Something Different 37 Followup

SD 37 was quite some time ago, but what flummoxes me is that I thought I’d done this post, a profile of another Mister Darby model I saw at the September 2022 Tugboat Roundup.  It seems, to my embarrassment that I never posted these.  

To the models we go.  Some model builders from Quebec had come down to Waterford to display their craft.  That’s one of the models westbound in the Erie Canal below. 

The real tug whose bow we look across above is Joncaire;  the model is marked as a Smit tug called Moniqua, but I can find no information about the namesake.

Edgar Bonnet was the most powerful tugboat in the world when IHC launched it in 1953 for the Suez Canal.  The tugboat was sunk in the Suez Canal in 1956-57 during what some call the Second Arab-israeli War. When it was raised in March 1957, the Canal was reopened. For someone who can read Polish, here’s the story, and google can translate.  Some specs, the original Smit tug was 152′ x 39′.  The raising got lots of media attention;  even UN SG Dag Hammarskjold was present.  In 1958, it was renamed Antar.

All these models were 2′ to 3′ in length.

 

 

Mister Darby interested me the most, because it’s none other than the current Atlantic Salvor. 

Many thanks to modeler Carl Durocher

and friends for showing off their boats at Waterford.  And my apologies for not having posted his photos until now. 

 

Something Different 37

The other night in a diner 300 miles from the sixth boro, Jim–holding the remote below and to the left–mentioned his boat models.  His favorite, he said, was Mister Darby.  My interest was piqued, but he went on, describing it as about five feet long and having an automobile battery as a power source.   In fact, he said, one time he sank the model as a result of taking an abrupt turn to port;  the battery wasn’t adequately secured, flipped on its side, dooming the tug.

I met Jim last year in connection with an old boat up on the Saint Lawrence.  I had coffee with him the other day in connection with another boat, one that’s been featured on this blog many times.

Anyhow, when he was finished, I asked if he had a photo of Mister Darby;  sure enough he did.  When I asked what else he knew about Mister Darby, he said it was last in Indonesia.  JMC on the stack expands to Jackson Marine Corporation, a Halliburton company.

So for Jim and everyone else, here’s Mister Darby –now Atlantic Salvor–as she appeared in the September 5, 2010 Great North River Tugboat Race.

 

 

And in late November this year, below she heads west under the Bayonne Bridge.

These days, Atlantic Salvor has a “twin” in the boro also, Atlantic Enterprise, ex-Mister Pete.

The first two come from Jim;  the others by Will Van Dorp, whose favorite Salvor photos were posted here.

By the way, here’s the Mister Darby kit.