East River Traffic 2

Here was the first in this series.  Let’s go to a different location on the East River, and I know I’m late coming to this story, but it’s an exciting one.  Hunts Point is now receiving regular cement shipments, by ship via the East River.  Shipments originate at Port Daniel Gascons, QC.

Here under the 59th Street Bridge a cement ship heads for the terminal  . . ..

 

Above and below, the ship and tugs pass the soon-to-open new campus of Rockefeller University.

I took the next two photos at a McInnis facility just upstream from Montreal, along the Beauharnois Canal.

Here’s more on the company.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

As of this writing, another cement ship is at the terminal.

 

GHP&W 27

Know this water, more of a waterway than a harbor?  The distant buildings are a clue.  See the one just left of the center of bridge center, needle thin?

Here’s another clue . . . the structure near the right side of the photo, like an old time gas station pump?

Or this one left of the crane, looking like the business end of a blue crab whose pincers are down?

Or this wreck?  What WAS this boat?  I’ve asked a million people who all say they also asked a million people.  Anyone know?

And seriously, the first photo showed the Throgs Neck Bridge, the second the LaGuardia airport traffic tower, and the third . . . Arthur Ashe stadium.  The photo above with the mystery wreck in the Whitestone Bridge .  .. the second one in when you travel from Long Island Sound into . . . the East River

And that needle thin tower in 432 Park, said to be the tallest residential building in the hemisphere.  Click here for views from the tallest bathtub in that building.  And in the foreground of the photo below, truly a place of superlatives . . . . Rikers Island, i.e., one of the largest incarceration places in the world.  No gunk holing is tolerated anywhere near this place.

Rikers has literally overflowed its banks.  This is the off-Rikers portion of NYC Corrections, the Vernon C. Bain Center.   

Click here for a tugster photo of part of the Rikers fleet.  And here for Bain’s NYC floating prison predecessor.

By now, most of you know this is the East River and we’re traveling west.  Here the DEP sludge tanker Red Hook prepares to depart the Hunt’s Point wastewater treatment plant.   Click here for some tugster posts on treating waste and keeping sixth boro waters as clean as possible despite the teeming millions that live along the banks of these waters.   And if you’ve never read my Professional Mariner story on the latest generation of these tankers, you can do so here.

Between Rikers and Hunts Point, there are the North and South Brother Islands;  see my post from South Brother here from a long time ago.  The safer channel goes around the north of North Brother, but in daylight, most vessels can shoot between the two.

I’ve never set foot on North Brother, but I imagine it a terrestrial version of the “graveyard” on the Arthur Kill. 

 

A “night wharf” on Wards Island for the sludge tankers lies here just east of the Hell Gate and RFK bridges there.

This strait–between Roosevelt Island and the upper east side of Manhattan–in the tidal strait that’s known as the East River can see some fast currents. Somewhere off to the right is the vantage point Jonathan Steinman takes his East river pics from.

This is not a cargo pier.  These vessels are repairing the bulk heading.

 

Anyone know the identity of these two “houses” nestled up there in the eastisde of Manhattan cliffs?

 

These barges called the Water Club  . . . I’ve never been there.  Any personal reviews?

 

Newtown Creek awaits its fate here at a dock in Wallabout Bay right across

from the rock wharf where Alice Oldendorff has discharged millions of tons of crushed rock over the years.

After we duck under the Brooklyn Bridge, we near the end of the East River,

where South Street Seaport Museum has been fighting the noble fight to

preserve ships and the upland including the wharves.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

GUP 4

Here was GUP 3, and here was one GUP-related post since then, about the sale of a peer of the vessel below.  In case you don’t check the links and are wondering what GUP is, it’s my neologism for “gross universal product,” AKA sewage.  I’m doing this post now as a complement to my article in PM magazine.    North River is currently high and dry and getting some paint.  More on that later.

For now, let’s have a look at the fleet carrying the load . . . or loads.

The most recently arrival is Rockaway, in service now nearly a year.

Coming right up on a one-year anniversary of start of service is Port Richmond.  If you are wondering about the names, all three  new boats are named for sewage facilities serving NYC.  Here’s an article about the Port Richmond facility.

And the original of this class is Hunts Point, in service now about 15 months.

Now if you conclude that Rockaway, Port Richmond, and Hunts Point look alike . . . well, they’re virtually identical.

Not true for Red Hook, which has been in service now for over six years.

I compared bows of the current generation with that of Red Hook here about a year ago.

Here’s the most recent photo I’ve taken of North River.  How much service–even back–she has left in her I can’t tell you.

Meanwhile, all hats off to this fleet which keeps sixth boro waters smelling as sweet as they do to us and feeling as hospitable as they do to all the other critters that depend on this habitat.

GUP 3

Here were 1 and 2 of this series, and here was a much earlier post about NYC DEP’s essential service.

Below is North River and Hunts Point as seen from Rockaway.

Port Richmond heads into Hell’s Gate,

Red Hook in the distance and Port Richmond passing by,

and finally all three new boats with Red Hook in the distance.  Here are some photos of Red Hook as she appeared when first in service in early 2009.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

GUP 2

For photos of all the previous generations of sludge carriers–aka carriers of Gross Universal Product–click here for the first in this series.  Rockaway makes the second of NYCDEP’s latest vessels I’ve seen.  Look her over well.

She’s only slightly less loaded than  . . .

Hunt’s Point, which I saw about a half hour later.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

GUP

. . . my latest coined term . . . for which the acronym GUP lends itself is  . . . gross universal product, i.e. what’s transported in vessels like these.  And it really is “universal,” as evidenced by a Hong Kong vessel like this.   That it is gross . . . let me say that it goes without saying.

Newtown Creek and Red Hook belong to two generations of NYCDEP vessels traveling along the East River . . . past places like this in these photos from 2012.  Red Hook came to transport GUP in 2009, the latest sludge carrier until

this one —Hunts Point–came along this February . . . in a photo compliments of bowsprite

Newtown Creek was launched in 1968 . . . and still carries a lot of GUP.

North River . . . 1974. Imagine your garbage being picked up by a 1974 Oshkosh!

Owls Head, the previous class and shown here in 2009 mothballed, launched in 1952!  And I had to find some 1952 waste picker uppers.

In case you’re wondering what prompts this post and what is new in this post, given previous ones like this and this  . . .  well here it is, something I hunted for a long time and finally found yesterday when the air-conditioned New York Public Library felt fantastic!   Mayor La Guardia spent a grand total of $1,497,000–much of it WPA money–for three sludge carriers launched in January, February, and March 1938, Wards Island, Tallman Island, and Coney Island, resp.  Wards Island and Tallman Island became barges Susan Frank and Rebecca K and Coney Island was reefed in 1987, although I can’t find where.

Below are the specs.  Note that “sludge” is NOT raw GUP.  I’d love to hear stories bout and see pics of these Island class DEP boats.  How large were the crews and what was the work schedule?

Click on the photo below for info on what was at least part of waste disposal–built in Elizabethport 1897— prior to La Guardia’s sludge tankers.

Here from the NYC Municipal Archives is a dumping boat said to be hauled out at “East River Dry docks,”  which I’m not sure the location of.

Unrelated, here’s another vessel–Pvt. Joseph F. Merrell-– built at the same location along the KVK in early 1951 and disposed of not far away after transitioning from Staten Island Merrell-class ferry to NYC prison space.  Does anyone know the disposition of Don Sutherland’s photos of Merrell/Wildstein?