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She powered herself away from the Fort Schuyler dock for most likely the final time. Click here for all the previous posts I’ve done on this soon-to-be-replaced training ship. Her replacement is already in the water in Philly for fitting out, sea trials . . . .
This morning Ellen and Marjorie pulled her away from the dock as a number of cadets waited
in the rain. Cadets and alums traded stories.
On many departures, she’d be rotated and pointed westbound on the East River, but today
she ducked under Throngs Neck Bridge, past Fort Totten, and
made for the western Long Island
lighthouses.
All photos, shortly ago, WVD.
What’s happening at this bridge?
Approaching on what appears to be a wooded river is an antiquated cargo vessel.
Know this sylvan location?
Might this be a not-so-obscure location referred to as the UES,
the Upper East Side of Manhattan? That certainly appears to be a section of the river campus of Rockefeller University . . .
Of course, this is the non-river but a tidal strait referred to as the East River, where the first pre-fabricated portions of the new campus were lifted in place only six years ago here.
And of course this is Empire State VI, launched as a cargo ship in 1961, converted on the Great Lakes to be a training ship, and serving as such for SUNY Maritime for over 30 years now, and departing on her last summer sea term for that school. See here.
Old as this training ship is, she turned heads along the East River as she headed out for sea. Many past departures and returns and shifts have been the basis of posts on this blog in recent years. I’d love to see photos of her transiting the Welland Canal and Saint Lawrence back 30+ years ago after conversion to training ship.
Happy, safe, and instructive cruise, cadets. As of posting today, she’s off the east end of Long Island with next port of call–if my info is current–Philly. I wonder if there will be a sail-past of the new NSMV at the Shipyard there . . . . It would make a great photo op, with the old and the new.
All photos, any errors, WVD.
Welcome back from Summer Sea Term this year. An FDNY boat provided a water display welcome on the far side of Governors Island, but my vantage point, as suggested by a SUNY grad, was Brooklyn Heights. This was the view from the Esplanade and Pierrepont. To see my perspective on previous occasions, click on the tag above. From the Heights, the overcast and almost precipitating morning dimmed the many gantry cranes in the distant port.
When she was delivered in 1962 as a break bulk freighter SS Oregon, she would have been typical of freighters on the high seas. Since 1990, returning aboard from summer sea terms has been a rite of passage for thousands of SUNY grads. I hope I have my dates right; if not, I’m sure you’ll correct me.
Passing the ferry terminals at the tip of Manhattan must have looked quite different back 30 years ago; the sight from 100 years ago would have differed dramatically. . .
as would any FDNY or NYPD escort vessels.
Back then, in the foreground, there would be commercial activity and warehouses, not
parkland with
an ever-growing cover of urban forest
almost obscuring the training ship as it passes beneath the Brooklyn Bridge.
Welcome back.
All photos, WVD, with thanks to Steve Munoz to try out this view.
Another training ship came through here just a week or so ago. Here are a few more from other maritime academies.
Here are previous posts on the vessel. This past June, Steve Munoz was in Scotland when the training ship traveled up and then later down the Clyde. All photos come from Steve.
TS ES VI arrived in Scotland after stops in San Juan and around the Mediterranean.
On the Clyde, escort was provided by Svitzer tugs Milford, Anglegarth, and Ayton Cross.
They pass checkerboard-patterned Port Glasgow Beacon.
It turns out that near the Beacon, this gentleman–Fergus Monk–has a Clydeside body shop, from which he takes leave to wave banners and take photos whenever a ship passes. Here the banner greets paddle steamer Waverley.
PS Waverley looks quite inviting here. Want to book?
What surprises me about the Clyde is the relative rural character of the hills alongside.
Steve’s guide here is none other than tug engineer Tommy Bryceland, occasional contributor on tugster. Greetings to Tommy.
After a brief sojourn in Glasgow that included meetings with City of Glasgow College, a marine programs partner, the training ship was escorted down the mighty Clyde
and out to sea.
Many thanks to Steve Munoz for these photos and this info. I hope I’ve interpreted his photos and notes correctly.
Here was the previous 2017 return, before the venerable vessel was called out for extraordinary duty in early September assisting in relief efforts after the devastating hurricanes in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico.
I caught these photos of the classic 565′ steamer–launched in 1962 as SS Oregon–from Roosevelt Island on a rainy blustery morning.
She ran eastward
before disappearing around the bend at Hell Gate.
All photos here by Will Van Dorp. Click here for a press release from SUNY Maritime. For more info, click here to read the workboat.com article.
Click here for previous SUNY sea term posts. I’m grateful to SUNY for an invitation to ride along from the Upper Bay to the SUNY Maritime campus yesterday. What a homecoming this must be for the cadets, and their friends and families.
Families and friends were already there off Staten Island.
For cadets–aka college students–the sense of preparing for a bright future must be palpable,
a reward for study and practice.
And the welcome comes from strangers all along these last few miles. Airports and airplanes just don’t afford this grand arrival.
Those were construction workers at Rockefeller University’s River Campus above, and ConEd workers below.
Small boats followed us.
Folks at the Vernon C. Bain Maritime facility paid attention.
Workers on the Whitestone stopped to watch.
NYPD came to greet and
be greeted. “Selfie taking” gives a whole new meaning to turning one’s back on a subject.
McAllister’s Ellen and
Amy C came to greet and assist. SUNY grads work in many different industries, including the towing industry, maritime services, pilots’ associations, law enforcement, fire departments . . . and the list is much longer.
But on the SUNY Fort Schuyler campus, the welcoming is most intense.
After 17 days at sea since their last port, this one is probably the best.
All photos and sentiments by Will Van Dorp. Hats off to students, families, staff, and of course the 57-year-old ship.
After a few more catch-ups, I’ll return to the account “Go West Again.”
Day 1. May 11, 2015.
Later on Day 1
Day 37, refueling near Gibraltar.
Day 48, Belfast
Yesterday, day 92 . . . south of the 59th Street Bridge, and
cadets showing their sea legs by climbing to novel places!
Still later yesterday . . . passing alongside Roosevelt Island, and almost home.
Credits . . . Steve Munoz, Tommy Bryceland and friends, Tony Acabono, Jonathan Steinman, Laura Seeholzer, a few secret salts, a communicative kraken, and Will Van Dorp . . . in no particular order.
Click here for photos of TS Empire State departing the sixth boro in May, here for her being towed into dry dock 10 months ago, and here for her return from Summer Term back in 2010.
You saw it here back in October as well as here just almost exactly a year ago at the start Summer Sea Term 2014. More info on the itinerary here. The first five photos come thanks to Jonathan Steinman and Rand Miller.
Hell Gate does not often see vessels of this size and style. For a vessel past the half century mark, TS Empire State VI has classic lines.
Here she leaves the top end of Roosevelt Island to port.
The rest of these photos I took.
TS Empire State passing Evening Tide at U Thant Island
Williamsburg Bridge
One of the two assist tugs–I’ll include more photos of the assist tugs later–was McAllister Brothers.
The East River is spanned by eight bridges. These two are the Brooklyn and the Manhattan Bridges.
She traverses the Upper Bay,
stopping only briefly as Rosemary Miller comes alongside, before
heading through the Narrows and
out to sea. The plan to to drop the hook off Montauk overnight to do some drills before heading for Delaware Bay, the C & D Canal, the Chesapeake, and then Chareston SC before heading across the Atlantic.
There are calls for a newer training vessel for SUNY here.
Many thanks to NYMedia Boat and Sean Shipco for conveyance. Have a great summer at sea, cadets. And again, thanks to Jonathan and Rand for photos from the “east” end of the East River.
If there are eight million stories in the naked city, then there are at least 80 million perspectives, and what I love about social media is the ability to share many more of these than can otherwise be seen. Take this one . . . sent along yesterday by Jonathan Steinman. Big Allis sets the location as about a half mile north of the bridge now named for Ed Koch. And the vessel . . . the current and VI version of Empire State on the first day . . . of Summer Sea Term 2014 and not yet out of its East River home waters. Greets to all the cadets on deck enjoying the mild spring morning. Click here for the previous versions of Empire State: I II III IV V.
And tailing . . it looks like McAllister Girls.
Around midday yesterday, Empire State was here (the blue icon off St George) and not quite 24 hours later,
she’s off Montauk.
The previous photo from Jonathan–which I never shared–was this, taken in midMarch. If you’re not from the area, that’s the East River with Roosevelt Island making for a quite narrow channel. That’s Shelby (of shuttle fame) and Freddy K Miller (ever morphing) team-pushing Weeks 533 (lifter of Sully’s ditched 1549).
And if you’ve forgotten what my –and many others’ focus was in midMarch, it was
salt!
Many thanks to Jonathan for sharing these photos.
Here’s a photo I took almost four years ago of the SUNY Maritime training ship returning home from Summer Sea Term.
Actually I’m creating the mystery, but I uncreate it after the fourth foto. You might try to guess what’s happening. I put in some lovely distractors. What was happening on Coney Island this morning between 7 and 930 am? Man with red shorts, a swimmer, and tug Edith Thornton (1951, ex-Signet Defender, J. K. McLean).
SUNY Maritime’s Empire State–-all flags flying– returns from its three-month summer training cruise to the Mediterranean.
Man with red kite in the air; black spot in between.
Man with green bathing cap wades in as a brace of jetskis bobs nearby. So far, it’s all men with head gear, but
then Bowsprite approaches with camera; yellow kayaks and NYPD as background. She didn’t say, “We have you surrounded.” This could mean only one thing: click here and find out. Here’s the site for CIBBOWS.
Swimmers in green caps (warming and limbering up) did the 5 km race.
Long Island City Community Boathouse spotted, as did the jetskiers.
Cristian read the rules.
And the first wave went in, heading for the first
turn around the buoy.
The second wave (white caps) began their one-mile race to the Coney fishing pier and
back.
Bowsprite served as beach-spotter at the finish line, where here arrive the first finishers in green caps. After
five kilometers in one hour and 18 minutes it was this close.
Now the man with the kite . . . that speck was a camera. Click here and here to see Scott Dunn’s amazing photography with kite-suspended camera.
Empire State and Edith Thornton . . . their role was to bless the race with their beauty.
This was my first swim race; I plan to attend the one in November. About the Aquarium, it served as venue for registration and celebration; as we prepared there for the race in the wee hours before sunrise, I overheard some flush pinnipeds wagering their fishy breakfast on race outcomes.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
And here’s another swimming organization to learn about: Swim Across America. Recall the 2009 swim post by tugster . . . uh, me? And someone’s unconventional techniques?
tugster: a waterblog 
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