From the Line Locker 36

Sometimes I’m conflicted about what to post, like today with too many competing stories, and we’ll start with news, and Cisne Branco, which translates as “white swan.”  The photo below shows Cisne Branco, a Brazilian Navy training vessel,  in the sixth boro in May 2012 for a sixth boro OpSail event.  Earlier this week, the 1998 vessel got swept downstream the Rio Guayas in Guayaquil, Ecuador and came to rest against a pedestrian bridge.  See it and hear about it here.

Here’s another shot of Cisne Branco in Gravesend Bay.

In other news, the 1967 83′ steel schooner Mystic Whaler, a regular in the sixth boro, has been sold to a party on the West Coast.  The Egintons have owned it since 1995. 

A few weeks ago now, the 1943 laker Mississagi was towed to the scrapyard in Sault Ste Marie.  I caught these two photos of her in summer 2016 in Lake Michigan below and

along the Saint Lawrence River below.  Other photos can be seen here.

While looking up my May 2012 photos of Cisne Branco, I saw this photo of Taurus in the North River.  She’s now Joker, featured here several times recently.  In May 2012, the K-Sea fleet had just been sold to Kirby, and in the photo below, the red K-Sea visor was painted blue, the K-Sea logo was removed from the stack, but the Kirby logo had not yet replaced it.  Also, in the background, it’s Harvey and Frying Pan at Pier 66.

This photo also from May 2012 shows Ellen McAllister coming alongside Dewarucci, an Indonesian training ship.  Between the two, it’s Scotty Sky, the small bunker tanker now sold somewhere in the Cabibbean.

Since there’s a lot of media attention on the congestion in SOME US ports, have a look at what’s off Savannah.  This was a screen grab from VesselFinder almost a week ago, and it’s not much different today.  A personal frustration is the outermost vessel shown, CMA CGM Marco Polo.  I missed getting a photo of her in the sixth boro on Saturday, October 9 because I was out of town;  in the wee hours of Monday, she departed for Norfolk and then Savannah.  She’s now been anchored, about 60 miles out from Savannah’s container terminals since the 15th.  Earlier this year she was setting a new record in US/Canada ports, and now she’s stuck in a jam.

And finally, two photos from April 2018 showing Mon Lei getting towed to a marina just north of the GW Bridge, where it stayed for some time.  Question:  Where is Mon Lei today . . .  asking for a friend.

This red/white junk was once quite the fixture in the sixth boro, and although I was never aboard, I’m told the interior was sumptuous!  Click here for posts I’ve done on the boat.  I talked with one of the owners once on the phone. 

That’s some news from my desk in Queens.  All photos, WVD.

I’d really like to know what became of Mon Lei.

 

Sixth Boro Fifth Dimension Mon Lei

Recall that “fifth dimension” is my code for the time travel series;  call it history if you wish.

In 1968–50 fast years ago!!–  Mon Lei, which transited the harbor last weekend, was more of a presence.  All photos here come from Steve Munoz, who writes:  “I saw your post and remembered seeing a Chinese junk at the South Seaport in June 1968, and I looked at my pics, which were originally slides. I was on the tug Dalzelleagle (1958 and now McAllister Brothers) with my uncle Bob Munoz, captain and pilot with McAllister. We had some time between jobs so we walked over to the Mon Lei and the people on the boat let us go aboard and inside to take a look. If I remember correctly, the boat was built in Hong Kong around 1895. The interior was beautifully hand-carved mahogany, but very musty smell. You will also see the USCG sail vessel Eagle at seaport pier. I did not know that Mon Lei was still around.”

Another reader of Monday’s post wrote:  ” I boat-sat her for one week in maybe the winter of 87-88. Was bitter cold and she was wintering at the late great Pier 15 [pictured above and below].  Normally she lived at the E 23rd St. marina, but some construction was going on there.  Alan York was traveling on business, so I looked after her. The interior was nothing short of a  fantasy world of Asian carving and ornamentation. One friend described it as a “floating fornicatorium.” Also a nice comfy oil burner for heat. I remember he was scouring the world for new bamboo of a certain kind for her sail battens. Quite the gentleman.”

If you didn’t look at this link previously, see it now for some interior shots.

I’m curious about the two vessels alongside the pier in the lower right.

Continuing here with photos from Steve, below is the future that never was . . . NS Savannah passing Ellis Island (onion domes) bound for sea.  It was June 1968, almost exactly a half century ago for all these photos.

Back when some tugboats had eagles atop their wheelhouses . . . this was Steve’s Uncle Bob at the helm.  A few years ago, I recall seeing one of McAllister’s boats with a plastic dinosaur atop the wheelhouse for a while.  I’ll have to look for the photo.

 

On a different note, here’s a photo by Elizabeth Wood taken in 2005 of Lettie G. Howard along the Brooklynside of the Upper Bay.  Lettie G., built in 1893  (125 years ago, making her as old or even older than Mon Lei, depending on which story you believe.   for all you readers downcast of me, Lettie G. departed the Hudson River around 0700 today, heading for Lake Erie via Gloucester and Nova Scotia.  She is on AIS.  Nelson, Joey, Mac, Jack, Marc, Brenda, Jake, Barry . . . you know who you are.   I hope to see Lettie G. on Lake Erie this summer;  I hope you do too.

 

Thanks to Steve and Elizabeth for use of these photos.

For a history of the Chinese “junk,” click here and here.

Spring Sixth Boro Sail 2018

“A butterfly among moths” flitted past lower Manhattan yesterday, northbound  on the North River, albeit a butterfly that hadn’t yet fully shed its cocoon.

“The boat has a colorful history, beginning as a small trading vessel along the South China coast. It reputedly once belonged to a Chinese warlord who had to sell it in haste to flee the country. Believe it or not, Robert Ripley purchased it in 1946 and owned it until he died…  It was sailed across the Pacific Ocean in 1939 and then to the East Coast the following year.”  All that was written here in 1985.   Mon Lei is not to be confused with a junk called Free China.

Maybe she flitted as a butterfly in my mind, but yesterday Mon Lei was being towed.   I should have gotten this photo without the excursion boat in the distance.

I had forgotten that the bow was squared off until I returned to my post from that year.

It’s truly unique, and I hope it doesn’t berth too far upstream because

I’d love to see it again, sans shrink-wrap and with junk-rig sails set on all three masts.  Here’s a long article from 2017 with black-and-white photos from the distant past, including one with the unique Robert Ripley playing mahjong, believe it or not.

Here’s another unique sailing vessel of the sixth boro, Lettie G. Howard.  And if you don’t see it in the next day and a half, you won’t see it in New York any time soon, as it heads west by sailing east:  Lake Erie bound by way of Nova Scotia and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence.  Maybe my friends along the way will get photos of her.  The Seaway and its locks might provide good opportunities for photos.

And to round out this post, here’s a Nautor Swan for sale, currently tied up in North Cove.  At a bit over $1.6 million, it could be yours, or mine, or someone else’s.

Like a RORO and a tanker that have appeared here before, Tugela is named for a South African river.

Quite the mast!

Finally, not the same black hulled sailboat, it entered the Upper Bay last week passing the Quarantine Station.  Anyone know if a facility by that name exists there  today?

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who should take walks around the land’s edge every weekend.

Here’s Mon Lei‘s homepage.  Somewhere  (?)  I recall seeing photos of her in the 1976 bicentennial harbor muster.  Also, not surprisingly, bowsprite dabbled with junk for a time.

Unrelated:  Here’s a voyaging sailboat from the Philippines.