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Recently I posted this a 1989 card. How about another go-round? Any guesses on dates and names?
One tug here tows another, maybe dislodging it from the ice.
Below is the whole card, date and all. Note the exact date and the publisher but not the photographer.
Dornbos, Henry J., now Urger, and now needing to be remembered. She’s still on the hard in Lysander NY. Gunderson, full name likely Gunderson Bros. dated from 1892 [or maybe 1890], built in Sheboygan and based in Grand Haven MI in 1907. One of the brothers was Gustav Gunderson, 1860 to 1933. As of 1910, she was based in Milwaukee. By 1920, she was based in Chicago. By 1925, she no longer appears in MVUS.
I recently purchased the card from David and Joan Newman here.
The Great North River Tugboat Race isn’t happening this weekend, but Waterford NY’s Tugboat Round Up will certainly be in a week. It’s been somewhat rebranded as the more manageable phrase TBR. Information about it and other upriver festivals can be found here too. For today, enjoy some photos I took at the 2013 TBR.
For example, this was my first time to see Grande Caribe heading into lock E-2; little did I know then that I would later be aboard this vessel and its sister for thousands of miles and hundreds of lockings-through. I can’t look at all the other boats along the right side of the photo and not think about all the changes and losses; of course, I also recall all the joy I felt there then and during other years.
Friday of the festival, a parade begins near the port of Albany. Dean Reinauer, with RTC 106, was getting a spin-around at the turning basin, assisted by Kathleen Turecamo. None of those vessels were part of the parade.
Governor Cleveland was, however.
Herbert P. Brake was too, here pushing HR-Bass. Brake would go on to become Rebecca Ann, and Bass became Betty D. It seems that Brake has now re-assumed its original 1992 name.
Gowanus Bay was a regular for a few years.
Among the small tugs were Iron Chief and Atlantic Hunter.
Cornell was there.
In front of Cornell were NYS Marine Highway Frances and Margot.
Back then, no TBR was complete without checking on Day-Peckinpaugh and Urger. Again, I had no idea in 2013 that I’d spend five months working on Urger or that in 2023, the future of Peckinpaugh would be so bleak.
As seen from the other side, Tappan Zee II was in the dry dock and would soon be part of the construction of the new TZ Bridge.
All photos and memories, any errors, WVD, who is currently down bound on Lake Erie about two hours behind J Arnold Witte, who will likely be at the 2023 TBR next weekend. She’s just starting through the Welland Canal as of this writing. I’ve no confirmation of that; I’m only speculating because of her timing and heading. As for me, I’m heading for Montreal, so I’ll miss the TBR.
If you want to see all the tugster photos from that year, click here.
I’m back and just in time for the last day of the year, which –as explained in previous years— in my Dutch tradition is a reflection day, a time to if not assess then at least recall some of the sights of the past 12 months. A photo-driven blog makes that simultaneously easy and hard; easy because there’s a photographic record and not easy because there’s such an extensive photographic record to sift though.
A word about this set of photos: these are some “seconds” that did not make the final cut for my 2023 tugster calendar. The actual calendars are still available if you’ve not ordered one; find the order info here. I’m ordering a bunch myself.
One windy day last January I caught a Pilot No 1–the old New York–doing drills under the VZ Bridge. Just recently I met one of the engineers on that boat, a person with epic stories about the sixth boro.
A warm day in February, I caught JRT Moran assisting QM2 into her Red Hook berth.
March I spent a delightful day on Douglas B. Mackie observing the water side of a Jersey shore beach replenishment project, thanks to the hard-working folks at GLDD.
April . . . I caught Jane McAllister heading out; correct if I’m wrong, but my sense is that soon afterward she made her way down to South America to join the expanding ranks of US-built tugs working on various projects on the south side of the Caribbean.
As a member of the Canal Society of NYS, I had the opportunity to see Urger up close and sun-warmed on the bank of the Oswego in Lysander NY.
A clutch of Centerline tugboats waited for their next assignment at the base just east of the Bayonne Bridge. Note the fully foliated trees beyond them along the KVK.
From the humid heat of western Louisiana and onto the Gulf of Mexico, Legs III–shown
here spudded up just east of SW Pass, afforded a memorable journey on its way up to the sixth boro. Thx, Seth.
Back in the boro, later in August, a Space X rocket recovery boat named Bob–for an astronaut– came through the sixth boro. More on Bob–the astronaut–here.
In September, I finally got to my first ever Gloucester schooner race, thanks to Rick Miles of Artemis, the sailboat and not the rocket.
Icebreaker Polar Circle was in the boro a few days in September as well. Now it’s up in Canada, one hopes doing what icebreakers are intended to do. US naval logistics vessel Cape Wrath is at the dock in Baltimore ready and waiting a logistics assignment.
Ticonderoga certainly and Apache possibly are beyond their time working and waiting. I believe Ticonderoga is at the scrappers in Brownsville.
Passing the UN building on the East River, veteran Mulberry is currently out of the army and working in the private sector. I’ve a request: for some time I’ve seen a tug marked as Scholarie working the waters west of the Cape Cod Canal; a photo suggested it might be called Schoharie. Anyone help out?
And finally, a photo taken just two days ago while passing through the sixth boro during what can hardly be called “cover of darkness” it’s Capt Joseph E. Pearce on its way to a shipyard on the mighty Rondout to pick up some custom fabrication for a Boston enterprise. Many thanks to the Stasinos brothers for the opportunity.
I’d be remiss in ending this post and this year without mentioning lost friends, preserving a memory of their importance to me personally . . . Bonnie of frogma–first ever to comment of this blog so many years ago and a companion in many adventures– and Mageb, whose so frequent comments here I already miss.
I plan to post tomorrow, although I may miss my high noon post time because I hope to post whatever best sunrise 2023 photos I can capture in the morning.
Happy, safe, and prosperous new year to you all. I’m posting early today because I want my readers who live much much farther east than the sixth boro to get these wishes before their new trip around the sun begins. Bonne annee! Gelukkig nieuwjaar!
Ten years and two days ago, I heard Urger had arrived in town and had rafted up to Pegasus, so
I had to come down in the late afternoon and shoot this, setting sun just post-Mahattanhenge notwithstanding. While there, I was asked to take close-up photos two days later of Urger at the Statue. “Sure,” I said, “as long as you provide a boat I could do that from.”
Upon a decade’s reflection, I regret we could not have arranged to get photos of Urger with more vessels in the sixth boro, especially with the larger tugboats of NYC 2012, to show difference of scale. You know what they say about hindsight . . . .
When I showed up at Pier 25 on July 14 at 0800, City of Water Day, the light was much more favorable.
Captain Wendy was cleaning up the wheelhouse, and
bosun “mean Mike” was atop the wheelhouse polishing the brass. Happy b’day, Mike!
Once the Atlas Imperial was warmed up and lines cast off, we headed over to the Statue, where
we figured out our position relative to the 111-year-old NYS Canal tugboat, and many photos were taken.
Then the intrepid crew and boat made their way over to Governors Island, where several thousand City of Water Day visitors
toured Urger, a sign I thought that the tug would go on forever, making history tangible, bidding downstaters to come upstate to that waterway that was Urger‘s home turf surf. It was a pleasant thought, and Urger did go on for the next five years. Now . . . she ‘s in Onondaga County hamlet of Lysander, waiting. My most recent (May 2022) Urger photos can be seen here.
All photos, WVD, who posted this montage together the next day.
Stay tuned . . . more July 2012 posts coming up soon.
The 2022 City of Water Day–July 16– website can be found here.
Urger got some love yesterday, and tugster was there to document it.
Wait . . . is that Urger?
No . . . that’s tug Seneca
and there is the Capt. Wunder getting some visitation in and
telling stories about the days he was her captain, but
“there’s more,” he said.
The older step-sister is here too.
The tugs were a place of pilgrimage.
Recall they are now seldom-seen but certainly not forgotten.
Want to make a poster? Write my email and ask for a full-size version of this image. Once you get it, send it far and wide to enthusiasts who lament her isolation as well as enthusiasts who can take her out of isolation.
All May 9, 2022 photos taken by WVD with arrangements by the Canal Society of NYS. Please share this post far and wide to the family of Urger and Seneca fans.
Here’s a history-packed and very detailed photo. In the foreground you see James K. Averill and Amsterdam. In the next row back, that’s Urger behind Averill and a boat I can’t identify [name board just to the right of Averill’s stack shows a name that ends in –le No 1 ] behind Amsterdam. Also, in the foreground, there’s good detail of the ratchet and chain system to open the bottom-dumping doors of the scow.
Averill, 50′ x 14′ x 4.5′, was a wooden-hulled tug built in 1912. It worked for a D. G. Roberts of Champlain NY until 1925. Champlain is a town on the NY/QC border. Her original power may have been a 200 hp coal-burning 1905 Skinner & Arnold steam engine. and a Murphy Donnely Co. boiler. She was repowered and given new superstructure in 1930, but I don’t know what the new power or the previous superstructure were. Notations on her info card says her coal storage capacity was seven tons and she burned on average a half ton of coal per eight-hour day.
This dry dock photo shows a “cutaway” of her frames and stringers.
Initially, I looked at this photo and assumed Averill had experienced a catastrophic fire, but with her all-wood structure, a fire would likely not have gone out before entirely consuming the vessel.
Another look at Averill, here off the stern of Tender #3,
says to me that this was the dismantling of Averill, which happened some time after October 1960.
All photos used thanks to the Canal Society of New York. The top photo above appears in Enterprising Waters, by Brad Utter.
It appears this tug and derrick barge are working over by the power house at the Vischer Ferry 2000′ twice-bent Dam opposite lock E-7. This is the dam where Margot and Watermaster have broken up ice jams the past few winters.
Here’s a closer up and
an even closer up, confirming that it’s Canal tug Amsterdam and Derrick Barge (DB) 8. And sorry . . . this is a call for group sourcing. Many thanks to Canal Society president Craig Williams, who started filling in details as follows: “Amsterdam… was B. B. Odell Jr., built in Schenectady in 1901 (50.4′ x12.4′ x5.9′). In the Department of Public Works report for 1945 (1946) Amsterdam is described as having been built, along with the Averill, ‘for the old Erie Canal, [and is] no longer efficient to operate and [having] deteriorated to the point it is no longer feasible to operate them.’ ” A post on Averill is in the works.
Urger, on the other hand and shown here as a steam vessel and with a different superstructure configuration, has appeared on this blog many times and will appear some more next month, or so is the plan. Urger was converted from steam to diesel in 1948.
I can’t be certain, but Urger here appears to already be dieselized in the next photos.
Below is a closer -up of the photo above showing the jackstaff on the bow topped with a wind direction indicator.
Here are two more tugs we might find more about. . . . the story of Queen City is [again from Craig] “very complicated. In 1946 it was reported as ‘so weak it will no longer hold patches’ yet they overhaul its engine in 1948 (for use on another boat?). It is replaced in the early 1950s by one of the 1950s tugs [of the] Pittsford, Lockport... [class]. Merchant Vessels for 1926 says that the Queen City was built in Buffalo in 1906. The State reported that year that they had rebuilt the tug, completely replanking the hull, new decks and pilot house, and the boiler and engine ‘thoroughly repaired’ Was it then probably considered a new tug?
The Merchant Vessels for 1902 credits NYS with a Queen City, nearly the same dimensions as having been built in Poughkeepsie in 1889. Curiously, the State Superintendent of Public Works describes painting the Queen City in 1881. There is a 1879 Lockport newspaper article that mentions the State hiring the tug Queen City to help tow boats at Lockport.” Maybe a name like Queen City gets recycled?”
As to Flower City, “According to Merchant Vessels it was built in Buffalo in 1909 though it doesn’t show up in the State’s annual reports until a note for 1912 that it worked throughout the season (sort of implying something new). It was condemned in 1937, replaced by a State Department of Corrections tug Refuge. Don’t know if it was dismantled at that time.” Actually, I’d love to learn more about tugs operated by the State Department of Corrections.
All photos used thanks to the Canal Society of New York. Many thanks to Craig Williams for filling in detail for these government boats.
This is a Carlotta in 1921. I’m curious about the large structure on the after deck. Is that cargo being carried?
Here’s a Carlotta 13 months later, looking the same except that large stern structure is missing. The 1913 MVUS shows a steam tug Carlotta 56′ x 13′ x 5′ built in Boston in 1879, but registered in Buffalo as of that date.
Aimed at canal passersby, this billboard
was located in Little Falls, most likely above lock E-17. Steam tug George E. Lattimer was built in 1899, 59′ x 16′ x 7′ in Buffalo.
This view of lock E-17 shows a formidable structure, especially without trees on Moss Island.
I had to throw this photo in. I took it in October 2014 of the 1901 formerly steam-powered 73′ x 15′ x 9′ fish tug Urger at the same location slightly different angle, showing a tree-covered Moss Island and virtually no windows in the powerhouse to the right of the guillotine lock door.
Jumping back nearly a century, with lots of steam and drama, Geo. E. departs the lock and the rockpile that was Moss Island back then.
Steamer Merchant tows a string of barges round a bend, which I believe is somewhere west of Brockport.
From Roger N. Benson: “A third-class wood steamer Lily was built in 1882, hailed from Buffalo NY. Lily was 103′ x 22′ x 9′. She was registered for the Barge Canal on May 13, 1922.” Those dimensions make her a fairly large tugboat for the Barge Canal.
The rails would likely have come from the Lackawanna Steel Plant, which that same year was acquired by Bethlehem Steel. The area of the plant is currently the site of a wind farm called Steel Winds.
Here an eastbound Lily approaches lock E-11. Interestingly, since the caption says the covered automobiles are Maxwells, they would be coming from one of the Midwestern plants, obviously not the original Tarrytown NY plant. Maxwell was declining at the time and as of 1922 would just have been taken over by Walter P. Chrysler, before he created the Chrysler Corporation.
I have to end with this photo I took in October 2014; it’s the same photo of Urger as above, just with the golden morning light color restored.
Thanks to the Canal Society of New York for use of these photos; the two versions of the Urger photo, WVD.
When this tow came off Oneida Lake headed west,
I wondered how many folks would interpret this incorrectly, that this was a tow and not a push.
Ditto . . . heading into lock E-23.
Of course, regular readers of this blog know precisely what is going on. After a long hiatus at the dry dock in Waterford, Urger has been pushed across the state to the dry dock in Lysander to be hauled out and mothballed, maybe and hopefully to be revived when the time is right, like a cicada or a future astronaut traveling light years in suspended animation . . . .
For more people than not in the “canal corridor” of New York State, Urger is without doubt that best known tugboat, the only one that thousands of New Yorkers have set foot on . . . .
Who is that unmasked fellow with a t-shirt that reads “tug boating is a contact sport”?
I have it on the best authority that exactly five years ago yesterday, he was in the Urger wheelhouse piloting the now nameless vessel through this very same lock, very much mechanically alive.
All photos yesterday, WVD, who offers this post as contribution to #URGERjourney.
Edna A has appeared on this blog by that name; it was also here as HR Hawk.
My goal was familiarization, not veni vidi vici, or exploration of the 2300+ miles of river crossing parts of seven states, beginning in SW Montana.
Barge traffic is possible there now because of the work of the USACE. More on that in a later post.
Here was my top-priority destination: the current northernmost aka upriver port. more on that later too.
The above port is 50 miles north of Omaha and on the Iowa side. So is Omaha connected to salt water . . . indeed.
There’s a story here and here. . . about a beaver and a business opportunity.
Now in the sixth boro, boats like the one above never worked, not so on the Missouri. If you’ve ever following the Missouri and see a sign about the “steamboat exhibit” at DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, by all means, check it out.
250,000 artifacts including 1860s steam technology have been excavated, cleaned/preserved, and nicely displayed.
It turns out there’s another steamboat wreck exhibit in Kansas City, which I took no time to check out, but I will next trip. Of note, both Bertrand and Arabia were built along the Ohio river, far to the east.
As to the question of current commercial activity north of Kansas City . . . it’s there.
If you’ve never read River Horse, a boat trip from the sixth boro’s Elizabeth NJ to Astoria OR, check it out. I’m eager to re-read Moon’s account of his navigation of his boat through this geography. Recently, I re-read his account of transiting the Erie Canal and encountering tug Urger and its erstwhile captain Meyer.
By the way, Urger will be featured in tomorrow’s post.
All photos, observations, WVD, who is back east of the Mississippi and catching up.
tugster: a waterblog 
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