Posts Tagged ‘Tugboat’
belching aperture
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This Maritime Sunday, a psychologically overwhelmed and physically exhausted narrator presents to you the little Miss Yvette tug, as it motors down the Kill Van Kull. That’s… Staten Island… in the background, and the red, black, and blue tarp witnessed back there is part of a road salt operation called “Atlantic Salt”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Call sign WDE7815, Miss Yvette is not a terribly large or fast tug- with a maximum recorded speed of 7.8 knots (9mph) and a length of some 22 meters (roughly 72 feet). She is owned and operated by the Sterling Equipment company, and was built in 1975. An “inland tug”, Miss Yvette boasts a 1200 HP twin screw drive, and is 106 gross tons.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
She used to be blue and white, having spent some of her career with Hallan Marine, but is a proud scarlet these days. These shots were captured while onboard a Working Harbor Committee trip to the Port of Newark Elizabeth, just a few weeks ago.
partly delirious
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recently spotted as it plied the estuarine expanses of the East River, the Vane Brothers Sassafras Tug. Your humble narrator was onboard an East River Ferry, heading from Manhattan to Greenpoint, and spotted the tug moving iconically along the strait.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the dim past of industrial supremacy, this was one of the busiest stretches of aqua firma in the world, and it is truly a condemnation upon our modern civilization that the passing of a tug and barge along its expanses is something remarkable. A blogger of a century ago would have been limited to monographs, of course, but such a creature would have found very little to say about such a thing. In modernity, it would be like commenting on the passing of a common truck.
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Upcoming Walking Tour- The Poison Cauldron, with Atlas Obscura
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Meetup at the corner of Kingsland and Norman Avenues in Greenpoint at 11 on Saturday, August 25th.
We will be exploring the petroleum and waste transfer districts of the Newtown Creek watershed in North Brooklyn. Heavily industrialized, the area we will be walking through is the heart of the Greenpoint Oil Spill and home to scores of waste transfer stations and other heavy industries. We will be heading for the thrice damned Kosciuszko Bridge, which is scheduled for a demolition and replacement project which will be starting in 2013. Photographers, in particular, will find this an interesting walk through a little known and quite obscure section of New York City.
Be prepared: We’ll be encountering broken pavement, sometimes heavy truck traffic, and experiencing a virtual urban desert as we move through the concrete devastations of North Brooklyn. Dress and pack appropriately for hiking, closed toe shoes are highly recommended- as are a hat or parasol to shield you from the sun.
Bathroom opportunities will be found only at the start of the walk, which will be around three hours long and cover approximately three miles of ground. Drivers, it would be wise to leave your cars in the vicinity of McGolrick Park in Greenpoint.
Click here for tickets, and as always- a limited number of walk ups will be welcomed- but for safety reasons we need to limit the group to a manageable size. Contact me at this email if you desire further details.
often done
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Imagine my surprise. Just the other day, while onboard a Working Harbor Committee Newark Bay trip, along came the Mary H. Another denizen of the Newtown Creek, it was so very odd encountering it somewhere else- sort of like visiting a foreign city and finding a neighbor or coworker is there simultaneously. Maritime Sunday’s are often composed of such “co-inky-dink”. Jung would have called it “synchronicity”.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Pictured above is Mary H in the place I most often expect to find her, delivering a barge to the Bayside depot on Metropolitan Avenue on the obliteration of rational hope known as the English Kills, some three miles back from the East River in Brooklyn.
scratching restlessly
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recently observed, the Gage Paul Thornton moving a fuel barge past Pier 16 in Manhattan, providing some focal point for this week’s “Maritime Sunday”. Picturesque, the spot that the boat is moving through is just loaded with NY iconography, recognizable instantly and impossible to confuse with anywhere else.
from marinesteel.com
Thornton Towing & Transportation is owned by Gerard and Richard Thornton, and Ed Carr; all of whom have spent their entire professional careers working on and around the waters of New York Harbor.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
It’s an odd thing, that when pointing a lens at Manhattan these days, it’s hard to find a place to “pin” the location as identifiably “New York City”. Without the Brooklyn Bridge or Empire State Building in the shot, it’s hard to recognize the formerly iconic skyline anymore. Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx still look like NY, but Manhattan has had so much reconstructive and cosmetic surgery that it’s hard to recognize.
another Thornton tug was featured not that long ago at this, your Newtown Pentacle- The Thornton Brothers was seen in the posting “middle stature“
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Similar rhinoplasty and silicon injections are in the works for the other boroughs of course, Williamsburg has had a boob job in recent years, and Long Island City has had a facelift and tummy tuck. One hopes that the process will fizzle out before it goes too far and the Bronx starts to look like Bruce Jenner.
Anyway, a hearty Maritime Sunday shout out is sent to the Gage Paul Thornton and her crew.
from dailymail.co.uk
He was a star athlete and American hero when he brought home the gold medal after the 1976 Olympic Games.
But Bruce Jenner today appears to have chiselled away at the masculine features that graced Wheaties boxes decades ago.
The reality star, better known now as Kim Kardashian’s step-father, was barely recognisable from the retro image as he stepped out for a promotional event this weekend, his face looking distinctly tighter than usual.
glassy or metallic
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Coming home from the Working Harbor Committee Walking tour of the Kill Van Kull yesterday, while onboard the Staten Island Ferry, one of the tour goers pointed out a gargantuan ship passing by and asked me about it. While neither of the ships pictured above and below are that exact vessel, they are of the same class and function. Automobile carriers, they are known to the maritime trade as “Ro-Ro” or “Roll on Roll off” cargo ships, which we’ll be taking a look at this “Maritime Sunday”.
from wikipedia
Since 1970 the market for exporting and importing cars has increased dramatically and the number and type of RO/ROs has increased also. In 1973, Japan’s K Line built European Highway, the first pure car carrier (PCC), which carried 4,200 automobiles. Today’s pure car carriers and their close cousins, the pure car/truck carrier (PCTC) are distinctive ships with a box-like superstructure running the entire length and breadth of the hull, fully enclosing the cargo. They typically have a stern ramp and a side ramp for dual loading of thousands of vehicles (as cars trucks, heavy machineries, tracked units, Mafi trailers, loose statics), and extensive automatic fire control systems.
The PCTC has liftable decks to increase vertical clearance as well as heavier decks for “high and heavy” cargo. A 6500 unit car ship with 12 decks can have three decks which can take cargo up to 150 short tons (136 t; 134 long tons) with liftable panels to increase clearance from 1.7 to 6.7 m (5 ft 7 in to 21 ft 10 in) on some decks. Lifting decks to accommodate higher cargo reduces the total capacity.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One often spots these gargantua moving slowly about the harbor, most often escorted by at least two tugs. Despite their ungainly appearance, the ships are a great deal more stable than they would appear, or so I am told. Researching this post, tales of Ro Ro ships listing as much as 80 degrees in heavy seas without capsizing have emerged. The economic advantages offered by these vessels, however, far outweigh their risks.
from eukor.com
EUKOR operates a large and modern fleet of specialized Pure Car and Truck Carriers (PCTC), embracing some of the largest vessels in the world – annually transporting around 3 million cars worldwide, utilizing a global network of offices and agents.
Through continuous expansion of our route network, minimization of transit times, utmost attention to cargo-handling quality and a strong dedication to cost savings for our customers, we strive towards delivering total customer satisfaction. Ultimately, we aim to achieve our vision of becoming the best shipping company for the global automotive industry.
We combine the best of what Korea and Europe have to offer. Having Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors as shareholders (20%) gives us a unique growth platform within the industry. Add to that the shareholdings of Norwegian shipping company Wilh.Wilhelmsen (40%) with shipping experience dating back to 1861 and leading Swedish shipping group Wallenius Lines (40%)- founded in 1934 and pioneers in car carrier operations since the 1950′s -and we have created a company of world class competencies.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Ro Ro’s, it seems, allow vehicles to be driven onto the ship and then back off at their port of destination. This creates a series of efficiencies when delivering automobiles. Time spent at dock is anathema to shipping companies, and the name of the game is to discharge and acquire new cargo in as efficient and expedient fashion as possible. Expediting such matters, and finding solutions to the never ending flow of goods through the port, is what has made New York the 2nd largest port in the United States (although the secondary ranking is something which officials at the Port Authority will argue against, claiming factual rather than statistical primacy over the currently ranked #1 in California).
This is less of a link than a crib from emails which have been passed around recently by members of the Working Harbor Committee. The source of the information is undoubtedly “official” but I can’t tell you it’s origin.
What actually transpires at The Port of New York/New Jersey:
- Total estimated value of cargo-$176 Billion (2011)
- 6.752 deep draft commercial ship arrivals (over 18/day)
- 1st in nation for petroleum product movement
- 1st in nation for domestic/foreign imports combined
- 3rd largest U.S. port for containerized cargo
- 3rd largest Passenger Ferry service in the world
- 3rd largest Cruise Ship port in the U.S.
In 2011, transported:
- 85 million tons of general and bulk cargo
- 5.5 million twenty-foot equivalent units of containerized cargo (15,058 containers per day)
- 561,965 vehicles
- Distributed to 89-90 million consumers in a 10- contiguous state area (35% of U.S. population
The Newtown Pentacle 