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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.
Coastline Girls and many other names including Gage Paul Thornton and ST-497, the 1944-build now sleeps deep in Davy Jones locker, and was not an intentional reefing.
It’s been a while since I last saw Mcallister Sisters, shown here passing the Esopus Meadows light. If I’m not mistaken, she’s currently based in Baltimore.
Ten years ago, this boat had already been painted blue over orange, but she still carried the June K name board.
Socrates, classic lines and a classic name, has since gone off to Nigeria, riding over in mid-2012 on a heavy lift ship called Swan.
Urger on blocks in Lyons . . . one would have thought then that she’d run forever. These days she’s back on blocks at the eastern end of the Canal.
And February 2010 was the time of prime iceboating, and that’s Bonnie of frogma.
James Turecamo, with its wheelhouse down as I rarely saw it, works these days upriver as far north as Albany. Photo by Allen Baker.
Brandywine and Odin these days spend most of their time on Gulf of Mexico waters.
Gramma Lee T Moran straining here as she pulled the tanker off the dock. She now works in Baltimore.
In the foreground, East Coast departs the Kills; I can’t say I recall seeing her recently,but AIS says she’s currently northbound north of the GW. In the distance and approaching, June K, now Sarah Ann, and she regularly works in the sixth boro.
All photos, except Allen’s, WVD, from February 2010.
I have to share back story about getting that top photo. I was on foot on Richmond Terrace walking east toward Jersey Street when I saw the Coastline tug and Hughes barge. I didn’t recognize the profile and realized I could get the photo ONLY if I ran. At the same time, I noticed an NYPD car had pulled over another car, and you know, it’s never a good idea to run for no apparent reason when the police are nearby. But . . . you understand my dilemma: walk and miss the shot, or run and maybe attract the curiosity of the police officer. I ran, got the shot, and sure enough, the police called me over and wanted to know what I was doing. Since I knew I’d done nothing wrong except appear suspicious, I gave him my business card and launched full tilt into my “new yorkers are so lucky because they are witness to so much marine business traffic, and why didn’t he too have a camera and join me watching and taking photos of the variety of vessels . . . .” You can imagine the stare I got. My enthusiasm failed to move him. No handcuffs, no taser, not even a ticket, but an impassive gaze from a weary officer of the law possibly wondering if I’d escaped from an institution or a time warp. He wrote up a report and left me with this advice: don’t run when you see a police officer nearby. “Yessir,” I said, thinking . . . well sure, but I’d likely do it again if I again noticed something unusual transiting the waterway. Since then, though, I’ve not had any further encounters with the LEOs, at least not on the banks of the sixth boro.
i.e., the 19th month in a row that I’ve posted photos from exactly 120 months before. Well, although it’s not always this hazy, the Statue still looks the same, but
Responder no longer carries that boom or works in the sixth boro, and neither that bridge nor Coho looks the same.
Coral Sea Queen has been reconfigured into a trillion recombined molecules, and
June K is no longer orange.
That part of the skyline is the same–maybe–but Lil Rip has not been in this harbor in quite a while.
This Rosemary is no longer here nor painted this way, and
John Reinauer . . . I’d love to see her since she transited the Atlantic to work in the Gulf of Guinea.
Flinterborg released these Dutch sailing barges in the waterways of another continent . . . and Flinterborg has not returned that I know of.
Penn No. 4 is laid up, I think. Does no one use the term “mothballed” any more? I’ve never mothballed clothes, for what that’s worth.
Laura K Moran works in Savannah, with occasional TDY in other ports, I’ve noticed..
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who himself is no longer the same person he was in October 2009.
My rules for this series: all photos need to have come from the month in focus but exactly 10 years earlier. It’s a good way to notice change.
Take Capt. Log. I used to love seeing that boat, now long scrapped. I have photos of her as a heap of scrap pieces and have never posted them. I’m guessing the Chandra B crew are happy to have that new boat, but Capt. Log was such a unique sight.
Baltic Sea . . . I’d love to see a current photo of her from Nigeria. See more of her departed K-Sea fleet mates here. Sunny Express is now Minerva Lydia, and still working, I think.
Taurus has moved to the Delaware River and has some splotches of purple a la Hays.
Volunteer has been scrapped.
The orange June K is now the blue Sarah Ann . . . . I still miss that color….
Charles Oxman is no longer in service . . . I last saw her here in 2016.
APL Egypt used to be a regular here, and of course John B. Caddell . . .had only a few years left at this point before getting cut up. For a “what’s left . . .” of John B., click here and scroll.
I’m not saying everything is gone or has changed. Walker and Salvor still work here and –to the untrained eye–look exactly as they did a decade ago, even though these days from any distance, I can’t tell the distance between Atlantic Salvor and Atlantic Enterprise. And those crewing on these two vessels, I can’t tell if anyone working then on each boat still does. For Walker, it’s very likely it’s an entirely new crew.
I hope you enjoyed this glance back.
All photos in February 2009 by Will Van Dorp.
I’m rushing December, but I’m eager to get through winter and back to spring. All photos here date from December 2008.
Bowsprite took this from one of her cliff niches: June K (2003) here is moving the Floating Hospital (1974, Blount) up to the Rondout, where she remains. Is she really now called Industria at Sea.
The geography is unchanged, but McAllister Responder (1967) is no longer in the sixth boro, and Sea Venture (1972) is dead and likely scrapped . . . .
Maryland (1962) has become Liz Vinik, after operating with Maryland in the name for more than a handful of companies.
Choptank (2006) is back in the sixth boro and environs. My autocorrect always wants to call this tug Shoptalk. Puzzling. NYK Daedalus (2007) is still at work, just not here. TEN Andromeda is still on the oceans as well, still transporting crude.
Now called Charly and working the Gulf of Guinea, Janice Ann Reinauer (1967) used to be a personal icon in the sixth boro. Note that 1 World Trade does not appear in this photo, as it would today.
Closing this out . . . Margaret Moran (1979 and the 4th boat by that name) passes APL Jade (1995 and likely scrapped by now) in the KVK.
I’m hoping you’re enjoying this glances back a decade as much as I am.
With the exception of the first photo, all these by Will Van Dorp, who alone is responsible for research errors.
Unrelated: Win a trip on a Great Lakes freighter/laker here.
Since W. O. Decker may soon be seen albeit briefly in the sixth boro, let’s start with this photo from July 2008, as she chugs past the waterfall under the Brooklyn Bridge, thanks to an Icelandic-Danish artist named Olafur Eliasson.
Reinauer had some of the same names as now assigned to different boats here a decade ago but now no more on this side of the Atlantic, like Dean.
Some names have not (yet) been reassigned like John.
Now for some that are still here, though some have different paint and names: Juliet is now Big Jake. Matthew Tibbetts is still all the same, externally at least.
Stena Poseidon–a great name– is now Espada Desgagnes, and Donald C may still be laid up as Mediterranean Sea.
The long-lived, many-named Dorothy Elizabeth has been scrapped.
Rowan M. McAllister is still around, but the Jones Act tanker S/R Wilmington has succumbed to scrappers’ tools in Brownsville TX.
Falcon has left the sixth boro for Philly and Vane, and Grand Orion, as of today, is headed for Belgium.
And finally . . . June K here assisting with Bouchard B. No. 295 . . . she’s still around and hard at work as Sarah Ann.
All photos by Will Van Dorp in July 2008.
Oh . . I don’t mean the boat that more than
once caught my attention from miles away because of that glowing color back ten years ago.
Not that striking prime mover . . . that seemed always engaged.
No, I mean
her fine namesake who passed a week ago. My condolences to her family and close friends. Waterskiing the East River? I wish I had photographed that!
Here are some classic Tennyson words.
Click here for more pics of the orange June K and fleet mates.
What’s prompted the reappearance of the past here is that I’ve been sorting my archives.
So let’s start in April 2008, and this vessel will reappear tomorrow. I miss that orange in the harbor.
This is November 2009. Where is McAllister Brothers (built as Dalzelleagle) these days?
This is what Eagle Service (now Genesis Eagle) looked like in March 2010.
Here’s a closer up of the vintage Horizon ship. Is she still in lay up?
Ivory Coast, headed into the KVK here on a foggy morning, appeared almost to be floating on air above the water’s surface.
And here, a mysterious swimmer, Edith Thornton (now in Trinidad as Chassidy?), and a Hanjin ship.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who wonders who says things stay the same.
I did this once before here. This time I was deleting near duplicates to limit the size of my photo library to accommodate the many photos I brought back from the gallivants, and my mind quickly formed today’s post. Enjoy all these from August through October 2009 and marvel at how much the harbor changes. As I went through the archives, this is where I stopped, given the recent developments in Bella Bella BC.
For background on this tug, check here.
Notice also the Bayonne approach to the bridge.
IMO 8983117 was still orange back then.
King Philip, Thomas Dann, and Patriot Service . . .
…
Odin . . . now has a fixed profile.
And these two clean looking machines — Coral Queen and
John B. Caddell — were still with us.
This is a digression to March 2010, but since I’m in a temporally warped thought, let me add this photo of the long-gone Kristin Poling.
Back to 2009, Rosemary looked sweet here in fall scenes.
John Reinauer . . . I wonder what that tug looks like today over in Nigeria.
And Newtown Creek, now the deep Lady Luck of the Depths, sure looked good back then.
And while I’m at it, I’ve finally solved a puzzle that’s bugged me for a few years. Remember this post from three and a half years ago about a group of aging Dutch sailors who wanted to hold a reunion on their vessel but couldn’t find the boat, a former Royal Dutch Navy tug named Wamandai A870? Well, here’s the boat today! Well, maybe . . .
Another boat you can dive on is United Caribbean aka Golden Venture.
Photos and tangents by Will Van Dorp.
When over 5000 horses get pulling, generating 68 tons of bollard pull, smoke happens. That … and the tanker starts to move. And Gramma Lee T Moran (May 24, 2002) feels satisfied.
Marjorie B McAllister (1974) escorts Stena Concert into her venue . . . er . . . berth through
a congested KVK. Foreground here . . . East Coast ( 1982) approaching and Pocomoke (2008) distancing.
June K (2003) hauls out the crumpled and rusted scrap metal for new life,
John P. Brown Thomas Brown (1962) , East Coast, and Brandywine (2006) all facing west in Bayonne,
Baltic Sea (1973) (Was she originally painted blue as S/R Albany?) heads east,
and a fairly new Laurie Ann Reinauer (2009) comes in from sea.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated . . . I’m literally knocked out by the entries to the Patty Nolan bikini contest. Just kidding. Maybe the figurefigure will be dubbed ” P Lady Godiva Nolan” this year?
tugster: a waterblog 
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