Fruits of Preservation 3

Here were the first two installments of this series.  And what prompts this post is the news yesterday about a $200 million structure in the assembly stages just four years ago.  Click on the image below to see the post I did just four years ago.

It will be scrapped as announced yesterday here.  The physical disassembled parts will be sold as will portions of it non-fungible tokens (NFTs), whatever they are;  I can’t quite understand them even after reading this.  Doesn’t that sound like eating your cake and still having it?

You can’t save everything . . . as the next two photos from Tony A show . . . relative to the 1907 Pegasus. For comparison, check out Paul Strubeck’s thorough cataloging of the many lives of Pegasus through the many years. 

Here’s the engine that powered Pegasus for many years, originally from Landing Ship Tank, LST 121 , which itself lived only three years before being scrapped and the engine transplanted into Pegasus.

The next two photos come thanks to Steve Munoz.  The 1945 USS Sanctuary (AH-17) looked shabby here in Baltimore harbor in 1997;  it last until 2011, when it was scrapped in Brownsville, TX, then ESCO and now SteelCoast. 

Another photo from Steve shows SS Stonewall Jackson, a Waterman LASH vessel in the Upper Bay;  note the Staten Island ferries off the stern.    Scroll through and see Jackson on the beach in Alang in 2002.  Tug Rachel will arrive in Brownsville with Lihue, a very smiliar LASH vessel within a week;  she’s currently approashing the strait between Mexico and western Cuba.

Here’s a photo I took of the beautiful NS Savannah;  a recent MARAD public comment period on what should be done with her ended less than a month ago;  I’m not sure when the results will be publicly commented on.   

Sometimes preserved vessels change hands, as is the case with the 1936 Eagle, another photo from Steve Munoz taken in 1992.  

More on this tomorrow.  Many thanks to Tony and Steve for use of these photos.

Ship preservation is tough and costly.  Turning an almost-new metal structure into NFTs . . . just mind boggling.

 

 

 

Whatzit 36

Thanks to a friend, I learned this morning what this is.  But I’ll give you an opportunity until the end of this post to ponder it as I did.

I’m guessing that since I’ve been paying attention to other soon-to-happen non-routine events in the harbor like the loading of Peking (more on that at the end of this post too) and the raising of the NYWheel legs, I completely missed this one until yesterday afternoon when I just happened to be walking to an appointment near Richmond Terrace.  Yes, I ALWAYS carry my camera, because in NYC, you never know what you are going to see in any of the six boros.

When I saw that it was DonJon equipment, I thought these might be additional structural members to be lifted into Rockefeller University’s River Campus.  After all, it was only about a year ago that preliminary structures were lifted into place over there, here and here.

Notice the curves and the staircases?

And the tow moved up toward the North–not the East–River.

So thanks to my friend Hank Beatty, those ARE structural members for something called “The Vessel,” unveiled months ago, a large assemblage of public art to be erected over at the Hudson Yards area of Midtown.  Click here for the speeches on the event of the unveiling back in September 2016:  2500 steps mounting 16 stories . . . billed as the Hudson’s Eiffel!  And the Hudsonside Midtown already has a pyramid!!

So here’s the update of Peking.  Now plans are for it to be loaded in early June onto Combi Dock III, not the identical Combi Dock I as I had been led to believe earlier.  So, put that on your calendars . . .  Thanks to T. V. for that update.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.