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Zee Bart periodically sends me photos from the North Sea and adjoining ports. A few months back he sent these, and I’ve filed them until now. These photos illustrate what can be done with old work boats.
Here’s what Zee Bart writes: “The old tug here is Grada, a 1927 tug with a Stork engine. Dutch pilots are using Grada to train not only for propulsion but also as supplement to the vessel’s movement/thrust capacity. Tender 1 is a 1954-build stand-by safety vessel. I took these photos in Amsterdam in the Westhaven, opposite of the Suezhaven.”
Here’s more info on Grada. If you don’t read Dutch, paste the text into a translation site and get the particulars there. Here’s more info on Tender 1.
Many thanks to Zee Bart for these photos and explanation. I hope you find it as interesting as I do to see how things are done elsewhere. He has a blog called uglyships.com I’ve mentioned before . . . a wholly subjective, unscientific look at some unusual vessels.
Repurposing vessels is certainly not unique to this example. For previous tugster posts about second lives, click here.
Quick post today, almost on time. I’m resting up after travels, reunions, summits, setbacks, ravines, tech glitches that turned out to be excessive cookie of the electromagnetic sort, and . . . more.
I took all these Lyons, NY photos in the past few weeks, although I missed all the excitement of the sixth boro, including a few CMA CGM boats . . . Magellan this morning. If any of you got photos, please get in touch.
Tug Syracuse may be looking for a captain. Contact me if you’re looking for a tugboat.
More on all this soon.
Happy to be back . . . WVD.
In six days, the gates along the NYS Canal system will be staffed and lifting/lowering vessels across the state. This is the third in a series of posts about the vessels that have worked to keep the canals functioning.
Not all these vessels, like Wards Island below, remain; it’s now over 50′ under surface of salt water on Hempstead Reef, scuttled. The bow of the tug here, Syracuse, does continue to work as she approaches her 90th birthday.
Below you see the 88-year-old tugboat Syracuse towing a group of canal vessels late in the season back in 2014.
Tender #1, along with most of the other tenders, are now in their 10th decade.
Ditto #9.
Curvaceous boats are out, and state-of-the-art boxy ones are in.
Boats like Waterford approach their eighth decade.
Grand Erie and Urger, both inactive, have been featured here many times.
And boxy, mostly nameless replacements have replaced them.
Urger here exits the lower side of Lock 17 in Little Falls as the sun illuminates the chamber.
All photos, WVD, who salutes the crews who operate these boats, even the finicky old ones. If you’re sailing the canal this summer and see these boats and crews, give a wave but also give them wide berth, as they diligently work to keep the waterway open.
Of course, if you need a guide, check out my virtual tours based on my boat transits and my one bike trip.
August can be hazy, and it appears that some August days in 2010 were, as below when Colleen McAllister towed dredge spoils scow GL 501 out and Brendan Turecamo (?) moved Bouchard barge B.No. 260 westbound in the Kills. Colleen has now traveled from sun to ice out to the Great Lakes, where the 1967 4300 hp tug is currently laid up. Brendan is alive and well and working in the sixth boro.
Kimberly Poling, then in a slightly different livery than now, pushed Noelle Cutler in the same direction. Both still work the waters in and out of the sixth boro.
These days I just don’t spend much time near the sixth boro at dusk, but here Aegean Sea pushes a barge northbound in the Upper Bay. Aegean now works the Massachusetts coast, and I recall she’s made at least one trip back to the Hudson since 2013.
On a jaunt on the lower Delaware, I caught Madeline easing the bow of Delta Ocean into a dock. The 2008 4200 hp Gladding Hearn tug is still working in the Wilmington DE area. Delta Ocean, a 2010 crude carrier at 157444 dwt, almost qualifies as a VLCC. She’s currently in Singapore.
Madeline is assisted here by Lindsey, the 60′ 1989 Gladding Hearn z-drive boat rated at 2760 hp.
Duty towed a barge downstream near Wilmington.
Recently she has sold to South Puerto Rico Towing and Boat Services, where the 3000 hp tug is now called Nydia P. I’d love to see her in SPRT mustard and red colors.
I traveled from the sixth boro to Philadelphia as crew on 1901 three-masted barkentine Gazela. In upper Delaware Bay, we were overtaken by US EPA Bold and Brandywine pushing barge Double Skin 141. Gazela, like other mostly volunteer-maintained vessels, is quiet now due to covid, but check out their FB page at Philadelphia Ship Preservation Guild. US EPA Bold, now flying the flag of Vanuatu and called Bold Explorer, is southwest of Victoria BC on the Salish Sea. She was built in 1989 as USNS Bold. Brandywine, a 2006 6000 hp product of Marinette WI, has today just departed Savanna GA.
Getting this photo of the barkentine, and myself if you enlarge it, was a feat of coincidence and almost-instant networking, the story I’ll not tell here.
On a trip inland, I caught Tender #1 pushing an ancient barge through lock E-28B. I believe Tender #1 is still in service.
From a beach in Coney Island one morning, I caught Edith Thornton towing a barge into Jamaica Bay on very short gatelines. Edith is a 104′ x 26 1951-built Reading RR tug that passed through many hands. currently it’s Chassidy, working out of Trinidad and Tobago.
Here’s another version I shot that morning. For even more, click here.
The mighty Brangus assisted dredge Florida. Back in those days, the channels of the sixth boro were being deepened to allow today’s ULCVs–like CMA CGM T.Jefferson— to serve the sixth boro. If I’m not mistaken, Brangus has been a GLDD tug since it was built in 1965. Currently she’s in the Elizabeth River in VA.
Here she tends the shear leg portion of a GLDD dredging job. See the cutterhead to the left of the helmeted crew?
On another hazy day, a light Heron heads for the Kills. The 1968-built 106′ x 30′ tug rated at 3200 hp was sold to Nigerian interests in 2012. I’d love to see her in her current livery and context.
Java Sea resurfaced in Seattle as part of the Boyer fleet and now called Kinani H, seen here on tugster just a month ago. The 110′ x 32′ tug was launched in 1981 as Patriot.
And finally . . . probably the only time I saw her, crewboat Alert. She appears to be a Reinauer vessel.
All photos, WVD, from August 2010. If you want to see an unusual tugster post from that month, click here.
For some unusual August 2010 posts, click here.
How many locks have you noticed since Lockport?
Actually, there are none. The entire 60-mile stretch with all the lift bridges is at a same level, 513′ above sea level. And adjacent to lock 32, is a sign of contemporary water use, a kayak park.
The Pittsford Canal Shop lies west of the village.
The village features some fine examples of preservation and adaptive reuse. Note beyond the replica packet boat Sam Patch, named for a local daredevil, is a converted silo complex. A memory of my childhood is summer Saturday night with a truckload of pickles, some of which I’d picked, for the Forman’s piccalilli plant.
Several places along this trip already I’ve pointed out that the adjacent land is lower than water level. This is especially true east (actually SE) of Pittsford on a location called the Great Embankment, and area where–to avoid locks–the canal water is carried on an embankment over Irondequoit Creek. This is risky, and breaches have occurred. Beside and below the embankment is the hamlet of Bushnell’s Basin, a transshipment point in the early days before the embankment was completed. Richardson’s Canal House is located in the hamlet.
After we round the Great Embankment, we arrive in Fairport. Here excursion boat Colonial Belle makes her way westbound under the Fairport Lift Bridge, a local landmark currently closed for repairs. Colonial Belle has the distinction of having arrived in this part of the canal on her own bottom via the Panama Canal from the West Coast US.
Enjoy the beautiful pre-0700 morning in Fairport.
In my experience, this stretch of the canal gets lots of use at almost all hours.
Signage helps the traveler see what is no longer here, what led to a here being here.
Commuters use the less-traveled, economy connector between Fairport and Macedon.
Some schoolkids were very enthusiastic as we exit lock E-29 in Palmyra. I’ve been told by a reliable source that lock E-29 power house used to supply power to both lock 29 and 30, since the Barge Canal dates to a time before the national power grid. The area near the lock includes a park where you can see a reconstructed 19th century canal change (not chain) bridge, where mules towing barges would change from one side of the canal to the other. Evidence of three-arch stone Ganargua Creek Aqueduct is also right near the lock. And, in town, a short walk from Port of Palmyra marina, is a set of five museums referred to as Historic Palmyra.
Palmyra plays a role in a book focusing on the transmission of spiritual ideas along the Erie Canal, Heaven’s Ditch, by Jack Kelly. Not far from here were the places that catapulted Joseph Smith, the Fox sisters, and more into the spotlight. The canal itself served as a conduit for religious ideas, social movements, trade goods, and of course many immigrants. And this part of the canal is sometimes referred to as the “burnt-over district” because of all the spiritual movements stemming for here.
East of Palmyra a spillway captures the overflow form the canal, forming Ganargua Creek, aka Mud Creek, a place that played a wet role in my childhood.
Port Gibson, aka Wide Waters, one of the many ports along the Erie Canal, is Ontario County’s only footprint on the Erie Canal.
The canal into Newark gets quite narrow, as you see with Urger eastbound. Route 31 runs between the bank and that farm. And again, driving on 31, you could have no sense that a major waterway can be found below that bank.
Here’s roughly the same location on a very cold morning about four months later.
HR Pike headed through this stretch with brewing tanks from China for Rochester’s Genesee Brewing Company.
Tugboats like HR Pike above and Margot below need telescoping wheelhouses and ballasted barges in order to to squeeze beneath bridges like this one in Newark.
East of town, we get to lock E-28B, where a tender is pushing a deck barge eastbound.
Before we leave Newark, a town of 9000 today, down from 12,000 in 1960, have a look here and here at some of the history of the town. For a few years, the Mora automobile was made here, until it went bankrupt. Looking back on the transit we’ve made so far, Rochester once made automobiles as well, including the Cunningham, a 1920 model of which is now in Jay Leno’s mega-garage. And going back even farther all the way to Lake Erie, Buffalo was the home of Pierce Arrow, many models of which can be seen in the Buffalo Transportation Pierce Arrow Museum. Pierce began making bird cages, then bicycles, and then automobiles. One of two Moras still extant can be seen in Norwich NY.
And maybe someone can comment on why there is no E-31 and E-28 has a part A and a part B?
Some Newark photos, thanks to Bob Stopper.
Here are previous posts in this series. Other titles with the word hulls can be found here.
I’ve taken all these photos since the start of 2019. The one below is a leap forward: that’s my first view of the 1912 hull of the oft-mentioned tug I know as Grouper. This might be the year of destiny for this 107-year-old boat, although I’ve thought that many times before. If plans are to emerge from the foundry of all possibilities, this is the time to forge them.
A decade and a half younger at 90 years young, Kentucky illustrates the draft on these tugs.
Tender #1 will also be 90 years in service this year.
Fairchild is the youngster in this set . . . launched in 1953 at Roamer Boat in Holland. MI
And finally, I don’t believe this is the 1938 Kam. But what boat is this? And why are those square openings in the hull just above the waterline? And is this the Purvis scrapyard?
All photos by Will Van Dorp, in Lyons NY and the Soo.
Here from Lock E-28A, Bob Stopper’s photo of Canal Corp’s efforts to get the Canal open for season 200!
The rest of these photos come from Jan van der Doe, starting with Sandra Mary, 1962, in McNally colors and built by Russel-Hipwell at Owen Sound in 1962.
W. N. Twolan, also 1962 built, alongside Menier Consol.
At the end and off the stern of W. N. Twolan, it’s the last side-wheeler ferry to operate on the Great Lakes, PS Trillium, launched in 1910. To see Trillium after a 1975 refit, click here.
In what I first thought was an unusual military dazzle pattern is actually a 1966 Davie Shipbuilding former cargo vessel that’s been reborn as a floating dry dock. Click here for Menier Consol transporting pulpwood.
Last but not least, it’s William Rest, 1961. Toronto Dry Dock is one of so many places I need to visit.
Many thanks to Bob and Jan for these photos.
Besides larger tugboats like Urger, the Canal has a fleet of nearly identical smaller ones called dredge tenders, or usually just “tenders” like the unidentified one to the left in the photo below.
Here’s a set: Tender #1
Tender #3 stern and
bow and
at work moving Urger out of dry dock.
Tender #4 in February 2014, and
tender #4 after being electrified, and
at work in Utica this summer.
Tender #6.
Tender #7 summer and
bow in winter, with an unidentified tender (registry at MB 5900??) and tender 4 in the distance.
Tender #9 profile and
three fourths.
Tender #10 on the hard and
assisting a dredge.
Tender with identifier ending in 0209,
. .. 0308
. . . 0313 aka Dana?
Dana again.
Again, I need to dig into the history of this class of Canal vessel. What number was this?
and why is it here? How many others are there?
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
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