a loan from Shondor Birns, a racketeer who gets this money from the Gambino family, leading to this gratuitous shot of an eastbound tug in the East River. Now that could be a canaler like Crow or Cheyenne . . . . These photos are both screen grabs and the tugboat below plays no role in the movie except to establish the location, already done by the buildings.
Can anyone shed any further light on these two tugboats, the ship, and containerization on the Great Lakes in that time period?
Screen grabs by WVD, whose previous film tugs can be found here.
If you ordered a calendar last year, you might recall that I promised that I’d “extend” the photo set each month. Well, here’s September, following all the other months. Call this . . . “how Cleveland turned a toxic industrial sewer into a recreation area, while maintaining industrial activity.” Recall while looking at these photos that THIS is the Cuyahoga, the object of shame back when I was a teenager, the river on all East Coast folks’ minds when the first Earth Day protest happened. WestCoasters had the Santa Barbara oil spill uppermost in mind. It took vision and –see the article– ongoing effort.
If you’ve never visited Cleveland, you’ll thank yourself for doing so. If you’ve never looked at Cleveland from the perspective of the Cuyahoga, you can do it right here thanks to the miracle of Google maps . . . it winds and winds and a few miles up, there’s still a lot of industry, so bulk carriers like Algoma Buffalo need to get up there, and getting there requires the assistance of tugs to negotiate all the turns.
Note all the recreation in boats happening all around this Algoma Buffalo, a 1978 Sturgeon Bay WI build, 24,300 tons cargo capacity (convert that to dump trucks), 634′ x 68′ and powered by 7200 hp. It was flagged US until the 2018 season. Note the “whitewater” from the portside emanating from the thruster tunnel.
People are enjoying the summer sun, oblivious some of them to the ship.
Kayakers and SUPers carry on.
Now what’s happening amidst all these folks enjoying the beautiful Cuyahoga is that Algoma Buffalo will exit the river as far as that lift bridge and then be assisted moving astern into the old Cuyahoga.
Also, keep in mind that tug Cleveland was launched in 2017, and Iowa in 1915. Yes . . . the two tugs assisting the laker are 102 years apart in age! The captain of Cleveland might be the great-grandson of the original captain of Iowa. Also, both tugs were built right on this river. Deckhands appear calm here while directing the swarm away from danger.
And . . . I said swarm!
Here’s the point where forward motion stops, and Iowa assumes the lead, tugging the ship into the Old River.
Also, if you’re thinking to take a drive to Cleveland, keep in mind that I took all these photos from land, not from a boat. People along the waterway there can have a beer or lunch or tea while enjoying a front row seat to all this . . . drama. Set your GPS to the Greater Cleveland aquarium, a good aquarium with a huge parking lot right by the riuver.
I’m being redundant now, but this is the Cuyahoga a half century from the time it caught fire and people who didn’t work on it shunned it.
Again, the ship is backing up the Old River, towed
amidst all the fun-seekers on the water
around all the twists and bends by this antique but state-enough-of-the-art 1915 tugboat. Just up around that bend is the Great Lakes Shipyard.
Cuyahoga!
Cuyahoga! This is the only photo I took not from terra firma.
Cleveland needs a song about the rebirth of the river. Maybe there is one I just don’t know about.
All photos, WVD, who’d go back to Cleveland in a heartbeat. If you’ve not been, you owe to yourself to go there on a sunny summer day, and there aren’t many of those left for this year.
For other photos of Cleveland, try this one from February. For posts in Cleveland of Buffalo as a US flagged vessel, click here and here.
I’m posting from Montreal, the M in the series title MB. So I’ve some catching-up to do.
Let’s start in a waterway where deckhands have an additional task, one involving hand signals.
I commend the deckhands for their polite signals given the crowding.
All proceeds with minimal horn blasts and absence of injury.
Some hand signaling has to be repeated though. Have you guessed the town, the waterway?
It’s Cleveland of course with its much-loved Cuyahoga.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Today’s post takes us from Port Colborne to Cleveland.
I’ll do another post about the MRC yard later. You can click here to see what these two looked like last year.
Algorail is nearly gone and work has already begun on Algoway.
At the Buffalo breakwater, Kathy Lynn was standing by with barge to receive concrete rubble, I think.
NACC Argonaut departs the Buffalo River for Bath, ON.
Manitoulin heads west.
Paul L. Luedtke tows scow #70. Is that Ashtabula in the background?
GL Cleveland assists barge Delaware out of the Cuyahoga…
until Calusa Coast clears the RR bridge and Cleveland returns to the barn.
All photos Will Van Dorp
To repeat what I said yesterday, this was supposed to be a visit to get photos of tugs and ships in ice. The Cuyahoga may be quite cold, but no ice . . . .
This shot is taken from the Carter Road Bridge looking toward Collision Bend and the bug venues.
Under the Rte 2 Bridge, Alpena awaits her 76th season! She makes me feel young!
In resplendent light last summer late, I caught her heading northbound mid-Lake Huron.
Again, I imagined ice; two weeks earlier and I likely would have seen it.
The yellow of the water makes more vivid the yellow of her hull.
Some crew is maintaining boiler pressure.
And when the season begins, Alpena will back out of this dock on the old river, turn to port and head back to work for her 76th season.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who looks forward to seeing her steaming on the Lakes again this summer.
Previous Cleveland posts on tugster include this and this with laker Buffalo, and this with–among other things–Iowa towing Sea Eagle II up the Cuyahoga. There are others also if you just use the search window.
I missed the ship at first, even though I was looking for it. Then its slow steady movement caught my attention. Behold the bunker carrier Buffalo in Cleveland
steaming upstream without tug assist, although it has thrusters. There’s 68′ beam of this self-unloading bulker winding her way upstream.
See the green-domed clock tower on the ridge? On the photo above it’s just to the left of the bow mast of Buffalo. That’s Westside Market.
See the West Side Market on the map below? And the red line in the river heading its way under the Detroit Avenue bridge? That was my location for these shots. Destination was somewhere near the red circle below. Imagine shoehorning a 634′ ship through here?
And whatever reputation the Cuyahoga had a half century ago, there’s river life stirred up here, as evidenced by the gulls. Anyone know what draws the gulls?
The folks in the apartments on the ridge (along W 25th Street) must have an enviable view of this traffic. Invite me to visit?
Again, what amazes me is the absence of tug assist. And learning to pilot this . . . I’m impressed. See this location in a time-lapse at 11 seconds in this short video. And the outbound leg is done stern wise, as seen at about the 6:00 mark in this video.
Cleveland . . . I’ll be back.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who posted the first of this series here. See a bit more of Buffalo on the Cuyahoga here.
I’m back near the sixth boro now and have photos for at least through early October, at which time I leave on another gallivant.
So here’s step one in catching up. Up the meandering Cuyahoga, here are Iowa (1915) and Oklahoma (1913); these boats were built to work and last.
The vintage GL tugs may just be replaced for the next century by this design: Cleveland, launched less than six months ago . . . 2017.
Click here for a recent article on Cleveland.
Cleveland in this series was doing assist for 610′ x 78′ sand barge Ashtabula powered by 142′ tug Defiance.
Here’s Elizabeth Anna in the Lake Erie port on Erie PA.
Elizabeth Anna (ex-Bear) last appeared on this blog here.
In the entrance to the old Buffalo River, here’s Daniel Joncaire II, a NYPA tug
launched in late 2015 by Great Lakes Shipyard in Cleveland. NYPA uses the tug for ice boom installations near its hydropower units on the Niagara River. I’m curious now about Niagara Queen II and William H. Latham.
I’ve always had misgivings about my series title “freshwater tugs” and here’s a good illustration why: Calusa Coast–here with Kirby barge Delaware–was until a few years ago a regular in the saltwater and brackish , in and out of the sixth boro. Here she is in the Niagara River headed for Black Rock.
Beyond her stern here is the combination Buffalo Intake Crib Lighthouse.
And to close out today’s post, it’s Sarah Andrie, another tug that’s made the transition from saltwater to fresh . . . the former Caribe Service.
She’s making her way here upstream into Lake Erie from the Welland Canal.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Here’s a new look in ship-assist boats. Can you tell what else is unconventional?
More on the design later in the post.
This is a classic design in freshwater tugs. And this particular boat you’ve seen in a number of posts on this blog in 2016, if you’re a faithful reader. It’s in these.
I’ve never seen Grouper‘s hull out of the water–and I hope to some day–but I’m imagining it’s fairly similar.
It’s GL tug Nebraska, 1929 launched, still working in Toledo, and in the yard only for preventative maintenance. Over in the distance, that’s Maine, nearing the century mark and likely to be scrapped soon. Here’s an entire page with links devoted to GL tugs ….
You’ve seen this design before: Cheraw is a YTB of the vintage of tugs like the sixth boro’s Ellen McAllister, but in the livery of the USACE. I don’t know if USACE operates any other ex-YTBs among their very large fleet.
And in closing this post, here’s Seahound, 1941 built in the US and since 1957 working in Canada. Since these shots show her at a dock in Windsor and pushing a barge marked . . .
ferry service, I’m left wondering if Seahound shuttles vehicles between here and Detroit. Anyone help? And I know better than to take any names literally, but given her location, she might better be called Straithound?
So to get back to the top two photos . . . that’s Cleveland, the prototype for a new series of harbor assist tugs built in Cleveland using a Damen design. And what you may have noticed is the absence of a stack. Engines exhaust through the stern. Much more in this article from Professional Mariner here. Here’s more from the Damen site. Here are other links showing the environment where GL tugs operate while assisting cargo vessels in Cleveland.
All photos, sentiments, and any inadvertent errors by Will Van Dorp, who’s grateful to Great Lakes Shipyard for the tour.
tugster: a waterblog 
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