Down and Up the Black Rock Canal

This is the same story as yesterday’s, but the perspective is different, thanks to a Great Lakes mariner.  New York slides the 509A into Black Rock Lock, a USACE facility.  By the way, Black Rock was a town that once rivaled Buffalo.

The photo above looks downbound, but the one below looks back toward Buffalo and to the stern of the tug.  Depending on conditions, one or sometimes two tugs are used.  To the left it’s Vermont;  to the right, New Jersey.    Vermont dates from 1914;  New Jersey, 1924.  It boggles my mind that one of the assist tugs is more than a century older than tug New York, launched 2019.

Here the unit heads down to Tonawanda.  Note New Jersey and Vermont. 

After discharging 50000 barrels of 300-degree hot asphalt, the unit turns back upstream.

Straight ahead here is the Niagara River and the speedy current this unit might never climb;  Black Rock Lock is off to the left.

When the 509A is loaded, it’s deeper in the water;  when it’s light, it’s way high.  Notice how little of the rocky margins of the Canal you can see. 

By this point, we’ve gotten south of the Peace Bridge;  a few more zigs to port and zags to starboard . . . and we’ve back into Lake Erie.

That’s the Buffalo skyline back there, as seen here in a previous post.  The barge goes onto the wire if the conditions warrant, and it’s Detroit bound, ETA 36 hours or so.

All photos, thanks to a Great Lakes mariner.

 

Random Tugs 271

Mary Alice with Witte 1407

 

Brendan Turecamo with container barge New Jersey

Sarah Ann with SMM 105

 

A light Stephen B passing the Lady

Caitlin Ann with SMM 211 and a light Emily Ann

 

Galveston with Petrochem Producer and a surveillance bird

And–to repost a photo from April 2018–guess where Iron Salvor is today . . .

All photos by Will Van Dorp, whose curt post today are dictated by a tank low on verbiage today because my reserves are being used on other projects .  ..

Iron Salvor, the one above, is currently in Malta, that English-speaking island in the Med!!

Thanks to Paul Strubeck 5

Here are some previous posts with photos from Paul.

If you want to see all my posts with photos of these wonderful towing machines, click here, the tag GLT.

Illinois is typical of this fleet.  Look at the riveted hull.  She’s still working, launched in 1914, before the US entered WW1!!!    Behind her is Idaho, 1931.  If you want an exemplar of American engineering and manufacturing, you need look no farther than this fleet.

New Jersey dates from 1924.    . . . . .       And Wisconsin is the oldest.  I’ll let you guess and you can read the answer below.

Wyoming . . .  1929.

Many thanks to Paul Strubeck.

1897!!  And she still works.  some day I hope she goes to the Smithsonian, as long as the Smithsonian establishes a wet display area.  And of course, the National Museum of the Great Lakes has already seen fit to add one of these to their wet display.  more on that later.   If I lived closer, I’d be there on November 30.

There’s a whole chapter on G-tugs in Tugboats of the Great Lakes by Franz A. VonRiedel.