Random Tugs 11

I’ve never noticed Tradewind Service in the Kills before, and

American Patriot, ex-Mister Robert (hailing port Honolulu but rounding Shooter’s here a month or so back) is a new one for me, as

 

is Houma, but then again stuff is always changing. New equipment and people arrive all the time. And

 

this fact highlights the need for updating records and archives and delving once more into storage boxes. I got a jolt of energy from stumbling onto these archives of postcards showing tugs, barges, and canal/river details. Thanks much to the folks at Virtual U. It occurs that a fun project might be to match these canal town postcards with Fred (Tug44)’s 2007 fotos of the same canal towns.

I discovered it while hunting info on Philip T. Feeney featured here last week. Click here for a black/white foto of Thomas A. Feeney. So anybody know what happened to the Thomas A. Feeney Corporation? Who last operated Philip T. before grounding it on Richmond Terrace?

Also, Philip T. was “dieselized” in the late 1940s. Has anyone ever heard of old marine steam engines recycled into vessels in other countries? Let me explain the question: in the mid-1970s I spend some years working in the Congo (Zaire), where steamers still operated on Congo River tributaries. I heard a story then of these steam engines having been shipped from the United States shipped to be refitted into steamers. At river town docks, wood piles always awaited.

Photos, WVD.

More Tugging 3

I’m recommending a book: Oil on the Brain. Lisa Margonelli, the author and someone ‘ve never met, has a piece in 5/13 online edition of the NYTimes, linked here and available only if you’re subscribed to the Times. Here’s a blogpost about Oil . . ..

 

Here Stapleton Service and barge named Energy 2201 transfers fuel in Newark. From Margonelli, a statistic: how much liability insurance is carried on a fuel barge?

 

Some fuel is transferred directly from tanker to barge for coastal or river transport. Stena Performance featured in this earlier post.

 

Here’s also a direct transfer from tanker Alpha Express to fuel barge. Here and here are some closeups of Alpha Express offloading in Boston.

The insurance statistic is about $1 billion. More from Margonelli: rank the following means of oil transport according to spillage from most to least (tug/barge, pipeline, truck) The most spillage . . . truck, and the least spillage . . . tug/barge. No spillage is acceptable, but hats off to the tugsters.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.