Retro Sixth Boro 24 B

Some things like winter fishing in the harbor appear not to change in a decade, but

Houma will never again move Mary A. Whalen.  Houma, built at Jakobson in 1970, was scrapped in 2017.  PortSide NewYork currently has a berth for the tanker and many other activities in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook.

B. E. Lindholm, built in St.Paul MN in 1985,  is alive and well, currently dredging off Fire Island.

This Kristin Poling was still working 10 years ago, definitely a survivor from before WW2 and also definitely then in her home stretch.  Byearly 2012 she was scrapped.

In March 2010 I also had a chance to gallivant off to Baltimore, home of NS Savannah.  If my calculations are correct, she was in service for 10 years total, and now in mothballs for 48!! Truth be told, she was a prototype, a demo ship with limited cargo capacity but also passengers.  Her beautiful lines were designed by George S. Sharp.  Recently she was at the end of a towline,  a sight I’m sorry I missed.  A wealth of info and video as well as smart comments can be found on this demo vessel here in a publication called Atomic Insights.  Let me quote a small section to tease you into reading the article:  “By technical measures, the ship was a success. She performed well at sea, her safety record was impressive, her fuel economy was unsurpassed and her gleaming white paint was never smudged by exhaust smoke.”

Cajun stood by Chios Voyager near the Inner Harbor Domino Sugars plant.   Cajun still works along the east coast US.  Chios Voyager, built 1984, has been scrapped.

And a somber last photo . . . I caught El Faro in Baltimore 10 years ago.  Little did I expect then what we all know now.

All photos, WVD, in March 2010.

 

SS El Faro and Sibling

In A Perfect Storm,  Sebastian Junger writes “There are houses in Gloucester where grooves have been worn into the floorboards by women pacing past an upstairs window, looking out to sea.”  Today a lot of people are wearing out keyboards searching for news on El Faro.  Others are out in the still stormy aftermath of the hurricane, looking for contact.  Wishes and prayers and hopes swirl through the air as well.

this photo and the next four . . . taken in Baltimore in March 2010

 

 

 

 

The next four photos show El Morro, sister ship, arriving in San Juan in March 2013.  Note the splash in lower center left in the photo above;  that’s the pilot boat delivering the pilot on this stormy morning two years ago.

 

 

Here she arrives in the port of San Juan.

 

All photos were taken by Will Van Dorp, who prays for strength and safety for all who need it today.

Click here for info on vessel owner, TOTE Maritime, a Saltchuk company.

Other Watersheds 5

Other Watersheds 4 is here.  And the most recent appearance of Joan Turecamo on this blog had her parked along the KVK.  So where was this?

Many cities have a wide or not so much wide street by this name, but –say in New York–Broadway does not have work boats anchoring it, although maybe in a better parallel universe it would.  More on this pier at the end of this post.

Some New Yorkers might also recall John W. Brown, named for a labor organizer and serving as a floating Manhattan high school –focusing on a nautical trades curriculum, of course–from 1946 until 1982.  I’d love to hear from alumni of this school.  So have you figured out which “other watershed” this is?

Here’s another clue.  The watershed feeds into a harbor with large number of massive government ships, like USNS Comfort (T-AH-20 and launched in 1976), which returned from Haiti less than two weeks ago; as well as

some very wet ones like Gov. R. M. McLane, which once served as flagship of government efforts during the Chesapeake Bay Oyster Wars, when foreign vessels harvested  domestic oysters.

Now if you want to know what foreign and domestic mean here, you need to check this link.

One last clue, maybe more of a distractor:  Sea Star line’s El Faro was tied up there this weekend.

Bertha offers conviviality here.

OK, you guessed it long ago.  But which watershed is it?

Patapsco.

More Baltimore soon.  Many thanks to Capt. Allen Baker for his hospitality.  The link in that previous sentence related to the SS United States aka the Big U, currently one of many vessels in peril.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

So this pier . . . shown in foto 2 above . . . will very very soon no longer be a working pier.  Moran is moving out toward the river’s mouth.  Change.  Improvement?  Ha!

Again, I’d love to hear comments on this as well as recollections from alumni of John W. Brown, the high school.