Photos of small tug boats (and online charts)

[tomlarkin]

As part of the planning for the small tug I'm building I collected a whole bunch of pictures of small tug boats from different places on the web and created three pages to show them. Enjoy!

http://www.zoomatron.com/tom/smalltugs/smalltugs.html
http://www.zoomatron.com/tom/smalltugs2/smalltugs2.html
http://www.zoomatron.com/tom/smalltugs3/smalltugs3.html

A little off-topic, the home page of my site allows you to look at nautical charts online, in an interesting interactive way. So far, it's only Washington state charts and a few from Massachusetts, but I plan on adding more later. http://www.zoomatron.com/Default.aspx

[NealmCarter]

Great collection of tugs.........thanks

[cats..paw]

Fine collection of pics!

During the 60's I worked the Wooden tug Rodney out of the C & D canal. Built as an ocean tug for the Navy during the 40's, in her youth she doubled as a fire boat. When she watered down it took 1500 gallons and showers were unlimited. She was 120' loa and largely took ocean barge assignments between various East Coast ports and sometimes Puerto Rico.

My first night aboard we towed an empty 200' barge out of Philly bound for Norfolk through the C&D on a short hauser. It was January and an extremely cold winter. The upper Chesapeake had frozen over and Coast Guard ice breakers had to keep the channels open. We picked our way through 4" slabs of ice which had been pushed up over one another and we found ourselves jammed to a halt with that barge, her big sloped bow high on the water, coming down on us. The 9' prop was stopped to prevent it's winding up the hauser, and the barge came down and drove us through the ice. I saw the round wooden stern actually flex upward several inches (4" thick steam bent planks). In a way we were pretty lucky because tugs can be run down and held under by big barges. The barge drove us through and came to a halt, drifting off to starboard, we fetched up so hard that the hauser tightened down on the H bitts like a machine gun, wringing out spirals of salt water. That stopped the tug and yanked the barge back toward her. With prop again stopped we got another, but lesser. kick in the stern. Tug pushed forward and the barge now drifted to port. Another three iterations and we finally got moving in some ice-free water with the barge obediently back in line.

The stern had been opened up about an inch, though it was above the waterline and right below the massive rub rail. A following sea off the Carolinas began bringing in some water; fortunately a handy billy kept up with it. I spent three days of a layover in West Palm Beach hanging off the stern on an extension ladder driving rags and oakum into the breach.

[tomlarkin]

That's an amazing story! Thanks. I talked to a guy out here who was selling old tugs, and he had one he couldn't sell because it had been sunk by being run over by a section of the Hood Canal Bridge it was towing. Some people had died in the accident, so no one wanted the boat because of the bad luck.

Do accidents like this happen often? I was under the impression that this was a freak occurance.

[Tom Hunter]

Great Photos

I hope this won't be considered Macabre, but you should google "tugboat graveyard" you will find amazing photos of a yard full of derelicts located on Staten Island.

http://www.undercity.org/photos/Ship_graveyard1/boat11.JPG

[JimD]

That's nothing short of macabre!

[cats..paw]

TomLarken: I think reports of accidents tend to get passed around a lot so the few sound like many.

The risk level of their work is high, as they have to work at such close quarters with vessels much larger than themselves, with only a huge engine and maneuverability in their favor. The skill level required to use those advantages was what always impressed me.

The old woody Rodney carried a gigantic single engine which had to be stopped and restarted to go from forward to reverse. Sometimes she was slow to restart. One night she popped a concrete spawl the size of a basket ball from the curb of a pier. Control is much better these days.

Tom H: Sad but such faded elegance, imho.

Chris.

[cats..paw]

Actually a push boat, but a rather amazing occurance from the past:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/~soldier/towboat06.jpg
See the full sequence of pics (goofy captions and all) at:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/~soldier/towboat.htm
and the story at:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/~soldier/index.html

[paladin]

One of your pictures of the tug "Fanny L. Baker..".......Fanny Luetta Baker was my Great aunt...:D

[J. Spira]

Great pics! Thanks for the look. I remember back in the 70s in Morro Bay, an 80' steel tug sunk near the harbor entrance. I knew the divers who salvaged it. They raised it and fixed it up to be resold. I got a look through and it was the first time I'd seen one of thise big diesel those engines that stop, the camshaft shifted using an air cylinder to put a different set of lobes under the valve lifters, then it started in opposite rotation, instead of using a gearbox. Impressive.

[boylesboats]

One of your pictures of the tug "Fanny L. Baker..".......Fanny Luetta Baker was my Great aunt...:D

That's wild.... I will believe this okay.... But, you're not pulling my leg aren't ya?

[Michael s/v Sannyasin]

Nice, but those are not small tugs... this is!

http://www.greatsoftware.net/sailing/jinx1.jpg


http://www.greatsoftware.net/sailing/jinx2.jpg

[nedL]

Great photos! Yup, Woodies marine on Staten Island was the final resting place for a lot of old wooden tugs. Back in the 70's you could pretty much trace a history of the tugboat by what was there. - Also reminds me of the 60's & early 70's when the railroad companies used to use old tug boats as "mooring bouys" for their rail road barges on the Hudson. They would just teather the old tugs out there on moorings & hang a string of barges behind them as needed for storage.

[Paul Pless]

re tugboat mishaps, here's a rather close call caught on video...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2oxuTW3tKVA&mode=related&search=

[Mark T]

Excellent tug photos, Thanks. Good luck with the Devlin Godzilla. I'll be dropping in on the blog to check things out. I've been tossing that design around for a while as one on my medium list.

That anchor will get the brown 25 moving!!!

[Lew Barrett]

I just discovered this thread. Thanks, nice shots, lots of fun. Seattle is rich pickings for these sorts of boats too, including quite a few being used as live aboards and as true private vesssels. What's your plan for your boat?

[paladin]

Boylesboat.....Nope...tain't pullin' yore leg on this one...see...no smilies.....not that I wouldn't do a little leg pullin' if the chance arose....
My Great Grandmaother was Sarah Ann South who married James Bradford.....Sarah was the great great granddaughter of Patrick Henry...Fanny Louetta was her sister that married Charlie Baker.....and so on....I got's about 800 pages of that stuff so far

and...My aunt, who passed away in 1977, was named for her...Fanny Louetta Gertrude....who married Edwin Fagg, a second cousin to Herbert Hoover......who's other cousin married my paternal grandfather after the first Gramma Phillips passed away....ain't it fun chasin' relatives....

[Lew Barrett]

.....Sarah was the great great granddaughter of Patrick Henry...Fanny Louetta was her sister that married Charlie Baker.....and so on....I got's about 800 pages of that stuff so far

and...My aunt, who passed away in 1977, was named for her...Fanny Louetta Gertrude....who married Edwin Fagg, a second cousin to Herbert Hoover......who's other cousin married my paternal grandfather after the first Gramma Phillips passed away....ain't it fun chasin' relatives....

In other words, all your relatives are related, some more than once? :D

[paladin]

yup...but by marriage.... before The South Union the Grandmother was the Great great Granddaughter of Sir Francis Drake.....Not THE Sir Francis, but his nephew...sir francis had no children so Nephew "Francis" inherited the title......My Grandfather had no male children, just 4 daughters, and two of my aunts married cousins who were also related by marriage, not blood cousins....when I started the geneology it got really weird for a while....sorta like the "I am my own grandpa" syndrome.....one of the great aunts married a gentleman by the name of Ring, formerly Reingold......also known as Johnny Ringo a son of the "infamous" gunfighter" or so the story goes, never could get an honest trace on that one, just family legend...

[boylesboats]

Boylesboat.....Nope...tain't pullin' yore leg on this one...see...no smilies.....not that I wouldn't do a little leg pullin' if the chance arose....
My Great Grandmaother was Sarah Ann South who married James Bradford.....Sarah was the great great granddaughter of Patrick Henry...Fanny Louetta was her sister that married Charlie Baker.....and so on....I got's about 800 pages of that stuff so far

and...My aunt, who passed away in 1977, was named for her...Fanny Louetta Gertrude....who married Edwin Fagg, a second cousin to Herbert Hoover......who's other cousin married my paternal grandfather after the first Gramma Phillips passed away....ain't it fun chasin' relatives....

But, I believe you Paladin,
Names sometime does pop up in strange ways, places...

[tomlarkin]

What's your plan for your boat? We took a 2 week trip to Desolation Sound in our 16' runabout last summer, camping each night on shore. Somehow it didn't seem as much fun as it was when we were 25 years old. Hauling the gear out every night, sleeping on the ground, sitting in the tent all day when it rained had lost some of its romance.

The week we got back I started looking for the perfect Puget Sound boat: small enough to build and to single-hand, inside steering, and a nice bed. Safe to move around on. A place to carry 2 bicycles. After a lot of looking the Godzilla was the only one to fit all the criteria. Plus it's really beautiful!

[capt jake]

I've been on that boat during construction. She's very nice. :)

[tomlarkin]

BTW - has anyone taken a look at my online charts (http://www.zoomatron.com/Default.aspx) yet? If I had them for the water you play on would you find them helpful? Any ideas for useful stuff I could add? Give me a chart number and I'll add it for you.