Columbia River Commerce 2

I’ve been fortunate to see the Columbia and do posts like this and this.  But equally fortunate is the fact Seth Tane lives there and periodically passes along photos like the ones below, Fennica, along with sister Nordica,  in Portland about a month ago. Fennica appeared here once six years ago in photos from SeaBart, showing the Finnish icebreaker at work in the North Sea oil patch.

Fennica, as Seth noticed, was carrying a “capping stack,” the yellow object hanging from the red frame on Fennica‘s stern.  Fr the difference between a capping stack and a blow-out preventer, click here.

Also, notice the shape of the hull in the photo below, especially the widening flair about midships. In the weeks since Seth took these photos, the icebreakers headed out to Dutch Harbor, AK, and toward the Chukchi Sea, where in the past few days a hull fracture has been found.  To be followed.

Below is oceanographic research vessel Kilo Moana (T-AGOR-26), also in Portland.

Also this spring .  .  . Global Sentinel was on the Columbia, although she’s currently off the Oregon coast.

Many thanks to Seth Tane for these photos.

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A Slew of Sail

There’s winter sail, spring sail, and autumn sail.  And today I’m just staying inside culling photos.   Since moving by wind has been around for millennia, Pioneer is a relatively modern vessel.

Pioneer, 1885

This vessel below can be “insanely fast.” I took this photos and ones that follow back on May 11, 2015 in Morris Canal.

Lending Club 2, 2015

Here’s another sixth boro regular, the largest NYC-based schooner.  See her here in winter maintenance.

Check out these special sails on Clipper City.

Here LC2‘s just finished the 635 nm run in less than 24 hours.

From Seth Tane on the Columbia River, it’s HMCS Oriole, US-built in 1921.

I’d love to see the interior of Lending Club 2, but my guess is . . . spartan.

Also from back in May . . . it’s Wavertree in the last feet of its transit for a major makeover, Thomas J. Brown sliding her over.

Here’s another shot of L’Hermione entering the Upper Bay for the first time.

And what do you make of this?

Maybe more on that last photo tomorrow.

Except for the photo by Seth Tane, all photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Second Lives 19

Here were the previous ones . . . and I recently corrected a duplicate number.

Salvage Chief, by the first half of its name, is involved in giving second lives to vessels that have seen seen distress.  For photos of many projects she has been involved in, including the Exxon Valdez, click here. For more photos, click here.   Of the over 250 LSMs built in Houston in the mid-1940s, there are not many left.

She started life afloat as a landing craft . . . LSM-380.

Many thanks to Seth Tane for sending this photo along  . . . a month ago already.

Unrelated but good photos of mostly ships upriver on the Hudson can be seen here on Mark Woods site.

 

 

Really Random Tugs 25

I believe I took this in summer 2005, my first view of Lincoln Sea from W. O. Decker.  Lincoln Sea is now making its way northward probably along Baja California, if not already along alta California.

A few days ago and from the crew of Maraki–aka my sister and brother-in-law–it’s Salvatore in Santa Marta, Colombia.

And in the same port . . . Atlantico assisting Mosel Ace into the dock.

From Seth Tane . . . Alaska Mariner in Portland on the Columbia . . . river, that is.

And the next few from Fred Trooster and Jan Oosterboer and taken in Amazonehaven section of the port of Rotterdam less than a week ago . . . the giant Thalassa Elpida assisted into the dock by FairPlay 21.  The two smaller boats are the line handlers.

Click here for a post I did four years ago showing FairPlay 21 nearly capsizing.

Tailing the giant is Smit Ebro.

Rounding today out . . . it’s W. O. Decker, Viking, and Cheyenne . . . before the tugboat race in September 2010.

Thanks to Fred, Seth, and Maraki for these photos.

Relief Crew 19

. . . comes from the same source as Relief Crew 17, Seth Tane, whose most recent work is called Sea Train.  Back in the summer of 2014, Blue Marlin brought in a dry dock named Vigorous–the largest in the US.  It came on the back of Blue Marlin from ZPMC.  That dry dock is now working, and below you see its current load, USNS T-AH-19 Mercy.  Yes, mercy!!  Here are some previous iterations of Mercy.

Photo by Seth Tane, although I tinkered with it a bit.

More Mercy here.

Click here (and scroll) to see sister hospital vessel Comfort in a post I did five years ago.

 

People Movers 4 and More

Spirit of America . . . operates as an icon among icons.

I need to force myself to look hard to see the obvious differences between Spirit and S. I. Newhouse, and others.

Recently, though, Spirit has intruded into my photos more than any other one of the ferries.

Molinari . . .

John F. Kennedy and Spirit . . .

Either Newhouse or Barberi . . .

Positively identified as Newhouse.

And this is the old terminal, actually called Battery Maritime Building and unofficially the Governors Island ferry terminal today.  And how’s the progress on its roof?  What’s going on there?  Read all about it here and here. Glass boxes seem currently in vogue in NYC.

Click on the image below to see Battery Maritime Building and more of the sixth boro almost a century ago.

For info on all the classes of Staten Island ferries, present and past, click here.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, except the nighttime photo by Seth Tane.

And finally . . .  here’s a bowsprite image used in a marinelink.com article without credit!  And by bowsprite’s report, she’s received no response from marine link.com when she’s contacted them about . . . crediting her art.  Hmmmm…  See her original published image from four years earlier here.

 

 

Relief Crew 17

aka Blue Marlin‘s Vigorous cargo, with all photos and most text by Seth Tane, whose painting site has long been linked to this blog AND who took the photos of the sixth boro during the 1970s and ’80s that he and I collaborated on last year in the 10-post series I called “sixth boro fifth dimension.”  By the way, the dry dock will be the largest in the US, built by ZPMC.  Do you recall hearing of them here and in other posts like here and here?

 On the bow, Foss’ Pacific Escort.  On port, Tiger 9.  The view is from the St. John’s Bridge.

On the stern is Shaver’s Sommer S.   That’s the city of Portland upper left.

Ahead is the BNSF drawspan. They’re going to crane lift a few bits and pieces at the Vigor Swan Island shipyard (Click here for photos I took there last year.) and then transit back under the bridges to a deep hole off terminal 4 to float off the dock where they have the required 50′ draft.

Here’s the side view.  Recall that it was Blue Marlin that returned a damaged USS Cole from Yemeni waters.

Many thanks to Seth Tane for these photos.  Click here for another look at his painting.

 

Adventures in Fueling 1

Hawsepiper Paul is writing about this subject all along, as you might expect since he lives most of his days on a bunker barge.

Indulge me a bit as I elaborate on these adventures, as captured in photos by Tony A, starting with this one. When does a New York port of registry seem out of place?

I’d say when it’s painted onto a vessel never or rarely seen in New York, and of course I know that with flags of convenience . . . anything is possible with arcane finagling.

To appear to digress a little bit more, Marcus G Langseth is to 2014 as Robert G Conrad was to –say– 1980.  Conrad is a photo I copied from Seth Tane‘s archives a little over a year ago when I did the “fifth dimension” series on the sixth boro.

Langseth is currently working off Atlantic City, one of its nearer peregrinations.

Anyhow, about two weeks ago Tony A and Patrick Sky got to deliver fuel to this international wanderer.

A little over an hour later, Patrick Sky, feeling much lighter, pulls away from this dock underneath Throgs Neck  (which autocorrect insists should be spelled “throb’s neck,” but that would take us into adventures in spell auto correcting, which I’d much rather avoid.

Many thanks to Tony A and to Seth Tane for use of these photos.   Happy scientific gallivanting for LDEO, Marcus G Langseth named for this Tennessee-born earth scientist.

 

From the Line Locker 17

Here was 16, and I’m asking again my questions about the last foto in that post . . . .

So here is this installment’s odds and ends.  First . . . in the second minute of Woody Allen’s 1979 movie Manhattan . . . there’s this clip.  Can anyone identify?

And . . . a foto taken not quite a thousand nautical miles from the sixth boro quite a while ago by a jaunty mariner who can’t be too careful . . . it’s LT-805 General Winfield Scott towing the IX-514 that later turned up in the sixth boro.  I’ve no idea if the HLT towed here remains local as of this writing.

And finally . . . another set from Seth Tane taken in New York harbor in the late 1970s/early 80s . . . it’s Harwich-built 1890s Thames sailing barge Ethel, 84′ loa.  According to former owner Capt. Neal E. Parker, the vessel, built originally as a linseed carrier and brought across the Atlantic for the 1967 World’s Fair in Montreal, was haunted.   “She was fighting to die,” he said, and after an unsuccessful attempt as a charter vessel in downeast Maine, she returned to New London, where around 1992, she sank at the dock and waited happily to be dismembered and removed by a clamshell crane.

I’d love to hear more about Ethel from anyone who saw her back 30 years ago.

Oh . .  and that tugboat from the Woody Allen film . . . it’s A. J. McAllister, I believe.  Click here and here for previous film tug posts.

Thanks to Seth and the jaunty mariner for use of their fotos.

Piers 2

Here was the first in this series.  The next five fotos are more of the set from the late 1970s/early 1980s from Seth Tane that I featured in the “fifth dimension” posts earlier this year.

I’d love to find more fotos like this, illustrating a line I’ve heard repeatedly, as variation on  . . . “NYC used to have huge pier fires.”  The smoke here might be wafting over from a NJ pier fires.  I’d also like to hear more about the general perception of piers at that time.

My take is that emphasis in fighting the fires was on containing them, ensuring that they didn’t spread inland.  Piers, aka covered short term warehouses, were transitioning into oblivion or another life as  containerization began to supplant break bulk cargo and moved out of these areas of the sixth boro and airplanes supplanted ocean liners.  Pier maintenance slipped and fires of a range of causes  broke out.

I’ve heard people say . . .  fires burned for weeks.

Demolition reigned.

(I’ve used this foto before.) In some cases . . . in NYC and elsewhere . . . retail areas were built.

The rest of these fotos are from September 2013.  Retail buildings,  parks and residences, businesses sprang up and continue to.  And one of those places, Pier 17 on the East River side of Manhattan is transitioning again.  Bravo to the Demanes for holding out, as Howard Hughes promises to “re-energize” the area.

Pier 57 on the Hudson River side is the venue for a similar makeover.  What was just a plan a few months back is happening now.

Here’s the interior of Pier 57 a few days ago.

You might recall the Nomadic Museum not far from here . . . nine years ago already.

OK, this is a wandering post.  Partly, I wanted to tell a story I heard last week from someone who fought these pier fires thirty years ago.   He related that one aspect of fighting these fires was removing “fuel.”  In some cases what would burn in these long-smoldering blazes was cargo, which would be pushed into the river.  His example was clothing, mens’ dress shirts.  Into the river whole skids of them would go.   And then, as soon as was possible,  many would be fished out . . . because to let them sink would just add to the pollution in the harbor and be wasteful.  I don’t know how common this would be, and I know nothing of the attitude of the merchandise owners or insurers  . . .  The piers were then a very different world.

Thanks to Seth for sharing these fotos.  My apologies if I’ve rendered any story inaccurately.  I’d love to see more of this type of foto and hear more stories.