Time Warp 2

I did this once before here.  This time I was deleting near duplicates to limit the size of my photo library to accommodate the many photos I brought back from the gallivants, and my mind quickly formed today’s post.  Enjoy all these from August through October 2009 and marvel at how much the harbor changes.   As I went through the archives, this is where I stopped, given the recent developments in Bella Bella BC.

For background on this tug, check here.

Notice also the Bayonne approach to the bridge.

IMO 8983117 was still orange back then.

King Philip, Thomas Dann, and Patriot Service . . .

…

Odin . . .  now has a fixed profile.

And these two clean looking machines — Coral Queen and

John B. Caddell — were still with us.

This is a digression to March 2010, but since I’m in a temporally warped thought, let me add this photo of the long-gone Kristin Poling.

Back to 2009, Rosemary looked sweet here in fall scenes.

John Reinauer . . . I wonder what that tug looks like today over in Nigeria.

And Newtown Creek, now the deep Lady Luck of the Depths, sure looked good back then.

And while I’m at it, I’ve finally solved a puzzle that’s bugged me for a few years.  Remember this post from three and a half years ago about a group of aging Dutch sailors who wanted to hold a reunion on their vessel but couldn’t find the boat, a former Royal Dutch Navy tug named Wamandai A870?  Well, here’s the boat today!  Well, maybe . . .

Another boat you can dive on is United Caribbean aka Golden Venture.

Photos and tangents by Will Van Dorp.

 

Freshwater Tugs 2

The first in this series posted eight years ago!

Of course, tugs currently working in freshwater haven’t necessarily started there, as is true of Manitou.

Victorious had to traverse halfway around the world before quite recently beginning its life on the Great Lakes, such as it is now pushing hot asphalt seething within John J. Carrick.

 

Ditto G. L. Ostrander, here pushing LaFarge barge Integrity.

 

 

Josephine (ex-Wambrau) has likely had the greatest amount of saltwater time and distance before coming to the Great Lakes watershed.  Here she’s docked in the Maumee river with the Mightys . . .  Mighty Jimmy, Mighty Jake, and mighty small.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who has more Mightys and more freshwater tugs to come.

 

Dutch Tugs 3

Hudson, launched 1939, spent WW2 working for the British Ministry of Shipping, having left the Netherlands with a tow to Africa just before the Germany invasion and occupation.  After the War, it towed to ports worldwide until 1963, when it was deemed underpowered and sold for scrap.  Instead, it was purchased by a fishery as an ice-making ship, which it did until 1989.  And again it was to be scrapped.  This time, a foundation bought it, invested 14 years of restoration, and now, as a unique industrial  artifact, it’s berthed in Maassluis, where visitors can picture the life of those in ocean towing from just before WW2 until 1960.

 

 

Hercules was built in the Netherlands in 1915 and worked for a Danish company until the late 1970s, when it was purchased for much-needed restoration.  See its condition here.

 

Furie has a similar story:  it was built in the Netherlands in 1916, sold to a Swedish lumber company in 1918.  It worked mostly on the Baltic until 1976, when it was returned to the Netherlands for restoration and assumed a role in a Dutch TV series called Hollands Glorie, inspired by Jan de Hartog novel.  You can watch the 90-minute series pilot here.   It was made in 1977 and in Dutch, but it follows a new chief mate named Jan Wandelaar (hiker or wanderer) in the “hiring hall.”   Give it a shot.  If you want to skip around, the captain’s character gets established around the 10-minute mark.  Around the 21-minute mark they are off the coast of Ireland.  Around the 29-minute mark, the captain negotiates in his version of English for the tow and the next few minutes are exciting.  Around 41 minutes in, they are towing a dredge along the WestAfrican coast to Nigeria.  Around 1 hour 5,” they deal with a leak in the dredge.

 

Equally picturesque although I don’t know the stories are Anna and

Alphecca.

These photos by Freek Konings come via Fred Trooster, to whom both I am grateful.

This post from 2013  was prompted by a request from Freek that I try to learn the disposition of a former Dutch Navy tug, likely sunk by the USCG.  We are still looking for info on the fate of Wamandai.

Anteojos de Sol 2

Here were the wild colors that started this series two years ago .. .

and Alice . . . always the trend setter and wanderer . . . seems headed out of the gray days in old New Amsterdam for the tropical colors of new New Amsterdam.  Notice the destination?  That’s the one in Guyana.

But I digress.  Tropical colors are a treat after some days in the cold achromatic north.  These photos come compliments of the winter refugees aboard Maraki . . . currently in the environs of Curaçao. For more colorful pics of this town, click here.

Here at the ready are Lima II and a pilot boat, and

newer sister Damen-built tug Mero.

Also in port was this International Telecom vessel . . .

IT Intrepid formerly known as Sir Eric Sharp.

Given the dominant language of this port, you’d think this local boat would be called “werken meisje ook,”  but surprises never cease.

or this be called “port service 1.”

The subject of Dutch-built tugboats in Curaçao resurrects the unsolved mystery of Wamandai, a tug that left Curaçao under some clouds and was possibly sunk by the US Coast Guard.  My letters of inquiry to various Coast Guard offices relevant to this case have turned up not a single answer, not even a word that Wamandai‘s fate is classified.  Should I say it turned up an arrogant silence?    Can anyone weigh in or help out?  Some Dutch navy vets and I would like to know.

Thanks to Maraki for these photos.

For a world of cable layers, click here.

 

Second Lives 11

This post presents a mystery.  Maybe someone knows how (or through whom)  to find the answer, possibly in US Coast Guard archives.  A group of veterans who spent their time in the Dutch Navy serving aboard the vessel below want a reunion but have lost their ship, possibly to Davy “drug-smuggler” Jones.

Wamandai A870 was launched in the late 1950s from Den Helder.  From there she went to the Dutch New Guinea, where she worked with Wambrau A871.   When the Dutch left the colony to Indonesia in  1962, Wamandai and Wambrau returned to the Netherlands.     Wambrau then was Netherlands-based as Sea Driver II until she was sold to a private company in Toledo, OH!!  where she works as Josephine to this day.    Click here (and scroll through) for some fotos.

Wamandai remained in the Royal Navy and in 1964 traveled to the Netherlands Antilles.  As a navy auxiliary vessel, she worked there until January 1986, when she was decommissioned and sold to a resident of Curacao.

According to Sea of Grass:  The Maritime Drug War 1970–1990, by Charles M. Fuss, Jr.,  she may have become a “mothership.”  Here’s a quote from pp. 226-7 that has an unsatisfying ending to me and to the Dutch Navy vets who called it to my attention:  “…The routine transportation of multi-ton loads of marijuana through the northern Atlantic ended in 1987.  The 90′ stateless motor vessel Wamandai with 22,000 pounds was one of the last motherships seized.  A Coast Guard C-130 from Elizabeth City, NC, found the suspect 105 miles southeast of Bermuda on 2 September, 1987.  A marathon air surveillance began that lasted until 5 September, when the cutter Gallatin (WHEC-721) finally arrived after being released from a navy exercise.  This was definitely one for the Airedales. ”  The next paragraphs switch to the 1987 drug interdiction campaign in the Pacific.

The question is:  What happened to Wamandai?  Would it have been scuttled then and there, or is there a chance that it was sold either as scrap or vessel?

Previous mention of motherships on this blog dates back to this post from 2008.   For recent fotos of Gallatin in the sixth boro after Sandy, click here.