The Newtown Pentacle

- photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s a whole lot of dredging going on.

It seems that the Harbor of NY itself is desirous of silting up, which would destroy its value as a commercial port. What the Harbor is actually doing is attempting to revert to the shallow estuary it once was, following the methodologies set down by nature, but this would impede navigation and be catastrophic for both the economic and urban activities of man.

When the terrorist is nature incarnate- the Marines, Army, or Air Force can’t help you at all. Forget about Homeland Security, for any problem that involves a whole lot of dredging you send in the United States Army Corps of Engineers!

from nan.usace.army.mil

New York Harbor encompasses approximately two-dozen separately authorized and maintained Federal navigation channels. These projects, whose authorized depths vary from 8 feet to 50 feet, along with the privately operated berthing areas, generate approximately 1 to 2 million cubic yards of sedimentary material annually from maintenance dredging alone. Further, several of these channels are either under construction or in plans for deepening in the upcoming years to accommodate larger vessels calling at the port. The construction of these deeper channels will also generate substantial amounts of dredged material. The DMMP process seeks to identify and implement options to manage the material generated from both the federal and non-federal maintenance and deepening of the Port through the year 2065.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

The USACE has over the course of time reshaped the course of mighty rivers, eradicated tall mountains, and they’ve even bent the Helegaat to its will. The USACE has powers and abilities far beyond those of ordinary men, which they employ in a neverending battle for the American Way. In the case of the modern dredging observed around the Kill Van Kull and Port Newark, the Corps are ensuring that the soft bottom of the waterway will be deep enough to allow an enormous class of cargo ship called “Panamax” to safely navigate the port.

This involves the movement and dispersal of a whole lot of dredging spoils.

from nytimes.com

For more than a decade, workers using giant digging machines have scooped up enormous mounds of rock, clay, sand and silt from the waters around New York to deepen the shipping channels to accommodate giant cargo vessels that will navigate the widened Panama Canal starting in the middle of the decade.

The dredging has produced millions of cubic yards of muck.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s a few different machines which are involved in this sort of thing, and not just the claw bucket derricks which are filling barges in these shots. Lots of private contractors actually do the work, with a few key players getting the lion’s share.

Some effort has been made to find shots of these various devices- photos which a humble narrator clearly remembers shooting- but they are currently lost amongst the nearly 20,000 shots which I’ve obtained and uploaded for usage at Newtown Pentacle in the last few years.

As far as my hard drives go, there’s a whole lot of dredging that needs to be done.

from epa.gov

The Administrator of the EPA and the Secretaries of the Army and of Transportation agreed to close the Mud Dump Site for disposal of dredged material in their 1996 Three Party Letter. This was in response to surveys that had shown that contaminants in the dredged material caused sediment toxicity and bioaccumulation effects in estuarine organisms. For example, worm tissue at the disposal site was found to accumulate dioxins, and both dioxin and polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) contamination was found in lobsters. Individual elements of the aforementioned data do not prove that sediments within the HARS are imminent hazards to the New York Bight Apex ecosystem, living resources or human health. However, the collective evidence presents cause for concern, and justifies the finding that a need for remediation exists, that the site is Impact Category I (see, 40 CFR 228.10), and that the site should be managed to reduce impacts to acceptable levels.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

There’s little controversy around the idea that the government needs to keep these channels open, and lots of acrimony about what to do with the often toxic materials which are brought up to the surface. According to most sources, the sediment which rests on the floor of the harbor contains a cocktail of industrial leave behinds. Concerns are also voiced about sediments which reenters the water column and proceeds to swirl and shoal in new places.

Which brings us back to “What do you do with a whole lot of dredging spoils?”.

from nan.usace.army.mil

To accommodate the increasing need for the disposal of the assorted material, The Office of Supervisor of New York Harbor was established by an act of Congress in 1888. The Harbor Supervisor, acting through the Office of the Chief of Engineers (of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers), was responsible for the designation of specific disposal sites and for ensuring that ocean disposal would not be detrimental to navigation or pollute adjacent beaches (Williams and Duane, 1974).

Materials including garbage, city refuse, cellar dirt (natural rock and soil excavated during building construction), floatable materials, and sediments derived from dredging during the maintenance, deepening and construction of new channels in New York Harbor, were dumped at specific locations in the New York Bight Apex. Records indicate that approximately six locations were selected to receive this wide range of materials. As the material accumulated at these locations, the sites were relocated farther seaward where increased water depths alleviated concerns of potential navigation threats posed by accumulation of materials.

Hydrographic data spanning the period from 1845 to 1934 revealed that mounds of material were being formed in the general area of the submerged Hudson Shelf Valley (Christiaensen Basin), the Ambrose Light Station (Diamond Hill), and the Scotland Light Buoy. By 1914, shoaling at one of the sites reserved for dredged material and cellar dirt became a critical factor in the decision of the Supervisor of New York Harbor to separate the site usages and thus segregate the material being disposed at each site.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

Were there just some seemingly limitless abyss, an infinity of dark and cold which might just swallow up the sins of the world. Indigo, this ideal dump would boast colossal pressure and unimaginable cold whose combination might vouchsafe whatever poisons you might secret away against future discovery. Some sunken Grand Canyon, which might be neither too far, nor too close.

This would be a great place, a historic one, to dispose of a whole lot of dredging spoils.

from wikipedia

The Hudson Canyon is a submarine canyon that begins from the shallow outlet of the estuary at the mouth of the Hudson River. It extends out over 400 nmi (740 km) seaward across the continental shelf finally connecting to the deep ocean basin at a depth of 3 to 4 km below sea level. It begins as a natural channel of several kilometers width, starting as a 20-40 m depression at Hudson Channel southward from Ambrose Light, then carving through a deep notch of about 1 km depth in the shelf break, and running down the continental rise. Tidally associated flows of about 30 cm/s (1 km/h) up and down the deeper parts of the canyon have been recorded. As silt, sand and mud are carried down the Hudson River, they flow into the canyon and out into the deep sea.

The Hudson Canyon proper is located about 100 miles (160 km) east of the mouth of the Hudson River off the New Jersey coast. Its walls rise three-quarters of a mile from the canyon floor making it comparable to the Grand Canyon, whose cliffs are over a mile deep and 270 miles (430 km) long. It is the largest known ocean canyon off the East Coast of the United States, and one of the largest submarine canyons in the world. The canyon is located near the 100 meter isobath on the continental shelf and is 2,200 m (7,217 ft) deep at the base of the continental slope. Over an 80 km (50 mi) distance, the average slope of the canyon floor is 1.5°. At this point the canyon is as much as 12 km (7.5 mi) wide (from east rim to west rim) and as much as 1,100 m (3,609 ft) deep from canyon rim to canyon floor across the continental slope. The floor of the canyon is less than 0.5 km (1,640 ft) wide across the upper part of the slope and broadens to about 0.9 km (~3,000 feet) at the base of the slope.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

The deeps have been explored a bit, but not enough, by the federal agency NOAA. They report that the canyon is littered with sunken sailing ships, indian canoes, even ocean going diesel freighters of relatively recent vintage. Can you imagine, all there is, that might be down there?

from pubs.usgs.gov

The 150-km-long Hudson Shelf Valley, the largest physiographic feature on the mid-Atlantic continental shelf, bisects the New York Bight region. The Valley is the submerged seaward extension of the ancestral Hudson River drainage system that, unlike other valleys on the Atlantic shelf, has not been filled with sediment. A survey of the topography and backscatter intensity of the valley has been carried out using a Simrad Subsea EM 1000 multibeam sea floor mapping system. The valley head is located in a broad shallow basin and extends offshore 5-40 m below the shelf surface to a seaward terminus at a shelf-edge delta. The valley can be divided into upper, middle, lower and outer sections based on the topography, surficial sediments, and drainage pattern. The middle valley is characterized by 5 local topographic lows along the valley axis that have relief of 3-11 m below the valley floor. The northwestern portion of the study area has been affected by disposal of dredged and other materials since the late 1800′s. Part of this area has been designated as the Historic Area Remediation Site (HARS). The sea floor of the HARS is being remediated by placing at least a one-meter cap of clean dredged material on top of the existing surface sediments that exhibit varying degrees of degradation. A large field of sand waves is located in the lower valley in 70-80 m water depth that cover an area approximately 30 km long and 4 km wide. This sand wave field is hypothesized to be part of a flood deposit that formed as a result of the break-out of glacial lakes in upstate New York approximately 13,500 years BP. In the eastern-most part of the survey area in water depths greater than about 110 m, the sea floor is marked by long narrow northeast-southwest-trending grooves that are interpreted to be iceberg scour marks.

ALSO:

March 5th, as in Monday night:

Riverkeeper and NCA ask: How’s the Water? How’s Newtown Creek?

Join Riverkeeper and the Newtown Creek Alliance for a presentation on water quality in the Hudson River Estuary and its tributaries, focusing on the waters around Manhattan Island and in Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek.

March 5, 2012, 7:30PM to 9:30PM

Brooklyn Brewery, 79 North 11th Street, NY map

and March 6th, as in Tuesday

- photo by Mitch Waxman

Would that a humble narrator might tell you that these shots were captured whilst riding upon some Hedorah like cacodaemon, but it was actually during one of last fall’s Newtown Creek Tours and onboard an entirely mundane NY Water Taxi that the subject of this “Maritime Sunday” posting was photographed.

As you can see, something was advancing toward us on the Newtown Creek that day, something newly born.

from epa.gov

Newtown Creek, located in the City of New York, is a part of the New York – New Jersey Harbor Estuary and forms the northern border of the Borough of Brooklyn and the southern border of the borough of Queens. In the mid 1800s, the area adjacent to the 3.8 mile Newtown Creek was one of the busiest hubs of industrial activity in New York City. More than 50 refineries were located along its banks, including oil refineries, petrochemical plants, fertilizer and glue factories, sawmills, and lumber and coal yards. The creek was crowded with commercial vessels, including large boats bringing in raw materials and fuel and taking out oil, chemicals and metals.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

Built Nov. 04, 2010- this is the tugboat Crystal Cutler and her articulated barge (the Patricia E. Poling) plying the Newtown Creek. The article linked to below will tell you everything you could possibly ask about this tug and those who Captain and command her.

What mysteries they might have witnessed along the Creek, however, are not discussed in this profile.

from professionalmariner.com

The 70-foot, 1,500-hp twin-screw tug Crystal Cutler has been pushing and occasionally towing a 15,000-barrel clean oil barge since the tug was introduced in 2010. The tug places a high demand on her captains and crews as she ventures into shallow rivers and estuaries, moving about in a highly dynamic harbor with loads of gasoline, fuel additives or heating oil for small oil terminals.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

Amongst the larger harbor community, Newtown Creek is seldom referred to in glowing terms. There are those who dispute its role and historical significance to the maritime industry- as their eyes and hearts are drawn to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the West Side of Manhattan, and the gargantuan modern ports in New Jersey.

Many would like to abandon it as an industrial corridor entirely, saying that its day as a working waterway is done, and give it over to kayaking and other recreational occupations.

from tugboatinformation.com

Founded in 1995, Poling Cutler began operations near the time the former Poling Transportation went out of business.

The Founders of the new company were Ed Poling, whose grandfather started the former Poling company, and Gary Cutler who spent years working in the financial world before getting involved in Marine Transportation.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

One of the greatest sins along the Newtown Creek is precisely how few of its docks are utilized today. Most of the modern business along the Creek looks toward truck transportation to bring their goods to market and for the delivery of raw materials, ignoring their valuable docking rights and imprimature. Miles of bulkheads, expensively installed during prior generations, are allowed to rot away.

What a wasted opportunity.

from newtowncreekalliance.org

Moving essential bulk materials by barge is more efficient economically and environmentally. From what we hear, a single barge has the same capacity as 28 – 56 long haul trucks, depending on the industry. Compared to other transportation modes, barge transport of bulk materials is safer in terms of worker injuries and generates far fewer emissions of particulate matter, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, CO2 and nitrous oxide on a per ton mile moved basis.

Despite the critical importance of barge transport as a best practice for industries on Newtown Creek, much of the bulkhead along this waterway is in disrepair. Overall bulkhead condition reveals a trend of disinvestment in maritime transit and a decline in related industries. According to Army Corps of Engineers, there were 19 businesses with working docks in 1999, compared to the nine that remain active today, as of January 2011.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

When you boil it down, the whole purpose of the Newtown Creek in its current form is to bring bulk goods into New York City by barge. Admittedly, the days of Standard Oil, Phelps Dodge, and the great Lumber interests are long gone- but… imagine some farmers in upstate New York loading their harvest goods onto a barge, and sending a floating green market directly to Long Island City or Greenpoint or even Maspeth. The barge could return to the farmer laden with cash and whatever else might be needed for the next harvest, completing a virtuous circle.

Imagine standing on the shoulders of giants, rather than rifling through their corpses like so many bugs.

from dot.ny.gov

Commercial and industrial development along Newtown Creek began circa 1854-60 and accelerated rapidly, spurred by low land values, water access for ships and boats, and relative remoteness from populated areas or regulations. The first kerosene refinery in the United States (1854) and modern oil refinery (1867) helped transform Newtown Creek into an industrial waterway. The first few industries also included a distillery near the Newtown side of the Penny Bridge, and the Peter Cooper glue factory relocated from elsewhere in Greenpoint to a site in Bushwick north of Maspeth Avenue10. The influx of industry and jobs, aggressive real estate development in and around Hunter’s Point, including LIRR’s presence on the creek in 1861, and the explosive growth of refined petroleum products all enhanced Newtown Creek’s attractions and helped transform the drainage into an industrial waterway circa 1860-1880. At the Industrial Revolution’s height, Newtown Creek’s industries were flourishing, bringing thousands of people to work at its plants and factories.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

The United States Coast Guard sometimes refers to Newtown Creek as part of “America’s Maritime Superhighway”, a vital industrial waterway which must be protected from the interests of those too short sighted to realize its potential to reinvigorate the economies of those communities through which it flows. It is the very definition of the future, and New York’s destiny is and has always been directly linked to it.

It’s heart warming to see clear eyed mariners like those onboard the Crystal Cutler plying its waters.

from nycppf.org

Significant Maritime and Industrial Area

Newtown Creek, at over 780 acres the city’s largest SMIA, abuts portions of the Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Long Island City, and Maspeth industrial areas. The waterfront area is characterized by heavy industry and municipal facilities, many of which are water- dependent. Newtown Creek is also the largest SMIA in terms of employment.

Although from 1992 to 2008 the SMIA lost roughly half its jobs, from 2000 to 2008 the number of jobs in the SMIA grew by nearly 1,400 to reach a total of approximately 15,000 jobs. Nearly half of the jobs in 2008 were in transportation and warehousing and wholesale trade. However, the business mix is becoming much more diverse. In the eight-year period examined, non-industrial jobs grew by more than 35 percent.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

Captain Zeke is an 88 ton tug owned and operated by the White Near Coastal Towing Corp. of Syosset, and was built as the Lady Ora for Falgout Marine at Houma Shipbuilding in Louisiana back in 1980. Unfortunately, neither the company nor the tug have much information available about them, so there’s little more that can be said beyond its size- which is 30 m x 8 m, and its maximum recorded speed of 6.4 knots versus its average of 5.5 knots.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

Captain Zeke ran into a bit of trouble just a few years ago, on the Hudson River.

from professionalmariner.com

Spontaneous combustion involving paint rags in a fidley opening may have been the origin of the Aug. 31, 2008, fire aboard the Capt. Zeke, a Coast Guard investigator said. When their fire extinguishers proved inadequate, the tug crew fled to one of the barges.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

Speaking from a position of strictly deductive reasoning at this point, due to a lack of available information about this tug and its owners- Captain Zeke has been personally observed about the harbor moving small loads of a decidedly non volatile nature, as in the previous shot wherein the cargo seems to be sand.

It would be logical to assume that this role is well suited to the relatively small tug, which can most likely get into narrower spaces than the mated tug and barge gargantua which are employed by large players like Reinauer, Moran, or K-Sea (whose vessels specialize in the handling of volatiles) for the transport of various fuels and the handling of cargo vessels.

This theory is contradicted though, by this posting at the blog tuglife, which shows Captain Zeke tethered “on the hip” to a fuel barge.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

In the shots above and below, which were captured on the Kill Van Kull, Captain Zeke is tied to the sort of barge one regularly observes at Newtown Creek handling the SimsMetal trade in bulk metal. It is damnably odd, in the opinion of this humble narrator, that so little information is available online about this vessel. Normally, commercial maritime activity is copiously documented by a variety of private and government entities.

Regardless of this information vacuum, Newtown Pentacle’s “Maritime Sunday” nevertheless recognizes and sends a hearty greeting to Captain Zeke and its crew.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

It’s Maritime Sunday again, here at your Newtown Pentacle, a weekly post which focuses in on and examines some aspect of NY Harbor- or the Sixth Borough as our friends from Tugster call it.

As many of you know, your humble narrator is quite the enthusiast for such matters, and serves as a Steering Committee member for the Working Harbor Committee. This role and set of interests often puts me in a position to witness and photograph interesting circumstance around the harbor, which these “Maritime Sunday” postings endeavor to share.

Today’s spotlight is cast upon the Moran Towing Tug “Kimberly Turecamo”.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

There are quite a few tugs with the surname Turecamo that are operated by Moran Towing, the result of a merger between two towing companies in the age of corporate expansion and conglomeration. The founder of Turecamo Coastal was born on an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea called Isola Lipari, part of the Aeolian Archipelago that straddles the distance between Mount Vesuvius and Mount Etna in fabled Italy. Lipari has a long and sordid history, a story which stretches back in time to the Estruscans, Greeks, and the Romans. The Island was once conquered by Arab Pirates, after all.

This of course, has nothing to do with the Tugboat Kimberly Turecamo, its just nice to know where certain folks hail from. The guy from Cake Boss on the TLC Channel, and Natalie Imbruglia- their dads come from Isola Lipari as well.

from tugboatinformation.com

Turecamo Coastal and Harbor Towing Corporation was foundeded by Bartholdi Turecamo, who immigrated from Isola Lipari, a small island between the northern coast of Sicily and the southern tip of Italy. As an immigrant Turecamo found work in road construction around New York.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

Kimberly Turecamo, the tug, is from Louisiana. She also was one of the ships which assisted in the evacuation of lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001. One of the great stories from that day, it’s only the persistent modesty of those sailors who managed to move more than a quarter million people out of harms way that prevents this story from pervading the popular imagination.

Sailors are a different breed, and immodest only amongst themselves.

from morantug.com

It is reported that as many as 300,000 people were evacuated from lower Manhattan during an eight hour period following the attacks. When the evacuation first began, Moran had 11 tugs on the scene, each taking as many as 100 people to designated sites around the port, and to New Jersey. “After the initial surge of evacuation, we went down to about five boats on the scene, still working around the clock, and after four or five days we still had two boats working there at the end,” said Keyes. “As soon as the people were taken off, the boats were used for moving emergency crews, equipment and supplies.”

Moran tugs logged a total of 256 hours during the operation, according to Keyes. The tug Turecamo Boys was on the scene longest, with 84 hours logged, followed by Marie J. Turecamo with 51 hours and Margaret Moran with 49 hours. Other tugs involved with the evacuation were Nancy Moran, Brendan Turecamo, Kathleen Turecamo, Diana Moran, Kimberly Turecamo, Miriam Moran, Turecamo Girls and Catherine Turecamo.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

The iconic white “M” on their black stacks, coupled with the scarlet hull and white detailing, make Moran tugs the easiest craft to spot in NY Harbor. As mentioned in the past, there is just something iconic about them, and if you were to ask someone to describe a tugboat blindly- they would probably craft an image of something not unlike the Kimberly Turecamo.

from tugboatinformation.com

Built in 1980, by McDermott Shipyard of Morgan City, Louisiana (hull #255) as the Rebecca P.

The tug was later acquired by Turecamo Maritime where she was renamed as the Kimberly Turecamo .

In 1998, Turecamo Maritime was acquired by the Moran Towing Corporation where the tug retained her name.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

Kimberly Turecamo is at work in the shot above, guiding a fuel tanker through the narrow Kill Van Kull waterway. The Kill Van Kull at it’s narrowest point, between New Jersey and Staten Island, is a scant thousand feet wide and might boast a depth of merely 40-45 feet above the soft bottom. The cargo ships which come here in pursuit of trade are ocean going vessels whose titan engines would provide a lack of subtlety in handing such conditions.

The Kill Van Kull is a tidal straight, incidentally.

from morantug.com

Moran commenced operations in 1860 when founder Michael Moran opened a towing brokerage, Moran Towing and Transportation Company, in New York Harbor. The company was transformed from a brokerage into an owner-operator of tugboats in 1863, when it purchased a one-half interest in the tugboat Ida Miller for $2,700.

At the time, the Harbor was alive with ships – many of them still sail-powered – and Moran’s enterprise soon grew into a fleet of tugboats. It was Michael Moran himself who painted the first white “M” on a Moran tugboat stack, reportedly around 1880.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

An interesting bit of trivia about the harbor of New York is that its natural depth is a mere 17 feet, but was deepened by the actions of dredging to 24 feet before the end of the 19th century. The large ships of modernity utilize shipping channels which are deeper than the surrounding area, in particular the Ambrose Channel- a 1914 construct.

Ambrose leads the way in from a spectacular natural formation, a depression on the continental shelf called the New York Bight.

The Bight is clove by the terrifying depths of the Hudson Canyon.

from wikipedia

The western edge of Newark Bay was originally shallow tidal wetlands covering approximately 12 square miles (31 km2). In 1910s the City of Newark began excavating an angled shipping channel in the northeastern quadrant of the wetland which formed the basis of Port Newark. Work on the channel and terminal facilities on its north side accelerated during World War I, when the federal government took control of Port Newark. During the war there were close to 25,000 troops stationed at the Newark Bay Shipyard.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

It’s Tugboat Sunday at the Newtown Pentacle, so let’s shine a little light on K-Sea’s Ross Sea. Named for the infamous Antarctic waters explored by Roald Amundsen, the ship is one of the newer tugs plying the waters of NY Harbor.

from k-sea.com

K-Sea Transportation Partners L.P., headquartered in East Brunswick, New Jersey, is a leading provider of marine transportation, distribution and logistics services in the U.S. From locations in New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Seattle and Honolulu, K-Sea operates a large fleet of tugs and tank barges that serves a wide range of customers, including major oil companies, oil traders and refiners.

- photo by Mitch Waxman

The Ross Sea, or specifically the Penguin infested Ross Island, is home to two volcanos which bear the dearest nomenclature of all geologic forms upon the earth- the polygenetic stratovolcano Mount Erebus, and the shield volcano Mount Terror.

The latter infernal mountain is mentioned in both the Poe Novella “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket” and H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” as well (although Lovecraft’s Mountains are in Western Antarctica, and assumed to be at least 1,000 KM from the Ross Sea).

for all the technical data, manufacturing history, and more photos of K-Sea’s Ross Sea- check out tugboatinformation.com

- photo by Mitch Waxman

The Ross Sea, as in the Antarctic, is named for explorer Sir James Clark Ross. An Englishman, Ross led an expedition to the frozen south in two wooden ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror- for which the volcanoes were named. The astounding Ross Ice Shelf is named for him, although he christened the formation as “The Victoria Barrier”.

It must be mentioned that Ross Sea, as in the Tugboat, was the winner of the 2011 Great North River Tugboat Race,

from workingharbor.com

The Great North River Race Results

1. Ross Sea – Class A 1st place – Time: 4:44 

2. Quantico Creek – Class A 2nd Place – Time: 4:55
3. Maurania III – Class A 3rd Place – Time: 4:55.5
4. Catherine Miller – Class C 1st Place – Time: 5:54
5. Pegasus – Class B 1st Place – Time: 5:56
6. Susan Miller – Class C 2nd Place – Time: 6:09.
7. Growler – Class C 3rd Place – Time: 6:13
8. Freddie K. Miller – Class B 2nd Place – Time: 6:29
9. Sea Wolf – Class B 3rd Place – Time: 6:48 Best Tatoo (Wayne)

10. The Bronx – Did Not Race Little Toot Award & best mascot

- photo by Mitch Waxman

A question I’ve often heard asked often about Tugs with the sort of configuration that Ross Sea exhibits, a second wheel house atop the mast, is “why it is thus”?

Short answer is that it enables the pilot and or Captain the ability to see over a barge whose own height occludes the way forward.

from wikipedia

The Ross Sea was discovered by James Ross in 1841. In the west of the Ross Sea is Ross Island with the Mt. Erebus volcano, in the east Roosevelt Island. The southern part is covered by the Ross Ice Shelf. Roald Amundsen started his South Pole expedition in 1911 from the Bay of Whales, which was located at the shelf. In the west of the Ross sea, McMurdo Sound is a port which is usually free of ice during the summer. The southernmost part of the Ross Sea is Gould Coast, which is approximately two hundred miles from the Geographic South Pole.

All land masses in the Ross Sea are claimed by New Zealand to fall under the jurisdiction of the Ross Dependency, but few non-Commonwealth nations recognise this claim.

A 10 metre (32.8 feet) long colossal squid weighing 495 kilograms (1,091 lb) was captured in the Ross Sea on February 22, 2007.