Headwaters 5

Seth Tane took this photo on the Columbia in 2000.  This was my sense of tugboats back then.  I had little sense of their age, power, crews, skills needed for operation, etc.  Take a guess on those features of this boat, and I’ll provide you some answers at the end of this post.  Note that this tug and barge are at a log dock, a trade unknown in the sixth boro or the NE US.

Here’s a shot I took in 2002 while hanging out on what I called back then the “waterfront” and saw this vessel.  Again, I had no idea of those same features as they pertained to this vessel, nor of the logic of this design.  Test yourself, and then some info can be found at the end.  

I took this photo in 2004.  My 15 years in coastal NE had given me an interest in schooners but I’d never sought an opportunity to crew on one, until my move to NYS, first on and then off the live-aboard.

Note the warehouses still standing where Brooklyn Bridge Park is now located.  Volunteer crewing on Pioneer and the other boats at South Street Seaport Museum kept me on the Upper Bay for long hours, and I  saw lots of new things, 

some things whose uniqueness I didn’t even fully appreciate.  Anyone know what’s become of that tugboat Rachel Marie?  I don’t.

Some things intrigued me, 

and other things like this derelict sugar mill and sunken lightship were soon to disappear.

I started to see interesting tugboats in unexpected places.

Little did I expect then the  changes that would happen.  Know the boat above and below?

All photos, WVD.  Answers below. 

Craig Foss, 1944, 116′ x 30′.  Here are more particulars, but as good as the boat appeared the top photo, she was purchased by unqualified parties, detained, and eventually scrapped.  You need to read the story here;  some crew were lucky to have survived. 

The second photo shows Coral Queen, a motor tanker that carried petroleum from 1920 (!!!) until 2011.  That is a long working life.  Here are the particulars from Birk’s data base.  From Auke Visser’s site, here are more particulars.  And finally, from my Barge Canal series last year, here are images of her generations of fleet mates;  her design relates to her work as a tanker in the “inter-connected waterways,” the Great Lakes and salt water connected by the Barge Canal.

The 1885 Pioneer still seasonally sails with professional and volunteer crews, and the 1893 Lettie G. Howard does the same on Lake Erie mostly.

I’ve no idea what became of Rachel Marie.

Meow Man traces are still around.  

The sugar mill area now has an Amazon facility, and the old shipyard is the Red Hook Ikea parking lot, and the sunken ship reefed,  the piers scrapped. 

Grouper, frozen in ice, is still waiting to be scrapped, but as of March 2, 2023 is still entirely intact.  The orange livery has disappeared from the sixth boro; that boat June K is now Donjon blue.

Ultimately, the more I found answers to questions I had, the more I was drawn in to learn more, a fact that keeps me looking and asking. I really never expected to be in the boros and fascinated by the sixth boro as long as I have been.  Recently, I had a conversation with a friend from another NYC life and she reported never to have heard of the sixth boro.  I guess that’s as shocking as hearing that someone’s not heard of the legendary Meow Man, the saltwater equivalent of Kilroy, or the US version of Maqroll, whose exploits need to be written down.  As of the date of these photos, tugster the blog had not yet been launched.

I’m not sure when I’ll post anything next, but it could be tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

Tugging

Actually that’s not what it’s called. Towing on the hawser is the phrase instead even if what’s on the hawser here is not the typical barge.

It’s Robert Smithson‘s Floating Island, a mobile piece of geography for a time in late summer 2005. Below is the island as seen under a full moon.

The nighttime tell-tale of a tug with a barge is the set of two lights one directly atop the other on the right side of the photo. Standing watch at night in the harbor involves looking for light combinations like this. It’s sort of like looking at consellations in the night sky.

When a tug has no load, it is said to be light, as is the case with the “retired” tug Gowanus Bay below.

Click here and scroll down to see more of Gowanus Bay, currently docked in Brooklyn Navy Yard after working from 1956 until 2002. It has a 600 hp Atlas direct reversing diesel. “Direct reversing” means that to “shift” from forward into reverse, the engine is shut down for a second or two and then restarted in the opposite direction.

If it’s September and you’re way up the Hudson in Waterford, the eastern end of the Erie aka Barge Canal and there are a few dozen light tugs around, you may see a pushing contest.

More tugs tomorrow.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.