Retro Sixth Boro 68

I really enjoy putting together this monthly feature, opening the archives from a decade back to see what I did and saw.  I just happened to walk past South Street Seaport that morning and caught Lettie G. Howard returning from repairs in Maine.  See more from the set here.  She turned 130 in the Great Lakes this year.

The 1977 McAllister Sisters continues to carry that only name she’s ever had.  Two changes, though, are she’s lost the upper wheelhouse and she’s moved to Baltimore.

It’s the time of year for clamming in the sixth boro.  I’ve not seen Dutch Girl yet this year, although I believe I spotted Eastern Welder . . . the nearer boat.

The 1997 Ever Decent was scrapped in Alang in 2020;  the 2012 Evening Star has become Jordan Rose and continues to operate through the sixth boro.

This Mount Saline in Port Newark has been replenished several times, and its granules may have kept you safely on the road.

The 1963 Crow, high in the water here, would never again move on its own power and was scrapped in 2015.

These two Thornton boats–Gage Paul and Bros— are gone as well, one scrapped and one growing into undersea habitat deep in a Caribbean trench and will likely never be seen again.

The 1951 Twin Tube here squeezes in between the pier and Balder as Balder discharges more Chilean salt.  More on the surprising contents of Balder‘s belly here. She may now be laid up as Ventura in West Africa.  Check out the harbor supply boat on her mission that day here.   Twin Tube continues to operate in the boro.   

I don’t know what has become of the 1954 Ticonderoga;  she may still be behind Prall’s Island.

I don’t have any updates on this government boat, said to date from 1929.

The 1966 Patrick Sky has long left the boro.  Summit Europe is now Myra and is anchored near Istanbul.  Indeed, the sixth boro is connected to the rest of the watery parts of the planet.

If you want to breeze back through the entire month, click here.  And I do hope you enjoy these glances in the rearview as much as I do.

Happy December.

 

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 Pralls 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.