Retro Sixth Boro 49A

Let’s jump back to May 2012.  Over along the Manhattan side of the East River then, I caught this scene.  Since then, there’s been some movement:   Peking to Germany,  Marion M to the Chesapeake,  Helen McAllister to  . . . rebirth as new steel.

Cheyenne has migrated to the Lake Michigan for now.

Twin Tube is still around but sans the boom.

Ellen McAllister is also still hard at work in the sixth boro, but I don’t see her doing much indirect towing as here.

Mark Moran was just passing through from the shipyard to Charleston.

Swan, built in 1981 and showing as her last movement three and a half years ago in China, has likely gone to rebirth as new steel.

But a decade ago in May 2012, she was here to move some used tugboats over to West Africa. Here she’s already down and BFT No. 38 with a crew boat strapped on has already been loaded, while

McAllister Sisters and McAllister Girls wait with three Crowley tugs, 

Cavalier, Pioneer, and Mars. 

After they are floated aboard, the tide turns the anchored Swan.

Socrates and Heron also float aboard, and

overnight, Swan gets deballasted and raises the hull, so that we can see their five-bladed wheels.   More of the story here.

Also in the boro those days was Picton Castle, showing the flag and more, maybe recruiting some hands

before sailing away.  Does anyone have news about her?  Has she really stayed in Lunenburg since late 2020?

All photos, WVD, exactly 120 months ago.

Unrelated to any of this, read this May 2004 article by the late great Don Sutherland and reflect on how much change has occurred.

1928 Fishing Trawler, etc.

A month and a half ago I posted photos here of Picton Castle as a freighter and a barque and only alluded to its previous incarnations as Swansea motorized fishing trawler and minesweeper.  Below is what she looked like as a minesweeper.  A crewman wrote:  “The minesweeper service lost more ships than any other branch of the Royal Navy as sweeping mines was very dangerous work. In fact, one day while on patrol a mine exploded under the ship and lifted her clean out of the water — all 300 tons of her. Fortunately, no real damage occurred.”  The really serendipitous story in the link above is how this minesweeper became known as “liberator of Norway.”

Many thanks to Nobby Peers for use of this photo.  As of this writing, the barque Picton Castle is in port in Madeira,  a little over 500 miles west of Morocco.

The Bath ME built trawler Georgetown, 1928, also went from trawler to minesweeper USS Linnet. although I’ve found no record of what became of her after WW2.

Second Lives 22

Take a fishing trawler built in 1928 and converted to a minesweeper some 10 years later.  After the war, convert it into a North Sea freighter, which then crosses the Atlantic to Kingston NY, where the photo below was taken.  To digress, I recognize Matilda (click and scroll)  on the hard behind the freighter but have no information of the two tugs to the right.  The photo below comes thanks to Nobby Peers, who worked on the old freighter in the mid-1990s, and it changed the course of his life.

So you might wonder about the connection of the freighter to this barque in Vanuatu?   The next four photos come thanks to Mike Weiss.

Here’s the same barque at sea.

Ditto, the barque seen here of Mangareva in French Polynesia.

And the answer is . . . they are all the same hull!

And finally, here are three photos I took when Picton Castle was in the Hudson in May 2012.  Tomorrow morning she sails out of Lunenburg NS for a five-month voyage. 

She’s registered in the Cook Islands. 

 

Many thanks to Nobby and Mike for use of these photos.   Fair winds . . . Picton Castle.

And here, verbatim again, is my call for collaboration for November posts.  Thanks to those of you who have already responded.

“…I invite your help for November posts.  All month long I hope to feature different ports–harbors–waterways and their workboats, which means not only towing vessels, but also ferries, fish boats, maintenance vessels, even yachts with professional crews.  I’ve been traveling a lot the past few months and have a fairly large backlog of boats from ports–harbors–waterways mostly in New England.  But as a social medium, this blog thrives on collaboration, so no matter which waters are near you,  I’m inviting you to send along photos of workboats from ports I might not get to.  I’d need at least three interesting photos to warrant a focus on a port.  Here are examples I’ve already done that illustrate what I’m thinking to do.”

Out

Outbound at 0800 this morning, Swan took a turn past the Statue before leaving.  Foto by John Watson, who is himself outbound for a while.

Out of luck I was in guessing the timing, so I got this view as Swan was outbound for the port of Luba, I’m told.   Luba is on the island now known as Bioko, which

I once knew as Fernando Po, a rare place in Africa where Spanish is the official language.    I hope the Atlantic Salvor folks got some good fotos of Swan headed out.

Yacht Justice (1930) is an outstanding survivor.

I’ve know idea what this trio of military/interdiction go-fast boats are, bt they are turly out-of-the-ordinary.

Also, out-of-the-ordinary for the sixth boro is Dewaruci, in port early for OpSail, arriving here on Wednesday.  Dewa Ruci appears to be a character in a wayang puppet story.  I’m looking forward to their marching band.   Over near the Red Hook side, that’s Pioneer.

And this is the start of leg 2 of the Atlantic Cup race, outbound for Newport this morning.

Over a dozen teams have entered boats.

Possible leader, pending resolution of a protest)  at the end of leg 1 (of 3) is this boat.

Oh yes . . . out of focus!   !@#@!!   And I loved the composition.

And finally . . . these folks are really outbound to a place even less known . . . maybe than Luba.

I love the hammock and banana bunch here.  For some fotos of Avatiu, click here.  For really outstanding fotos from there, click this one.

Picton Castle stack logo is quite outlandish.

First foto by outbound John Watson.  all others by Will Van Dorp.