CB 2019 F

As a reminder, CB here expands to Chicago-bound, our journey.

Dean Marine and Excavating are continuing work on the breakwaters in Oswego.

Madison R stands by as the barge is loaded with boulders brought in by train.

The ubiquitous Rebecca Ann waits along the wall in preparation to head for the Welland Canal.

 

 

 

As we follow Rebecca Ann, we pass Madison high and dry and waiting for deployment.

H. Lee White’s Eleanor D stands as a reminder of the commercial fishing that once happened here.

Over in Rochester, a party boat fishing vessel enters the Genesee River.

The fast ferry fiasco that ran two seasons or so 15 years ago has resulted in this Australia-built Lake Ontario boat now the object of derision in  . . . . ready for it . . .  Venezuela!!

During the first half of the 20th century, Rochester was a coal-export port using these two boats.

Today tug Seaway Patricia operates here to provide bulkhead reinforcement for the high-water-level-afflicted shorelines.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, and taken in Oswego and Rochester.

 

More Fishing Tugs 6

Happy fall equinox.  This seems as good a time as any to honor Poseidon with a photo parade of more fish tugs, to really challenge a segue. . .

as is grouping Lady Kate with fishing tugs.  It appears she was built as passenger vessel G. A. Buckling II back in 1952, and is wearing her fourth name now, but

she certainly has the lines of a fish tug despite possibly never having worked as such.  I’m sure someone will weigh in on this.

Doris M is a fish tug built in Erie in 1947, and given the flags,

she appears to still work.

Real Glory is a real deal:  a Lake Erie fishing boat that sells the catch right from the pier, according to this news article.

If I lived nearby, here’s where I’d get my fish dinner.

Environaut (1950) is a 48′ science platform for Gannon University.   

Big Bertha is a 1945 Stadium Boat Works fish tug, built as Gloria Mae.

I love how shore power plugs in here.

Thanks to this site, I can confirm that ASI Clipper, which I’ve wondered about before, began its life as a 1938 Port Colborne-built fish tug.  Here’s a photo from that earlier incarnation.

And finally, we end here, it’s Eleanor D, a 1946 Stadium Boat Works fish tug about to be eclipsed by Stephen B. Roman.  Here’s a closer-up photo of Eleanor D I took almost a decade ago.  Like me, Stephen B Roman has been roaming a lot.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who is honored to have been interviewed on WBAI’s Talk Back–New York, We and Thee show.  To hear the interview, click here and start listening at about the 1 hour 38 minute mark on the Sept 20 show.

And if you haven’t seen this yet on PBS, stream Erie: The Canal that Made America here.

And finally, click here for the “fishing tugs” tugster archive.

 

More Fishing Tugs 3

Harvey Hadland–a Brooklynite– and Bob Mackreath–a Long Islander–created the definitive site on fish tugs here . . . and Bob currently carries on Harvey’s legacy.  Next time I get up to Lake Superior, I must visit Bayfield and linger in the Apostle Islands, as the trip recorded here came with too many time constraints.

One part of the fish tug site discusses their evolution, here.  If you have Facebook, watch fish tugs break ice in pairs here.  Actually type “fish tugs” into YouTube, and you might get this.  Click here for my previous contributions to the topic.

I organize this starting from oldest and known, at least to me. Of course, many of you know more.  Here’s what Hadland/Mackreth say about Margaret below:  “Built by Peterson Boat Works in 1934, for Joe Schmidt, Algoma, Wis. The 45 ft. x 12 ft. wood hulled vessel was equipped with a Kahlenberg oil engine (size not known), installed at Algoma, and taken from another boat. Schmidt later sold her to Ed Zastrow, Algoma. Again sold to owners in Door County the boat was last operated out of Baileys Harbor, A severe storm in January 1975 resulted in heavy damage to the boat while at a dock at Baileys Harbor. Since that time the boat has been used as a centerpiece in several museum displays.”  Yup, Algoma WI is where I saw it,

along with what might have been a museum . . .

 

but when I walked around town, I found it again . . . on a mural.  To me, this says people in this town want this stories of this boat remembered.  It’s been years since I moseyed along the Michigan side, but Fishtown might be a place where remembrance of heritage fishing is even more elaborate.

Islander (1936) lives on as an on-terrafirma display in Sheboygan.  I was pressed for time when I arrived here, so I got no close-ups. For some Seger family accounts of Islander–even some poetry with the word Kahlenberg used–click here.

Oliver H. Smith, built right in Kewaunee WI,  where I saw it, dates from 1944 and appears to be still fishing.  I sought out Lake fish for meals on this trip and had great whitefish, walleye, and perch.

Nels J (1956?) is hoping to reopen in Duluth’s Canal Park, but as of late June, I couldn’t sample any of the wares . . .

Here’s a mystery boat.  It had just come in from a whitefish run and the crew was busy, and all they’d say was that it was a repurposed research boat.

It has some fish tug lines with a “convertible” afterdeck covering.  It matches up with none of the Great Lakes historical “science ships” here. Any help?

Here’s another Lake Superior commercial fishing vessel, but I can’t find Arlene A in the listings I know.  She has a look in common with the deadrise boats of the greater Chesapeake.

The fish tug nearest the sixth boro–I believe–is Eleanor D (1948), below, which worked out of Oswego from 1958 until 1978 and now on the hard at the H. Lee White Maritime Museum in Oswego.  Source of the photo below is this online Oswego history.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

If you’ve never tried lake fish, don’t hesitate.  Someone in Munising that thrills with under the water debris suggested I get my whitefish here, and I can vouch for the place and the fish.   That someone (and crew)  does a great job helping you see beneath the water.  If you want more in the clear waters, see Chris Doyal‘s work.

How to Swim TO a Helicopter

Actually the key is making it possible for the helicopter to find you.  In some cases, assisting the task of arriving at your location makes the difference between life and death;  things don’t always go so well.  On a windy unsettled afternoon last week I happened to be there when

an obsessively circling C-130 over Oswego’s lighthouse demanded attention.  I wish I’d stumbled onto this scene the day they trained search & rescue with a Reaper drone.   Here’s another link about that drill.

As it was, the helicopter here working with the USCG puzzled me, and

having no VHF or binoculars, I couldn’t tell whether the debris on the jetty was just drifted remains of a Lake Ontario shoreline tree, but

someone had certainly swum to proximity of  rescuer.

In the half hour that followed at least a half dozen “winchings up” and “down” before

it returned to USCG Station Oswego.   Click here for their flickr page.   Click here for info on the blue-yellow structure to the lower left, NYS Derrick Boat 8, the last steam-powered barge (with dredge capabilities at one time) on the Erie Canal . . . maybe even in New York .  DB8 is also known as Lance Knapp, named for a salvage diver.

A half year ago I watched a helicopter rescue drill  here.

All fotos taken within an hour by Will Van Dorp.  Here was my previous swimming post.

PS:  Enjoy the additional fotos below from the Port of Oswego, showing schooner OMF Ontario,  LT-5, and fishtug Eleanor D, and Oswego West Pierhead Light.

More Fishing Tugs

What started as a Michigan mystery has spawned a new obsession for me. Of course, I obsess readily. Finally, for example, I have context for the foto below I took in May 2007. Eleanor D was described as the last commercial fishing vessel on Lake Ontario. Nowhere was the term “tug” used, as you can see at this link packed with images and up on the website for the H. Lee White Marine Museum in Oswego, NY. Now I see where she fits.

Here’s a shot of the stern of the unnamed “tug” in Muskegon. As with car carriers, these vessels’ design follows function. Speaking of context, here’s an rich and comprehensive website dedicated to what are clearly referred to as “fish tugs.”

Elsie J plans to offer harbor cruises out of South Haven, MI. Check them out if you’re nearby.

OK, sometimes I’m lazy and just foto the label; this link has images of the Kahlenberg engine, a labor intensive power plant that gets oiled externally in about 50 places before starting.

Here’s another link on that engine.

Now I re-raise the question . . . why are they called “tugs”? Dan Meeter’s topmost comment makes sense on the way words change meaning over time. Take the word “scow”. When my brother-in-law mentioned he had a racing scow, I didn’t imagine what you see at this link. I visualized something much more like a gundalow featured here last year. So why “tug”?

Photos, WVD.