Fruits of Preservation 2

Here was the first in this series.  Guess the date these photos were taken?

Consider all that coal smoke.

As it turns out Dockyard III doesn’t always blow so much smoke. Click on this link if you wish, but what I find remarkable there is that Dockyard III and its sisters were built in WW2 for Murmansk and hence have the chimney-encasing wheelhouse (for heat) and an ice-strengthened bpw.

Adelaar dates from 1925.

Paddle steamer De Majesteit dates from 1926.  I saw her on the river in Rotterdam in 2014, and included her in a comparison of old passenger vessels here.

Dockyard IX, part of that same order that never made it to Murmansk, was completed in 1942.  Dockyard IX has been on this blog once before here.

Many steam tugs crowd the river below, but nearest the camera,  that’s Heibok 4, a floating steam crane dating from 1916.

SS Furie, dates from 1916.  I wrote about her extensively here in 2016.

George Stephenson had me fooled;  it was built starting in 2007, ie., she might be called steampunk.  I saw her in May 2014.

Hercules is the real deal steam, launched in 1915.  I was aboard her in 2016, as seen here.

And the answer is late May 2018 at the Dordrecht Steam Festival.  The photos come via Jan van der Doe from the photographer Leo Schuitemaker.

Looking at these photos, I’m again struck by the number of historic vessels preserved and in operating condition in the Netherlands.  Some are scrapped there of course.  Has anyone ever heard of the Dutch reefing boats to create North Sea fish habitat?  These, and I have many others from Jan and Leo I’d love to post,  have benefitted from loving restoration. Let me know if you want more steam tugs.

Amicitia, which I wrote about in 2011, is back to life after 60 years (!!!) underwater as a result of being bombed, not reefed, back then.

Do the Dutch have different financial tools that produces this fruit?  Is it because of their different attitude toward maintaining machines and buildings?  Are there just different priorities throughout Dutch culture?

A google search leads to this article referring to “artificial reefs around the world,” but the headline is quite misleading.

 

Outa-Towners 2

Hercules . . . (keel was laid in 1915)  has never visited the sixth boro and never will, but some rough water

she appears able to handle.  You saw Hercules on this blog a few months back burning some coal to set a towing record here.  Read the narrative here in the July portion of the log here.

The body of water in question here is between Zierikzee (marked with the red balloon with capital A) and Veere . . . on the island off to the southwest.  Also notice Rotterdam, Antwerpen, and Brugge on the map.

Speaking of Brugge, notice what they call this Brugge-registered vessel working on the Rhine?

Top two fotos used with permission from Kees (pronounced “case”) and Ingrid van Trigt;  bottom foto thanks to Patty Nolan‘s own Capt. David Williams.

Finally, tugster made the front page of the Wall Street Journal, and . . . no ATF, FBI, IRS, EPIRB . . . no handcuffs, no raincoat covering my face, no sex or financial scandal, no announcement of  an imminent run for office.  Running FROM office to pick up a copy of the paper sounds like a much better idea.  Lots of thoughts there from Cornell‘s Capt Matt Perricone there too.  See “Old Salt” Rick’s post on the article AND the upcoming 19th annual Great North River Tug Race here;  watch the video and you’ll see some of Rick’s and my footage from a previous race.

Unrelated:  This weekend tugster has dispatched me on assignment/hazardous duty at the Pageant of Steam.

Dutch Treat 2

Hercules . .. built in 1915 in northeast Netherlands province of Groningen, served most of its career in Denmark as Fremad.  In 1978 she returned to the Netherlands and was was renamed as Hercules.  Back in November 2010, she set a record in Schiedam (see map at end of post)  towing 15 vessels,

a tow that measured about a half mile.

They traveled 2.6 miles in 35 minutes.

Here’s a shot somewhere in the middle of that tow of 15 vessels.

I’d love to have heard it.  All fotos compliments of Fred Trooster.