Other Peoples Photos 85

The first three come thanks to Steve Munoz . . .  HMS Bounty heading up the North River in May 1998.

Taken November 2001, it’s Adventure of the Seas heading upriver with an diverse escort.  Given the date, this would have been her maiden voyage into the sixth boro of NYC.  John D. McKean and what appears to be another fireboat beyond her, a USCG 140′ cutter, and lots of commercial tugboats see her in.  Adventure of the Seas is currently in Sint Maarten, along with at least four fleetmates.

From October 1986, David McAllister is on the starboard bow of Borenquin heading into Port Elizabeth.

From John Jedrlinic, it’s Laney Chouest in Tampa.  The blue/white vessel at Laney‘s bow is the Aiviq, the  AHTS built for ice.  You may recall its challenges back in 2012.

and C-Tractor 8 . . . taken in October 2016.

And from last week, Craig Lewis sent along these photos of McAllister Brothers awaiting its fate in Fall River.

Since launch in 1958, how many tons of grub and coffee have crews ingested in this galley of the Brothers . . !?

And finally, last but not least, Skip Mildrum noticed some interesting cargo in Port Elizabeth recently . . .

Might they be new Kawasaki subway cars, four of an order of 535 R211 cars coming to a subway stop near you one of these days?   They might not be, given his estimate of car length;   R211s are only 60′ loa.

Skip’s estimate of the trailers was at least 120′.  Also, the R211s are built in Nebraska . .  .

Many thanks to Steve, John, Craig, and Skip for these photos.

Retro Sixth Boro NYC Tugboat Races 5

Call this “thanks to Steve Munoz 20:  the 9th Annual North River Tugboat Race September 2, 2001.”   As Steve writes,  “The tug race on 9/2/2001 was  nine days before 9/11/2001. I was on board the tug Janet M McAllister for the race. My son was on board a Seabulk oil tanker docked in Bayonne and he could see the Twin Towers from his cabin porthole. As the tug headed up the Upper Bay I was going to take a picture of the Twin Towers and decided not to since I had so many already. Little did I, or anyone else, know that they would not exist nine days later. I wish I had taken a picture.

[Participating] include tugs McAllister Bros, Janet M McAllister, Empire State, J George Betz, Mary L McAllister, Irish Sea, Dory Barker, Powhatan, Dace Reinauer, Beaufort Sea, Resolute, Growler, Z-TWO, Janice Ann Reinauer, Katherine, Amy C McAllister, James Turecamo, Kathleen Turecamo, Emil P Johannsen;  also, includes fireboats John D McKean, John J Harvey.

I’ll not identify all the boats here.  As you know, some of these boats, like Dace Reinauer, look quite different now. Also, many boats here, like Janet D. McAllister and Powhatan,  are no longer in the sixth boro,

Z-Two is now Erin McAllister, and in Providence RI.

Emil P. Johannsen is laid up, I believe,

in Verplanck NY.

 

Beaufort Sea has been scrapped.

There were tugboats to port and

tugboats PLUS a fireboat to starboard.  Two things here:  I love the water thrusters deployed from Z-Two.  And Powhatan is now a commissioned Turkish naval vessel known as TCG Inebolu;  as such it was involved a month ago in the tow of a Bangladeshi corvette, BNS Bijoy, which had been damaged in the explosion in Beirut harbor.

 

 

 

Again, many thanks to Steve Munoz for taking us back to September 2, 2001 with these photos.

A different series of tugboat races happened decades earlier, as attested here.  An indicator of how different the world then was is the fact that back then, a rowing contest was included, and crews of ships in port took part.  Those days of break-bulk cargo had ships in port for much longer periods of time,  and “port” included places along the Hudson.

 

Second Lives 25

I took the photo below in spring 2012 on the event of 343‘s arrival in the sixth boro.  It shows (from far to near) FDNY’s John D. McKean, Kevin C. Kane, and Firefighter.  None of these vessels is currently owned by FDNY.  McKean has gone upriver to be converted into a museum, Kane has gone to Wisconsin to become a workboat, and  so far as I know, our whole upriver alliance of traffic watchers–myself included– missed her passage to Troy and then the Erie Canal, even though I traveled on the Erie twice this past November. Did anyone catch photos of Kane and not post them, I wonder?

Firefighter has gone to Greenport on the North Fork to live on as a museum.

The next four photos were taken by Fireboat Firefighter Museum volunteers.

I saw Firefighter in Greenport on December 31, 2016, but as of today, she’s at Goodison’s Shipyard in Rhode Island,

where haul out and

hull inspection and repair and

 repainting. This work was made possible by grants from the National Parks Service National Maritime Heritage program, as well as the NY State Office of Historic Preservation, and our supporters and benefactors who provided matching donations to allow us to access the grant funds. We’re still taking donations for shipyard work through our donation page on our website, and presently have a benefactor willing to provide a 100% match on any donations up to $50K received for additional yard work.

According to Mike Hibbard, VP and vessel historian at Fireboat Fire Fighter Museum, Firefighter will emerge from the shipyard “no longer be sporting the red coat of paint applied to the FDNY fleet in the 1960’s. We’re taking her back to her 1938 appearance – which means she’ll have a black hull, white topside house, black decks and a buff stack. All the monitors, bitts and nameboards will also be returned to their original polished brass appearance.”

Click here for photos I took of Firefighter in the KVK, when she still worked for FDNY.  The next three photos come from the Goodison Shipyard FB page.

 

 

Many thanks to Mike Hibbard for contacting me about this story.

For one of many posts featuring another retired FDNY vessel, John J. Harvey, click here.

Merrily Merry 2

OK . . . I’ll admit that I’m foolish enough to think every day is Christmas, every day in New Years,  . . . and I could go on.

So happy 18th day of Christmas 2013.   And my heart-felt thanks go out to Tim and Bill Hughes of Hughes Marine for these images.  Thanks also to John Skelson who helped reformat them for this blog.

Let’s go back to November 1997.  Tugboat Spuyten Duyvil delivered a barge carrying a Torsilieri truck carrying a Norway spruce bound for Rockefeller Center.

The tree was felled in Stony Point.  Click here for the article by James Barron detailing the tree transaction.

If that tree is 74 feet, that’s a long trailer.

You gotta love those red balls.  By the way, Hughes logo on the barge was painted out for this transit.

Here were some fotos taken in the Upper Bay.  I highly recommend getting the children’s book version of the story in part to see the artistic liberties taken in rendering both tug and truck.

Fireboat John D. McKean  does the honors.

Although I’m still working on locating more pics of this event, including Joyce Dopkeen’s shots of the offloading process, I am thrilled to share these with you here.

Again, many heartfelt thanks to Bill Hughes for sending these photos and to John Skelson for reformatting them.

I hope to have more belated “christmas” fotos soon.

Government Boats 25

The last post in this series–24–was quite obscure.    And this one . . . could be called ex-government boats.

The foto below comes thanks to Scott Craven, who caught the vessel upbound on the Hudson near the Bear Mountain Bridge.  At first I thought it was a re-purposed 65′ WYTL.  With a bit of research, however, I learned it’s the retired Massport Marine 1, Howard W. Fitzpatrick (scroll through to the 8th foto).  Note the traces of removed signage along her port side.  She’s now replaced by American United.   Again, scroll though, and you’ll see the folks on Windermere posted a foto of American United high and dry at the Canadian shipyard here.  Click here for more info on Massport.   Fitzpatrick launched in 1971 from a now inactive shipyard in southern Illinois, just north of St. Louis.   So does anyone know where Fitzpatrick is headed?  Great Lakes?  the Mississippi system?  Maybe a reader upriver can report?

On a rainy day back in mid-April, Gary Kane caught this display on the East River, just south of Roosevelt Island.

It was the John D. McKean, a retired FDNY fireboat.  McKean was Camden, NJ built about 60 years ago.  Anyone know what her future may be?

All this talk of retired fireboats and mention of Gary Kane give me an opportunity to suggest you buy the documentary produced by Gary Kane and myself called Graves of Arthur Kill.  One of the major voices/story tellers in that documentary is a retired FDNY engineer.

Thanks to Scott Craven and Gary Kane for use of these fotos.

Government Boats 12

When tugs race on Sunday, government boats will officiate.  Here are a few players.

When Liberty IV splashed into her element in 1989 at the Washburn & Doughty yard in East Boothbay, ME, she began a career that she still occupies:  to ferry Park Service employees and supplies from the “mainland” to several stops in the sixth boro archipelago, i.e.,  Liberty Island and Ellis Island.  Besides bearing a heritage relationship with such diverse vessels as Pati T. Moran, Shearwater, and Black Knight, she also carries a unique escutcheon on her stern.

Does anyone have fotos of Liberty I or II or III?  Would Liberty I be sail or steam?

John D. McKean, foto taken one sunset a few weeks back, started service in 1954, first splashing into the waters in Camden at John H. Mathis, the same yard that built Mary Whalen!

A Perth Amboy Fire boat zipped eastward in the KVK last month.  That’s K-Sea Baltic Sea in the background.

USACE Moritz, in  hurry toward Newark Bay last week. Moritz comes from Kvichak Industries, soon

disappeared round the bend at Bergen Point.

Other recent fotos of government boats include this ones entrusted to  Union County (New Jersey)  Police,

and New Jersey State Police.

Finally, certainly NOT a government boat, but a German ship that has vessels that experiment with alternative propulsion.  Foto was taken by bowsprite from her cliff last week.  Did anyone catch the name?

Finally, as of Wednesday morning writing, Flinterduin will approach the Narrows near dusk tonight and start offloading tomorrow at dawn.  And I have to be at work . . . from dusk today until dawn Friday . . .  maybe I can sneak away to do tugster’s bidding.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.

Government Boats 4

{First, an “ad” for the opera on Mary Whalen.} Great mood foto and  ticket info here.

Now . . . Defender to Cigarette . . . prey to predator; cheetah to zebra. And the outcome…

Cheetah! Busted! Hove to.

Erie Canal tug Seneca, a government boat, attends to various and sundry canal work, here accompanying a crane barge clearing tree encroachment on a boat landing.

Below is Marine 1’s John D. McKean. See this link for John D‘s welcome of the QM2 on her first arrival here. John D. may have only a few years of service left; scroll down to “changing tide” for 2009 replacement plans. More FDNY boats here.

The newly refurbished 110′ cutter Tybee based in Woods Hole cruised westbound this summer. Tybee is one of about 40 110′ sisters.

Getting us back to predator and prey, conversion of these 110′ cutters to 123′ faster ones has not gone smoothly.

For fantastic video of Coast Guard rescue of tran-Pacific rowe Roz Savage, see this link from Sea Fever, long on my blogroll.

All images by Will Van Dorp.

By the way, new to the blogroll at left… World Ship Society with lots of New York links.

Specialized 8

My 101st post crossed the 6000-reads mark yesterday. Thanks for all the reads. Now on to the next mark. For ceremony and celebration, let’s bring on the John J. Harvey. Harvey and her active duty siblings came out last June to celebrate Flag Day.

 

Some countries like Thailand have their water festivals; places like the sixth borough do too. I’m not sure how FDNY does this color below. Anyone know the secret?

But this one below is nothing short of miraculous. No one but the Harvey could do this. She even has her own book.

By the way, Harvey is retired, but check out this info on her superlative predecessor, the New Yorker. Scroll down to the second set of photos, an 1891 New York fireboat.
While researching fireboats in general, I discovered that the historic fireboat of Buffalo, New York, the Edward M. Cotter, was built… where else but in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Imagine that.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.