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.

 

 

 

Seats of Power 1

Consider this a post in the genre of stacks and wheels. The fourth photo is the latter post shows 12 hands on these wheels, and no one seated.   Someone once said you stand (not sit) watch.

This canoe livery motorboat used in Algonquin Provincial Park has a flat aluminum seat, no cushion.

No seats here either.  I believe this is an oyster dredge mast unstepped.

Tugboat Jupiter has a old-style steering and an old style stool, not surprising given that it dates from 1901.

The once-padded barber’s (dentist’s?) chair shouldn’t really count here because it

complements this wheel aboard Frying Pan, a much modified vessel now floating pub.

So now let’s go standard contemporary.  Thanks to Xian Herrou, behold the seating aboard Abeille Camargue, now VB Camargue, a French tug built in 2007.  Here a seat is essential to operating the controls.

Here’s the note from Tony A, who inspired this post when he wrote:  “The Eric R. Thornton is rocking a new helm seat from Ocean Air Inc, Gainesville FL.  The [builder] is a chief engineer on a processing ship in Alaska and builds these in his spare time. They are very very heavy duty and will last a lifetime.”

“He uses a Nylatrol bushing that will last the life of the chair. The design incorporates an automotive style seat which can easily be replaced if the seat gets damaged or worn out.  He gave me a discount, because I told him I would try and promote his product.”

“His cell is 206-409-9881.  Let me know if you want to come and sit in it:)”

Thanks, Tony and Xian.  More seats of power to come.

Unless otherwise attributed, all photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

OpSail 2012 Thames River

When this event happened on Memorial Day in the sixth boro, I wrote about it as “cast.”   The New London cast right after the 4th of July was quite different.   All these fotos come with thanks to Birk Thomas, now at sea. Ferry New London is automatically part of the local and daily cast .

Thames (rhymes with “james” ) Towboat Company’s   John P. Wronowski (2004) was built in Florida.

Gwendolyn (1975) was built in Louisiana.

USCGC Eagle began to take shape in Hamburg in 1936.

USS Carter Hall had her keel laid in Louisiana in 1991.

Adam uses her 450 hp mostly around the Thames Towboat Company yards, where it was built.

Patricia Ann came out of a Louisiana shipyard as a YTB on hull #758 . .  to Hercules #766, now in Nigeria.

Figureheads need inspection.

John P. and Paul A. Wronowski (1980 in Connecticut) assist USS Carter Hall into its berth.  Paul A. was one of the first z-drive tugs ever built.

Ticonderoga (1936 by Herreshoff in Boston as Tioga) begs to be seen from closer, much closer.

Ferry Race Point is cast, even if she’s really working the run to Fisher’s Island.

Behold Wolf . . . she flies the flag of the Conch Republic, where I found myself exactly a year ago!

Cisne Branco . . . like Eagle was in the sixth boro almost two months ago.

Schooner Brilliant, 1932 in the Bronx, is truly brilliant.

Schooner A. J. Meerwald, 1932 in South Jersey, homeports in Bivalve . . . yes the village is truly called that.

Wisconsin-built YP-700 had its keel laid in 1987.

Another shot of Paul A.

It’s Amistad  (Connecticut with a 2000 launch) with its unmistakable rake.

Again . . . many thanks to Birk for these fotos.

The Calm . . .

the serene before Irene.  As of Friday, the USCG Captain of the Port announced the following: “Commercial deep draft vessels greater than 300 gross tons are not authorized to remain in port alongside a pier after 1800 on Saturday, August 27, 2011.   All vessels must be out of Bay Ridge, Stapleton, and Gravesend Bay Anchorage Grounds by 1800 on Saturday, August 27, 2011.  Only one barge per commercial mooring buoy, with a tug in the vicinity, is authorized after 1800 on Saturday, August 27, 2011…”

NYC officials dictated that 300,000 residents of certain low- lying zones evacuate.   Public transportation will cease at noon today, Saturday.  From the morning NYTimes, find these other announcements.  Doubleclick enlarges most.

Lots of folks I spoke with yesterday remembered Gloria’s visit in 1985.  If Irene heads in, our wake could be breadcrumbs for Irene to find the Battery.

Structures that could move yesterday were doing that, like Fox Boys and this construction barge.

Sailboats played nervously in front of the Statue, where hundreds waiting in line . . . but

lots of smaller vessels moved upriver, like Kimberly Poling here pushing barge Edwin A. Poling as

well as Austin Reinauer and RTC 100.

A friend from upriver called last night to say he’d seen at least $300 million worth of luxury yachts heading north, like

the 1958 Black Knight, the Goudy & Stevens yacht featured here three years ago . . . then also running from a storm albeit a thunderstorm that time.

However, some, infirm and not easily moveable,

their lines reinforced,

… is that a terrified face appearing like stigmata on the second porthole from the right, and a grinch-like demon on the one to its left? … will ride it out at the dock.  I hope the “custodians” in the SSSM offices know our eyes are on them as those same eyes are on the vessels left at the dock.

And who will be in the harbor . . . I’m guessing these folks and ones like them–police, Coast Guard, mariners working on the big ferries and certain private commercial vessels …  For frequent updates, read Hawsepiper, Paul the pirate, a scholar who works on an oil barge.  Paul . . . if you could get me keys, I’d move your truck outa Zone A.

Be safe.  I’m staying on high ground inland.

Since I posted here a half month ago about WIX-327 USCG cutter barque Eagle, visiting the sixth boro, I’ve read Capt. Gordon McGowan’s The Skipper & the Eagle, which details the months he spent in 1946, post-war Hamburg, refitting Eagle (his orders were that appropriating Eagle and getting her safely to the US should happen at NO EXPENSE to taxpayers in this country).  If you need a good read, to end the summer, this is it.  McGowan’s success depended on many things, maybe the foremost of which were Eagle‘s seaworthiness and the brotherhood of the sea that bridged the divide between Capt. McGowan of now-christened Eagle and Kapitanleutnant Barthold Schnibbe of ex-Horst Wessel.

A hurricane struck Eagle on the final leg of the journey–between Bermuda and New York.  As Irene approaches, consider these excerpts from McGowan’s book, written about the experience of being in an open bridge, exposed to wind, rain, and wash.

“In the rising seas the swells were beginning to overtake us, each crest coming in from a slightly different angle, and delivering a wallop to the underside of our old-fashioned overhanging counter”  (195). [McGowan added six additional helmsman to the two then on the three linked wheels.]

“Whitecaps had long disappeared nd been replaced by angry streaks gouged on the breast of the waves by the claws of the wind.  Puffs became roaring blasts of wind.  The average velocity rose above fifty knots.  This brought another change.  The streaks on the surface vanished, giving way to clouds of spray as wavetops were sheared off by the wind … The stinging pellets of water fly horizontally downwind” (196).

“The early skirling and piping of the fresh gale through the rigging had risen in volume  and in tone to belowing and shreiking.  The vast sound seemed to fill the world.  Voices of men died away and became inaudible.  Lips moving, neck cords and veins standing out recalled the silent movie days.  Here were faces transmitting thoughts by expression alone.  Here was sound without sound.  It pressed upon eardrums and bodies as a solid thing.  The singleness of this mighty roar brought about a solitude …  The voice of the storm was more than a roar.  There was a sharp tearing sound–the ripping of the fabric of the gates of hell …  The    fore upper and lower tops’ls were the first to go.  One moment they were there; a second later they had vanished.  It seemed incredible that all that remained of the broad spread of sail were these ragged little ribbons” (200).

“I turned to the idea of heaving to.  The ship had begun to dive and wallow like a wounded wild thing.  Each time a wave overtook us I looked apprehensively astern.  As the stern began to lift on the face of a wave, the bowsprit dipped deeper and deeper until it disappeared from sight.  When each crest swept from aft forward, the stern settled deeply upon the back on the wave, and the bowsprit pointed toward the sky” (202).

Sorry . . . you’ll have to read the rest.  Then there’s also Drumm’s book, which I haven’t read.

All fotos taken Friday by Will Van Dorp, who might not post tomorrow.

A South Street Seaport update:  Pioneer and Lettie G. Howard have departed for Kingston.