Gone!

This is the third of three digressions before getting on with the account of my trip west.

The saga of SS Binghamton started in 1904,

and I last saw it from land on January 6, 2017, when demolition was said to have started.  Demolition had started but defined as “asbestos abatement” by the alien looking figures clustered near the tender and the stack.

As a relative newcomer in the sixth boro, I first set foot on the ferry in 2011, when some thought a chance still existed to save her or parts of her.  I’ve also been holding off doing this post in hopes that more photos of the demolition process would surface.  I hope I can still do another post if such photos emerge.  I would have been there, but I was on my trip west.

The next two photos I took on July 16 from the water, the last it turns out.

 

Paul Strubeck took the photo below as he passed by about 10 days later when the stack had just been removed . . . as in a decapitation.

Only a few days later, Glenn Raymo took the next two shots from the Walkway over the Hudson, rubble going up the river.

 

Here’s a TV commercial once intended to attract patrons to the now gone restaurant.

Thanks to Paul and Glenn, more of whose work is available here.

 

 

Small Craft 15

Hats off to the small boats that work all year round . . . crew boats,

patrol boats,

fishing boats,

line boats,

pilot boats,

dive boats,

more fishing boats,

more crew boats,

government boats,

more —soon to face major cuts--government boats

more line and boom boats,

and here’s a special . . . a historic life boat, long atop Binghamton, which is still intact as far as I know, and a bit longer ago had

guys in hazmat suits doing the last ever lifeboat drill aboard the 112-year-old condemned ferry.

And finally, of course there’s the New York Media Boat. 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who gives a hat tip to all the crews in small boats on the big waters.