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Many thanks to Phil Little, who took these from his socially-distanced perch high atop the Weehawken cliff . . . I had thought to go out, but I didn’t want to get swarmed by “social-approachers.” An alternative title here could be “Comfort Departs.” I like the blue/white sign on the building off the starboard side of the ship: “Thank you essential and health-care workers . . . .”
If I see accurately, it’s Ava, Capt. Brian, and Marjorie that see her out. As Phil writes, “Conditions: slack tide, wind 10-15 ESE, temp 53 deg.F. Looked like they had to nudge her around a bit into the wind, before she got underway!”
And so she got underway, exactly a month after arriving.
The closest I could find to an accounting is here from Mike Schuler at gCaptain: “While in New York, medical personnel treated 182 patients of which 70% were COVID-19 positive. More than 110 surgical procedures, 540 x-rays and CT-scans, and 1,300 intravenous and oral medications were performed, according the U.S. Navy. ”
Many thanks, Phil. Many thanks to crew of USNS Comfort.
And tomorrow, we begin our virtual canal tour of the western portion the NYS Canal system. And thanks to a friend who pointed this out on a NYS blog a short time ago, a fascinating and profusely illustrated article about the impact of the 1872 horse epidemic on the economy and the Erie Canal.
I could also call this “other peoples photos” but here is yesterday’s arrival of the hospital ship as seen from three friends’ perspectives.
Phil Little took this, and referred to it as his Normandy landing shot, an appropriate name given that this asset, arriving with a large support group, marks a surge, a counteroffensive against the invisible foe. Note that the top of WTC1 is obscured, as is most of the VZ Bridge, center right.
To reiterate, Comfort‘s 1000 beds and 12 operating rooms will take overflow from other hospitals, overflow of NON-covid-19 patients. Click here for much more info on the ship, medical facilities and operating life. Click here for video of the hospital ship arriving.
The flotilla is almost to her berth, here passing Hudson Yards.
Renee Lutz Stanley took this one from a pier south of Intrepid while trying very hard to practice social distancing.
Phil calls this the “turn-in.”
This last two come from David Silver, taken looking south.
Cruise ships and hospital ship are roughly the same color, but that color gives a profoundly different impression in each. Comfort with its relatively few “port holes” and glass is a place of intensive inward examination, a place apart, one hopes, for healing.
Many thanks to Phil, Renee, and David for use of these photos. Please do continue social distancing and hand-washing.
At 0900 and a few minutes, USNS Comfort arrived at the Narrows. Ava M was one of six McAllister units meeting her there to assist.
USACE, NYPD, and other agencies saw her in as well.
, 
She passed the USCG station and
and the old hospital complex.
Another USNS vessel in the port was Watkins.
From this point off Bayonne, we’ll pick up the story tomorrow.
All photos, WVD.
Note: Tomorrow I may slip my post time a little; you’ll understand, I hope, tomorrow. Mentioning hope, check out this link to learn about, among other things, an iron cow!! Hope, SS Hope, was born of USS Consolation, AH-15.
Anyone know the US first hospital ship? When did USNS Comfort last call in the sixth boro? Answers follow below.
I used the photo below just over five years ago in a post about Red Cross ships; tanker SS Rose City became USNS Comfort in 1985. Study the photo and compare it to the current iteration.
I’m thrilled Mercy has been activated in the west and Comfort will arrrive here, but only a very short time ago there was serious consideration to mothball and maybe scrap at least one of these vessels. Also, as positive as they are, what they are not is panaceas. Mechanical, electrical, and other bugs need to be sorted out on the ships. Crews need to resolve dynamics; after all, even two months ago all those crews were happily working elsewhere, and as USNS ships, they have hybrid civilian/military crews.
And the US first hospital ship, establishing a “makeover” tradition, began life in Cape Girardeau, MO in 1859 as a Mississippi River steamer. The Confederacy transformed it into a barracks, the US army captured it, and she was made into a hospital ship. I believe she carried the name Red Rover throughout all three lives. Nursing staff on USS Red Rover were members of the Sisters of the Holy Cross.
Click here for a ketch used to evacuate wounded going back to 1803. What were we involved with 217 years ago?
USNS Comfort made her last call in NYC was in September 2001, and I honestly didn’t recall that. Does anyone have photos to share from that deployment?
Finally, I’ve mentioned it before, but back in 1980 SS Rose City had a young crewman named John Moynihan, who wrote a noteworthy account of his hitch aboard the vessel. It’s a great book in itself; his father was a senator from New York.
Long ago and faraway, I boarded this hospital ship on a tributary of the Congo River; that it operated there at all is a scintilla of evidence that even a dictator can do good things by his subjected peoples. I’m unable to learn the disposition of this ship, SS Mama Yemo, but a little researching did lead me to understand that it was developed by a US doctor, William Close, whom I’d love to learn more about.
SS Rose City photo thanks to William Lafferty; sentiments and filtering of info by WVD, who thanks you for keeping your distance.
Hats off to the folks dredging USNS Comfort‘s berth even as we read.
And finally, a request . . . if you get photos of her arrival tomorrow, consider sharing them with this blog.
Whatzit? Where has it come from and where … going to? Doubleclick enlarges.
The piles are coal, the bucket-wheel at the tip of the stacker-reclaimer (s-r) might be at least 15′ diameter, so the s-r arm must be as long as an Oldendorff self-unloader. Note the white vessel between the stacks.
A different view of the stacks shows more of the white vessel. Can you identify it, pretty as an Edsel or gorgeous as a 1953 Studebaker?
Savannah, resplendent, built in New Jersey and designed by George G. Sharp Company, who also designed several classes of Staten Island ferries, and many other vessels. Here’s a memory site devoted to the vessel that has very interesting historical fotos and info. Under the section “radioactive waste,” I like the detail of the waste discharge barge called Atomic Servant. I understand that Savannah is open only on rare occasions to the public. It seems appropriate to see this foto of Savannah surrounded by mounds of coal, given how miniscule the “bulk” of her fuel was relative to that of ships that burned coal as fuel.
Nearby in the Canton portion of the port, here’s another look at USNS Comfort, a vessel with an interesting past life. Guess? Look at the hull. Answer below.
Atlantic Impala (built on the Russian Black Sea) offloads containers while off its stern, Navios Star prepares to head for sea with many tens of thousands of tons of coal . . . bound for South Korea’s steel mills.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
And the unusual history of Comfort: she began her life in 1976 as an oil tanker called Rose City.
Other Watersheds 4 is here. And the most recent appearance of Joan Turecamo on this blog had her parked along the KVK. So where was this?
Many cities have a wide or not so much wide street by this name, but –say in New York–Broadway does not have work boats anchoring it, although maybe in a better parallel universe it would. More on this pier at the end of this post.
Some New Yorkers might also recall John W. Brown, named for a labor organizer and serving as a floating Manhattan high school –focusing on a nautical trades curriculum, of course–from 1946 until 1982. I’d love to hear from alumni of this school. So have you figured out which “other watershed” this is?
Here’s another clue. The watershed feeds into a harbor with large number of massive government ships, like USNS Comfort (T-AH-20 and launched in 1976), which returned from Haiti less than two weeks ago; as well as
some very wet ones like Gov. R. M. McLane, which once served as flagship of government efforts during the Chesapeake Bay Oyster Wars, when foreign vessels harvested domestic oysters.
Now if you want to know what foreign and domestic mean here, you need to check this link.
One last clue, maybe more of a distractor: Sea Star line’s El Faro was tied up there this weekend.
Bertha offers conviviality here.
OK, you guessed it long ago. But which watershed is it?
More Baltimore soon. Many thanks to Capt. Allen Baker for his hospitality. The link in that previous sentence related to the SS United States aka the Big U, currently one of many vessels in peril.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
So this pier . . . shown in foto 2 above . . . will very very soon no longer be a working pier. Moran is moving out toward the river’s mouth. Change. Improvement? Ha!
Again, I’d love to hear comments on this as well as recollections from alumni of John W. Brown, the high school.
tugster: a waterblog 
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