Seats of Power 2

Edda Fram runs back and forth, it seems, from shore (Scotland)  to various oil platforms in the North Sea.  Rough weather operation necessitates seats hard to fall out of.

Solomon T, once operated by Elbert Felton (shown), is a 1938 restored inside the Outer Banks fishing vessel, with seat and wheel appropriate to 1938.

MV Argyle is a ferry that operates on the Firth of Clyde.

T-ATF 172 USNS Apache has a spacious bridge.

Tug Mississippi, in service doing commercial work since 1916 (102 years!!) has a “bar stool” and a tiller.  It was repowered from steam to diesel electric in 1957.

Converted Bering Sea crabber Ocearch has wide bridge.  Here’s an article I did on their shark research program a year and a half ago.  Follow individuals of different species of shark around  the ocean in real time here.

A seat on an ATB? here’s the spacious wheelhouse of Paul T Moran.

Lake Express is a fast ferry that crosses Lake Michigan several times a day from Milwaukee to Muskegon.  One of these days, I’ll cross the lake fast.

Here’s another fast ferry, Athena,  sometimes serving Block Island.

Kaori is a 2004 tug operating in New Caledonia.

I’ll close out this post with the seat of power in the powerful Ocean Taiga.  For an article I wrote on this St. Lawrence tug, click here.

To protect the anonymity of some folks who sent along these photos, let me just give a tip of the hat to all the photographers.  Unless you send along more photos or unless I take some more, this’ll be the last in this series.  Any seats out there in strange colors?

Other People’s Fotos 20

Here was 19.

From  Towingline.com, a foto I’ve long sought:  NYC prison barge Resolution leaving the sixth boro (East River portion) on Giant 4 in 1997, assisted by ITC Towage tug Suhaili. She traveled to the UK, where she became HM Prison Weare.  It seems that less than a decade later, her use as a prison was discontinued, although I’m not sure the vessel has been scrapped.   Credit for the foto goes to Hans van der Ster and to Smit.    Currently the sixth boro is home to prison vessel Vernon C. Bain.

The next fotos–updates on T-ATF 172 Apache come compliments of Mark Helmkamp, Ocean Tug & Salvage Ship Class Manager for the Military Sealift Command.  The foto below shows the handoff of the decommissioned sub USS Philadelphia from Apache to Sioux at the former Rodman Naval Station.

Note the sub on the wire on the Pacific side of the ride.

The next two fotos show Apache towing the sub through the Miraflores Locks.   It’s rainy season at the Canal.  Many thanks to Dianne Woods-Olvera Cavness for these fotos.

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And finally, from Cape Town and thanks to Colin Syndercombe, a followup on Mighty Servant . . .  here carrying an unidentified oil rig.

And if I’ve whetted your appetite for workboats hither and yon, check out what Jed located in the BVI here.

This compilation from Will Van Dorp, who’s back in the sixth boro after a family gallivant.  For fotos, see the top 100 fotos on the Flickr show along the left margin.

T-ATF 172 USNS Apache 2

How about a quick walk-through of Apache?  Here’s part 1, if you missed it. And here and here are links to the shipyard where she was built.  The masts (main to fore) are just under 90′ and just over 60′.

Apache and sister vessels’ mission is towing and submarine support.  This is no design for towing alongside or nose-in-notch.

Here’s a slightly different view of the “fish” I posted last week.  Tally marks show instances of participation in submarine salvage and rescue exercises.

Also, an update/answer to a question in that post:  the vessel in the second foto is former USCGC Salvia, now a training hulk.  The rusty boxes foreward and abaft the stack  are fire boxes, making Salvia a “fire boat,” NOT as in one that fights fires, but rather, one where fire fighting training can happen.

Here’s a different view from yesterday’s of the bridge.  The unit foreground and right is the ECDIS, which complements the traditional paper chart/dividers approach to navigation.  Imagine on the bridge and elsewhere in the vessel equipment that didn’t exist back in July 1981, when she was delivered.

The wooden wheel surprised me, but what surprised me even more was

an indication of how responsive it could be.  As I understand it, those are degrees of heading.  Altering course two degrees to starboard takes very little turn of the wheel.

Here’s a view of the foredeck from the “walk-around,” which I assume has another name.

The “cardiac gym” is located between

the stacks.  This is the portside stack.

The afterdeck is long and open, as on an offshore supply vessel, making Apache versatile.  It can tow, but it can also replenish at sea from a helicopter hovering over the white box and

carry containers bolted down in this adjustable grid.  Each stud here (most 24″ apart) can be replaced by an eye.

Apache has a 10-ton capacity crane and

two winches, one for wire and another for synthetic line. .

Power is supplied by twin GM EMD 20-645F7B engines providing a total of 7200 hp to the Kort-nozzled 9′ diameter  controllable pitch props.

Food–shown here in the deck mess–on the vessel is supplied by the Steward department:  steward cook, cook/baker, and steward utilityman.

All fotos here by will Van Dorp.

For more fotos of Apache, click here for fotos by Rod Smith from 2010.

As I understand it, Apache will soon be leaving for the Panama Canal with a sub in tow;  Apache hands the sub off to a sibling T-ATF on the Pacific side of the Canal.  I’d love to see fotos of her traversing the Miraflores locks. . .  I’d love to go back, but . . .

Postscript to yesterday’s post, which started with a foto of ex-T-ATF 166 Powhatan (now Turkish Coast Guard Navy  Inebolu A-590):  you know that a Turkish F-4 was shot down over the Mediterranean late in June.  Guess who retrieved the jet and victims from the seabed?  Robert Ballard’s EV Nautilus and . . .   TCG Inebolu.  

Bosphorus Naval News looks to be an interesting blog, which I’ve now added to my blogroll.   A trip to Istanbul may be in my future??

Again, many thanks to MSC Public Affairs Officer Susan Melow for setting up a visit and to Apache Second Officer Michael R. Rankin for guiding the tour.

I’d still love to see some fotos from Apache’s visits to Kingston, NY, in the late 80’s and in 2000, per Harold’s comment yesterday.

T-ATF 172 USNS Apache 1

Click on the image below and you’ll see how I posted it just over five years ago.  So what do the big blue tug Powhatan below, Ellen McAllister, USCG Katherine Walker, ATB Brandywine, ATB Dublin Sea. and the Staten Island Ferry Spirit of America (as well as ferries Molinari and Marchi) all have in common?

For starters, the Menominee River in Wisconsin.   And from that, given corporate acquisitions, an “in-law” relationship exists with Fincantieri vessels including Costa Concordia as well as the caissons that’ll try to re-float her.

But closer to home, the list above was built at the same Wisconsin shipyard as seven fleet ocean tugs, four of which are active in Military Sealift Command today.  Click here for the 2012 MSC vessels poster, one fifth of which is reproduced below.  MSC operates over 100 vessels today using 5500 civilian mariners.  Civil servant mariners!!

The DonJon Marine Powhatan above has since 2008 become Inebolu A-590 of the Turkish Navy.

The Powhatan-class T-ATFs hare huge, by New York tugboat stands:   226′ loa x 42′ x 15.’

And they do long, large tows.  Here about a year ago, Apache begins to tow a decommissioned USS Nassau to join the reserve fleet  in Texas.  Click here for more context on the foto, taken from USNS Grapple, another MSC vessel that may appear on this blog soon.

Thanks to Birk Thomas, I have a few more fotos of Apache in New London.  Note the towline . . . attached to a sub in this 2010 foto, and  . . .

light in 2011.   Here’s a question I do NOT know the answer to:  Apache visited NYC before 2001, but I don’t know when.  Does anyone recall this?  Have a foto of this?

In the next post, we look inside Apache.  Next question . . . does this marlinespike seamanship have a name?  Would this have been original to this 1981 vessel?  By the way, Apache’s 31st b’day (technically d’day . . . D for delivery)   is late July.

Only the first and last fotos are by Will Van Dorp. The second and third from last are thanks to Birk Thomas.  All the others come from Military Sealift Command.   Many thanks to Susan Melow, MSC Public Affairs Officer,  for setting up a visit and to Apache Second Officer Michael R. Rankin for guiding the tour.

Click here to see Apache towing USS Forrestal.  Here she is in St. Petersburg.  Finally, here she deals with Atlantic Ocean pirates.

Finally, once again, does anyone remember when Apache visited NYC?  Is there an archive online for vessels visiting during Fleet Weeks going back to 1982?