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.

 

 

 

 

Retro Sixth Boro 40 A

Happy August 2021.  And “Wow!”  That is almost always my reaction when I jump back a decade into the archives.  This riveted tug  was 83 years old when I took this photo, and I looked at that deep rounded icebreaker hull and imagined it would go on working forever.  Now it’s 93 years old, and mortality is nipping at the heels of this Canal tug and all the Canal tugs.  It and they may not be around 10 years from now.  Of course, neither might I.  She was built by Buffalo Marine Shipbuilding in 1927-28, and originally equipped with a John W. Sullivan steam engine.  Her stack was hinged so that it could be lowered for bridges. She’s 77′ by 19.5′.  If I read the archives right, Governor Cleveland is three feet shorter;  I’d always assumed they were twins.

The 1958 Blount-built green tug in the foreground has changed hands several times in the past decade;  it may be Bay Star of Port Washington now, but I’ve not seen it in more than half a decade.

The 1998 container ship was last recorded as in Aliaga Turkey in 2017, which leads me to suppose this 3802 teu has been scrapped. 

I’ve seen these East River based float planes several times recently, but I’ve not been back to their “field” in the East River in a while.   It is pricey but no doubt memorable . . . fun to travel somewhere in one of these. Anyone report having done it?  I don’t know which company then flew the red planes.

NYK Constellation, a 2007 4900 teu vessel, is currently at anchor off Vancouver, but has been renamed Tell T (Erase some of the letters of “constellation”).  That “erasure renaming” suggests it’s bound for the scrappers.

Here’s Chandra B‘s predecessor, doing then what Chandra B does now.  It even has the same crew.

I’ve heard that Ace was being converted into something . . . . what it a floating cocktail dispenser?  Seriously . . . I have some such recollection due to a query I got a few years back.  Well . . . there are orange juice tankers, so why not a floating frozen margarita or daiquiri truck boat? Can anyone provide an update on this project?  What paint scheme/name would immediately scream out “slushy float”.

 

I’ve not seen Iron Wolf out in the harbor, although I might have seen it tied up over at Claremont.

Pegasus then had no upper wheelhouse, and here it was pushing the elusive Michael Cosgrove, a 1960 Blount vessel that Charon drives for some on a one-way trip to a Potter’s Field.  

The 2000 4500 hp Vernon C has recently gotten new life as Mackenzie Rose. 

And finally . . . 2011 saw this combo do quite the tour . . . the 1907 Pegasus with the 1914 Lehigh Valley 79 alongside.  If you’ve never visited the 79, make an effort to get to it and be prepared for a treat.  Pegasus met the scrapper this past spring.

All photos, first half of August 2011, WVD.

I hope you enjoy these monthly journeys to the past as much as I do.   And to satisfy my own curiosity, I looked up the first post in the Retro Sixth Boro series. . . .

Random Tugs 283

How’s this as an unusual perspective, East Coast coming through the Narrows and under the VZ Bridge, barely visible at top of photo,  with a sugar barge, not sure which one. I believe that’s a Sandy Hook antenna and West Bank Romer Shoal Light off starboard.

Kimberly Poling heads into the Kills past Robbins Reef Light.

James William has been moving garbage containers these days.

The intriguingly named Iron Wolf passes the Brooklyn Army Terminal.

Mary Alice moves Columbia New York.

A few hundred yards ahead of Iron Wolf is Sea Fox.

Andrea departs the Kills to pick up a fuel barge.

Mary H returns from a run with barge Patriot.

And finally, Fox3 heads southbound;  that’s the southern tip of Manhattan behind her.

All photos, WVD.

Winter Miscellany

Call this the March 1 version. Even cold fanatics feel starved for more sunlight, blossoming perfumes, bright colors, and shorts. Iron Wolf below has that lean, post-winter hungry look.

 

And Mostank needs some bright color, or does the 1950-launched tanker seem so forlorn because of the monochromatic background? By the way, that’s the west tower of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge beyond the ridgeline of Staten Island.

 

Imagine Jay Bee V with bright paint and a tanned crew.

 

Spring happens in March. For me, sooner is better.

This link on the history of tugboats as depicted on postage stamps cheered me up a little.

Photos, WVD.