NYC needs more #piers4boats! PortSide’s blog covers our WaterStories programs, urban waterways issues, the BLUEspace, development plans for the NYC waterfront, our ship MARY A. WHALEN, other historic vessels, and boats and ships of all sizes.
What’s in a name – first week of December 2008
/After the Whalen’s birthday party, I plow through the inbox. The day before the party, Mary Habstritt, wife of Gerry Weinstein, and President of the national Society of Industrial Archeology, had sent an email:
"I was boning up on history of Whalen and saw that her old name S.T. Kiddoo was a mystery. I searched just the last name and got several threads about the surname on www.Ancestry.com that mentioned A history of the Kiddoo family in the United States, 1780-1981 which is full text on the Brigham Young University libraries digital collections site. On p. 188, it tells of a Solomon Thomas Kiddoo (1883-1965) who, after a career in banking in, of all places, Wall SD, became Secretary-Treasury of Fairbanks Morse. Hmmm. I think it cannot be a coincidence that the ship had the same name as an officer of
Bingo! We also know that Bushey was a distributor of Fairbanks Morse engines, so we are quite sure this is the person for whom the Mary A. Whalen was first named.
Tanker engine parts – first week of December 2008
/It was great! It was a hoot! We were mobbed! The December weather held!
It wasn’t without hiccups, mind you.
There was a bit of a glitch getting setting up due to someone outside the organization being slow to vet some paperwork, so the Whalen did not get towed to
After that, our electrical guy, the master of old systems and all-around Mr. Fix-it Ed Fanuzzi, kicked back in the galley and chatted with Scott, a friend who had brought me take out dinner. I sat in the office writing the party program while the two guys drank coffee, smeared Nutella on Lorna Doones and told dirty jokes. “
Early Saturday morning, while I was still in a pre-caffeinated state, I got a call from our insurance agent Totch Hartge. He was outside on the dock! He came bearing a gift for the Whalen, a brass ship’s lamp.
Next call was good friend and former neighbor Gary Baum. He had just driven his wife to the subway and was wearing a coat over his pajamas. “Howzit going?!” “We’re behind, we got here a day late.”’ He showed up in pajamas to pitch in.
The event caused such excitement that all the volunteers who’d RSVP-ed actually showed up. (You usually can’t be sure of that). Actually, volunteers we hadn’t heard from showed up! We had more volunteers than we needed! Here’s some text from the post-event PR we sent out. Please forgive me for not writing more original copy. Too much to do...
“December 6th, a happy horde of about 500 came from as far away as Maryland to cheer and visit the tanker Mary A. Whalen, home of PortSide NewYork, during her 70th birthday party.
The tour guides were a salty lot: Bob Moore, Vice President of Atlantic Container Line a shipping line that calls on ports both sides of the Harbor, Gerry Weinstein and Mary Habstritt of the Lilac Preservation Project, John Weaver, son in law of Alf Dyrland who had been captain of the Whalen for twenty years, and Will Van Dorp, author of the blog Tugster who sagely dubbed the harbor “the sixth borough.”
The galley and engine room were clogged with visitors of all ages, including former crew members, maritime buffs and rank landlubbers. The latter included one woman who stepped off the gangway to say “where’s the tanker?” but all had a grand time. Former crew members came bearing old photos and boat parts, from the Whalen and other tankers, in an effort to put her back together. Waterfront bloggers from
Guests arrived by water: PortSide partner the tug Pegasus attended, as did one working tug. The luxury yacht
Tours ceased during a half hour of formalities when proclamations were presented by
Carolina Salguero, Director of PortSide announced that most of the missing parts needed for the Whalen’s cannibalized engine had been secured in Seattle thanks to the co-operation of Stabbert Maritime and the Washington State Department of Natural Resources, Derelict Vessel Removal Program which had just scrapped an old tanker similar to the Whalen.
Salguero also announced that the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation had invited PortSide to produce a performance on the Whalen in the Navy Yard, and she asKed for performing arts groups with water-themed work to get in touch.”
After the public left the party, some folks hung around in the galley. Some PortSide volunteers, two tug captains (one came by land and one by sea), some harbor activists. I ordered pizzas and realized as I served that it was all guys. “
I also marvelled at how easy life could be if we got the Whalen out of a containerport or out of an industrial park; because after three years of life that included
sigh.
Tanker engine parts -Third week of November 2008
/The discussion of engine parts has expanded to include the crankshaft which is encased in the lower engine block. That seems monstrously heavy to move, and I’m wondering if it should be taken out and shipped separately. Gerry Weinstein recommends I put in call to Gary Matthews, a specialist on vintage engines, and ask him to come look at the Whalen’s damaged crank. He’s running an old locomotive in NJ, he worked on tugs in
A revised estimate from Stabbert comes in. I can’t do boo about it.
After months of negotiating about
I tell Stabbert I need to get past 12/6 before I can think about parts.
They accept that. Unbelieveable. Thank god.
Tanker engine parts - Third week of October, 2008
/Stabbert says the scrap barge will leave with Ked parts. Their bill is higher than we expected, I don’t have shipping worked out yet. How the hell am I going to get these parts, and after so much work!
All the other things PortSide had planned for the autumn have been front burner lately, including very important networking to push the possibility of getting an operating space in
Real estate has been a big issue since we completed the business plan in May 05, and the developer did a "fade away and radiate” and avoided all meetings where we could present the data in the business plan and discuss lease terms. Actually, we couldn’t really complete the business plan because neither he nor Fairway would come to the table, so we submitted it to the funders, New York City’s Department of Small Business Services calling it “’A Report on Business Planning Activities.” That real estate story fizzle was so perplexing.
When Fairway needed a rezoning to get a supermarket in an m-zone on the waterfront, they were asked “why do you need to be on the waterfront” and they gave the answer “because we will service the working waterfront” and they talked about tugboats coming in to shop. I had supplied the information that tugboats would flock to a waterside supermarket since it had become so hard to get provisions due to the decline of finger piers near neighborhoods. I learned that while doing my National Geographic
project on tugboats in NYC. The PortSide business plan followed up on that knowledge and surveyed the local towing industry about how much they spend on boat grub a year ($7.MM) and whether they wanted to shop at Fairway (yes) and why. We concluded that $1.5MM of business wants to shop at Fairway. PortSide was going to position shopping tugboats as an attraction, much as they are in Fells Point, Baltimore, and build our maritime museum concepts around visiting real boats doing real things.
Over the ensuing 3 years, we write many real estate proposals. The Mary Whalen’s fan base grows, but few people seem to understand that it is a hub, a place, that PortSide is trying to be, not a ship project, and certainly not a conventional historic ship project (much as we now love the Mary Whalen).
So… once there were August rumblings that Atlantic Basin was being replanned and that the EDC might be interested in our putting our proposed maritime hub in there (which seems the perfect fulfillment of their own 2008 Maritime Support Services Inventory Study), PortSide has been busy networking about Atlantic Basin, creating program concepts, analyzing how much of what we proposed in 2005 could work in another space, thinking how to combine cultural programs and port operations in that space.
Now that there’s a Stabbert deadline, I shift my energies to finding an interim
K-Sea agrees to store the parts in their
Whew.
I convey to Stabbert that their bill is tough for PortSide to pay right now, can we discuss an installment payment plan. I offer to get the parts out of their way and held by a third party (K-Sea) til we work this out?
They write back “up to my eyeballs in alligators right now with issues but you have my promise we will not toss the parts you need and will work out a satisfactory arrangement. “
Stabbert is really being great.
Tanker engine parts - First week of October, 2008
/I send and email to a shipbuilding history website and ask for Ked history. I hear back from Tim Colton of Maritime Business Strategies, LLC in
“According to the USCG, the Ked was formerly the Fletcher J and was built by Bushey in 1945, not 1943 or 1944. If so, that narrows it down a bit: it almost has to be either 583 or 585. Did you ask if there's a builder's plate on the ship?”
I thank him and suggest he amend his Bushey history to get Hornbeck included by changing his site description from “[Bushey] was the parent company of Red Star Towing and was located on Gowanus Creek, in the Red Hook section, at the foot of Court Street: the site is now occupied by the Hess storage terminal” to say “the site is now occupied by the Hess storage terminal and the yard of Hornbeck Towing which moves the Hess product.”
Always trying to raise awareness of the working waterfront!
He changes his website. We continue exchanging emails. The PortSide Whalen family grows.
I send the URL to Gerry Weinstein, this leads to more info on davits.
“
They’ve already been in touch. Small world. Big Whalen family.
Tanker engine parts - Fourth week of September, 2008
/The wish list is expanding as we learn more about the Ked. My brother spots some davits. Are they the same as the Whalen’s.
9/26/08, I send out an email blast
“i only have 1 davit of the 4 here.the Ked has two. I'm about to send them this drawing to see if what is out there matches my davit here.
do you guys know if Bushey had a standard davit?the one here is continuous taper with a curve not right angle bend, and has a ball at the end thru which there is an eye bolt.answers requested as fast as you can as the Ked is lying around in pieces.”
Gerry Weinstein, Chairman of General Tools and Mr. Archive, provides the most documentation and detailed responses.
“Detail of YO davits (radial type, probably navy spec.) and Bushey quadrantal tilting type, commercial ones. Gerry”
What?! I think:
“what does "Bushey quadrantal tilting type, commercial" mean? I think this means it is a Bushey standard,... quadrantail I"m guessing means it is is square sided plate, not rounded stock, the tilt i can see ,but what does commercial refer to?
could you call me today so i can ask? I want to get the blog catching up with the data flowing in here.
also are the photo #s corresponding to the Bushey album? have you sent YO#3 and YO#4, or are these frame #s from same boat (looks like it), or just your numbering to me. this YO4 also looks like a ghost what with that leaden grey, no appearance of porthole glass (blank eyes), no sign of life aboard, and the foggy no horizon line in the background.
the Bushey photos break my heart, they look so like the Whalen, save for the YO-4’s rounded stern, and they are such elegant, but robust craft. It pained me to see the photos of the Ked sliced up. it's like seeing the Whalen's sister eviscerated.
Gerry:
“Just to recap. Francis S. Bushey taken just before the end. Definitely a Bushey build because of the hard chine aft. Prewar, post war? Don't know, but it should be in the list. That and the A. H. Dumont outboard (no hard chine) had the quadrantal type that worked off a geared sector and leaned out to launch the boat. Pretty fast, saved a few lives on the Titanic. YO's radial type, much older. Harder to work, slower to launch boats. Same as on Lilac. All the YO photos from the same Bushey album probably produced for the Navy. You'll see rest when things "quiet down" GW
Tanker engine parts - Third week of September, 2008
/
Information on Bushey tankers and Fairbanks Morse engines began pouring in.
Bobby Mowbray, a K-Sea tug engineer and one of the last engineers on the Whalen but not the guy in the engine room when the crank got damaged, was prompt on phone and email with his answers, but he was on a tug and couldn’t come look at things in the engine room with me.
Stabbert was now answering and sending photos. My brother Antonio Salguero of Coastwise Marine Design made a site visit and was sending photos. The engine plaques were gone. They would have confirmed it the engine was the same model. Without them comparing photos from there to photos from the Whalen and vintage references became important.
Gerry Weinstein, the Chairman of General Tools, and a man obsessed with old steam engines, got very interested in helping save this diesel one. He has created photographic documentation of engines and industrial sites for years, working for the US Army Corps of Engineers and others, and has an extensive collection The Archive of Industry. He sent photos from Bushey brochures that showed me what an intact FM 37E12 looked like.
The partnering vibe was kumbayah.
The prob was that I’d never even seen a head for the Whalen’s engine before. And we had no engineer on the team as we hadn’t been planning to fix the engine soon. My learning curve was steep.
Folks were patient with email requests like this one “I see a slight difference in the flange beneath the exhaust, some difference in piping external to the engine block ... but I really cant tell as I have never seen the heads on a 37E12 direct reversing Fairbanks Morse, which is what the Whalen has. Whalen is missing piston, heads, rods and fuel injectors. I'm wondering if the Ked's engine is a slightly newer model of the same engine... I'm wondering if an engineer can tell by looking at attached jpegs or if he knows these engines well enough to know that 37E12's varied slightly over the years... “
Here, take a stab yourself.
Mary Whalen
Ked
Bushey gift album for Navy sea trials of new YO’s.
I learned a lot about engines.
In one case, thanks to an email from Pam Hepburn of the tug Pegasus Preservation Project who wrote in response to this jpeg “These are the early/first generation diesels the most distinguishing aspect is that the cylinders are alone - as steam engines-and not part of a block- fantastic.”
Pam really knows her engine room.
Bobby Mowbray, a K-Sea tug engineer and one of the last engineers on the Whalen but not the guy in the engine room when the crank got damaged, was prompt on phone and email with his answers, but he was on a tug and couldn’t come look at things in the engine room with me.
Stabbert was now answering and sending photos. My brother Antonio Salguero of Coastwise Marine Design made a site visit and was sending photos. The engine plaques were gone. They would have confirmed it the engine was the same model. Without them comparing photos from there to photos from the Whalen and vintage references became important.
Gerry Weinstein, the Chairman of General Tools, and a man obsessed with old steam engines, got very interested in helping save this diesel one. He has created photographic documentation of engines and industrial sites for years, working for the US Army Corps of Engineers and others, and has an extensive collection The Archive of Industry. He sent photos from Bushey brochures that showed me what an intact FM 37E12 looked like.
The partnering vibe was kumbayah.
The prob was that I’d never even seen a head for the Whalen’s engine before. And we had no engineer on the team as we hadn’t been planning to fix the engine soon. My learning curve was steep.
Folks were patient with email requests like this one “I see a slight difference in the flange beneath the exhaust, some difference in piping external to the engine block ... but I really cant tell as I have never seen the heads on a 37E12 direct reversing Fairbanks Morse, which is what the Whalen has. Whalen is missing piston, heads, rods and fuel injectors. I'm wondering if the Ked's engine is a slightly newer model of the same engine... I'm wondering if an engineer can tell by looking at attached jpegs or if he knows these engines well enough to know that 37E12's varied slightly over the years... “
Here, take a stab yourself.
Mary Whalen
Ked
I learned a lot about engines.
Pam really knows her engine room.
It takes a village to fix a vintage tanker engine - part 1
/Here’s the sticky wicket about blogging.
Often you can’t write about things in real time because to do so could affect the course of events, in ways you can’t foresee, so sometimes you have to just sit on things. Voila, the case of the tanker engine parts and the Bushey tankers Ked and Mary Whalen. The story from September through February will now come out in installments. Yes, I kept all emails and good notes. The posts are mostly all written.
Tanker engine parts - The first week of September, 2008:
Thanks to a tip from Bernie Ente, I learned that another Bushey tanker was being scrapped oh so far away in
Anyway, first answer out of Stabbert Shipyard in Seattle was a lot of silence.
I looked at their website and saw that one line of their business was turning old workboats into luxury yachts. Was this what they would do with Ked, I wondered, and so wouldn’t want to give stuff away? Were they really scrapping the Ked? If so, it certainly would seem preposterous to a scrapper to get a call from across the continent, from a non-profit, and I suspect, from a woman, looking for parts to save an old tanker. No one saves tankers! Tugs maybe; yachts surely, but tankers don’t have Enthusiast Societies, yet.
What to do? Here my old skills as a journalist, a foreign correspondent of the pre-digital era were useful. I did most of my work overseas in a career that ran from opening of Berlin Wall to 9/11 in countries that often didn’t have decent phone systems (or had phones systems with the government listening in). The way you got information was social. You saved every name and number you ever got, you horded them, you kept them in handwritten notebooks; and these names and numbers were exchanged with select (friendly) journalists coming and going to the same countries. This is a segue to a little rant of mine: I’ve noticed that 20-somethings who come to work at PortSide are conversant with web and digital connections but less good at reaching people to solve a problem. Once they’ve googled or filled out the web contact form, they’re done; and when that isn’t working/doesn’t net the solution, it’s often hard to get them to get on the phone, to reach out and touch someone; and most to the point, they don’t seem good at recruiting a person to the cause to help solve the problem at hand. It makes me appreciate being middle-aged and having experienced the world before email, web, and customer service in India.
But back to the Ked parts... I began reaching out. When PortSide was creating its business plan, a Capt. Kris Lindberg out of Seattle had worked for us. He did a raft of things and headed all the market research on the charter and excursion boats in NYC and determined which would be interested in coming to our proposed Maritime Hub. He was getting a Masters in planning at the time and thinking desk job after years of running boats from Seattle to Alaska. After graduating from NYU in 2005, he returned to Seattle. I called.
Turns out Kris knew the Ked well. He had not got a desk job after all and was doing environmental ops for Global Diving & Salvage Inc., and had been on the Ked just months before. Global did the abatement work on the Ked, and had bid on the scrapping job and lost to Stabbert.
I called K-Sea in NY, knowing they had bought a Seattle tugboat company. Could their Seattle folks could see if the Ked was still afloat… Answer: yes.
I called the Washington State Dept of Natural Resources, Derelict Vessel Division to see if they could find a way to help. I had no idea what their contract to Stabbert allowed or mandated, but surely scrappers worked with eye on the clock and wanted no delays. Could they facilitate? Melissa Montgomery said “Yes, we’d love to.”
I got my brother Antonio Salguero of Coastwise Marine Design, on the phone. He’s worked a range of marine jobs near
On the eastern front, I started calling folks to learn more about the Whalen’s engine, what had failed, what was fixable, what other Bushey tankers had for engines as a way to determine what this thing in the Ked might be, even what this Ked was originally called to learn more about her. I asked about alternative sources for parts because schlepping things from Seattle looked expensive on the transpo alone… and the logistics of cross-continent research were going to be challenging.
All that hadn’t been done earlier, because, honestly, the planning team did not see the engine as an immediate priority. The Whalen can deliver a lot of programming as a dead ship. We came to her as the cheap alternative to a spud barge, a means to a docking end, making her go was not the plan. Admittedly, our thinking was evolving since we learned some things during ship tours.
What we learned was that the engine room was the 2nd most popular place on the boat. Galley first, engine room second. The wheelhouse, to our surprise, was definitely third. We had considered yanking out the whole old engine (down the road) to give us more space, and then we listened to the public. As Tim Ventimiglia, our museum designer, put it “I thought the boat and engine room would really appeal to middle-aged men, but that is not what is happening.”
I remember the day the Whalen’s engine room cured a woman. I was leading a tour of 15. As we approached the engine room stairs, a woman said “’oh no.”
“What’s the matter,” I asked?
“I’m claustrophic.”
I said “here’s what we’ll do. I’ll hold the group back, you go down there, and if you feel uncomfortable, you can rocket right back up those stairs, and no one will be in your way.”
She went down the stairs. Silence.
“Are you all right?” I yelled.
Then came the answer “WOW.”
I told the group to stay on the fidley and went down. “You OK?”
“This is amazing.” And there she stayed, so excited by the engine that she wasn’t claustrophic and was able to have a crowd of 14 join her for a 20 minute stay down there.
So we learned over tours large and small that because the engine room captivated, it created a way to discuss mechanical and infrastructure topics you would think were too dry for the public: the dated peculiarities of a bell boat system and a direct-reversing engine and what that meant for ship staffing, shaft generators and how the ship created and stored its own power. Even the marine composting toilet system interested people. Not to mention the thrills the engine room brings to kids. For them, it is the best of cave, tree fort and space ship.
The looming, antique lump of the engine had a powerful voice; and so, when engine parts seemed available, I thought we should try for them. They might not get installed for years, but if we started looking for them years from now, they surely wouldn’t exist. With the price of scrap steel high, old boats were being scrapped pell mell; and old marine businesses all over the country were being pushed out by gentrification, so repair places with old parts were on the wane.
And so, as inconvenient as the timing of the Ked’s demise was for PortSide’s autumn plans, I went for it and redoubled my efforts on the phone.
Can the Ked help the Whalen?
/My how small the world can get! Thanks to the indefatigable maritime reader-photographer-emailer Bernie Ente, I got a link on September 1 from a west coast newspaper saying there was a Bushey tanker headed for scrap. The Ked is a bit younger (if the story has her age right) and shorter than the Whalen but is unmistakenly a Bushey boat. (photo from Kitsap Sun)
September 2, I got in touch with the
It’s sad to see another Bushey boat go, but we’re hoping the Ked can help save the Whalen. The Ked has two davits on the boat deck (we are missing 3) and also has a Fairbanks Morse engine. We don’t know what type of engine yet; I’m hoping it’s a 37E12! Standing by!
9/11 on Pier 9B
/
It’s funny how life works sometimes. 7 years ago, two planes flew into the WorldTradeCenter, and 7 years ago I snuck into the Red Hook containerport to make photos of the burning buildings. 7 years later, I’m living on a retired oil tanker on the same pier from which I made a widely-published photo of the disaster (and Homeland Security funds have since built a new port fence that makes such sneaking-in impossible.)
I’ve been interviewed and awarded aplenty for my photojournalism work at ground zero; but up until now, I have refrained from writing anything about 9/11. What I’d like to do here is acknowledge the work of others who I think deserve appreciation.
First, starting with the personal: Many thanks and much credit should go to Debby Romano. She’d only steered a boat one time before 9/11. That was a few days before 9/11, when I was shooting Robert Buchet bagpiping on the tug Amy Moran at dawn for a long term National Geographic project. I told Debby to hold a course right off the tug’s beam and just outside the barge wake. She did it, and that ain’t easy in a 26’ runabout. I told her she was a natural.
When 9/11 happened, I called her boss Greg O’Connell, baron of Red Hook, and asked if Debby could get off work to join me on my boat going to the WorldTradeCenter. The BrooklynBridge was already closed, I had tried to bike over it after sneaking into the port. He said yes. Debby and I watched the 2nd tower go down from the water, and we got involved in getting one cop from shore to the Sandy Hook Pilots boat just off the Battery.
As I left her in North Cove and handed her my bag of exposed film in case I didn’t get out, I told her “When you dock, remember that boats keep moving after you decelerate more than cars do. Take that into account and also the wind; and so long as you approach the dock very slowly, you can’t damage anything, and good luck.”
With only that for experience and instructions, she got the boat home. She reported that, on the way to Red Hook, she passed a slew of tugboats steaming out of the Kill Van Kill -- some 20 of them roaring towards ground zero. More on them later.
I shot for several hours at ground zero, and went to go as I felt bad vibes (building 7 collapsed shortly thereafter). I spotted the tug Nancy Moran on the seawall and her engineer Gina Sikes, who I knew. Gina has since passed away, but still I’d like to thank Gina and that crew for their assistance in getting me out and for being friendly faces on a dark day.
I reached L&I Color lab in the photo district and had the weird good luck to have Kathy Ryan, photo editor of the New York Times Magazine, walk in as soon as my developed slides hit the light table. I needed the bag of unexposed film, the bag I’d left with Debby, and I’d like to thank Richard Dennis and other Red Hook friends who tried to get to Manhattan in my powerboat. The Coast Guard turned them back, so they gave the film to Joe Martin, a Red Hook townie who has since been pushed out of here by gentrification; and he biked over one of the bridges - after attempting several - to deliver the film.
As to the bigger picture, I’d like to acknowledge the tremendous role of the marine industry in 9/11. Their contribution on that day, and for the weeks and months thereafter, has not been duly registered, analyzed nor appreciated.
When Debby and I approached the Battery, thousands of citizens were crammed along the seawall. As I left ground zero on the tug Nancy Moran only 2 or 3 hours later, there were none; all evacuated by boat in what was a spontaneous, civilian-initiated operation. It began before the Coast Guard asked for it. Tugs, ferries, excursion boats, pilot boats, police and park police boats, historic vessels, dinner boats -- all sectors of the marine industry on all sorts and sizes of craft showed up and got people moving.
They sorted themselves out by size, the shallow draft vessels took people to locations with shallow waters. Boat crew sprayed bedsheets with destination signs; they got out torches and cut the (stupidly) designed fences of Battery Park City that had no removal sections nor cleats or bollards for boats to tie to.
Bedsheet destination on the front of this tug
Tugs and then barges brought fuel for fire trucks and generators, and fresh water. Boats brought food from the Jersey shore. I remember standing knee deep in rubble and water on West Street and Liberty within an hour of the second tower collapse, shortly after a firefighter shared their grim estimate “we’ve lost 340 men,” to see a college kid coming out of North Cove pushing a shopping cart with snack bars, Gatorade and water. Hats off to the boats that brought that all over.
Right after these firefighters learned how many had been killed
As the “rescue” period with its hope of survivors eroded into the “recovery” period with its goal of finding body parts, the marine industry soldiered on removing the rubble. Floating cranes unloaded trucks and loaded barges. Tugs took the loaded barges away. The larger steel pieces left from Pier 11 on the East River. The smaller stuff, which was really none too small, left from Pier 25 in Tribeca.
Mike Mazzei, videographer and diver who day-jobbed as a dockbuilder, put up a series of banners at Pier 25 documenting the tonnage and number of barge loads they removed. He shot the job and made a video.
M ike mazzei paid for this banner himself since the media and officials were not giving the marine bargeport any credit for their work
Still, most of the media drove past the pier to do stories from the pile, then the pit, from firehouses, from city hall, stories about steelworkers, medics, cops, shrinks, priests and even photographers. Much of that media continues to chime that the working waterfront is dead. (A special Broken Record Award goes to the New York Times for reiterating that old chestnut.) Is the working waterfront dead, or is the media just blind?
Other media ignored the significant maritime story even when they had it. National Geographic considered running my tugboat project, with it’s unpublished content about the 9/11 marine evacuation, on the first anniversary of the attacks.The Director of Photography decided not to “since we have two other water stories in the same issue.” So, rather than doing a water-themed issue, they put meerkats on the cover — I got many an angry call from tugboat captains on that one.They never published the tug work and held on to it so long it was un-publishable anywhere else. My apologies, fellas; but you can see why I left the media biz.
But back to ground zero: When the politicians got around to concocting a ceremony for the last piece of steel removed, they didn’t include a tug or barge in the choreography. They put a huge beam on a truck and slowly rolled it out of Manhattan.The Pier 25 rubble removal crew watched as the departure ceremony started north of them.
last column ceremony on 5/30/02. This column is now exhibited in the 9/11 museum at ground zero
Why is this all important?
Everyone should get their due.
We should understand what really happened.
We should be prepared for the next one.
We should understand where we live (an archipelago) and build to suit.
There’s been a whole lot of waterfront revitalization going on, leading to a rash of newfangled piers without cleats, piers too weak to dock a tug and barge, piers designed for pedestrians-only, silly piers whose planners want them designated “water dependant.”
We shouldn’t be doing that.
Not only because of disaster preparedness, but because the seam between water and land should be a porous membrane with people and things coming and going across it.Not only would that make the most useful (or what 2008 plannerspeak calls “green and sustainable”) waterfront, it would also make the most interesting and fun one.
And with that, I leave you all to your prayers and memories and your own rituals of thanks and acknowledgment. 9/11 was a public episode, but many of us have private ways of handling it. Today, this happened to be mine.
More on the maritime role in 9/11:
List of Boats involved in Manhattan evacuation on 9/11
Interviews associated with South Street Seaport exhibit on the topic
Video Merchant Marine heroes of 9/11 by MARAD (US Maritime Administration)
Interviews with local tug crews on www.carolinasalguero.com see section “Maritime 9/11” under section WTC. Slow to load – it’s an old Flash site. (This site is temporarily down and version from Archive.org is here.)
MagRack3 video profile of Carolina Salguero. 2001 On the morning of September 11, 2001
Update: in 2011, I curated PortSide NewYork’s exhibit the Mariners’ Response to 9/11.
Paradise in 60 amps
/
________________________________________
From: Erica Reynolds
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2008 8:31 AM
To: Carolina Salguero
Subject: The boat trip
Hi, I hope the trip went well. I had to work yesterday so I couldn't make it. Any good news from the trip? Today I am looking at a painting job that I hope to start today. I will let you know what my schedule is like for this week. How's the view? and Lulu?
Dear Erica:
Sorry you missed it. The move was astounding. Our best yet. What joy aboard.
We had about 50 passengers, volunteers, bloggers, Tim Ventimiglia, our museum designer who said "this is my paycheck," David Bianiciardi who did all the powerpoints and AV hook ups for us. Anthony Mancebo the AV fellow at the book reading sadly couldnt make it. The amazing caterer gals from Bar Tini and Roquette Catering, some kids, septegenarians, Hans Hansen, the son of the engineer Hans Hansen who worked with Karen's father Alf Dyrland. Karen remembers answering the phone to Hans' thick Norwegian accent asking for her father, another Norwegian. Hans and Karen had never met before. This ship does bring people together.
We had about 10 band members from the Hungry March Band, a last minute connection to Nydia Velazquez' office of all things. Dan Wiley is, I think, going out with one band member. They were fantastic, made the day. Brass band, the music reminded me of gypsy music from Balkans to Spain, both places I've spent lot of time. I loved them. High energy and as Karen put it, clothes like Pipi Longstocking. There was a gang dancing the wave on the bridge deck. I danced on the main deck. the rain held until 2 hours after everyone left. Channel 12 TV was here, so it's on the record.
The K-Sea tug was great - again. Really nice crew. That company has been so good to us. The boat arrived early, some came aboard to visit. The engineer on the tug was Robert Mowbray. He used to be engineer here. I've been corresponding with him, he has some parts for this engine.
It was a magical day. Everyone was grinning. As we were unloading a guy in coveralls appeared on the pier and said "my father used to work on this boat." I said "I'd love to talk to you but have to deal with the tug." Next time I turned around he was gone. The guys on the tug told me that was Scotty Gellatley. I've tried to reach the other side of his family often, to no avail. The Gellatleys had some massive falling out and one side got the tugs and the other the tankers – I think that's how it goes. I do love the Irish, I'm half myself, but, my god, the feuds.
In any case, he was like some sort of ghost, no idea how he was here nor where he went but it's another case of "everyone worked on the Mary Whalen." Maybe he was over at the Circle Line boats. I'll try and track him down.
Once the cheerful mob left, I sat for an hour the galley with John, Karen and a friend of theirs Richard DuBois (who doubles for Robert DeNiro of all things); He says he'll come scrape paint God bless him.
I let Lulu off once all the guests left. The pier has a large burm of ancient used sandblast grit gone wild with weeds and one small tree. A Lulu Serengeti, as someone said. She began to prowl right away. I'm sure she'll find lots of fun chasing rodents, it's more kitty freundlich than the cement pier over in Red Hook. I do still worry about the hawk. Ernie brought him up right away saying he'll be two years old right away. It feels like he's become some sort of GMD mascot. Murray Fisher of the Harbor School who visited 2 weekends ago claimed to be a bird of prey buff and said red tailed hawks don’t go for cats, but as Ernie put it in his ever to-the-point way "why not?" I'll call Audobon. The hawks aren't here right now. Maybe that will be our new reason for summer home for the Whalen "save Lulu from the Navy Yard hawks."
Loving birds that don’t eat Lulu, I raced to put up birdfeeders before the snow. So far not a one.
In any case, the view is mighty different. We are no longer alone. I can see a building or boat out of every porthole, actually usually lots of both. Moran fuel barges on other side of pier. Circle Line fleet across the water of this berth, tho dunno how many folks are around there. Those are the boats tied up in an acquisitions haggle. When Hornblower won the RFP for the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island ferry run, the Circle Line boats were supposed to be bought for the service. The price has been rising... I'm sure all the lawyers as sending love letters back n forth and here the fleet sits.
Ernie in his trailer is right at the head of the dock. A Coast Guard bought is coming in soon so the men in blue will be all over this place. Handsome nighttime view down the deck of the Williamsburg bridge and Schaefer Landing's curious light show.
I've so wanted to get here to make winter more bearable, I can see we will be sheltered from the worst of the winter winds and we will be basking in sun all day. This will raise the boat temp a good 10 degrees is my guess. Ernie has 400amps in the 220 power!!!!!!! I don’t know what it is in the 110 service yet, but it will be so much better then the trickle over in Red Hook. In short we will be able to run enough space heaters. You should be able to reduce your 4 layers of pants to 2. such progress.
and then WiFi. I see two networks right now without using Kyle's satellite dohickey. I can imagine there will be more networks after President's Day and folks come back to work.
So, as we long dreamed, here it all is, shore power, internet, sun and neighbors. Plus some dirt for Lulu. Paradise, til March 31 and our agreement expires. Then what, god only knows. Lots of calls to make to solve that one.
I can’t decide whether to go to the Russian Baths and soak my tired bones tonight or roast up a big dinner and invite the barge next and Ernie over for dinner. I'm feeling very nesty about this new home.
Heating the shovel so I can wax it and shovel off the deck. Why go to the gym when there's yards of snow to shovel?
From: Erica Reynolds
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2008 8:31 AM
To: Carolina Salguero
Subject: The boat trip
Hi, I hope the trip went well. I had to work yesterday so I couldn't make it. Any good news from the trip? Today I am looking at a painting job that I hope to start today. I will let you know what my schedule is like for this week. How's the view? and Lulu?
Sorry you missed it. The move was astounding. Our best yet. What joy aboard.
We had about 50 passengers, volunteers, bloggers, Tim Ventimiglia, our museum designer who said "this is my paycheck," David Bianiciardi who did all the powerpoints and AV hook ups for us. Anthony Mancebo the AV fellow at the book reading sadly couldnt make it. The amazing caterer gals from Bar Tini and Roquette Catering, some kids, septegenarians, Hans Hansen, the son of the engineer Hans Hansen who worked with Karen's father Alf Dyrland. Karen remembers answering the phone to Hans' thick Norwegian accent asking for her father, another Norwegian. Hans and Karen had never met before. This ship does bring people together.
We had about 10 band members from the Hungry March Band, a last minute connection to Nydia Velazquez' office of all things. Dan Wiley is, I think, going out with one band member. They were fantastic, made the day. Brass band, the music reminded me of gypsy music from Balkans to Spain, both places I've spent lot of time. I loved them. High energy and as Karen put it, clothes like Pipi Longstocking. There was a gang dancing the wave on the bridge deck. I danced on the main deck. the rain held until 2 hours after everyone left. Channel 12 TV was here, so it's on the record.
The K-Sea tug was great - again. Really nice crew. That company has been so good to us. The boat arrived early, some came aboard to visit. The engineer on the tug was Robert Mowbray. He used to be engineer here. I've been corresponding with him, he has some parts for this engine.
It was a magical day. Everyone was grinning. As we were unloading a guy in coveralls appeared on the pier and said "my father used to work on this boat." I said "I'd love to talk to you but have to deal with the tug." Next time I turned around he was gone. The guys on the tug told me that was Scotty Gellatley. I've tried to reach the other side of his family often, to no avail. The Gellatleys had some massive falling out and one side got the tugs and the other the tankers – I think that's how it goes. I do love the Irish, I'm half myself, but, my god, the feuds.
In any case, he was like some sort of ghost, no idea how he was here nor where he went but it's another case of "everyone worked on the Mary Whalen." Maybe he was over at the Circle Line boats. I'll try and track him down.
Once the cheerful mob left, I sat for an hour the galley with John, Karen and a friend of theirs Richard DuBois (who doubles for Robert DeNiro of all things); He says he'll come scrape paint God bless him.
Loving birds that don’t eat Lulu, I raced to put up birdfeeders before the snow. So far not a one.
Ernie in his trailer is right at the head of the dock. A Coast Guard bought is coming in soon so the men in blue will be all over this place. Handsome nighttime view down the deck of the Williamsburg bridge and Schaefer Landing's curious light show.
I've so wanted to get here to make winter more bearable, I can see we will be sheltered from the worst of the winter winds and we will be basking in sun all day. This will raise the boat temp a good 10 degrees is my guess. Ernie has 400amps in the 220 power!!!!!!! I don’t know what it is in the 110 service yet, but it will be so much better then the trickle over in Red Hook. In short we will be able to run enough space heaters. You should be able to reduce your 4 layers of pants to 2. such progress.
and then WiFi. I see two networks right now without using Kyle's satellite dohickey. I can imagine there will be more networks after President's Day and folks come back to work.
So, as we long dreamed, here it all is, shore power, internet, sun and neighbors. Plus some dirt for Lulu. Paradise, til March 31 and our agreement expires. Then what, god only knows. Lots of calls to make to solve that one.
I can’t decide whether to go to the Russian Baths and soak my tired bones tonight or roast up a big dinner and invite the barge next and Ernie over for dinner. I'm feeling very nesty about this new home.
613 Tons of Homelessness
/
This is reposted here thanks to the generosity of Richard Fleming, Red Hook wit extraordinaire, that is when is his wit is not in Rwanda, the Congo, Antartica and all the other challenging remote places he prefers to the purportedly untamed frontier of the Red Hook peninsula.
http://antarcticiana.blogspot.com/2008/02/613-tons-of-homelessness.html
2/20/2008
613 Tons of Homelessness
Some weeks ago I got an email from Carolina Salguero informing me that she was hoping to resurrect her once-excellent but lately dormant blog about efforts to refurbish the Mary Whalen, the 172 foot long rust-bucket of a tanker that she has adopted like a stray kitten. She mentioned that she would momentarily be moving the Mary Whalen from her most recent home in the Red Hook container port, to a new, but also temporary berth in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, that vast pocket of crumbling industry wedged between
Weeks passed, and when I did think of
In my case this was a bit of a charade, since the sum total of my work aboard amounted to a couple of hours of painless schlepping, many months ago, on a warm and sunny day at the end of spring. After that morning I managed to let an entire summer and fall season of volunteer days slide by without another visit.
Last Sunday was a chilly one, but we try never to let an opportunity to get out onto the waters of New York harbor go unseized, so, bundled up and fortified with bagels, we trudged down Van Brunt street to the container port.The tug Nathan Stewart, lashed tight to the Mary Whalen in the container port.
The irrepressible John Weaver prepares to hoist the gangway on deck. In every picture in which Weaver appears he wears this broad, warm grin, perhaps delighting in the fact that, even if only under tug power, the Mary Whalen is once again setting out to sea. In a moment of idle Googling, Weaver and his wife, the daughter of a long-serving captain of the Mary Whalen back in her days of active duty, discovered
Under way at last, lower
In a particularly inspired moment,
Raise the Roof! As the wicked winds of winter came whistling in over the waves, many danced to stave off the chill, shaking their groove things to the funky brass band sounds of the Hungry March Band.
I counted at least six video cameras on board filming the historic event, from the palm-sized to the professional. It is starting to feel as though everyone is making a documentary about something. However, despite all the cameras, there were no working soundmen participating in this media frenzy, which may explain why I don't have any gigs at the moment. This dude, from Channel 12, was doing his own sound the hard way. I would have thought having to hold a hand mic for the interview you are filming would seriously limit your ability to choose and hold a nice frame. In the business, this is known as the "one-man band," or "one-man banding it," and we sound brethren frown on this sort of behavior, for obvious reasons. I'm going to complain to my union, if I can get anyone on the phone over there.
Home, sweet ghetto. The new digs in the
Adieu Red Hook: The Mary Whalen at her new berth in the Navy Yard. I know this picture looks as if it had been taken from on board the tug as it heads back south, the day's work done, but that would only be possible if the Nathan Stewart had kindly offered us a lift back to the neighborhood, which they couldn't have, because their insurance and other policies wouldn't permit it. So, in short, I have no idea how this picture came into existence.
The Ballad of the Mary Whalen
/
This is reposted here thanks to the generosity of Richard Fleming, Red Hook wit extraordinaire, that is when is his wit is not in Rwanda , the Congo
http://antarcticiana.blogspot.com/2007/05/ballad-of-mary-whalen.html
5/27/2007
The Ballad of the Mary Whalen
Aaah, is that the Big Apple I spy through my porthole? Delightful
Even before I abandoned rent-controlled Manhattan tenement life five years ago and up and moved to my very own little shack of a frame house in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the latter neighborhood had become a throbbing termite-mound of home renovation, new construction, face-lifting and just all-around progress, as they call it. On the waterfront, the original setting for the play that became the classic Brando vehicle of that name, Red Hook is on the front lines of the epic gentrification still sweeping
In there the other morning I ran into my friend Carolina Salguero, one of the first people I met in the neighborhood and herself a gentrification victim who was asked last summer to move on, when her affordable apartment was caught in the rising rental tide. Now she lives in Oyster Bay,
In fact I was the first volunteer to arrive, making me that much more certain that the "spring-cleaning" had been invented for my benefit alone. Fresh from my new floor, in sawdust-covered work pants and greasy suede gloves, I waited for In the belly of the beast: eager volunteer and recent Red Hook arrival Jim Clark, proprietor of LOOK NORTH, an Inuit art gallery. That's right, Red Hook now not only has art galleries, it has Inuit art galleries!
The Mary Whalen began life in 1938 as a local gasoline tanker and was eventually converted to haul loads of diesel fuel throughout the harbor. The Captain's cabin still has original mahogany trim and the former oil storage holds will hopefully soon become a maritime museum but she's pretty humble. Which may be the point. We set to work offloading the winter trappings, mostly coal and firewood and the woodstoves that had made the ship bearable to work on over the winter. I coiled some vast ropes in piles on a shady corner of the steel deck, where the summer sun shouldn't batter their uv-sensitive strands. We moved some mattresses. We considered what to order for lunch.
At last another volunteer arrived, Jim Clark, an Alaskan fisherman who recently moved to Red Hook. We had barely been introduced before he clambered down a long ladder into one of the Mary Whalen's innumerable gunk-filled foredeck caverns, carrying a shop-vac and a submersible pump. Shortly waste-water began spurting out of a tube and running along the decks, but Jim himself was never seen again. I assisted Eight of the countless buckets...
I warned
Labels: gentrification, mary whalen, renovation, shipping
Spudwell S1
/Tuesday 1/30/07
I’m feeling in the groove here, like I’m living up to John’s knickname for me, “Tanker Princess.”
Ernie and I are getting along like a house afire. I’m feeling on top of this project.
I go down to check status of the forward spudwell. I never feel too welcome with this team, Roach always has a way of keeping his head down, no eye contact.I don’t have a sense of the other guy; but, I’ve always loved the cavernous, moody spaces of the cargo tanks and so this spudwork is great to photograph.
I’m loving photography again. The camera that Erica delivered yesterday, the latest little Elph, is astounding. Auto mode can expose images in low light and high contrast, it has a wide lens, a view finder even, and makes a 20 meg file!This little $400 cigarette pack is out performing my “pro” Nikon D1X that only makes a 19 meg file. No, Canon is not a sponsor.Hmmm…Hello, Canon?
Then I look down near the spudwell, I see that the Whalen’s gangway pin, a 4’ steel rod, threaded at one end with an eye at the other, has been used to lever the spud in place. The threads are mashed.
Something blasts out of me.“Yo pago, yo mando”(I pay, I give orders) and continue to dictate in Spanish that they will not use parts of the boat as tools, they’ll go off the boat for tools. I steam up the ladder “joder.”
Straight to Ernie “I have my first close-to-complaint.”Ernie is back in a few with the rod. He’s smirking. “I took care of it.” He waves the rod.“Yes, Ernie, the threads look better in daylight, yes, they can be recut.”I mutter about Roach’s attitude. Ernie tactfully points out, “you have to understand, it’s a macho thing… and his relationship to women is that they put bills in his underwear.” I laugh. Good joke about Roach's former job as a stripper, but maybe very wise.I move on.
I check in on the laborers cleaning out the crawl space underneath the forward engine room floor. Because the forepeak was not pumped out promptly, and the bulkhead failed, the water ran back into the next space; and as it wasn’t pumped out of THERE promptly, there are cakes of rust ice in the bottom of this compartment. Ernie doesn’t want to use heat to melt it as that will ruin the paint, so a team of Hispanics is hunkered in there smashing ice.
Diligent Freddy continues working round the hull, washing of steel. He’s always alone, up high on scaffolding or a high reach. Burning open the bow steel leads to lots of smoke and lots of looking from below and from within, looking to understand the structure, the damage and to devise a plan.
After lunch, I go back into cargo tank S1 to make nice with Roach. He says “this must be a special project, they never put me on work like this." I don't really know what to say, but at least we're talking. The day concludes without episode. We're all in the groove.