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Here are previous iterations of this title. Sometimes it’s energizing to return to places you’ve not visited in a while. We followed North River for a bit and then turned into
the Brooklyn Navy yard, a quite busy place. Sugar Express was there along with Carolina Coast. The barge shuttles less-refined sugar from Florida to Yonkers, where the sugar is further refined at a riverside facility.
Atlantic Salvor was in one of the graving docks.
Once under way again, we followed Genesis Eagle heading for the Sound.
North River was docked at DEP Ward’s Island Central (actually WPCP) by the time we passed by.
NYC Department of Correction Vernon C. Bain Maritime Facility was still where I last saw it, the only traffic being who goes in and out.
Ditto this wreck, which deserves a name or a series of ex-names, where the only traffic is the ingress and egress of tidal current water.
All photos this week, WVD.
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.
I’m guessing Eric R Thornton is off in search of some scrap waiting in
the Bronx maybe?
It’s been a long while since I’ve seen Penn No. 6, and here she and Normandy are made up to Penn No. 121. See those four shore cranes against the sky? Here’s a post I did on them almost a decade ago.
Here’s B. No. 250 eastbound for the Sound, with
Evening Star in the notch.
Some people would be pleased with this juxtaposition: MTA’s Highbridge Yard, with Harbor II, MetroNorth, and the 44th Precinct Police Station!
Barbara Ann holds station at the University Heights Bridge, with the unmistakeable Hall of Fame for Great Americans dome over the treeline. That’s a place I’ve yet to visit, one of many places in the five boros.
Ditto . . . Ireland on the north side of that bridge.
And to conclude for another day . . . it’s Penn No. 91 with
Skipjack in the notch.
Oops! All photos by Will Van Dorp . . . from aboard Manhattan II.
Here are previous posts with references to wind. Sunday and Monday were windy but commerce went right on.
The weight of these units is manifested by the smooth ride in the harbor chop. Offshore it would be a different matter in the swells.
I wouldn’t call it spindrift, so maybe
it’s just spray?
All photos last weekend by Will Van Dorp.
And here, thanks to Aleksandr Mariy and unrelated but interesting, it’s Black Douglas, in its many forms. And if you like that, you’ll love Roosevelt, especially that photo off Newburgh NY.
And finally, thanks to Isaac Pennock, who caught Dylan Cooper down bound passing Detroit on a run between Green Bay and Montreal.
Here were 1 and 2 of this series, and here was a much earlier post about NYC DEP’s essential service.
Below is North River and Hunts Point as seen from Rockaway.
Port Richmond heads into Hell’s Gate,
Red Hook in the distance and Port Richmond passing by,
and finally all three new boats with Red Hook in the distance. Here are some photos of Red Hook as she appeared when first in service in early 2009.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
. . . 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.
. . . aka a jumble.
I took the foto below of Stephen L. Colby (St. Louis, MO-built, 1967, 144′ x 40′) on 1/4/2013 in Cairo, IL. Yesterday, the boat sank into 14 feet of water farther north on the Mississippi.
Below, s/v Concetta meets Charles D. McAllister (Jacksonville, FL, 1967, 94′ x 29′) in late October.
Twin Tube (Blount, 1951, 64′ x 19′) passes the polytube rack. If you click on the link in the previous sentence, you’ll see the very next completed Blount project was of Ceres, a “grain elevator.” A google search turned up no fotos. Anyone know of any?
I took this foto a week and a half ago. Currently, Grande Sierra Leone has left Dakar bound for Cotonou, passing the older Grande Buenos Aires en route.
Bow Hector in the Kills a few days ago . . . now in Morehead City. Bow! Hector!
Taft Beach . . . shuttling dredge spoils, inbound.
Sludge tanker North River noses past 118,000-bbl barge Charleston.
On Marathon Day, this was Explorer of the Seas ( I think) approaching the Narrows, as seen past the stern of Transib Bridge.
A few days ago . . . it’s Challenge Paradise. I wonder if that’s ever a command. . . .
And at the same moment, crude oil tanker Felicity. By the way, I passed between felicity and challenge paradise . .. steering clear. Both vessels are currently southbound off the coast of the Carolinas.
Finally, in the Buttermilk, it’s MAST’s r/v Blue Sea, passing Wilson Newcastle and McAllister Responder. Responder and Charles D. are two of the triplets built near the end of the run at Gibbs Gas Engine, currently a place to sleep and stroll. The last time I saw Roderick-the third triplet– in the sixth boro was here.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
. . . the premier marine motor sports event in the sixth boro . . . the 2013 Great North River Tugboat Race & Competition.
I first attended in 2006, and when I look at fotos for the past seven years, I’m amazed by all the changes I see. I hope you enjoy this album even if I don’t enumerate the vessels that no longer work here or look as they do in these fotos.
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
What surprises will 2013 bring? Don’t miss it. See you there . . . .
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
By the way, here are some of the competitors from 61 years ago . . . .
Springtime . . . and motion gives a renewed sense of life to the watery boro. Emerald Sea‘s been around all winter, but she’s not moved loads like this. Diner? Prefab beach buildings for post-Sandy reconstruction? Many thanks to Ashley Hutto for this shot taken along Roxbury, Queens.
Eclipse, the huge yacht in the distance has taller masts than Clipper City, the tallest sailing vessel operating in the the harbor. Eclipse left the harbor Tuesday, headed for Gibraltar.
Schooner Virginia left Wednesday, headed for Virginia . . . by way of Portland, Maine.
Anyone know the manufacturer of the speedboat in the foreground? In the background is Zephyr, launched 10 years ago from the Austal Shipyard in Mobile, AL . . . and Wavertree, launched 128 years ago in Southampton, UK.
I could almost imagine this boat has a bowsprit.
Smaller workboats seem more commonplace this time of year like Henry Hudson,
this Oyster Bay government boat,
an OCC vessel,
and of course the ubiquitous all-weather sludge tanker North River, frequently mentioned on this blog.
Thanks to Ashley for the first foto, and I’d love to know what that structure on the Weeks barge is. All other fotos by Will Van Dorp, who feels the urge to go somewhere too.
tugster: a waterblog 
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