Retro Sixth Boro 27 a

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.

Port of Boston 1

Back last November, I devoted a whole month to ports and harbors.  As I get new material, I’ll continue that series.   Here Boston’s latest fireboat passes in front of Logan’s control tower.

Here’s her namesake.

Massport has its own fireboat, American United.  Its predecessor–Howard W. Fitzpatrick— was the subject of several tugster posts as it made its way up to Lake Huron to become a dive boat.

Claire looks like she was based on a hydrofoil design, but I can’t find any evidence to support that.

From my vantage point, I could tell the controls were right up in the bow.  I’d love to get a tour of her wheelhouse.

This Nantucket aka LV-112 moved from Oyster Bay to Boston six years ago, a transit covered by tugster here.  This Nantucket is not to be confused with WLV-612, which frequently appears in the sixth boro.

Angus . . . good to meet you.  Somehow I expected you to look like Brangus.

Can anyone fill in some info on the history of King Triton?  Is it a modified former government vessel?  In the background are the digesters on Deer Island.

I believe that’s Ocean King, whom I saw in the sixth boro back in 2010.

Here, identification thanks to Paul Strubeck are the 1958 Nancy (red), the 1954 Brandywine (green) , and an unnamed Army tug.  And over on the far left side of the pier, it’s

the 1940 Brooklyn-built Gaspee.

Over on the fish side of the harbor, here’s David Tonnesen’s 45′ stainless steel sculpture called Cod.  Wind spins the discs on its back, and windspeed determines the color of the eye, s0 it’s a wind speed indicator.

Along both sides of Boston’s Fish Pier,

boats offload their catch.

More from the port of Boston tomorrow.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Names 21

Cold weather keeps me inside, where my fingers keep the keyboard warm.    I’ll start by revisiting this foto I took a warm morning in 2010.  That tugboat was 60 years old at that moment.  The easiest name to read is Ocean King, but in raised metal letters on the port bow, you might make out some other letters,

here and

even clearer here on the starboard bow.    And in between those two names, she also went by David McAllister.

The following three fotos come thanks to Allen Baker.  The foto below shows Resolute in 1974 in Fells Point, when she was part of the Baker-Whitely Towing Company.    Click here and here for posts I did in Fells Point and Baltimore back in 2010.

The foto below dates from 1980.  Notice Grace McAllister to the left.  At this point, McAllister had just purchased the B-W Towing Company.

The boat to the right I can’t identify.  Notice Holland and Britannia also.  Britannia was built as Thomas A. Meseck at Marvel in Newburgh NY in 1942.

It turns out that Ocean King aka Resolute was built at RTC Shipbuilding, the same yard in Philadelphia Camden as  John B. Caddell, which I last saw, sold for scrap here.

Many thanks to Allen Baker for sharing these vintage fotos.  And thanks to the folks at tugboatinformation.com, without whom I’d have a much harder time tracing back these names.

First three fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Three Kings

Three kings parades happened today in some parts of the world . . . including East Harlem, where camels walk through Manhattan streets.    This blog has had a fair number of posts about queens, so here are some kings, though not Gaspar, Melchior or Belthasar.

But here’s Ocean King, a foto I took back in June 2010.  I believe she’s built in 1950, and this was the only time I saw her in the sixth boro.

I caught this shot of King Douglas in the KVK in spring 2009;  tonight she’s crossing the Andaman Sea.

And finally . . . a stretch, I got this “below the keel” shot of Pe king back in January 2007, a whole seven years ago.  Click here to see fotos of Peking‘s first ever arrival in the sixth boro, almost 40 years ago, when there was great optimism about her future.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.