Headwaters 5

Seth Tane took this photo on the Columbia in 2000.  This was my sense of tugboats back then.  I had little sense of their age, power, crews, skills needed for operation, etc.  Take a guess on those features of this boat, and I’ll provide you some answers at the end of this post.  Note that this tug and barge are at a log dock, a trade unknown in the sixth boro or the NE US.

Here’s a shot I took in 2002 while hanging out on what I called back then the “waterfront” and saw this vessel.  Again, I had no idea of those same features as they pertained to this vessel, nor of the logic of this design.  Test yourself, and then some info can be found at the end.  

I took this photo in 2004.  My 15 years in coastal NE had given me an interest in schooners but I’d never sought an opportunity to crew on one, until my move to NYS, first on and then off the live-aboard.

Note the warehouses still standing where Brooklyn Bridge Park is now located.  Volunteer crewing on Pioneer and the other boats at South Street Seaport Museum kept me on the Upper Bay for long hours, and I  saw lots of new things, 

some things whose uniqueness I didn’t even fully appreciate.  Anyone know what’s become of that tugboat Rachel Marie?  I don’t.

Some things intrigued me, 

and other things like this derelict sugar mill and sunken lightship were soon to disappear.

I started to see interesting tugboats in unexpected places.

Little did I expect then the  changes that would happen.  Know the boat above and below?

All photos, WVD.  Answers below. 

Craig Foss, 1944, 116′ x 30′.  Here are more particulars, but as good as the boat appeared the top photo, she was purchased by unqualified parties, detained, and eventually scrapped.  You need to read the story here;  some crew were lucky to have survived. 

The second photo shows Coral Queen, a motor tanker that carried petroleum from 1920 (!!!) until 2011.  That is a long working life.  Here are the particulars from Birk’s data base.  From Auke Visser’s site, here are more particulars.  And finally, from my Barge Canal series last year, here are images of her generations of fleet mates;  her design relates to her work as a tanker in the “inter-connected waterways,” the Great Lakes and salt water connected by the Barge Canal.

The 1885 Pioneer still seasonally sails with professional and volunteer crews, and the 1893 Lettie G. Howard does the same on Lake Erie mostly.

I’ve no idea what became of Rachel Marie.

Meow Man traces are still around.  

The sugar mill area now has an Amazon facility, and the old shipyard is the Red Hook Ikea parking lot, and the sunken ship reefed,  the piers scrapped. 

Grouper, frozen in ice, is still waiting to be scrapped, but as of March 2, 2023 is still entirely intact.  The orange livery has disappeared from the sixth boro; that boat June K is now Donjon blue.

Ultimately, the more I found answers to questions I had, the more I was drawn in to learn more, a fact that keeps me looking and asking. I really never expected to be in the boros and fascinated by the sixth boro as long as I have been.  Recently, I had a conversation with a friend from another NYC life and she reported never to have heard of the sixth boro.  I guess that’s as shocking as hearing that someone’s not heard of the legendary Meow Man, the saltwater equivalent of Kilroy, or the US version of Maqroll, whose exploits need to be written down.  As of the date of these photos, tugster the blog had not yet been launched.

I’m not sure when I’ll post anything next, but it could be tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

Spring Morning Hour 1

The light could not have been more beautiful as I swooped into the boro, metaphorically speaking:  Peace Victoria in the foreground, Coral Queen (not the other Coral Queen) loading scrap mid-distance, and that ridge the Watchung Mountains defining a horizon.  Note the Tsereteli monolith mid left margin of the photo.

Closer than Peace Victoria, Zola dispensed Egyptian rock salt.

Note the front end loaders shifting salt within the scow?

Down at water level, Curtis Reinauer squeezes into the notch of RTC 42.

Helen Laraway heads over to Zola to shift scows filled in  the salt dispensing.

Jill has been called to assist Curtis out of the dock, 

passing Nicole Leigh at the Reinauer base, adjacent to the Moran base, marked by the white “M”.

The assist begins and

soon Curtis is eastbound. 

And this is just the start of my focus of 1/100th of the doings in the boro.

All photos, taken between 0700 and 0800, WVD.

Entirely unrelated but fascinating, here’s a NYTimes article and video on oil smuggling into North Korea.

Retro Sixth Boro 19

i.e., the 19th month in a row that I’ve posted photos from exactly 120 months before.  Well, although it’s not always this hazy, the Statue still looks the same, but

Responder no longer carries that boom or works in the sixth boro, and neither that bridge nor Coho looks the same.

Coral Sea Queen has been reconfigured into a trillion recombined molecules, and

June K is no longer orange.

That part of the skyline is the same–maybe–but Lil Rip has not been in this harbor in quite a while.

This Rosemary is no longer here nor painted this way, and

John Reinauer . . . I’d love to see her since she transited the Atlantic to work in the Gulf of Guinea.

Flinterborg released these Dutch sailing barges in the waterways of another continent . . . and Flinterborg has not returned that I know of.

Penn No. 4 is laid up, I think.  Does no one use the term “mothballed” any more?  I’ve never mothballed clothes, for what that’s worth.

Laura K Moran works in Savannah, with occasional TDY in other ports, I’ve noticed..

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who himself is no longer the same person he was in October 2009.

Retro Sixth Boro 8

One satisfying thing to me about these retro posts is noticing how much the local fleet has changed.  All these photos I took in November 2008.  Coral Queen was scrapped at least eight or nine years ago.  Maersk Donegal has had two name changes since 2008, now know as Santa Priscila, and no longer calls in the sixth boro.

SPT Guardian, still under the same name, is currently operating out of Lome, Togo.  Note the NJ State Police boat alongside.  I don’t know if they are still using that boat.

ITB Groton is gone as well.

The huge K-Sea fleet in the boro has dispersed.  Solomon Sea is now Emily Ann,

Falcon, I believe, is still Falcon but wears Vane livery,

Davis Sea still has the same name but Kirby colors and operates in the Gulf,

and Aegean Sea carries the same name but works for Burnham Associates in my old stomping grounds north of Boston.  NYK Diana has moved to the Pacific to the US West Coast.

This Rosemary McAllister has been replaced by another Rosemary McAllister, and has spent only part of one day in the sixth boro.

Stapleton Service takes the prize for the greatest number of name changes, three since 2008.  She’s now Michael Miller.

Buchanan 15 has become Dory, although I’ve not seen her in a while.

Coral Queen‘s smaller fleet mate was John B. Caddell, which became a hurricane Sandy victim:  grounded, sheriff auctioned, and scrapped.

I made a jaunt upriver aboard the only and only Half Moon–now sold abroad– in November 2008, and saw

Champion Polar but she’s now

–ice bow and all- dead and likely scrapped,  as well as

a more intact Bannerman’s Castle.

All photos by Will Van Dorp in November 2008.

 

 

Time Warp 2

I did this once before here.  This time I was deleting near duplicates to limit the size of my photo library to accommodate the many photos I brought back from the gallivants, and my mind quickly formed today’s post.  Enjoy all these from August through October 2009 and marvel at how much the harbor changes.   As I went through the archives, this is where I stopped, given the recent developments in Bella Bella BC.

For background on this tug, check here.

Notice also the Bayonne approach to the bridge.

IMO 8983117 was still orange back then.

King Philip, Thomas Dann, and Patriot Service . . .

…

Odin . . .  now has a fixed profile.

And these two clean looking machines — Coral Queen and

John B. Caddell — were still with us.

This is a digression to March 2010, but since I’m in a temporally warped thought, let me add this photo of the long-gone Kristin Poling.

Back to 2009, Rosemary looked sweet here in fall scenes.

John Reinauer . . . I wonder what that tug looks like today over in Nigeria.

And Newtown Creek, now the deep Lady Luck of the Depths, sure looked good back then.

And while I’m at it, I’ve finally solved a puzzle that’s bugged me for a few years.  Remember this post from three and a half years ago about a group of aging Dutch sailors who wanted to hold a reunion on their vessel but couldn’t find the boat, a former Royal Dutch Navy tug named Wamandai A870?  Well, here’s the boat today!  Well, maybe . . .

Another boat you can dive on is United Caribbean aka Golden Venture.

Photos and tangents by Will Van Dorp.

 

Coral Queen

Thanks for today’s fotos and text go to James Ash, port captain for Poling & Cutler.     “I took [these fotos of Coral Queen]  about 12 years ago from the Boston Post Road Bridge in Eastchester ( Mt. Vernon).

The “Rock Cut” is one of the most challenging transits as lining up for the turn around the last corner under the B.P.R. Bridge is a widow maker in a single hull, single screw, tanker built in 1920.

Probably a highlight of my career [is] the 1,200 trips up the Hutchinson River in my time on this vessel.

There was a time when she made two trips per day up this river,

one on each tide.   Master mariner Tony McDonald is at the helm on this trip.

I came in for crew change.”

Thanks much, Jim.

Here are my fotos of Coral Queen, which began rebirth through the scrapyard portal a few years back now.

1920 Ship

I adopted the theme “three score plus” for this week.  Anything still afloat in the harbor 60 years or older, any vessel launched prior 1948 or earlier is fair game.  Please send along your candidates . .  I may have an incomplete list. What vessels of this vintage work in other ports?    John B. Caddell and Mary A. Whalen fit the “three score plus” criterion.  And so does the older, larger sister, Coral Queen.  Spot it below pulling past an annoyingly slow (in the KVK) container vessel, Maersk Donegal, and preparing to

streak past like a high-performance Stutz Bearcat circa 1920 like

Coral Queen, and still awork after four score and eight years!!

Coral Queen has shed several other identities since it came off the ways at Bethlehem SB, Corp. in Elizabethport, NJ in 1920 as Buffalo Socony.  Among them, Buffalo, Queens Bay, and Leona L., always 188 ‘ loa.  Anyone have fotos of this vessel with the above names?

Thanks to Joel Milton for this shot of Coral Queen under Pulaski Bridge in Newtown Creek.  More of Joel’s fotos soon.

Another “three score plus” vessel in the harbor in tomorrow’s post.

Close Quarters

Left to right, it’s Linda Moran, Danielle M Bouchard, unidentified K-Sea, and Ruby M.   Anyone know the air draft on Danielle?  And plenty of room remained for others

like Amy C. McAllister, Ruby M (again), and Ghetty Bottiglieri, of Torre del Greco.

Then Coral Queen took advantage of the narrow channel to overtake Maersk Donegal, ex-Santa Priscilla.

Finally another Bouchard tug passing also respectably huge Christian Reinauer.

All photos, WVD.

Specialized 5

Two generations of a family are represented here: Coral Queen is 87 years buoyant and still at work, all 188 feet of her getting home heating oil nearer to you. She’s the matriarch.

Kristin Poling, shown high and dry here, is 73. At 281 feet, she’s the most buoyant here, largest and most wayward. Yet she has no title like Regent or Grandmere.

Captain Log, a mere 32 years young and 59 feet long, wanders the harbor wondering when the growth spurt will happen, a mere pup in the oil products world. Maybe Cap Log was forced into the family business and really wanted a different specialty.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.