Archive for the ‘Kill Van Kull’ Category
perils faced
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Simple of mind, your humble narrator is always overjoyed when a previously unrecorded Tug passes in front of me. This time around, it’s the Mary Alice operated by Donjon Towing. Extensive operations performed by the corporations boats upon my beloved Newtown Creek have been discussed frequently at this, your Newtown Pentacle, and usage of the search box at the upper right hand corner of this page will reveal many of them to those who typed “Donjon” into it’s text field.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If horses could swim well, it would take 3,000 of them to equal the output of this Tug’s engines, which drive the hundred foot long and 40 foot high boat through the Kill Van Kull along with its barge. A home town girl, Mary Alice was built in 1974.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As she passed me by, the comical windmill generator in Jersey- rising over the oil tanks- came into view. For a while, I’ve been wondering if it was put there to provide comic relief to, or just taunt, the petrochemical companies located on the Kill Van Kull. That’s this week’s Maritime Sunday, Lords and Ladies.
circumstance manifest
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just a short one today, on this Maritime Sunday.
A recent shot gathered onboard the Working Harbor Committee’s Port Newark Tour. Depicted is the Gramma Lee T Moran tugboat hurtling down the Kill Van Kull past the Atlantic Salt facility on Staten Island. Gramma has been described in some detail at this, your Newtown Pentacle, in the posting “Crooked Boughs” from back in December of 2011.
The Working Harbor 2012 Schedule is well underway-
- Next Tuesday is the
North River tour, with the legendary Bill MillerBrooklyn Tour, with Dan Wiley joining Capt. Doswell on the mike. - My own Newtown Creek tour is on the 22nd of this month.
- Captain Margaret Flanagan will be leading a walking tour of South Street Seaport, the next one is on July 21.
- Another Staten Island Walking Tour will be forthcoming from your humble narrator on July the 28th.
Check out workingharbor.com for details and excursion schedules. Also, check out the Working Harbor blog here.
____________________________________________________________________________
Click for details on Mitch Waxman’s
Upcoming boat tours of Newtown Creek
July 22nd, 2012- Working Harbor Committee Newtown Creek Boat Tour
time and magnitude
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A quick one for this week’s “Maritime Sunday”, depicting the “P.O. Kenny Hansen” Launch No. 4 of the redoubtable NYPD Harbor Unit as it patrolled the Kill Van Kull. Named for a young officer who lost his life in the line of duty, as are all Police boats, wherever the crew was going- they were heading there fast.
from nypdangels.com
Officer Kenneth Hansen, 26, drowned after apparently suffering a leg cramp while posing as a victim during an air-sea rescue training operation in the water off Battery Park. He was wearing street clothes and no life vest when he disappeared beneath the murky water while waiting for a lifeline from a helicopter hovering overhead. Officer Hansen was reported missing and his body was recovered from New York Harbor in Lower Manhattan the next day.
present position
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Maritime Sunday is with us once again, happening to coincide with Greek or Eastern Orthodox Easter (known as greester here in Astoria) as well as the 100th anniversary of the well known Titanic disaster. That subject will be explored by everyone else, I suspect, so instead let’s check out the scene on the Kill Van Kull.
from wikipedia
The Bayonne Bridge is the fourth-longest steel arch bridge in the world, and was the longest in the world at the time of its completion. It connects Bayonne, New Jersey with Staten Island, New York, spanning the Kill Van Kull. Despite popular belief, it is not a national landmark.
The bridge was designed by master bridge-builder Othmar Ammann and the architect Cass Gilbert. It was built by the Port of New York Authority and opened on November 15, 1931, after dedication ceremonies were held the previous day.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
These shots were captured while onboard one of the many Working Harbor Committee excursions I attended last summer, and portrays one of those summer days which New York is infamous for. Heavy clouds of humidity dangle, and inescapable temperatures render the entire archipelago in a tropical aspect.
from wikipedia
The Kill Van Kull is a tidal strait between Staten Island, New York and Bayonne, New Jersey in the United States. Approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) long and 1,000 feet (305 m) wide, it connects Newark Bay with Upper New York Bay. The Robbins Reef Light marks the eastern end of the Kill, Bergen Point its western end. Spanned by the Bayonne Bridge, it is one of the most heavily travelled waterways in the Port of New York and New Jersey.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
From this cauldron of wet heat emerged the vermillion hull of a Bouchard tug, the Frederick E Bouchard. It was returning from the gargantuan Port Newark complex, where it’s unknown mission seemed to have been accomplished.
From his first voyage at eleven years of age as a cabin boy on a sailing ship bound for China, Captain Bouchard knew that shipping would be his life. By 1915, he was the youngest tugboat captain in the Port of New York.
On July 30, 1916, while on watch of the tug C. GALLAGHER of the Goodwin, Gallagher Sand Co., Captain Bouchard witnessed the infamous Black Tom Explosion, which detonated $22 Million dollars worth of WW I munitions. Always one to set out to accomplish what few others could, he took his tug from the Long Dock at Erie Basin in Brooklyn and headed for New Jersey. Amongst continuing explosions, which blew the glass panes and lights out of his tug, he worked to rescue the 4,000-ton Brazilian steamer TIJOCA RIO, and the schooner GEORGE W. ELEZY, of Bath, ME. Later the US District Court awarded the Captain a salvage award and an additional award for personal bravery, which totaled $9,000. He quickly invested the salvage award to create his own company, Bouchard Transportation Company, which was incorporated in 1918.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A fairly large boat, for NY Harbor at least, the tug made good time against the tide. Models like this one are used by the petroleum industry to ferry fuel barges from point to point along the waterfront, ensuring that bulk delivery of “product” to local distribution depots happens in a timely fashion.
Built in 1975, by Halter Marine of New Orleans, Louisiana (hull #437) as the Frederick E. Bouchard for Bouchard Transportation of Melville, New York.
She is a twin screw tug rated rated at 3,900 horsepower.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Omnivorous, of course, the Frederick E Bouchard has also been personally observed handling non volatile cargos as well. You have to stay busy in the maritime industry, and cargo is cargo. The actual nature of the cargo may change, requiring special handling dictated by custom and regulations, but at the end it’s physics and profit margin that define the mission carried out by maritime professionals.
Law of Gross Tonnage
The law, which is more common sense then explicitly written in the code, goes like this: “The heavier vessel always has the right-of-way.”
This is based on simple Newtonian physics. Newton’s first law talks about objects in motion stay in motion unless another force is acted upon it. In other words, if a boat is moving a 5 mph east and you were in the vacuum of space, it would never stop traveling east at 5 mph. However, we all know when we stop our engine on our boat, we slow down.
How long it takes to go from 5 mph to zero, depends on wind, and current. Even if there was no wind or current, we’d still slow down, because the water itself provides friction upon the hull of the boat, and that in itself acts as a brake.
We all have, by observation found that the bigger the object, the longer it takes to slow down. Newton’s second law of physics talks about how the amount of force required to move an object is inversely proportional to the mass of the object.
So, if a tug and barge were traveling down a narrow channel, and you stopped your boat 1,000 feet away, right in front of the tug and barge; and, if the master of the tug saw you immediately; and if the master of the tug immediately began to stop the tug and barge; you’d have less than one minute to move your vessel.
Because if you didn’t move your vessel in less than 60 small seconds, the tug and barge would just run right over you. It would be impossible for the master of the tug to stop, based of the collective mass of both the vessel and the barge, in 1,000 feet.
The law of gross tonnage is un-relenting. It is a fact of life. What also is a fact of life, is that you should not depend on the master of the tug or any other large vessel is able to see you, either visually or on radar.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As mentioned at the start of this post, today is Easter Sunday to adherents of the Eastern Orthodox church, but oddly enough, it coincides with a decidedly goddess based celebration which the Roman Empire celebrated called Fordicidia.
from wikipedia
In ancient Roman religion, the Fordicidia was a festival of fertility, held April 15, that pertained to animal husbandry. It involved the sacrifice of a pregnant cow to Tellus, or Mother Earth, in proximity to the festival of Ceres (Cerealia) on April 19.
On the Roman religious calendar, the month of April was in general preoccupied with deities who were female or ambiguous in gender, opening with the Feast of Venus on the Kalends. Several other festivals pertaining to farm life were held in April: the Parilia, or feast of shepherds, on April 21; the Robigalia on April 25, to protect crops from blight; and the Vinalia, or one of the two wine festivals on the calendar, at the end of the month. Of these, the Fordicidia and Robigalia are likely to have been of greatest antiquity. William Warde Fowler, whose early 20th-century work on Roman festivals remains a standard reference, asserted that the Fordicidia was “beyond doubt one of the oldest sacrificial rites in Roman religion.”
vast enclosure
– photo by Mitch Waxman
When you cut things down to the bone, and ask yourself the question “Who was the New Yorker that most profoundly changed the City?” it always comes back to one fellow. Ray Kelly or Mike Bloomberg would vie for the crown in modernity, in the long view of history Alexander Hamilton, DeWitt Clinton, Boss Tweed, or the Roebling clan have major claims on the title. Robert Moses would tell you that it was himself, and arguably, so would Osama Bin Laden.
In the opinion of a humble narrator, the crown belongs to one man- a Swedish immigrant named Othmar Ammann, and today is his birthday.
from wikipedia
Othmar Hermann Ammann (March 26, 1879 – September 22, 1965) was a American structural engineer whose designs include the George Washington Bridge, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, and Bayonne Bridge.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Brooklyn Bridge has the fame, Williamsburg Bridge the infamy, Manhattan Bridge is overlooked. The bridges of Othmar Ammann, however, are the ones which shaped the modern megalopolis and allowed the expansion and diaspora of New York’s laborers from the tenement neighborhoods of the five boroughs to the suburban satellites of modernity. The vast populations of Long Island and New Jersey and Westchester who commute into the city on a daily basis would have never achieved their current size, were Ammann removed from the story.
As a side note, and just to toot my own horn for a moment, the shot above was published last year in the New York Times- check it out here
Also from wikipedia
Othmar Ammann designed more than half of the eleven bridges that connect New York City to the rest of the United States. His talent and ingenuity helped him create the two longest suspension bridges of his time. Ammann was known for being able to create bridges that were light and inexpensive, yet they were still simple and beautiful. He was able to do this by using the deflection theory. He believed that the weight per foot of the span and the cables would provide enough stiffness so that the bridge would not need any stiffening trusses. This made him popular during the depression era when being able to reduce the cost was crucial. Famous bridges by Ammann include:
- George Washington Bridge (opened October 24, 1931)
- Bayonne Bridge (opened November 15, 1931)
- Triborough Bridge (opened July 11, 1936)
- Bronx-Whitestone Bridge (opened April 29, 1939)
- Walt Whitman Bridge (opened May 16, 1957)
- Throgs Neck Bridge (opened January 11, 1961)
- Verrazano Narrows Bridge (opened November 21, 1964)
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Othmar Ammann was a bit of an artist, his bridges achieving a rare thing for engineering projects, which is the elevation of a functional structure to the sublime. A prevailing theory in fine art and graphic design which emerged in the 20th century is “less is more”, and Ammann’s spans are manifestations of this concept in steel and cement.
from smithsonian.com
By the early 1960s, when the George Washington’s lower deck was added (as specified in the original plans), Ammann had all but eclipsed his mentor. Ammann’s other 1931 creation, the Bayonne Bridge connecting Staten Island and New Jersey, was until 1977 the world’s largest steel arch bridge — more than 600 feet longer than the previous record holder, Lindenthal’s Hell Gate Bridge.
Months before his death in 1965, Ammann gazed through a telescope from his 32nd-floor Manhattan apartment. In his viewfinder was a brand-new sight some 12 miles away: his Verrazano-Narrows suspension bridge. As if in tribute to the engineering prowess that made Ammann’s George Washington Bridge great, this equally slender, graceful span would not be surpassed in length for another 17 years.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Eclipsed by the vain and power seeking during his sunset years, Ammann is one of the forgotten few who crafted the connections between the individual components of the archipelago islands of New York Harbor. Mighty Triborough or the graceful arch of the Bayonne Bridge speak to his sense of esthetic, and indicate that he was in touch with some higher imperative than merely moving automobiles from one place to another.
from nytimes.com
His works soar above the water, spanning the city’s rivers and connecting New York to the rest of the country. But who has heard of Othmar H. Ammann?
Donald Trump hadn’t, at least not back in 1964 when he was a high school student and his father took him to the dedication ceremony for the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. ”It was a sad experience,” Mr. Trump recalled. ”For years, various politicians had fought the bridge. Now that it was built, I watched as these same people all got up and took credit for it, congratulating themselves and introducing one another. The only one not introduced was the man who made the bridge, Othmar Ammann.
The Newtown Pentacle 