Pilot No. 1

Since noon it’s been raining, but the sunrise brought this sequence:  CSAV Romeral outbound for Baltimore and one of the most beautiful work vessels of the sixth boro inbound.  Also, that’s Vane’s Magothy in the distance.  And for outatowners, way in the distance is Coney Island, home of the mermaid parade on the summer solstice.

Pilot No. 1 New York first splashed into the waters in May 1972.

She’s 180 feet loa,  gorgeous, and “related” to a good dozen varied regulars in the sixth boro.

Here she passes between  European Spirit and Fort Wadsworth light.    Given that New York comes off a Great Lakes shipyard

in the tiny town of Marinette, Wisconsin . . .

she shares that Green Bay/Lake Michigan place of origin with

Vane’s Brandywine and three Staten Island Ferry vessels (Spirit of America, Marchi, Molinari).  See tugster posts features the following Marinette constructions.  Katherine Walker, Apache, Jennifer Miller, and Ellen McAllister.  Here’s Marinette’s current website.   Here’s Strong, another Marinette product I never expect to see, but clearly a forerunner of the Brandywine type tug.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who would love to see contemporary fotos of the vessels built in Wisconsin that made their way  into the navies of Vietnam, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Here’s my post-Sandy New York Pilot No. 1 foto.