You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Pegasus’ tag.
Discovery Coast has been around for over a decade now. One of my first times to see her was here.
Lightning has only recently been joined by Thunder, here. Might tugs named for other weather phenomena like hail and fog be coming?
Helen was only renamed that earlier this year; before that, she was Charles Burton.
Thomas D. Witte appeared here only once as Kendall P. Brake, and that was a decade and a half ago with Powhatan, class-establisher for Apache.
Defender last appeared on this blog a year and a half ago here . . . She was
formerly Davis Sea, my favorite photo of which was here, struggling with solid water upriver.
Pearl Coast is a regular at the cement dock on the KVK, here with Cement Transporter 1802, one of a fleet of barges dedicated to exactly that.
And while I was at this location, I caught a convergence of tugboats, Pegasus eastbound and Stephen Reinauer westbound. Stephen has been in the sixth boro for nearly 30 years now.
All photos, WVD.
Ten years and two days ago, I heard Urger had arrived in town and had rafted up to Pegasus, so
I had to come down in the late afternoon and shoot this, setting sun just post-Mahattanhenge notwithstanding. While there, I was asked to take close-up photos two days later of Urger at the Statue. “Sure,” I said, “as long as you provide a boat I could do that from.”
Upon a decade’s reflection, I regret we could not have arranged to get photos of Urger with more vessels in the sixth boro, especially with the larger tugboats of NYC 2012, to show difference of scale. You know what they say about hindsight . . . .
When I showed up at Pier 25 on July 14 at 0800, City of Water Day, the light was much more favorable.
Captain Wendy was cleaning up the wheelhouse, and
bosun “mean Mike” was atop the wheelhouse polishing the brass. Happy b’day, Mike!
Once the Atlas Imperial was warmed up and lines cast off, we headed over to the Statue, where
we figured out our position relative to the 111-year-old NYS Canal tugboat, and many photos were taken.
Then the intrepid crew and boat made their way over to Governors Island, where several thousand City of Water Day visitors
toured Urger, a sign I thought that the tug would go on forever, making history tangible, bidding downstaters to come upstate to that waterway that was Urger‘s home turf surf. It was a pleasant thought, and Urger did go on for the next five years. Now . . . she ‘s in Onondaga County hamlet of Lysander, waiting. My most recent (May 2022) Urger photos can be seen here.
All photos, WVD, who posted this montage together the next day.
Stay tuned . . . more July 2012 posts coming up soon.
The 2022 City of Water Day–July 16– website can be found here.
Happy independence day. While taking your coffee break, give this document signed by fallible but brave men 246 years ago a read….
I took these photos a decade ago on
a memorable night
in the sixth boro.
Later I posted my first “illuminations” post, reprising language from one of the 56 signers of that document, who put aside their petty disagreements to unite on what they considered common ground despite their differences.
Like I said, from one fallible person to all the rest of you fallible folks, happy independence day.
All photos, WVD.
Wow! It’s time to flip the calendar to March 2022 already; that means flashing back to March 2012. A photo of Bow Chain on the KVK seems a good place to start, for reasons apparent at the end of this post.
Since these “retro” posts highlight what’s no more to be seen, this is a good one, Brendan, a 6140 hp tug that now is Cindy Rose.
Sea-land Racer dominates the foreground, but look at the unmistakable Viking farther back.
Yes, I mean this Eklof-KSea-Kirby 4300 hp Viking, dismantled a few years ago already.
This 3900 hp Brendan still works daily in the boro.
Also passing the Sea-land Racer is this 1900 hp Pegasus, when she looked as she had coming from the shipyard without an upper wheelhouse. Pegasus is still a busy machine in the port.
2012 was the year I decided to see the Panama Canal before the new sections opened. In the middle ground here between the Miraflores locks and the ridge, you can see the mounds of dirt on the middle distant ground. Those mounds represent dirt displaced digging the new channels.
In the farther lane, Pacific-bound it’s Nord Snow Queen and nearer . . . Atlantic Polaris. And again in the photo below, see the dirt removed to create the new channel. As of this writing, Atlantic is at the dock in Houston and Nord between the ancient, now-Russian port of Novorossiysk and wherever she will be able to enter port.
See more dirt on the nearer ridge? And the traffic, like Chiquita Schweiz and now called Schweiz Reefer, it continues night and day
Tugboats–see many of them here–have a greater role in the new Panama Canal channels, replacing the locomotives evident in some of the photos above and below, but they were already plentiful pre-expansion. Here Veraguas 1 heads Pacificward…
assisting Bow Summer in accompaniment with
locomotives aka mules, once supplied by GE but now sourced elsewhere. Ever Dynamic, like the Odfjell parcel tankers whose names begin with “bow” [no doubt named for the renowned bowsprite],
are as likely to be seen in any major port as in the sixth boro. Ever Dynamic had been in the sixth boro just a month earlier than here, making me almost feel like it was welcoming me to Panama, which I found a very hospitable place. Bow Summer as of this writing waits outside a South African port. Ever Dynamic was dismantled in Alang almost exactly two years ago.
All photos, WVD, in March 2010.
Sea-land Racer and Viking have both been dismantled in the past five years, Racer in Alang and Viking in Texas.
Two separate parties sent me this article from the LA Times. With a title including the phrase “humble tugboat,” I was interested but not prepared for the fantastic photos. Thx John and George. Enjoy. Meanwhile, here are some more of my recent photos.
James D. Moran assisting on a towline above and Robert Weeks leaving the fuel dock below,
Andrea walled off from her barge above and Sarah Ann light below,
Gregg McAllister returning to base and Pegasus heading to work,
A light William Brewster and an equally light Daisy Mae,
Mackenzie Rose and Philadelphia, and
to close out this installment . . . Kimberly Turecamo assisting a ULCV.
All photos, WVD, who never associated the adjective “humble” with tugboats or their operators, and that’s not a bad thing.
If you’re new to this blog (or even if you are not), I’m always looking for photos from other people and places, especially, tugboats seen in South America, Asia, Oceania, and Australia.
Deck the hulls . . .
the bell sound signal device and railings too.
And I’ll leave that song right there.
Kimberly Turecamo has a wreath around the bell also, but
consistent with the Kimberly crew, there’s more.
Merry Christmas all . . .
All photos, WVD.
Here was last year’s M is for Merry.
Yesterday’s post ended with Timothy L.
Sarah Ann, and
Treasure Coast at different amounts obscured by the fog.
Treasure Coast spun around before my location to set Cement Transporter 7700
into the Lafarge North America Bayonne
dock with assist by Pegasus. I wondered about the vintage of Cement Transporter 7700; she was launched from Todd Shipyard in Houston in December 1981 as Ideal II, then Midnight 1, and now its current moniker. Todd Shipyard has a distinctly Manhattan origin in the form of DeLameter Iron Works.
Meanwhile, from the western end of the KVK came
a Manzanillo-bound Lars Maersk assisted by James D. Moran.
At that same moment, Pegasus, after having completed the Treasure Coast assist, heads west of the Bayonne Bridge.
From that same fog bank west of the Bayonne Bridge emerge Daisy Mae pushing a light scow and
Cape Henry, returning to its barge at the west end of IMTT.
All photos, WVD, who is happy days will soon be getting longer.
Happy 31st, aka Halloween, World Savings Day, Day of Seven Billion, National Candy Apple Day, Annual visit a cemetery or graveyard day . . . and more. If you need suggestions for a graveyard, consider this one. And just yesterday, I learned of this one and this one. Who knew?!!? Want to revisit a tugster ghost post?
For this post, there’s a quiz. The first part is … name the oldest and newest boat here. The second part … identify the only two boats here NOT built in Louisiana. Of course, building is one thing, and designing is another.
All photos taken this October. Susan Miller,
Miriam Moran and Pegasus,
Andrea,
Gregg McAllister,
Robert IV,
Buchanan 12,
Navigator,
Robert Burton,
Shawn Miller,
Pearl Coast,
Miss Ila,
Mary Turecamo,
and the always seasonal Kimberly Turecamo.
There you have it . . . And I’ll give the answers tomorrow.
And my question is . . . who is Miss Ila‘s namesake and what do you call that shade of red?
It’s hard to believe, but I’ve not been to the Great North River Tugboat Race since 2014, but in normal times, September 5 would see the next race. But we’ve dispensed with the “normal times” concept for the time being.
In selecting the batch for this post, I wanted splash, froth, bubbles, and the effervescence the river can react with when tons of steel and thousands of horsepower push through the ever changing water. The next two photos are from that 2014 race.
It was overcast during the race, but an hour or so later, when pushing contests were happening and
the wakes flattened out and we sized up USAV MGen. Anthony Wayne, patches of blue appeared. I should leave you in suspense about how this push went. Let me put it this way; they left town not long after the push-off.
2013 was an equally overcast day, and again, not to identify every tugboat in that lineup, it appears that W. O. Decker has either jumped the gun or activated its jet drive and will soon rise up out of the Hudson on her hydrofoil assists. I’d guess the latter.
See what I told you . . . Decker has gone so far ahead that it’s already over the horizon.
Second lap maybe for Decker?
It’s starting to appear that in 2012, as in ’13 and ’14, it was overcast.
It was great to see Buchanan 12, usually burdened with a half dozen stone barges, disencumbered and frothing up the river. That’s the 1907 Pegasus back there too.
In 2011, I was able to get a photo of the racing craft along with sky spray by one of the fireboats present, likely 343. What’s remarkable comparing the photo above with the one below is the color of the water; hurricane Irene had dropped a lot of rain upstate and all the tributaries sent that into the Hudson with tribute in the form of silt.
Quantico Creek and Maurania III did an excellent job of stirring up the water.
But again, it was overcast and hazy over silty water.
However, in 2010, we had blue skies that really accentuated the DonJon boats like Cheyenne and
the harbor colossus, Atlantic Salvor.
In 2009, there were wispy clouds, allowing the “queen of the day” to be Ellen McAllister. But look who else showed up!!!!
Urger. Urger would EASILY have won the race, but she was doing what she does best . . . urging all the other boats and crews to be fleeter than she, holding herself back, allowed herself to be that day.
All photos and commentary, WVD. See you at the races in 2022.
Happy August 2021. And “Wow!” That is almost always my reaction when I jump back a decade into the archives. This riveted tug was 83 years old when I took this photo, and I looked at that deep rounded icebreaker hull and imagined it would go on working forever. Now it’s 93 years old, and mortality is nipping at the heels of this Canal tug and all the Canal tugs. It and they may not be around 10 years from now. Of course, neither might I. She was built by Buffalo Marine Shipbuilding in 1927-28, and originally equipped with a John W. Sullivan steam engine. Her stack was hinged so that it could be lowered for bridges. She’s 77′ by 19.5′. If I read the archives right, Governor Cleveland is three feet shorter; I’d always assumed they were twins.
The 1958 Blount-built green tug in the foreground has changed hands several times in the past decade; it may be Bay Star of Port Washington now, but I’ve not seen it in more than half a decade.
The 1998 container ship was last recorded as in Aliaga Turkey in 2017, which leads me to suppose this 3802 teu has been scrapped.
I’ve seen these East River based float planes several times recently, but I’ve not been back to their “field” in the East River in a while. It is pricey but no doubt memorable . . . fun to travel somewhere in one of these. Anyone report having done it? I don’t know which company then flew the red planes.
NYK Constellation, a 2007 4900 teu vessel, is currently at anchor off Vancouver, but has been renamed Tell T (Erase some of the letters of “constellation”). That “erasure renaming” suggests it’s bound for the scrappers.
Here’s Chandra B‘s predecessor, doing then what Chandra B does now. It even has the same crew.
I’ve heard that Ace was being converted into something . . . . what it a floating cocktail dispenser? Seriously . . . I have some such recollection due to a query I got a few years back. Well . . . there are orange juice tankers, so why not a floating frozen margarita or daiquiri truck boat? Can anyone provide an update on this project? What paint scheme/name would immediately scream out “slushy float”.
I’ve not seen Iron Wolf out in the harbor, although I might have seen it tied up over at Claremont.
Pegasus then had no upper wheelhouse, and here it was pushing the elusive Michael Cosgrove, a 1960 Blount vessel that Charon drives for some on a one-way trip to a Potter’s Field.
The 2000 4500 hp Vernon C has recently gotten new life as Mackenzie Rose.
And finally . . . 2011 saw this combo do quite the tour . . . the 1907 Pegasus with the 1914 Lehigh Valley 79 alongside. If you’ve never visited the 79, make an effort to get to it and be prepared for a treat. Pegasus met the scrapper this past spring.
All photos, first half of August 2011, WVD.
I hope you enjoy these monthly journeys to the past as much as I do. And to satisfy my own curiosity, I looked up the first post in the Retro Sixth Boro series. . . .
tugster: a waterblog 
Recent Comments