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All photos in this post come from Paul Strubeck, who has started a blog here called vintagedieseldesign.
Mary H is the right size to serve the fuel storage in Newtown Creek, a renowned location in the sixth boro. Here are previous posts I’ve done there.
The first oil refinery in the US was sited here, and that industry fouled it, given attitudes at that time toward the environment and disposal of chemical waste.
Today a lot of commerce happens there from oil storage to scrap metal processing.
The creek has its advocates, these folks and others. At its headwaters lies Bushwick, not for everyone but vibrant in its own way. Here’s a post I did last fall after a tour on land and on the water of Bushwick.
Again, thanks to Paul for these photos.
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.
This series handles my miscellaneous needs with updates, follow-ups, and oddments.
Let’s start with the mage below. Click on it and you’ll learn how soon a sixth boro GUP vessel transforms into dive attraction named Lady Luck. Thanks to Mike Hatami for passing along this info.
If the image below looks like a boat, it is, or it was before San Francisco grew (or tumbled?) over top of it. For more info on the buried vessels of SF, click on the image. Here’s more.
Below, well that was me about 10 years ago. After I had built a skin-on-frame kayak, I need to paint the porous “skin” with urethane, hence the respirator. If anyone’s interested in buying me a token of appreciation to update this vessel–which I still have–click on the image to see my one-item wish list. And thanks in advance.
More old business . . . the photo below I took from the Manhattan side of the East River about 10 years ago, and
this photo was taken by Robert Silva back in September 2014; of course this was what remained of the John B. Caddell after Hurricane Sandy, the suspense, and the subsequent auction.
By now, that old steel may have seen the hold of a scrapper like Atlantic Pearl . . . and been transformed in the heat
And finally, in response to a recent comment asking about Gateway tugs . . . the rest of the photos/text here I took/wrote in April 2014 and never posted because I was waiting for some additional info.
“What’s under the ‘white house’ here?
Click here to find out. And the tug C. Angelo is resplendent in the brightening daylight.
So this is future defense works passing obsolete defense works.”
C. Angelo in drydock?
All photos except the top three and the one by Robert Silva . . . by Will Van Dorp.
Uh . . any guesses which creek that might be?
It’s still the sleek lines of the GUP carrier once so familiar to folks paying attention to sixth boro traffic.
Newtown Creek is now going up a waterway for the last time and what a waterway this is. From here, she’ll be further
dismantled before she’s gently laid to the sea bottom for aquatic growth and diver’s enjoyment. Atlas is likely the one from 1985 shown here (and scroll).
Many thanks to Mike Hatami for sending these photos along.
For some news from the Miami River, click here. For two stories about a vessel on that River, click here and here. With the latter, you’ll need to translate the Spanish.
Unrelated and sent along by barrel, an interesting “second life” conversion here, although I believe the headline was written by someone who does not know a container ship from an OSV, maybe not a creek from a brook.
Know this water, more of a waterway than a harbor? The distant buildings are a clue. See the one just left of the center of bridge center, needle thin?
Here’s another clue . . . the structure near the right side of the photo, like an old time gas station pump?
Or this one left of the crane, looking like the business end of a blue crab whose pincers are down?
Or this wreck? What WAS this boat? I’ve asked a million people who all say they also asked a million people. Anyone know?
And seriously, the first photo showed the Throgs Neck Bridge, the second the LaGuardia airport traffic tower, and the third . . . Arthur Ashe stadium. The photo above with the mystery wreck in the Whitestone Bridge . .. the second one in when you travel from Long Island Sound into . . . the East River
And that needle thin tower in 432 Park, said to be the tallest residential building in the hemisphere. Click here for views from the tallest bathtub in that building. And in the foreground of the photo below, truly a place of superlatives . . . . Rikers Island, i.e., one of the largest incarceration places in the world. No gunk holing is tolerated anywhere near this place.
Rikers has literally overflowed its banks. This is the off-Rikers portion of NYC Corrections, the Vernon C. Bain Center.
Click here for a tugster photo of part of the Rikers fleet. And here for Bain’s NYC floating prison predecessor.
By now, most of you know this is the East River and we’re traveling west. Here the DEP sludge tanker Red Hook prepares to depart the Hunt’s Point wastewater treatment plant. Click here for some tugster posts on treating waste and keeping sixth boro waters as clean as possible despite the teeming millions that live along the banks of these waters. And if you’ve never read my Professional Mariner story on the latest generation of these tankers, you can do so here.
Between Rikers and Hunts Point, there are the North and South Brother Islands; see my post from South Brother here from a long time ago. The safer channel goes around the north of North Brother, but in daylight, most vessels can shoot between the two.
I’ve never set foot on North Brother, but I imagine it a terrestrial version of the “graveyard” on the Arthur Kill.
A “night wharf” on Wards Island for the sludge tankers lies here just east of the Hell Gate and RFK bridges there.
This strait–between Roosevelt Island and the upper east side of Manhattan–in the tidal strait that’s known as the East River can see some fast currents. Somewhere off to the right is the vantage point Jonathan Steinman takes his East river pics from.
This is not a cargo pier. These vessels are repairing the bulk heading.
Anyone know the identity of these two “houses” nestled up there in the eastisde of Manhattan cliffs?
These barges called the Water Club . . . I’ve never been there. Any personal reviews?
Newtown Creek awaits its fate here at a dock in Wallabout Bay right across
from the rock wharf where Alice Oldendorff has discharged millions of tons of crushed rock over the years.
After we duck under the Brooklyn Bridge, we near the end of the East River,
where South Street Seaport Museum has been fighting the noble fight to
preserve ships and the upland including the wharves.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
With Valentine’s Day only a dozen days away, how about a honey boat for your honey . . . and you?
Click on the image below to find details. Newtown Creek, the GUP carrier, really can be yours for a mere $235,000, unless someone takes the bid higher. Click here and here for some of my previously posted photos of NYC GUP carriers. And for the record, they do NOT take the honey out of the harbor to dump out at sea . . . not since 1991 at least. The photo of Newtown Creek above I took in October 2011.
Seriously, although you’d have considerable work and expense transforming the above skiff into a vehicle for romance, you would be starting from a vessel with exquisitely sweet lines. This smaller skiff or many of them then could serve as tenders.
. . . my latest coined term . . . for which the acronym GUP lends itself is . . . gross universal product, i.e. what’s transported in vessels like these. And it really is “universal,” as evidenced by a Hong Kong vessel like this. That it is gross . . . let me say that it goes without saying.
Newtown Creek and Red Hook belong to two generations of NYCDEP vessels traveling along the East River . . . past places like this in these photos from 2012. Red Hook came to transport GUP in 2009, the latest sludge carrier until
this one —Hunts Point–came along this February . . . in a photo compliments of bowsprite
Newtown Creek was launched in 1968 . . . and still carries a lot of GUP.
North River . . . 1974. Imagine your garbage being picked up by a 1974 Oshkosh!
Owls Head, the previous class and shown here in 2009 mothballed, launched in 1952! And I had to find some 1952 waste picker uppers.
In case you’re wondering what prompts this post and what is new in this post, given previous ones like this and this . . . well here it is, something I hunted for a long time and finally found yesterday when the air-conditioned New York Public Library felt fantastic! Mayor La Guardia spent a grand total of $1,497,000–much of it WPA money–for three sludge carriers launched in January, February, and March 1938, Wards Island, Tallman Island, and Coney Island, resp. Wards Island and Tallman Island became barges Susan Frank and Rebecca K and Coney Island was reefed in 1987, although I can’t find where.
Below are the specs. Note that “sludge” is NOT raw GUP. I’d love to hear stories bout and see pics of these Island class DEP boats. How large were the crews and what was the work schedule?
Click on the photo below for info on what was at least part of waste disposal–built in Elizabethport 1897— prior to La Guardia’s sludge tankers.
Here from the NYC Municipal Archives is a dumping boat said to be hauled out at “East River Dry docks,” which I’m not sure the location of.
Unrelated, here’s another vessel–Pvt. Joseph F. Merrell-– built at the same location along the KVK in early 1951 and disposed of not far away after transitioning from Staten Island Merrell-class ferry to NYC prison space. Does anyone know the disposition of Don Sutherland’s photos of Merrell/Wildstein?
All these photos come from bowsprite, who is known to scale the cliffs and trees of lower Manhattan to photograph and sketch the ships go by. From auspicious time to time, she shares her photos with me, as she did recently.
Northbound . . . Stad Amsterdam in formation with a sludge tanker.
This past Sunday she caught Topaz. Some years back, I caught Skat, a yacht built by the same yard.
Here and here were photos of Stad Amsterdam I’ve taken in recent years.
The Intermarine vessel (Industrial Echo taken on April 6) is evidence of expansion of wind power generation upriver. Thanks to David Silver for identifying the ship.
In the foreground Gateway tug Bridgeport (Thanks for the help!) and in the distance the all-knowing, never shrinking from difficult work Michele Jeanne.
As we move through these photos, bowsprite must have descended the trees or cliffs, because here she’s incorporated early spring arboreal detail into her compositions . . . Gran Couva (with “lower” Jersey City) and
Afrodite and Stad Amsterdam and
Voge Freeway.
For the current tip of bowsprite’s opus, click here. For the most recent tugster post showing her work, click here. Her photos clearly show the variety of large vessel traffic northbound between Manhattan and Jersey City/Hoboken.
I am grateful to bowsprite for her permission to use these photos. To see and buy her work online, click here.
Bowsprite made my jolly Easter even jollier with her post here, rendering the silvery ovoids of Newtown Creek aubergine. These digester eggs are an essential part of keeping the harbor clean. See this DEP link as a starter. Boston has similar structures on Deer Island, which are part of the same process.
Here’s another shot of Newtown Creek’s facility, as viewed from Peter Cooper Village across the East River.
And yet another view . . . as seen from a boat on the Creek, the loins of 19th century industrial New York. Yes, that’s the now-scrapped Kristin Poling back in 2010.
As bowsprite points out in her post . . . yes, there is a proverbial “recreation area intertwined with a waste disposal equipment” around these eggs . . . a boat launch, a minipark with historical info on local names like this.
This DEP vessel Red Hook is the newest addition to the NYC DEP fleet, which I wrote about quite some time ago here. If you’ve ever seen a vessel of these colors in the sixth boro, you’ve witnessed NYC fertilizer production at work.
Enough seriousness . . . . this post has to be leading into a gassy direction. Imagine this as a multi-hued digester filled with so much lighter-than-air vapor that it came loose from its Newtown Creek moorings.
What if engineers could isolate the light gaseous by-products of digestion so that passenger
craft like this one that circled the harbor last weekend could be exotic-fuel powered?
More digesters in evolution?
And this bit of blue jetsam along the KVK . . . might it expand to digester size . . and if so . . what might hatch from this?
OK . . . back to my serious world. All silliness aside, New York City school kids DO come down to the park around the eggs to see and learn . . . using this “scavenger hunt guide.”
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Bernie sent me this foto about two years ago. I loved it. I’d asked permission to use different of his fotos before–and he always said yes. For this foto, I never asked. I just looked at it regularly, admiring it. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind my using his foto today in his memory. May he live on in his work.
Bernie lived near and advocated for a rebirth of Newtown Creek; some friends went there yesterday to … remember him and to carry on. Here some white flowers float on the Creek as if they were on fine black marble.
Bernie was an inspiration
to me and
other folks. Enjoy these google images of Newtown Creek.
Each of the following tugster posts have at least one foto contributed by Bernie: December 12, 2009; September 9, 2009; September 21, 2008; August 15, 2008;
Bernie . . . we carry on.
tugster: a waterblog 
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