Canal Tug Project E

Albert Gayer’s photos beckon us back, with this well-known livery and the big white M on a black stack.  Mary Moran was built in Beaumont TX in 1941 and was called Mary Moran from 1947 until 1974.  Questions I’d have is about the voyages:  how far into salt water would she go and same  . . .  in the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence.    Note the Texaco star on the barge house.  Are there photos of her in the Welland Canal?

Seaval was launched in 1950 in New Orleans, and changed hands three times in two years, becoming Seaval in 1952.  She kept that name for about a decade.  Eventually she was owned by Purves as Anna Marie Altman, who scrapped her in 2021.  There must be lots of photos of her working on the Great Lakes. She’s pushing barge Pittston.

Marie S. Moran was built at the same Beaumont TX Bethlehem Steel shipyard as Mary Moran, just six years earlier.  In 1961 or 1962, she was sold to Sierra Leonian interests, renamed Afpet (African Petroleum) 5.  Note she appears to be getting some repainting on the wheelhouse.  There must be many more photos of her on the Great Lakes, since she likely had the same range as the younger Mary Moran.  How about a photo of the two of them crossing?

How about this beauty, with what appears to be a wood superstructure?

My question is this:  is this the 1914 boat by the name Clayton P. Kehoe or the 1943?  My money is on the 1914 boat, which carried that name from 1968 until 1971;  recall that Gayer lived until 1976, so he could have taken this photo.  Also, the 1943 boat had this name for only a year or less and looks quite different in the photo in the 1943 link. Interestingly, this boat carried several Moran names as well as Dauntless No. 5

in its lifetime and was built at the same Ferrysburg MI yard as Urger.

William J. Moran is a Moran name used at least twice, for a 1916 boat (which foundered in the late 1930s) as well as a 1938.  My money says this is the 1938 boat, which was built at Defoe in Bay City MI.  Eventually, she may have become Anne Moran and Eklof’s Yankee, which was scrapped in 1993.   Here she’s pushing tank barge Seaboard 38.

Recall that the Moran story, told so well in the 1956 book Tugboat by Eugene F. Moran and Louis Reid, begins with Thomas Moran, an immigrant kid in Frankfort NY in the vicinity of today’s lock E-19.  That 1956 book is an excellent read.

That was a digression from this last photo for today . . . Sheila Moran, pushing Barrett No. 2.   Two boats carried this name, twice very briefly and another launched in 1941, which would carry the name until 1975 (with a very brief interruption.  So this is the 1941 boat, also built in Beaumont TX. The 1939 boat carried the name Catherine Moran for most of its career on the Barge Canal from 1947 until 1960, and has appeared on this blog several times.  A model of that boat exists at Oswego’s H. Lee White Maritime Museum.

All photos, Albert Gayer and used with permission from the Canal Society of New York, who hold a winter symposium in about a month, although it appears the website has not yet been updated.

Related question:  When did the last Moran tugboat exit the Barge Canal?

My sources include these:  http://www.tugboatinformation.com/     and   https://greatlakes.bgsu.edu/item/438169     and https://gltugs.wordpress.com/

 

Oswego Postcript

Here‘s the post that prompts this one.  The Ships of the Sea model exhibit in the William Scarborough House by far exceeded my expectations.  Reaction to one of my Virtual Tour of the Erie Canal posts suggests I do this post.  Someone could likely confirm the date of this unattributed photo.  I can tell you the place . . . lock E-12, upbound. *

I believe this is the 1939 Sheila Moran.

If you read Birk’s summary of the Sheila, she became the Catherine in 1947, right after Moran acquired her,  and worked by that name until 1960. Might this have been Sheila‘s first and maybe only trip up?  I’d love to know how many tug/fuel barge units Moran operated on the canal.  Here’s a model I saw in the H. Lee White Maritime Museum a few years ago of her as Catherine.  Given her location in the canal corridor, her USN name might have been more appropriate, Canasetego.

Here’s the label that goes with the model.

Re-reading this, I decided to look up William H. Leighton, the model maker.  Unfortunately, Mr. Leighton died in 2017.

I’m putting this post up to follow on yesterday’s end of the first of two virtual Erie Canal tours.  I’m hoping to hear from more folks who were paying attention to canal traffic long before I was. Maybe someone from the H. Lee White?   The painful irony for me is that I lived near the canal from the mid-1950s until the late 1960s, but somehow my eyes were directed elsewhere until the late 1990s, when I first traveled on it.

*Group sourcing . . . it’s a thing!  Four different readers have already corrected me.  Thx all.   It’s lock E-8 and the unit’s downbound.  Furthermore, credit goes to the Gayer Collection, another great source for vintage NYS photos.