Exotics 11

This is yet again a nautic scene in the Narrows, so I’ll bet you’re wondering why this title.

It doesn’t appear all that exotic either, compared with other posts of this title.   But I’m thinking someone might be reaching way back to an epic if pungent voyage in 1987 and figuring this out.

 

Hang in here with me.  Check out the name.  Break of Dawn came through the Narrows Saturday morning in the rain, quite a few hours beyond the break of dawn.   Recall Mobro Marine?

Remember the Mobro 4000, and the garbage barge hauling Long Island trash for two months, causing states’ conflicts and several near international incidents . . .?  It’s been memorialized in a kids’ book, if you want to help your kids or grandkids familiarize themselves with sixth boro (and beyond)  lore . . ..  I was living in NE Massachusetts in 1987, and I followed this story closely.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who got rained on while getting these photos, standing off to a water side while hundreds of runners pounded the esplanade between Owls Head and the VZ Bridge rest area.

 

Clues

Here’s a game:    I show part of a foto, and you might try to identify the vessel . . .

an answer of Marion C. Bouchard would have been correct.  Doubleclick enlarges most.

Let’s start here.  Although I didn’t take this foto, I did refer to it recently on this blog.  Note the logo.  Any guesses?

Unusual exhaust location . . .

“training wheels”

those can’t be superhigh steamer stacks, can they?

angular hull profile

tiny tires as fenders, or  …

Terrapin Island has a stack forward of the house.

Ellen McAllister, of course.

The unique Odin tailed by Ross Sea over by the Goethals Bridge.  Ross Sea seems to sprout a massive starboard stack here.  Anyone know whose stacks those really  are?

Lois Ann L. Moran

Huge tires, actually, on the gargantuan Atlantic Salvor.

And here’s the final one.  It’s Break of Dawn.  When I read that the tug that had the misfortunate to take the job of towing Mobro 4000, I assumed it was a local independent tug, not a fleet sibling of Dawn Services.    This blog has run fotos of Baltic Dawn and Atlantic Dawn.

For a fuller story of the motivations behind the “garbage job,” read this, starting from p. 243.

For the artistic story behind the children’s book, see this link for the series of decisions and sketches involved in creating the story.  As a disclaimer … I haven’t read the book and realize some controversy surrounds it, but check out the Amazon page video about the author’s process in creating the artwork.  To me, one important story here is an honest ambitious  crew doing a job that captures them, transforming them into pawns of a diverse, far-flung, and powerful interest groups.

The Break of Dawn fotos come thanks to Harold Tartell.  All others by Will Van Dorp.

Unrelated:  I just added a blogroll link to Lars Johnson’s site on Swedish tugs and other vessels.    Thanks much to  Björn Wallde for sending these along.  Check out his comment for fotos!

And talking about being pawns . . .  my account of my time as a hostage in Iraq exactly 20 years ago is reaching its climax on the Babylonian Captivity site.  If you’ve not been reading it, my detention lasted from August until December 1990;  to read the account in chronological order, see the note upper right on the homepage.