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Back in 2010, I did four posts about the weekend, which you can see here. What I did for today’s post was look through the archives and just pick the photos that for a variety of reasons jumped out at me. A perk is each of the four posts has some video I made. One of these photos is from 2006.
Again, I’m not listing all the names, but you may know many of these. In other cases, you can just read the name. If you plug that name into the search window, you can see what other posts featured that particular vessel.
Below, here the pack that locked through the federal lock together make their way en masse toward the wall in Waterford.
You’ll see a lot of repetition here.
The photo above and most below were taken earlier than the top photo; here, Chancellor and Decker head southbound for the lock to meet others of the procession beginning in Albany.
2020 is Decker‘s 90th year.
Nope, it’s not Cheyenne. Alas, Crow became razor blades half a decade back.
Technically, not a tugboat, but Hestia is special. We may not have a functioning steam powered tug in the US, but we do have steam launches like Hestia, with very logical names.
You correctly conclude that I was quite smitten by Decker at the roundup back 10 years ago.
All photos, WVD.
And Shenandoah was not from 2010. It was 2009.
A steam engine seems like the perfect antidote to dark dreary mid-October; last night leaving work I scrapped ICE off my back window. Besides their heat, I love how steamboats look, perform, and sound; the power they generate while panting makes anthropomorphizing easy. I could fall in love with that sound, a sound after all of love. Hestia, a liberty launch, on this mid-September morning was stunningly beautiful.
The wood-clad boiler protects a careless finger or hand from burn. The starboard-mounted wheel affords the steersman clear view of stand-on traffic.
Hestia‘s engine was built in Portsmouth (NH) Navy Yard in 1898; that’s on the Piscataqua. Its oil dripping system
photogenic as vials in a long-gone apothecary.
Tech specs: 18.5 hp. USN G2 type compound. Bores are 4″ and 8″; stroke is 6″ and it can dance while turning a 26″ four-bladed prop.
Starboard side of the boiler.
Tools and ancillaries on Hestia themselves please the eye, especially when juxtaposed with the equally-leasing aesthetics of its hull, built in Bass Harbor, Maine in 1972, design by Peter Culler.
Hestia . . . a thing of beauty. See her play in the Rondout here.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. Thanks to Gary Matthews for info.
Unrelated to stacks: as of this moment–8 am local time sixth boro–Flinterborg is off Sandy Hook inbound for Albany to load the Dutch barges for return. Through Narrows by 9 at this rate?
Stack logo on an independent boat like Shenandoah reminds me of nose art on WW2-era airplanes. I’m surprised nose art– way forward @ waterline — hasn’t emerged as a trend in tugboat painting, given the pivotal (yea . . . pun intended) role of noses in much tug work.
Stack art could proclaim regional pride like Buffalo does,
although the conflict between the Canal’s western terminus city and eastern gateway town needs to be resolved.
Stacks on steamers like Hestia–I’m still working on getting info together on her–eject some many particulates (count them) that anything painted here would soon be . . . coated.
Always iconoclastic Patty Nolan –“mystery tug” shown in the fifth foto down here–borrows an idea from trucks . . . with a stainless steel (?) stack.
Pleasure tugs, of which Trilogy is a paragon of style, might proclaim a family coat-of-arms, faux or genuine.
Mary H carries some sporty lines on her stack.
Empire sports the most squared off stacks I’ve ever seen.
The Chancellor demonstrates classic passenger liner–think SS United States–arrangement: longitudinal.
Last one for now . . . Samantha Miller . . . packs her stacks as widely spaced as possible to free maximal work and supply space astern.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Literally it means “equal night.” NOX has lots of associations. More Hestia soon, I promise.
Half-half symmetricality, or almost so;
dark and light . . . river and land . . . fog and clarity;
summer cedes the stage to fall.
Time to think of harvests, baskets, thanksgiving; Sam Plimsoll marked just how full these floating cornucopias should ever get. The viscous wine of our civilization can submerge the vessel carrying it.
Brightness and shadow envelope Elise Anne Conners, who has spent most of its almost 13 decades above the surface.
Night and light make
odd silhouettes of 958′ ships like Maersk Montana.
Happy hot equinox in the sixth boro.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Second in this series, this post attempts to captures quick details on Rondout this weekend,
venue for the latest Working on Water (WOW) festival. Rondout, a creek I’d love to spend much more time on, enters the Hudson about 80 miles north of the sixth boro, strictly delineated. The word may be a corruption of “redoubt,” no doubt a reference to the geography of the high part of town relative to the Creek.
Some vessels there this weekend included Governor Cleveland and Day Peckinpaugh, both having been featured on this blog previously. Much more Day Peckinpaugh soon.
Lehigh Valley Cornell and Barge 79, the peripatetic Waterfront Museum, have also appeared here before.
Bermudan ketch Belle Adventure reflects sunrise.
Bushey-tug The Chancellor was there. Check info and a lovely drawing of The Chancellor here. More The Chancellor later in this post.
Jessica duLong alternated between driving Gowanus Bay (ex-Linda) and talking about her new book My River Chronicles. Listen to a podcast of an 8 September interview with Jessica here.
Canine passenger kayaks inhabited the Creek.
Working tugboat Patty Nolan was there; hull was launched in Superior, WI in 1931, but I’ve been unable to determine if the bikinied figurehead figurefigure was original standard equipment.
For some sights and sound . . . mid-day and duck, watch this. Benjamin Elliott, who arrives at dusk, has appeared on this blog before. Video made from the venerable Pegasus.
All fotos and video by Will Van Dorp. More from WOW later.
Non-random . . . of course. And all taken in the past five days. For starters, this is a view from base of Pegasus‘ house as she cruises the Upper Bay for the North River, something she might have done 102 years ago. This view from this deck in 1907 would survey a radically different planet.
Brian Nicholas pulls two barges of shredded steel past Our Lady toward the bulk loading yard.
Here’s another shot of Robert Romano just up-creek from the Metropolitan Bridge in Queens, not that far from where I slept last night! Again, notice the camel moored alongside. Yes, Virginia, that’s a camel, not a dromedary.
Kimberly Turecamo pushes barge Long Island eastbound just past the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.
Canaler Governor Cleveland heads up a creek we’ll visit soon: the Rondout. Notice on the upper left side of foto what looks like a conical mound of greenery on footings? A lighthouse stood here until 1954.
Another shot of the Governor shows how low-slung that tug is . . . perfect to pass under some of the bridges along the Erie Canal, which is its routine habitat.
Shot here at more than half-mile away, Doris Moran pushes LaFarge barge (labarge farge?) Alexandra past the entrance to Roundout Creek in Kingston. To see Doris closer up and appreciate her size, click here.
To complement the Pegasus shot that opened this post, here’s a view from the house of Cornell as she cruises the Hudson southbound in the direction of Poughkeepsie. Notice . . . upriver there might not be a bowsprite but here is irrefutable evidence of a bittsprite . . . aka stembittsprite.
And a close-up of the bitt sans its sprite. Forward of Cornell here are: steamer Hestia, the yellow Spooky Boat, and rafted up, bankside Hackensack gone back to almost all gray next to Petersburg.
This post is getting quite long, but this Hestia appears on a list in Bowsprite’s tribute to Lilac‘s 76th birthday. By the way, click here to discover why the name Hestia suits a steamer.
Parting shot . . . Cornell moored along the waterway that once was synonymous with coal payloads and the construction of steam tugboats.
Working on Water has big doings planned on the Creek for the middle of September.
Read Jeremiah’s report on Waterpod here.
All photos, WVD.
Still fotos are mute; they communicate no noise. Too bad . . . because River Day 5 hurt the ears, like thunder over the Hudson. Take the dory Willi Bohlmann. I’m still wondering who Willi here is. Hear the blast, feel the concussion?
Imagine it: I didn’t expect to find this . . . blunderbuss on board.
Or Owl, also depicted here yesterday, has 16 guns that
look realistic, given the red tampions resting on the ports.
The small steamers carried several noise makers
loud enough to alarm, or startle.
Like this white steamer with conflicting image: prissy canvas and
a thunderous cannon.
The orlop deck of Half Moon has armament expeditiously unleashed
when needed and carrying the company logo branded into it, maybe so you remember who you’re fighting for. Robert Juet‘s log, inspiration for the blog henrysobsession, refers to some of their guns as murderers.
I’m sure this vessel has its own set of noise makers.
And then there are these on John J. Harvey, which I understand as “water cannon,” but are actually called “monitors” trained skyward at quite the ardent angle.
This is what Harvey looks like when it’s high time you move. In its prime, its five engines could speed the 130′ focus to an emergency at 22 knots! 1931 was her launch date, coming off the ways from Todd Shipyard; recall that if you ever shop at the Ikea in that general vicinity today.
Back when I kayaked, I fancied myself as the antithesis of noise, the better to approach birds and fish . . . . I can’t resist here–given the noise of Day 5, I imagined calling out to this paddler: “you’re too stealthy. Get thee to a gunnery.” OK, throw tomatoes…
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated: Time is nearly up to get tickets to the PortSide fundraiser while they last here and bid on line for the fabulous auction items (like a catered dinner at a private waterfront location with Bowsprite and me) on eBay.
tugster: a waterblog 
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