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Welcome back from Summer Sea Term this year. An FDNY boat provided a water display welcome on the far side of Governors Island, but my vantage point, as suggested by a SUNY grad, was Brooklyn Heights. This was the view from the Esplanade and Pierrepont. To see my perspective on previous occasions, click on the tag above. From the Heights, the overcast and almost precipitating morning dimmed the many gantry cranes in the distant port.
When she was delivered in 1962 as a break bulk freighter SS Oregon, she would have been typical of freighters on the high seas. Since 1990, returning aboard from summer sea terms has been a rite of passage for thousands of SUNY grads. I hope I have my dates right; if not, I’m sure you’ll correct me.
Passing the ferry terminals at the tip of Manhattan must have looked quite different back 30 years ago; the sight from 100 years ago would have differed dramatically. . .
as would any FDNY or NYPD escort vessels.
Back then, in the foreground, there would be commercial activity and warehouses, not
parkland with
an ever-growing cover of urban forest
almost obscuring the training ship as it passes beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
Welcome back.
All photos, WVD, with thanks to Steve Munoz to try out this view.
Another training ship came through here just a week or so ago. Here are a few more from other maritime academies.
Here are the previous 61.
A novel idea is floating in the East River, or was.
My spin on it is this. Name three of your favorite “maritime” books, or works, to put into a maritime collection of books . . . Don’t overthink it . . . they can be obvious or obscure or a combination of both. They can be books for kids or adults.
And my three are:
The Lost Sea, Jan de Hartog.
We the Drowned, Carsten Jensen
Maqroll the Gaviero, Álvaro Mutis
Photos, WVD. Thx, Nate Austin.
How about a quick post today, all three photos taken in a two-minute span on March 25, 2011. The third photo here is set to enlarge when you double click; let’s see if FB allows a preview with that.
Congestion: I don’t know what barge Sea Raven is pushing, but the Allied boat and First Coast are headed for the Gate on the East River. Sea Raven became razor blades in 2018. First Coast began as Morania No. 18.
Into the photo rides Hercules! Hercules was just off the ways at Washburn & Doughty in Maine, and on its delivery trip to Texas, where I believe she works with G and H.
Then into the photo also crowds Penn No. 4. Penn No. 4 ended up with Curtin Maritime in Long Beach CA but is currently out of service.
All photos taken during a busy two minutes, WVD.
Tech astounds me . . . yesterday morning I got an email from a New Yorker in the UK telling about this event; tugs are already under way, he said.
I missed the first tug but arrived in time for Liz Vinik, shown here in classic NY context as well as state-of-the-art architecture.
Following Liz was Vinik No. 6., another classic, one I’d not seen in a while.
Both veteran tugs were on the move.
Five hours later, and after both my VHF and cell phone had died, leaving me to wait on sheer faith that this was going to happen, the tow appeared into my field of view, westbound at Hell Gate.
TS Empire State IV VI was headed for the yard in dead ship mode.
With Liz on the bow and No. 6 alongside, they made their way to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, to GMD, where she would make her way into the graving dock after dark yesterday.
Nicholas tended the stern. Previously she was Maria J.
Had she come around the bend by Hell Gate 15 minutes later, i would have missed this, since I had late afternoon chores waiting.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who is grateful to Steve Munoz for that early morning email from the UK.
Here was the first in this series. Let’s go to a different location on the East River, and I know I’m late coming to this story, but it’s an exciting one. Hunts Point is now receiving regular cement shipments, by ship via the East River. Shipments originate at Port Daniel Gascons, QC.
Here under the 59th Street Bridge a cement ship heads for the terminal . . ..
Above and below, the ship and tugs pass the soon-to-open new campus of Rockefeller University.
I took the next two photos at a McInnis facility just upstream from Montreal, along the Beauharnois Canal.
Here’s more on the company.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
As of this writing, another cement ship is at the terminal.
Traffic on the East River captivates, in part, because of the context, the vertical density shrinks even large vessels, or flotillas like this.
Weeks 531, I’m thinking, must be fairly new, not only because I’ve seen her only in 2018, but more so because she doesn’t show up on the Weeks crane pages. For a 500-ton lift capacity crane, she’s strangely absent online.
Unlike most crane barges that I’ve seen, she has a prominent superstructure.
When she was “west” bound the other day, Katherine was out front, tailed by
Susan and Michael (ex-Freddie K) Miller.
Back in January I caught the next two photos of Weeks 531 headed directly from the AK into Newark Bay. At first view, I assumed Weeks had a huge new tug.
That’s Bergen Point between the equipment and my lens.
All photos by Will Van Dorp. Can anyone fill in more info on the 531?
Previous posts featuring Weeks equipment can be found here with the Shuttle Enterprise and here with USAirways Flight 1549, in both cases involving Weeks 533, another 500-ton capacity crane.
I’m guessing Eric R Thornton is off in search of some scrap waiting in
the Bronx maybe?
It’s been a long while since I’ve seen Penn No. 6, and here she and Normandy are made up to Penn No. 121. See those four shore cranes against the sky? Here’s a post I did on them almost a decade ago.
Here’s B. No. 250 eastbound for the Sound, with
Evening Star in the notch.
Some people would be pleased with this juxtaposition: MTA’s Highbridge Yard, with Harbor II, MetroNorth, and the 44th Precinct Police Station!
Barbara Ann holds station at the University Heights Bridge, with the unmistakeable Hall of Fame for Great Americans dome over the treeline. That’s a place I’ve yet to visit, one of many places in the five boros.
Ditto . . . Ireland on the north side of that bridge.
And to conclude for another day . . . it’s Penn No. 91 with
Skipjack in the notch.
Oops! All photos by Will Van Dorp . . . from aboard Manhattan II.
I think today is a holiday. Somewhere. If it weren’t, it just should be.
Actually it’s Children’s Day in Turkey. And the Feast of St George at the Vatican and in England. Slay-a-Dragon Day somewhere. International Talk like Shakespeare Day . . . I could go on. Feadship’s Casual Water is headed upriver, if not uptown.
Others are going in all directions . . .
mostly southbound.
Grande Mariner was westbound on the East River to get southbound to the River City. Know that place?
Some are Sound bound, and
others like Ma Belle are headed La Belle Province.
I can’t keep track of Elizabeth.
Flowers are blooming and
it’s great out. Make time to enjoy the holiday. Oh . . . River City starts here.
All photos in the past few days by Will Van Dorp, who did the first “spring giddiness” here.
I’ve done other East River series, but it’s time to start a new one. The next 12 photos were taken yesterday over a total elapsed 11 minutes! I happened to be near South Street Seaport in hopes of catching santacon craziness there, as I did many years ago here.
Let’s start with Alice discharging aggregates, and barely recognizable, that’s Matilde the cement making vessel.
A longer shot reveals a clutch of kayakers, which I hadn’t seen while shooting.
Down by Red Hook, I see Frances approach with two barges of aggregate.
Dean Reinauer passes, pushing a deeply laden
RTC 106.
Those are the stacked lanes of the BQE with the Brooklyn Heights esplanade atop.
Buchanan 1 heads in the same direction as the other two units, but at a slightly greater speed than
Frances.
Again . . . all in 11 minutes.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
I have more Saint Lawrence posts, but with a chrononautical weekend behind us, let me digress and report. The mood for the first ship was set by the weather; see what the mist did to my favorite downtown building–70 Pine. Click here and be treated to a slideshow of views through time of boro Manhattan’s tall observation cliffs, past present and future.
Looking eastbound up the East River, I saw her waiting, as
first one of her entourage arrived and
and then another.
The term “haze gray” was certainly demonstrated yesterday,
as was the vintage of this Liberty ship headed to sea, for a cruise.
Even the Higgins T-boat in the distance is a whole decade closer to the present–in inception– than Brown, although yesterday all crowded into 2016.
It was a moving sight,
which I beheld,
only slightly regretting I was not aboard.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
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