Chrononauts 5

Of course, there are little known gunkholes in the backwaters of the sixth boro where fossils–living and inert–float.  This one is off an inlet behind one island and concealed by another, a place easily missed, and if seen, it gives the impression of being off limits by land and too shallow by water, near the deadly bayou of Bloomfield.  But with the right conveyance and attitude, it’s feasible if you’re willing to probe.  And the fossils have names like . . .

Caitlin Rose.  I don’t know much, but built in Savannah GA in 1956?  Relentless.  She’s before my time here, but I suppose she’s the one built in Port Arthur TX in 1950.

I can’t make out all of the words here.

 

Ticonderoga is obviously playing possum. Only a month ago she doe-see-doed into the Kills with the ex-Pleon, the blue tug behind her,

a Jakobson from 1953.

Dauntless .. . built in Jakobson & Peterson of Brooklyn in 1936, was once Martha Moran.

From right to left here, Mike Azzolino was built for the USCG at Ira S. Bushey & Sons and commissioned as WYTM-72 Yankton in 1944.  Moving to the left, it’s Charles Oxman . . .

was built by Pusey & Jones in 1940 and originally called H. S. Falk., and looked like this below, which explains the unusual wheelhouse today.  She seems to have come out of that same search for new direction as David, from a post here a year ago.

The photo above I took from this tribute page. 

The small tug off Oxman‘s starboard, i don’t know.

 

 

The low slung tug that dominates the photo here is Erica, and beyond here is a Crow.

Someone help me out here?

And as far into this gunkhole as I dared to venture . . .  this one is nameless.

Oh the stories that could be told here!  I hope someone can and will.  Balladeers like Gordon Lightfoot could memorialize these wrecks in a song like “Ghosts of Cape Horn,” which inspired a tugster post here years ago.  And looking at the last photo in that old post, I see Wavertree, which leads me to this art- and detail-rich site I don’t recall having seen before.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Random Tugs 175

The first two photos–showing the newest and fastest (??) ATB to arrive in the sixth boro– were taken by Randall Fahry.

Tina Pyne is one immense mover, and Kirby 185-02 is one of two 578′ ocean going tank barges with 185,000-barrel capacity built by Gunderson Marine for Kirby.   See her christening here.

Zachery Reinauer is a Hudson River-built tug from 1971 one of the last 10 built at Matton, and she looks as good today as new!

This was taken a few seconds later, and this

as she stands by, while Haggerty Girls finesses RTC 107 into position.

An occasional sixth boro visitor, it’s Rhea I. Bouchard with B. No. 284.

 

As I began this post with another photographer’s photo, so I’ll end.  Thanks to Gerard Thornton for this rare catch of Ticonderoga assisting Pleon (?) into the Kills, possibly the last float for Pleon.     That’s also Barry Silverton in the distance.

 

Thanks to Randall and Gerard for use their photo.  All others by Will Van Dorp.

Reports of her Demise

. ..  to paraphrase Mark Twain …are highly exaggerated.

What?   . . . you ask?  Well, click on Auke Visser’s link.  You’ll see a foto of her being raised after a sinking.   Then follow through to the phrase “disposal date.”

September 2005.

Ticonderoga looks pretty good for being technically scrapped.

I took these pictures in December 2013, earlier this week.

Check Auke’s link:  she was built in Baltimore in 1954 and had sailed as Socony 9, Mobil 9, and Exxon’s Ticonderoga–her name when she ran aground and sank in 1992.