You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Morris Canal’ tag.
Up, up,
and in. All new builds follow the same arc, even though the details differ. Check out the splash of Onrust here over a half decade back. Here’s how the water came up to meet Pegasus back five years ago.
To finish the dory, there’s a trip
through the Kills and
across Raritan Bay to get to Cheesequake Creek. Pam writes, “Carl Baronowshi, owner of the yard was helpful in determining the rig. Traditionally it would have been a push the boom up alongside the mast and unstep the whole business and lay it in the boat. I wasn’t strong enough to list the mast out of the step without raising havoc if it got out of the step, John help me figure out a gooseneck and track arrangement so we could lower the sail in a less cumbersome manner.”
Ibis is launched,
boarded, and
eager to what she was built for.
More photos follow.
The last photo of yesterday’s post here showed a dory in the beginning stages of construction. Its placement there conforms to Chekhov’s gun principle. So here’s what follows. Maybe I should call this post . . .” in the shadow of an old building and protected by the body of a Chinese laundry truck, Ibis hatches, fledges, and more . . .” but that would be rather long. So just enjoy.
Garboards in place,
planks fastened and plugs driven . . . About the clamps, Pam says “they are simple and brilliant. They have really long jaws to be able to reach across a plank to clamp the new plank to the one already in place. Wedges get tapped into the other end to tighten the grip.”
Sheer strake in place, and now
it’s time to roll her over.
“Dories are usually built on their frames which act as the mold stations – I would do it that way if I built another dory. We used the mold stations and steam bent frames to go into the boat. Steam bending is an experience, although hair-raising… handling a hot piece of wood, and maneuvering clamps quickly before wood cools… It is hugely satisfying though.”
Ibis has a beautiful bow, soon to be cutting through sixth boro waters
Again, many thanks to Pamela Hepburn for use of her photos and in some cases, her commentary.
Here is the index of posts from two years ago showing an older Jersey City and environs.
All of the following photos/collages come compliments of Pam Hepburn, master of the 1907 tug Pegasus aka “Peg” and the godmother of the Pegasus Preservation Project. Many posts devoted to Peg can be found here.
In the collage below taken from atop a crane, you are looking east from a midpoint in the Morris Canal. The Twin Towers serve as a reference, as does the Statue of Liberty to the right horizon. Pam has included text, which I will not duplicate. She mentions the white vessel Chauncey M. Depew, which you can see here. Also mentioned is the M/T Mary Gellatly; here is another–I believe–Gellatly tanker. Today marinas fill the canal, the north side is largely built up, and the south side is Liberty Landing State Park.
This photo was taken from the same crane but looking west.
Taken on the north side of the canal and near the border with Hoboken, here was new life springing forth. More photos of this new life soon.
Many thanks to Pamela Hepburn for use of these photos.
And thanks to all who commented on the captions yesterday. This morning when I opened wordpress to prepare this post, the captioning option was nowhere to be seen. Oh, the mystery of software!!
Foto #1. Seth Tane took this from the WTC in the early 1980s. From L to R, that’s the Statue, Ellis Island, and Communipaw Terminal of CRRNJ . . . with a lot of vacant space behind. NOT shown but just to the right would be the Morris Canal and the Colgate Clock.
Foto #2. I took this grainy foto from the WTC in late December 2000. NOT shown but just to the left is the CRRNJ terminal. Notice the Morris Canal and the first set of high rise condos of Jersey City. Anyone know the name? Also notice that Goldman Sachs is not there yet.
Foto #3. Beyond QE2 leaving the sixth boro for the last time in October 2007, you see the CRRNJ terminal, Morris Canal, Colgate clock, and the Goldman Sachs with additional buildings to the right. Foto taken by amica.
Foto #4. I took this foto in September 2009 from North Cove.
Fotos #5 and 6. Amica took these in 2010 and 2011.
Foto #7. I took tis one last week from just north of North Cove, 18 floors up.
Click here for some great views of Jersey City, mostly Morris Canal area, mostly in the early 80s. Here for aerial shots emphasizing rail.
Click here for lots more . . . dating way back.
To reiterate what I said in part 9 of this series, the margins of the sixth boro have experienced a sea change from 30 years ago to now. And stormy Sandy of seven months ago intimates that all this relatively rapid building on reclaimed land at sea level will again change. But the difference is that since humans have walked and waded and floated here, we’ve never had construction of this scale.
Foto #8. Shifting focus a bit, Seth took this shot of–I believe–South or North Cove from the same vantage at the same time as foto #1.
Click here for images of the same, but from the mid 70s. And still more here looking across what was then the plains of Battery Park City. And the last one for now crediting Nelson Rockefeller for the concept.
As I did before, I’m inviting a sharing of more fotos showing the tremendous changes on the edge of the sixth boro.
Afterthought . . . if you want to witness further changes to the sixth boro margins, be in a viewing location that’ll show this building between 0700 and 0800 tomorrow morning. The structure below might just implode . . .
Here are some more fotos by Seth Tane in the late 1970s /early 1980s.
Foto#1. Princess Bay just south of the Old Bay Draw, placing her about a mile of her place of construction. Anyone know what happened to her, last known as Mabel L? She was launched from Elizabethport the same year as Coral Queen.
Foto #2. Jet Trader heads for the Arthur Kill. Today Jet Trader has a new life as . . .
reef, among sunken NYC subway cars and army tanks off Atlantic City. Here’s a foto of her last voyage on the hip of Taurus. Click here to see fotos of motor tankers, subway cars, and army tanks being reefed. Have you or someone you know had the experience of diving on these reefs and care to share the experience?
Fotos 3 and 4. Mystic Sun waited in the Morris Canal for its last voyage to the scrappers in Kearney. Click here for fotos of some of the Sun fleet including Mystic Sun in better days. Can anyone identify the tugboats here?
Here’s the bow of Mystic Sun. Here’s a detailed history of Sunmarine. Mystic Sun started life in 1944, launched from East Coast Shipyards in Bayonne as AOG 38 and was scrapped in 1981, dating this foto. Here are other AOGs in dazzle paint.
Last foto, #5. Mary Gellatly, the tanker incarnation. Click here and scroll for a recent foto of the current Mary Gellatly in the sixth boro. Who was the long-revered namesake? And anyone know the details of the launch and demise of this tanker?
Many thanks to Seth Tane for these fabulous fotos of sixth boro history.
Back three decades again with more fotos by Seth Tane, in this case with some vessels now considered dead.
Foto #1. QM2 assisted at the dock by Diana L. Moran, a 1956 Jakobson boat now seven years scrapped.
Foto #2. Rio la Plata. Here’s what Harold Tartell has to say about her: ” In 1984, RIO LA PLATA was built [by Sanchez Marine Services of Fall River, MA]. At the time Turecamo was quite busy, short on boats, and chartered the boat with the option to buy. Turecamo also had another tug on charter from Tidewater Marine Services around the same time period. She was EL ZORRO GRANDE. She was to be renamed HELEN J. TURECAMO, but I never saw a photo of her officially with that name affixed. She was sold to Dunlap Towing Co., LaConner, Wa., & renamed MANFRED NYSTROM. In 1987, RIO LA PLATA went West to become Oscar Niemeth Towing’s SILVER EAGLE. She is still in service.”
Foto #3. Harold says “The McAllister tug assisting LASH Atlantico with barges is MARGARET M. McALLISTER.”
Foto #4. “The red canaller towing the two light oil barges is Morania Oil Tanker Corporation’s MORANIA NO. 8.”
Foto #5. “JULIAN A was built 1943 By George Lawley & Soms, Neponset Ma., as DPC-28, WSA-22, WOTOCO, GAY MORAN (1967). In 1972, she became JULIAN A. owned by Julian A. Corp. In the early 1980’s she was owned by River Towing Corp. name unchanged. She was later sold to Raymond Connelly Shamrock Marine Corp. & renamed INTREPID. By 2001 her existence was in doubt,” Harold.
Here’s the class of Army DPCs. In this foto, Julian A was towing salvaged scalloper Fatima from Massachusetts waters to the sixth boro, where her engine parts would be used in a restoration project. Not long after this foto was taken, the tug was searched by the federal agents who found $32 million of marijuana.
Foto #6. About the yard vessel sporting the flag and striped stack, Harold says, ” JOE WEBER McAllister’s little yard tug at Tug & Barge Drydocks, Jersey City. They built her in 1975. She was later sold to Miller Launch, & is now MILLER GIRLS.”
Click here and jump ahead to 1983 in this fascinating compilation of Jersey City history from 4.6 billion years ago to the present for a reference to the now-gone McAllister Tug & Barge Drydocks. Click here for a tugster foto of Miller Girls.
Foto #7. Harold says, “I’m having a little difficulty indentifying. Under the handrails on the lower small white panel near the pilothouse door, it appears to read N.J. MATHER. I will continue to work on it.” Any ideas? She seems narrow boat; someone with long arms in the wheelhouse could have a hand out each each at the same time.
Foto #8. On the Morris Canal . . . here’s a foto I wish I could truly travel back in time to see. Part of the house seems to be a huge rectangular tank. Up high the sign says “nite blues limited.” Anyone know the story? The Morris Canal today has changed. Anyone have water-focused fotos of the Canal you are willing to share on tugster? Type morris canal into the search window and you’ll find lots more fotos.
I’m eager for your interpretation of these fotos of a lost sixth boro, captured on fotos of Seth Tane.
Graves of Arthur Kill has archival footage of a boneyard on the Arthur Kill from about the same era. I’d love to see more fotos of what was new and what was derelict in the sixth boro from then and before.
Le vie navigabili . . . is what you could call “sesto borgo” or “the sixth boro.” And it’s navigated by creatures small as these canadagoslings,
greater,
numerous . . . unwanted or
scruffy but perennially utilitarian.
Say hello to 3/4 of the painting crew on Pegasus last Saturday. Vote daily for Pegasus here–so that she might benefit from a huge grant of $250,000–and
starting from THIS weekend, come and visit Pegasus on board at Pier 25 in the boro called Manhattan. The schedule now calls for Pegasus to leave this “canale” within the sixth boro tomorrow . . . Thursday, pick up Lehigh Valley 79, and move back over to Pier 25. In reference to the canales di venezia, Pegasus would look good exploring there . . . By the way, here’s a log of Pegasus’ last visit to the drydock for work.
Here you’re looking east at Manhattan and its tallest building from the Morris Canal in New Jersey. Il canale di morris è una delle vie navigabili del sesto boro.
See you some hours this weekend on Pegasus at Pier 25. And please . . . vote daily, no mater which continent you are on.
Parting shot . . a foto of Pegasus leaving the tour dock in Yonkers 11 months ago.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
By the way, the tugboat shown most completely in the 4th foto is the 1943 46.5′ Linda G. I don’t know where she was built. Pegasus is 96′ and 1907-built in Baltimore. The goslings, hatch of 2012, were about 4″ long.
For info on where the canal is, see this post from last year. The distant red tug you see in that link is the 1907 Pegasus recently in drydock but now getting springtime service. I visited this area of Jersey City and posted fotos a year ago here.
So yesterday seemed ripe for a revisit–as well as an ideal time to help with the springtime chores on Pegasus. Here, from near to far are Little G, Sandy G, Katherine G (featured here), Pegasus, and a bit of Patriotic.
In the same order, this shows a closer view of Little G, and
as seen from Pegasus, this view of Patriotic as
well as this one.
Shooting back toward the east, a classic 43-footer, Linda G, and
Annie G II (whom I’d imagine as Littlest G) . That’s the lower Manhattan skyline in the background, exactly the location from which I shot the first foto in the first link of this post.
Here’s Cape Race, featured here, still on the south side of the Canal.
Some details on these:
Sandy G (1962), Katherine G (1981), Patriotic (1937, a Bushey formerly known as Rainbow), Linda G (1943), and Annie G II (2000). Cape Race is Quebec-built, 1963.
All fotos, Will Van Dorp.
For “outatowners,” the Morris Canal was an energy artery in the age of coal. A remnant of its eastern end is the inlet just south of the Colgate Clock in Jersey City (cropped out to the right below) and right across the North River aka Hudson from Battery Park City. I’ve posted fotos from the Canal and an ill-fated raft project called Abora here quite some time ago. I say ill-fated because the expedition didn”t succeed in crossing although all were rescued.
The Canal today serves as a marina but with some unusual winter inhabitants, like migratory birds. Cape Race, featured here once before, has some of the lines of the activist vessel formerly known as Westra.
I know I read something about this vessel somewhere recently, but my filing system prevents me from locating that paper now. Anyone know more info?
Who is Cape Race? If it had a voice, what stories of hard work and variable waters might it tell? With some flaking paint, the name actually reads as “CAFE PACE,” a soothing thought to file away for stress days.
And Wallaby, also in the Canal.
If I penned folk songs, this vessel looking misplaced here from downeast Maine or the Canadian Maritimes might inspire rollicking verses about emerging from fog into a metropolis perched on cliffs. And I’d travel the dirt roads and byways singing for peanuts in legion halls, bars, canal fests, and church basements. For now, fellow-gallivanters and I adventure whenever possible across ill-defined boundaries to haunt the waterfront for blog fotos and sometimes just to ask questions like Why Wallaby? Why here?
Bossanova, maybe ex-Shady Lady, might be classified as a pleasure workboat. Aka “pleasure at work boat” or something?
Where has this vessel danced, rocked, roamed?
For now, no answers, but hope you enjoyed the fotos.
Tomorrow, if the sun rises, I’ll post about tugs in the Morris.
Cape Race was at Liberty Landing in Jersey City last Saturday and maybe still is. It’s a side trawler like the vessel Cape Sable I saw years ago in Lunenburg at the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic. Cape Sable–click here–was Dutch built; here’s background for the type, but I’m still curious about Cape Race. Might it be this one in the ad? Great name. Filling up the diesel tank at current prices would cost about . . . $50k!
Notice Lower Manhattan in the background with the silvery 17 State Street.
Below is a slightly smaller stern trawler hauled out on Staten Island last winter.
And since we’re on fish, here’s an even smaller stern trawler anchored in the Merrimack River in Newburyport, Massachusetts, my old river.
All photos by will Van Dorp.
tugster: a waterblog 
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