Retro Sixth Boro 58

February 2013 saw Patrick Sky still working in the boro. 

The walkway still flanked the west side of the Bayonne Bridge, which allowed images like the ones that follow. Sun Right and Suez Canal Bridge were regulars. Since then the 1993 Sun Right has been scrapped.  The 2002 Suez Canal Bridge continues to work under the name Suez Canal.   Container capacity for the two vessels comes in at 2205 and 5610, respectively. 

Winter 2013 saw these pipelines getting staged and buried across Bergen Point.  I believe they were these for natural gas, somewhat controversial at the time.  If so, it’s interesting to note the message here on “natural gas” compared with a shift in attitude that seems to be gaining traction.

It was the view of vessels rounding Bergen Point in the morning light I enjoyed the most back then. 

Let’s follow Sun Right around, here assisted by Ellen McAllister and Marjorie B. McAllister. Out below, that’s Shooters Island, Port Ivory, and Elizabethport in the distance.

 

The benefit of the lower bridge was 

proximity to the vessel and 

crew.  Obviously, that proximity was also its drawback; the global fleet increased in size and air draft with the obvious impediment to container ship traffic in the boro.  

I recall the crew below seemed eager to have their photos taken.  I wonder where these guys are, a decade on.   See the whole series differently here. 

All photos in early February 2013. 

Retro Sixth Boro 42 B

The bridge photo at the end of part A was of Kristin Poling, right after she’d been taken out of service.  In her long life from 1934 until 2011, she carried the nameplates of Poughkeepsie Socony, Mobil New York, and Captain Sam, before taking on her last name. 

Here’s a shot from the bow, and

here from near the stern looking forward along the catwalk.

This is one of my all-time favorite photos.  I wonder where this Coastie is today.

A decade ago, Maurania III worked in the harbor, here alongside the venerable Chemical Pioneer and

here muscling Suez Canal Bridge around Bergen Point.

APL Coral was scrapped in 2017, I believe.  Anyone know what those bolts of green fabric are?  By their location, I’d guess an anti-piracy measure.  Nicole Leigh continues to work.

DEP’s Newtown Creek was in her last days;  currently she’s a dive destination in Pompano Beach, FL known as Lady Luck.

Lygra (1979) went to Alang in 2018, after carrying that name as well as Centro America, Nornews Service, and Transfjord. 

Does anyone know where Captain Zeke has gone to?  I don’t.   If I ever did, I’ve forgotten.

Catherine Turecamo assists SN Azzurra away from a dock. The tanker seems still to be working as Augusta;  she’s also carried the names Blue Dolphin and Stena Commander.  In 2014, Catherine T. went to fresh water and, the last I knew,  became a Chicago area based John Marshall.

If you click on no links in this post except this one, you will be pleased;  it’s the legendary 1937 commuter yacht Aphrodite.  HERE is the link.  Those all-caps are intentional.

Note the raked forward portion of Maersk Murotsu, getting an assist from Kimberly Turecamo. The tanker is currently known as Ardmore Seafarer, which I have seen but not photographed in the boro.  It’s impossible to keep up . . .  hang on to that thought until the end of the post.

And let’s close out  with some busy photos, here Barbara McAllister moves a barge, East Coast follows light, and Gramma Lee T Moran assists a tanker.  Barbara is now Patsy K.

And finally, the waters here are churned up by James Turecamo, Resolute, and Laura K Moran, as well as a few tankers off to the left.

All photos, WVD, who’s astonished how much changes if not daily or monthly but surely by decade.

And about that thought I asked you hang onto:  I’m considering taking a break, a sabbatical, or as Chapter 17 of Moby Dick explains . . .  a ramadan, a term used with respect. I say this as a solicitation of advice.

 

Suez Canal Bridge

or Bridge.

Below is a photo I took in October 2011 . . .

Also from October 2011, when the bridge looked like this,

squeezing under the roadbed looked like this, and

the McAllister stern quarter escort looked like this . . .

the mighty Maurania III, that is.  Here’s the complete post I did back then.

But five and a half  years have elapsed, not without change.  So earlier this week, Suez Canal in the KVK and under the Bayonne Bridge looked like this.  See the worker above the new roadbed?

See him now?

 

So this week it was Marjorie B on the stern, and

 

Ellen forward.

 

 

I hope to be around and doing this five and a half years from now to see what there is to see.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Yesterday I mentioned the request to help the Roaring Bull ferry project, and that’s now fully funded. Thank you.   Here’s another and more somber request that you might consider, the Captain Joseph Turi Memorial fund.

Turning 80a

About a year ago this blog featured “turning 70,” with a vessel that subsequently played an unexpected role in history.

See the crewman on the bridge wing looking up?   What’s he monitoring?

Ten minutes earlier I’d caught Suez Canal Bridge nosing around a bend on E 1st Street in Bayonne.  That’s Caddell Dry Dock and Repair Shipyard over on the far side.

Six weeks ago she actually was at the north end of the Suez Canal,

and now she’s headed for a portal that turns 80 this month, the Bayonne Bridge, dedicated on November 13, 1931. For the next 46 years, vessels passing here like Suez Canal Bridge–escorted by Maurania III and Amy C McAllister–could say

they were passing beneath the longest single arch steel bridge

in the world.

In 1977 the New Gorge Bridge took that distinction from the Bayonne Bridge.  See what the New Gorge Bridge looks like here, and that was in turn eclipsed by the Lupu Bridge.

Some vessels traversing this waterway and squeezing under this arch may in fact know the Lupu Bridge.

Anyone have fotos to share of tugboats on the Huangpu in Shanghai?

Maurania III churns the waters to turn Suez Canal Bridge the 90-plus degrees into Newark Bay at Bergen Point.

By the way, the Lupu Bridge is itself no longer than longest steel arch bridge in the world, a distinction that now belongs to the Chaotienmen Bridge.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.