Thanks to Paul Strubeck 5

Here are some previous posts with photos from Paul.

If you want to see all my posts with photos of these wonderful towing machines, click here, the tag GLT.

Illinois is typical of this fleet.  Look at the riveted hull.  She’s still working, launched in 1914, before the US entered WW1!!!    Behind her is Idaho, 1931.  If you want an exemplar of American engineering and manufacturing, you need look no farther than this fleet.

New Jersey dates from 1924.    . . . . .       And Wisconsin is the oldest.  I’ll let you guess and you can read the answer below.

Wyoming . . .  1929.

Many thanks to Paul Strubeck.

1897!!  And she still works.  some day I hope she goes to the Smithsonian, as long as the Smithsonian establishes a wet display area.  And of course, the National Museum of the Great Lakes has already seen fit to add one of these to their wet display.  more on that later.   If I lived closer, I’d be there on November 30.

There’s a whole chapter on G-tugs in Tugboats of the Great Lakes by Franz A. VonRiedel.

 

1929 G-Tug

specifically Wyoming, built in Cleveland.  All these photos come thanks to Isaac Pennock, who writes, “If I’ve got your guidelines for December correct, the tug Wyoming should fit. She was built in Cleveland in 1929 as a steam tug. Converted to diesel in 1953. Repowered with her current engine (EMD 12-645-E6) in 1980. She was chartered to McAllister in Charleston for one year in 1993. [Does anyone have photos of her working in Charleston?]  Now GLT’s lead tug in the port of Detroit. 84 feet long, 2,000 horsepower. She has held the same name & same owner for her entire career.

Whether you like to be reminded of winter or not, let’s start with some cold water photos.

 

Why G-tugs?  Check the stack.  Franz von Riedel devotes a whole chapter to this long run of boats in his heavily illustrated  Tugs of the Great Lakes.

Great Lakes ports have hot seasons also.

 

Click here for a few pages on the G-tugs from TES.   I recall my surprise upon learning that Great Lakes Towing was created at the turn of the 19th/20th century by a group of industrialists including John D. Rockefeller.

Click here,  here, and here for previous tugster posts with G-tugs.   SS Columbia crossed Lake Erie this summer on G-tug wire.   Earlier this fall, Great Lakes Shipyard christened a new tug for the NY Power Authority/Niagara project.

Many thanks to Isaac for sharing these photos.

 

Other Peoples Photos 42

Many thanks to Ashley Hutto for this photo . . . gotta move a scow across skinny water?  Only five feet at high water?  Here you go.  Ashley took the photo in Tampa Bay.

And thanks to my sister aboard Maraki . . . which departed Trinidadan waters yesterday.  It’s Island Intervention, a Vanuatu-flagged oil well stimulation vessel.

Also, a tip of the hat to Aaron Reed of Crewboat Chronicles for this photo;  it’s Sea Durbin, 43′ vessel from 1950 and built by Alcide Cheramie, and with

very similar lines, here’s Wyoming, a 57’6″ beauty built 1940 by Camley Cheramie, a photo I took here almost three years ago.

I’d love to see her interior.

And here’s another repeat from a few years back . . . I’m still looking for info on her previous life.

Photos not attributed by Will Van Dorp.  For the others, thanks much to Ashley, Aaron, and my sister.

Unrelated, check out this NYTimes story about a Queen Mary –and its namesake from half century ago– moving through NYC yesterday on its way to California.