Retro Sixth Boro 12

March 2009 . . . Stephen Scott here passes Port Ivory, near my old job, pushing RTC 70.   I’m still looking for Stephen Scott photo is her new profile, sans upper wheelhouse.  Port Ivory was an intriguing place name for me when I first moved here;  once a North Shore Branch of the SIRR even had a station there.

Kimberly Poling already had the color scheme, but adding a few more teal stripes to her current appearance is a big improvement.

Lettie passed by once while I scheduled my lunch break.  As of today’s posting, Lettie G is in Mobile AL!!  If she continues, she could end up back in Lake Erie by way of the great loop.  Is that what’s happening?  A few months I caught her at the top end of the Welland Canal here.

More Port Ivory area, Specialist was around, then called Specialist II.

So was the huge K-Sea fleet, which included Falcon.

This post should be called “sixth boro and beyond,” since I took this photo of Justine with RTC 120 up near Saugerties.  Back then,

was that a red canoe along her portside rail?

Side by side  in the Rondout 10 years ago were Hackensack, the 1953 colorful one, and Petersburg, 1954 vintage and still in the general area.  Last I knew, Hackensack was in Guyana pushing molasses barges.

And going  farther out, it’s Allie B pulling Goliath on a cargo barge Brooklyn Bridge out of Quincy MA, with assistance from Vincent D. Tibbetts Jr and Justice.

Here’s a closer up of Liberty.  For the entire reportage on that journey to Mangalia, Romania (!!), click here.  Damen operates the crane in their shipyard there, the largest shipyard in the Damen collection.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who hopes you enjoy these looks back as much as I do.

Allie B Details

aka closer-up shots from Saturday’s departure.  Might we have to wait til the Gilbraltar port call to get the next closeups?  And is the person on the barge just forward of Tibbetts the last one to set foot there until Europe?  If I could get a cheap ticket to Gilbraltar in two weeks or so . . .

Liberty glided to starboard

and then port

to line up through the bridge.  (Yes, I was shooting through chainlink.)  Does Liberty have z-drives?

Less than a quarter-mile from the “slip” Allie B showed signs of settling into the harness.

Brooklyn Bridge‘s cargo has robust bracing forward

and aft.  And are those bundles corrections to balance?

Not every early March day lends itself to so much outdoor activity.

Towmasters’ comment leads to a link about another crane named Goliath in Belfast’s Harland & Wolff, builders of the Titanic.  Belfast landmarked the crane to ensure that it stayed in the port.  And that led me to a link to about Kockums Crane here and a poignant site in Swedish (if you don’t read Swedish, you can surely read the fantastic fotos) about a crane that, like Quincy’s, went away.

If you’re interested in a soundtrack to this series, try Downeaster Alexa even though it laments a different Northeast maritime industry;  it just happened to play on my radio Saturday . . . as if anything “just happens.”

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.

Allie B’s Epic 2

Imagine you worked at the shipyard for 10 or more years.  You put in the strength of your best years with friends who did the same.  You were young then and eager to get out of bed in the morning to hurry to the job you loved:  building LNG tankers, huge vessels that sailed the world’s oceans and delivered fuel and  withstood the challenges of the roughest seas.  Then  the shipyard gates closed and the 300-foot-high Goliath idled and rusted.  Weeds grew up where 32,000 workers once built ships.   Today, between the fence and the tow, several acres of unsold automobiles stood parked there, awaiting buyers.

Here’s Allie B about a half hour before departure today.

And this is how a voyage of more than 4000 miles begins:  assist tugs Liberty and Vincent D. Tibbetts Jr.  ease the barge Brooklyn Bridge into the Fore River, and Allie B moves the tow seaward.

Liberty and Tibbetts guide the tow through the 3A bridge between Quincy and Weymouth and

and then you hurry to Great Hill to watch your crane disappear towards Peddocks Island,

and Hull Gut, past the other islands of Boston harbor, and then

to sea, over the horizon, to build great ships elsewhere.  And you may never see it again.  How would it feel?

See sackrabbit’s fotos here, and check back there for updates over the coming month.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.