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I took the photo below in spring 2012 on the event of 343‘s arrival in the sixth boro. It shows (from far to near) FDNY’s John D. McKean, Kevin C. Kane, and Firefighter. None of these vessels is currently owned by FDNY. McKean has gone upriver to be converted into a museum, Kane has gone to Wisconsin to become a workboat, and so far as I know, our whole upriver alliance of traffic watchers–myself included– missed her passage to Troy and then the Erie Canal, even though I traveled on the Erie twice this past November. Did anyone catch photos of Kane and not post them, I wonder?
Firefighter has gone to Greenport on the North Fork to live on as a museum.
The next four photos were taken by Fireboat Firefighter Museum volunteers.
I saw Firefighter in Greenport on December 31, 2016, but as of today, she’s at Goodison’s Shipyard in Rhode Island,
where haul out and
hull inspection and repair and
repainting. This work was made possible by grants from the National Parks Service National Maritime Heritage program, as well as the NY State Office of Historic Preservation, and our supporters and benefactors who provided matching donations to allow us to access the grant funds. We’re still taking donations for shipyard work through our donation page on our website, and presently have a benefactor willing to provide a 100% match on any donations up to $50K received for additional yard work.
According to Mike Hibbard, VP and vessel historian at Fireboat Fire Fighter Museum, Firefighter will emerge from the shipyard “no longer be sporting the red coat of paint applied to the FDNY fleet in the 1960’s. We’re taking her back to her 1938 appearance – which means she’ll have a black hull, white topside house, black decks and a buff stack. All the monitors, bitts and nameboards will also be returned to their original polished brass appearance.”
Click here for photos I took of Firefighter in the KVK, when she still worked for FDNY. The next three photos come from the Goodison Shipyard FB page.
Many thanks to Mike Hibbard for contacting me about this story.
For one of many posts featuring another retired FDNY vessel, John J. Harvey, click here.
Just the facts: Firefighter entered service in 1938 designed by Gibbs and Cox (who also designed the SS United States and the LCS) . . . to last and last and last. And she has. Firefighter is not only the oldest active-duty FDNY vessel but also
she who can deliver the highest gpm (20,000) through her pumps. One of Firefighter‘s finest moments occured in 1973 . . . after the collision of Sea Witch and Esso Brussels. just north of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. See great text and fotos of that accident here. Salvaged portions of Sea Witch live on in Chemical Pioneer, still a regular in the sixth boro. See her (Witch Pioneer) stern in this tugster post from a year ago.
Dimensions: Built in Staten Island. 134′ x 32′ x 9′ with twin 16-cylinder 1500 hp engines. gCaptain wrote about it here. Watch a very informative 18-minute video here.
The Rolls-Royce of fireboats . . .
All fotos by Will Van Dorp in early March 2010.
If you’re still in the mood for video, you might check out this new site for cruiser USS Olympia (C-6), featuring new reels of the battleship parading up the Hudson with Dewey on board in 1899, post-Battle of Manila Bay and Spanish-American War. The second newsreel has the best video, 1899 technology. Olympia today is is ship in trouble.
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