Something Different 15

What’s this?  I’ll get around to identification in a bit. Sistine chapel ceiling?  Sister of Sistine?   For now, everyone knows the genre of “nose art” on aircraft.

Trucks  . . . most likely the owner operator variety . . . sometimes display.

Then there’s official marking with numbers and painted emblems to clearly mark purpose as well as to

bedazzle, make nimtopsical, render too fuddled to head tail or trail . . .

display trophies.

Then there’s this . . . by sea and

by

land.

I prefer the Vallejo inspired above to the Disney knock offs below.

Here she is . . . probably

Steiner built.

Since we can’t really call this nose art, let’s call it bow, stern, or house art.  Send me you favorite examples  . . . from commercial vessels only?

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

By the way, Mohawk WPG-78 above was reefed about a year after I took that photo.  Here and here are links to that vessel that now dazzles divers.  I’d love to hear from anyone who’s dived on it.

Chemical Pioneer

The sixth boro really does not have that many tugboats doing ship assist work, so when I see McAllister Responder and Ellen McAllister  move in this formation, no matter the weather, it can mean only one thing . . .

ship assist.  Chemical Pioneer has a checkered past with respect to the sixth boro:  she’s

part of Sea Witch and part newly grafted hull.

Sixteen mariners paid with the lives as a result

of the crash and inferno.  But ships are inanimate, just vessels shaped and reshaped by human hands.

We need her product, and so she’s

welcome in the port, I suppose.

And  Ellen and Responder are there to assist.

All fotos taken last Saturday by Will Van Dorp.

Stealth

My camera is an opportunistic feeder, and when I saw these (anyone know what they are?) on my way to the water, the camera demanded I linger.  And as I did, I

noticed some orange movement, also unidentified, so I needed to have a closer

look.  Hardly, I thought.

High and wet, it was–I supposed–headed for

sea.  Except . . . why the rumble

of chain, I asked, hoping the crewman had his feet firmly planted.

Or was he trolling for some gargantuan surface feeder?

By the time I’d followed around a point, the hook seemed solidly held in place by a gargantuan bottom, and my camera had just missed a pallet of supplies hoisted off the capacious decks of ABC-1 (See it high and dry in the sixth foto in that link).  Here’s a Don Sutherland article about ABC-1‘s owners.

And as I came around, I spotted another craft on the Un-Stealthy One‘s portside, but I got a clear shot only after

the man standing on the foredeck of Nicholas Miller swung outward from the ladder  he had just descended.  Notice in the foto above anchored off Stena Stealth‘s portside . . .  Chemical Pioneer, not far from where it, as  Sea Witch 37 years ago lost its steering and created its fireball and a major oil spill, by sixth boro standards.

Services need to be rendered before the conspicuous tanker heads for sea.

I hope my camera captures some real stealth in the next post.

Catchups and followups and accountclosings by the end of this month.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.

Something Different

I call this a “water blog,” but usually avail myself only of salt water shots.  Below is what I saw from my bedroom window yesterday morning:  rainwater pool on roof beside my building.  Foto is obviously flipped, but the vent with round hole to the right serves as “portal” for at least three raccoons who cavort and sing after dark.  New York is wild.

Foreshortening . . . makes for some arresting shots:  here McAllister Responder, Franklin Reinauer, Jennifer Turecamo, and RTC 150 pushed by Meredith C. Reinauer enjoy much greater separation than appears.

Left to right here are:  Chemical Pioneer, Johann Jacob, and OOCL Busan.  I post this foto because it suggests that the forward portion of Chemical Pioneer and its stern seem mismatched.  Think about it . . . and I tell you the story below.

Foreshortening again . . .  plenty of searoom exists between NYK Constellation and OOCL Busan, but for some seconds, from my vantage point, I was getting nervous.

No comment on the frothiness in the center of this foto.  Notice the building on the tip of Manhattan between the red and green buoy.  That is 17 Battery Place, once the “footprint” for Moran Towing.  Starting on p. 273 of Tugboat:  The Moran Story by Eugene F. Moran and Louis Reid, there’s an incredible story about a Captain Daniel F. Anglim that dates back to the 1927.  In short, Dan had a naturally loud voice “even louder from having to yell against the wind” (pre-walkietalkie days) did dispatch from the 25th floor of that building down to the tugs waiting between Pier 2 and 4 on the Hudson.  I cannot imagine.  Looking for a good read:  Get The Moran Story!

Today several hundred feet of landfill separate 17 Battery Place from the nearest water.  See a foto of 17 Battery Place from that time here .  . second foto down.  I’d love to see a larger version.

Cape Melville bound for sea.  I love the name . . . that northeast corner of Australia.  In the background you see parts of the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, and One Court Square, Queens’ and Long Island’s tallest building.  One court Square also appears in the second foto above.

That’s Adirondack coming around the side of City Pier A, the once and future dock for NYPD and FDNY?

Yes, this is a wild turkey in Battery Park, it looked totally indignant when I asked that he pose in front of  either the Terminal or one of the Homeland Security cars in the background .  Imagine that !!  But the location is inland about 100 feet with the Staten Island Ferry Terminal to the left and the Coast Guard station to the right.    Wild New York.

The Chemical Pioneer story:  in late May 1973, a Bath Iron Works container ship called Sea Witch bound for sea lost steering and collided with an anchored tanker called Esso Brussels, resulting in a deadly fire (15 deaths, 13 of them on Esso Brussels, loaded with Nigerian crude) and New York harbor oil spill.   Read the complete story here.    Later, the stern section of Sea Witch was grafted onto a new forward section.  For Sea Witch‘s original lines, click here;  she’s the second one down.

All fotos taken on May 20 by Will Van Dorp.

By the way . . . that turkey . . . she goes by the name Zelda;  be good to Zelda when you see her.