Random Tugs 200

First, thanks to Peter Eagleton, Philip T Feeney in the 1970s.  I haven’t the heart to go see her in her current condition.

Next, Miss Ila, resplendent as a springtime cardinal!

Haggerty Girls nudging RTC 107 out of the Kills,

 

Helen Laraway passing TS Kennedy over by ConHook,

James William leaving Mister Jim over by the scows,

James E. Brown taking some rail cars past a wall of containers . . .

and finally . . . is that Durham setting up Willy Wall?  Is that what it’s still called?

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, except that first one supplied by Peter, whom I thank.

KVK Surprises 2

Surprises can be ranked in degrees.  Here was a surprise . . . people walking way up on the Bayonne Bridge back in 2011.  Ditto here I was looking into a hot tub on the stern of a scrap-carrying bunker (photo#7).

The surprises in this post emerge slowly.

This PCTC has been on this blog before, as has Kirby Moran.

That it’s called Don Juan was surprising the first time I saw it, but this line names some of its vessels after characters from opera, so Don Juan fits.

But the detail below–just forward of the radomes– blew me away.  In fact, when I took the photo, I had no idea what it was, maybe some netting, I imagined.  But a painted-on bower?  Or is it painted on . . . maybe it’s real bougainvillea?  Is there a Don Juan aboard who uses this as his love nest?  Here’s stanza XVIII from Lord Byon’s epic Don Juan Canto 1:

Perfect she was, but as perfection is
Insipid in this naughty world of ours,
Where our first parents never learned to kiss
Till they were exiled from their earlier bowers,
Where all was peace, and innocence, and bliss,[b]
(I wonder how they got through the twelve hours),
Don José, like a lineal son of Eve,
Went plucking various fruit without her leave.

Next . . . even stranger, I think.  See TS Kennedy over next to the GMD Graving Dock and Anthem of the Seas out beyond that?  Surprise?

A giraffe?!  !@#!

Maybe it’s an amusement.  Maybe it’s a stand-in for emergency drills?  I went looking and found out about Gigi.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Government Boats 22

Here was installment #21.

This foto was taken from Front Street in Stapleton, Staten Island.  The gray vessel is docked at the pier now used by Firefighter II.  What’s remarkable about this foto–I think–is that Hurricane Sandy has brought together here  (l to r) a re-purposed C5 and a repurposed C4, two old-fashioned but reborn American built ships.  Let’s take them chronologically.  The black hull is T/S Kennedy, a C4-S-66a originally built by Avondale Industries as Velma Lykes, has been activated to serve as housing for relief workers.  Thank you Mass Maritime.   The gray hull is SS Wright, a C5-S-78a originally built by Ingalls Shipbuilding as Mormacsun, was quite some time ago reconfigured as aviation (helicopter) logistics support ship T-AVB-1.

Here’s as close as I could get, and

here’s a view from the south.

RIBs are a common sight here, and

Is this the Moose boat that sank off Breezy Point back in September 2012?

And finally . . . I know Patrick Sky is not a government boat, but she was posing here yesterday with a snmall UACE vessel.

While looking at this list of MARAD design vessels, which include Wright and Kennedy, I notice E. A. Fisher, built in 1963 and donated to NYC in 1993.  Of course, I’m new on this scene, but has anyone heard of this vessel?  What became of it?

From the Line Locker 11

A line locker, in my experience, is the place on a boat where all manner of miscellaneous line and rope is kept.  It’s like the “junk drawer” in your house.  I haven’t used this title in over three years, but when I get behind and have a set of unrelated fotos, it seems a needed catergory.

So . . .  since yesterday’s post had a foto of  Indy 7, which Harold Tartell’s wonderfully detailed in a comment, I went back to fotos from two years ago that I’ve never posted.  Behold the stern of Indy 7’s mother ship, Brooklyn Navy Yard’s own CV-62, USS Independence, which as of two years ago still

languished in Bremerton, WA, next to another Brooklyn vessel, USS Constellation, the last carrier built anywhere other than Norfolk.    Indy 7 . . . behold your mother.

The next three fotos come from John Watson.  Here’s another shot of the Chinese-built Algerian corvette Soummam 937.  Here–scroll through interesting fotos of other “small navies” –are some fotos of Soummam at the shipyard in Shanghai.

Also from John, recently the Massachusetts Maritime Academy T/S Kennedy left the sixth boro after work at GMD Brooklyn.

Here’s John’s Friday morning foto of Horizon Producer, in service since 1974;  by Saturday, she was outbound for San Juan.

I took this foto Friday morning, mostly curious about the two tanks on the afterdeck.

A few weeks ago here I ran the “fish flag.”  In response, Capt. Mark Helmkamp, manager of Ocean Tug and Salvage Ship class for the Military Sealift Command wrote the following:  “I had APACHE paint the “Fish Flag” on her bridge wing in reference to the Navy ASR’s – particularly the CHANTICLEER Class that I rode as a young officer – as the T-ATFs picked up that Navy mission along with the T-ARSs when the ASRs (CHANTICLEERs and PIGEONs) were decom’d.  The Fish Flag was flown during Submarine Rescue Chamber ops – the McCann chamber – designed by Swede Momsen, [my note:  who grew up in Queens].  The ASRs used to exercise the SRC to a ‘false seat” a few times a year after laying a four-point moor using the “cloverleaf method” that preceded GPS. . .

 We also had the Fish Flag painted on the bows of the ASRs…this goes back to the SQUALUS rescue. . .

Currently, SALVOR [T-ARS-52] is eligible to paint the Fish Flag too as she has worked the SRC for training.”

The MSC poster below shows sibling vessels of Salvor.

When I visited Apache in Little Creek, I also saw Grapple ARS-53.

Grapple was involved in the recovery efforts for Egypt Air Flight 990 off Nantucket in 1999.   Click here for a complete set of missions performed by T-ARS Grasp, including the recovery of JFK Jr.’s Piper 32 and remains.

Thanks to all who contributed.

Unrelated:  Thanks to Walter Scott for sending along this obit.