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I hope you all enjoy looking at these retro posts as much as I do putting them together. I’m seeing that 2010 was the year I started to gallivant extensively, so the division for July 2010 retrospective is part a is for local, and part b will be for away.
Count the boats in the photo below! Greenland Sea is prominent, but in the distance, find a Staten Island ferry, QM2, Susan (?) Miller, a dredge operation where I see Rae, and a Reinauer tug (Ruth?) beyond that! Greenland Sea is now on the hard in Houma LA, the SI ferries run regularly but with fewer passengers due to the covid catastophes, QM2 is in Southampton, the Miller boats are still busy, Rae is kept in reserve for special projects designed for a 46′ tug, navigation dredging is over for now, and the Reinauer tugs have proliferated and keep busy.
Navigation dredging has created deeper channels, and the Bayonne Bridge has been raised. Miss Gill is now in Jacksonville FL, and GL 55, the dumper scow, is wherever work may require her.
The formerly-yellow submarine is located at the entrance to Coney Island Creek, a place I’ve not been to in almost a decade.
I never did identify the wrecks at the mouth of said Creek, which seemed then to have an abundance of blue-clawed crabs.
Jane A. Bouchard languishes along with the rest of the fleet, and Cape Cod, with one of the intra-port SSS barges here, has moved to Philly, last I knew.
Barbara McAllister pushes B. No. 262 with an assist from Ron G. Barbara has not been in the sixth boro in quite a while, the 262 is laid up, and Ron G has been sold south.
Cape Race arrives here in Atlantic Basin, with a much-changed lower Manhattan skyline. The former fishing trawler/now expedition yacht is currently on the Elbe, south of Hamburg.
Margot still “keeps on pushing,” although I’ve not seen her down in the sixth boro of late.
And here, Patty Nolan passes a wreck–I’ve not yet identified it . . . maybe you have–inside Sommerville Basin in coastal Queens. Patty Nolan has been on the hard a few years.
And here’s a photo taken exactly a decade ago today . . . an unnamed houseboat being towed from Peekskill to Queens, not a view you see every day. It’s Patty Nolan towing with gatelines. Here and here she tows other houseboats.
All photos, WVD, who wishes everyone health and patience in this difficult time. Also, these “retro sixth boro” posts take us back only one decade. It’d be great to locate more photos of identifiable locations going back 50 or so years, the fifth dimension of time photos.
If you’re new on this blog, for the past 27 months I’ve been posting photos from exactly 10 years before. These then are photos I took in June 2010. What’s been interesting about this for me is that this shows how much harbor activities have changed in 10 years.
Tarpon, the 1974 tug that once worked for Morania and below carries the Penn Maritime livery, is now a Kirby boat. Tarpon, which may be “laid up” or inactive, pushes Potomac toward the Gate.
North River waits over by GMD shipyard with Sea Hawk, and now also a Kirby vessel. Sea Hawk is a slightly younger twin, at least in externals and some internals, of Lincoln Sea.
Irish Sea, third in a row, was K-Sea but now is also a Kirby boat.
Huron Service went from Candies to Hornbeck to now Genesis Energy, and works as Genesis Victory.
Ocean King is the oldest in this post . . . built in 1950. She’s in Boston, but I don’t know how active she is.
Petersburg dates from 1954, and currently serves as a live aboard. Here’s she’s Block Island bound, passing what is now Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Kristin Poling was built in 1934 and worked the Great Lakes and the Eastern Seaboard via the Erie Canal.
To digress, William Lafferty took this photo on 15 May 1966 at Thorold, Ontario, in the Welland Canal, same boat 44 years later.
And finally, she who travels jobs up and down the East Coast, the 1970 Miss Gill. She’s currently working in the Charleston area.
All photos, WVD, who never thought a decade ago while taking these photos that I’d revisit them while in the midst of a pandemic. June 2010 was a great month for photos, so I’ll do a retro a and b.
Happy 2020, so let’s go a decade back, and see a selection of photos from January 2010.
Ross Sea escorts Rebel eastbound past Atlantic Leo in the KVK.
Lucy Reinauer, bathed in morning light, approaches Howland Hook in the AK.
Miss Gill and Lucky D head for the smaller Bayonne Bridge and Goethals Bridge, off to the west.
Athena is way out of Block Island Sound, here doing winter work in the sixth boro. Little did I know back then that I’d soon be taking my first ride to Block Island aboard Athena.
North Sea is on the hard in Kingston NY.
My favorite winter harbor fishing vessel passes Robbins Reef, leaving
the rest of the fleet farther to the NE in the Upper Bay. Note how different the skyline of lower Manhattan was then.
Doris escorts a tanker into the KVK.
Davis Sea crushes her way into the Rondout with a load of heat.
It was, as all these “retro sixth boro posts,” only a decade ago, but so much has changed.
All photos in January 2010 by Will Van Dorp. Happy 2020.
Different day . . . different character . . . the Hudson can have thick patches of fog, which
allow Dorothy J to slip past structures on a mysterious shore.
Farther along, Miss Gill guards some incongruous piles of
coal that surely did not arrive through the Delaware and Hudson Canal, which I visited recently but didn’t dip my foot into.
Wendell Sea waits alongside a fuel barge, and
Christiana–not a frequent visitor in the sixth boro–does in her own way
up by the GW Bridge.
Helen Laraway stands by scows of different sized crushed stone.
And this gets us down to the sixth boro.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Katanni and
Sawyer I, these photos I took in September along the Saint Lawrence.
I took the next photos in October. Evans McKeil was built in Panama in 1936! The cement barge she’s paired with–Metis— was built as a ship in 1956 and converted to a barge in 1991.
Wilf Seymour was built in 1961 in Port Arthur TX. I’ve always only seen her paired with Alouette Spirit. Here she’s heading upbound into the Beauharnois Lock. The digital readout (-0.5) indicates she’s using the Cavotec automated mooring system instead of lines and line handlers.
Moving forward to Troy NY, I don’t think the name of this tug is D. A. Collins,
but I know these are Benjamin Elliot, Lucy H, and 8th Sea.
Miss Gill waited alongside some scows at the booming port of Coeymans.
And the big sibling Vane 5000 hp Chesapeake heads upriver with Doubleskin 509A.
And one more autumnal shot with yellows, browns, grays, and various shades of red, and a busy Doris Moran and Adelaide.
Will Van Dorp took all these photos.
If you think the sixth boro has a wide variety of tugboats, you’ll agree it’s also surrounded by a variety of land–boro–scapes.
l to r: Thomas J. Brown, 1962 and Joyce D. Brown, 2002
from obscure to iconic.
Eastern Dawn, 1978. Previously Delta Mule and Grand Eagle
Here’s the Brooklyn passenger terminal and
Evening Star, 2012
the anchorage in mid-Upper Bay,
Nanticoke, 2007
Brooklyn Navy Yard,
Bridgeport, 1982. Previously, Dragon Lady and others
Williamsburg,
Miss Gill, 1970. Previously Mister Mike, Samson, and other.
Bayonne,
Eric R. Thornton, 1960. Previously Roger Williams
east end of Wall Street,
Pelham, 1960. Previously Little Joe, Tucana, and other
entrance to the Kills showing the Bayonne Bridge and obvious modifications to the bases,
Eastern Dawn again
and finally the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges.
the Browns again
All photos this week by Will Van Dorp.
Lil Rip !! I’d seen this unique tug twice before; both times were in the Rondout on rainy, dark days. To see Lil Rip yesterday in the euphoric October light . . . it has been worth the long wait. Long waits usually make outcomes more satisfying, eh? Lil Rip, the Empire State Building and even the Chrysler Building! I am
satisfied. Now I understand why my friend Jeff Anzevino chased it through 30 miles of the upriver portion of the Hudson to get pictures a few days ago. Go, Jeff! I’d like to do a whole post on Lil Rip: the three-exhaust configuration itself qualifies as unusual. Help me with some specs/genealogy and I’ll put up more fotos. Here she’s following bulker Florence Lily, delivered by Oshima Shipbuilding in Spring 2009. Lil Rip brings dynamic color (October leaf-red & yellow) to the otherwise gray cityscape;
It’s Miss Gill (ex-Samson, Karl Foss, Mister Mike) 1970 last week and smaller sibling
Captain D (ex-Dick Bollinger) 1974 from last summer.
Christine McAllister (ex-William L. Conlon) 1975 of Great Lakes Dock and Dredge, and Kimberly Turecamo (ex-Rebecca P) 1980.
Penn No. 4 (ex-Morania No. 4) 1973.
Co (ex-Draco) 1951 and based in New Bedford! Some rainy day I can imagine the fun to be had figuring out “re-namings” for vessels using this subtraction method. Like Falcon could become Fa . . . or DEP North River could re-enter as No River . . . you get the idea.
Take my word for this one: the tug dividing the shimmery water from the wintry sky is Volunteer (1982).
McAllister Brothers has an interesting stack/top of wheelhouse line. I can’t help notice the drab yellow & red foliage on the far bank.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. Check out Jeff’s 2010 calendars, one of which is a fundraiser.
Bonus: two more Lil Rip closeups. Portside . . . with Goldman Sachs in background; safety buoy is Albany . . .?
and starboard. And to add here what I put in comment, if Lil Rip is little, I’m eager to see Rip or BIG RIP!
OK, so I’m a curious blogger who looks in on a world I don’t really inhabit, a set of professions I wish to know more about than I do, a realm where I might re-engage. If I’d made different decisions years ago, I could have been this crewman, almost lost among the steel members of bow and crane at the dock where President Polk will discharge and accept containers with goods worth millions. I’m guessing he’s a docking pilot, sixth boro crew as opposed to Polk crew. Might some of Polk crew be asleep as their vessel docks, here at Howland Hook?
I might have come to work the clamshell dredge this morning on this crew boat. Or I could have been boat crew bringing these dredgers to their job site. English is strange sometimes: crew boat just isn’t the same as boat crew. The tug there is Miss Gill. More Gill and dredge fotos soon. Is Gill a day crew only boat?
When Grimaldi Lines Repubblica di Amalfi came through the Narrows the other morning, I first saw a RORO container ship painted the same bright yellow as . . . a Ferrari or a Fiat. Well, maybe less glossy. But I didn’t think of the crew: how many, what life stories and dramas and talents, what nationalities. But as the vessel came closer, I noticed the bow
had five guys visible. They were taking in the sunrise as I was. (I’m trying to figure out how to upload fotos such that when you click on them, they enlarge, but I don’t have it yet.) The closest guy wearing a chartreuse life vest had a phone to his ear. Talking to whom and where, I wondered. I’d certainly call friends and special friends all over the city just to say I was back in the sixth boro, but could he even get off the ship?
About the same time into the harbor came this beautiful tanker, Orange Wave, carrying my favorite drink fresh from groves in Brazil. And the Orange Wave crew, what color uniforms do you suppose they wear?
But who is he? How many trips between Santos and Newark has he made?
Robbins Reef . . . I could be wrong, but I’m guessing what we see here is the entire crew, one man sitting at the wheel. Correct me if I’m wrong.
And the crewman of Falcon standing beside the railing near the stern of the barge, how many fellow crewmen are on the tug?
As Miriam Moran with white protective sheet over the rubber pudding trailed a cruise ship into port last weekend, a crewman looked upriver maybe at the stern of the cruise ship, resting on the warm H-bitt.
This is one of my favorites and I posted a different shot in the series a few days ago: one crewman of Gramma Lee T Moran working out on a rowing machine while hundreds of people on the cruise ship look on. Does he realize he appears to be such a spectacle. Of course, you say, those folks were looking at Manhattan, not the crewman, and I know that.
My point: crew is crew. They’re not passengers, family, friends, staff, associates, castmates, colleagues, teammates, partners . . . I could go on. Crew. They’re crew.
If I were crew, there’d be gains and losses. I’d know some of the answers to questions like those raised, but I wouldn’t see myself or my vessel in its entirety the way I can now. On the other hand, I’d see the world from it, see the insides. Gain some, lose some. Makes it hard.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp since July 1, 2009.
tugster: a waterblog 
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