New York tugboats
Encyclopedia
Tugboat
A tugboat is a boat that maneuvers vessels by pushing or towing them. Tugs move vessels that either should not move themselves, such as ships in a crowded harbor or a narrow canal,or those that cannot move by themselves, such as barges, disabled ships, or oil platforms. Tugboats are powerful for...
is one symbol of New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Along with its more
famous icons of Lady Liberty
Lady Liberty
Lady Liberty may refer to:* Lady Liberty , La mortadella, 1972 French-Italian comedy* "Lady Liberty" , written by Al Jardine and Ron Altbach for the Beach Boys...
, the Empire State Building
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...
, and
the Brooklyn Bridge
Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States. Completed in 1883, it connects the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River...
, the sturdy little tugs, once all steam powered,
working quietly in the harbor became a sight in the city.
The first hull was the paddler tug Rufus W. King of 1828.
New York Harbor
New York Harbor
New York Harbor refers to the waterways of the estuary near the mouth of the Hudson River that empty into New York Bay. It is one of the largest natural harbors in the world. Although the U.S. Board of Geographic Names does not use the term, New York Harbor has important historical, governmental,...
at the confluence of the East River
East River
The East River is a tidal strait in New York City. It connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates Long Island from the island of Manhattan and the Bronx on the North American mainland...
, Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
, and Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
is among the world's largest natural harbor
Harbor
A harbor or harbour , or haven, is a place where ships, boats, and barges can seek shelter from stormy weather, or else are stored for future use. Harbors can be natural or artificial...
s and was chosen in the 17th century as the site of New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that served as the capital of New Netherland. It later became New York City....
for its potential as a port. The completion of the Erie Canal
Erie Canal
The Erie Canal is a waterway in New York that runs about from Albany, New York, on the Hudson River to Buffalo, New York, at Lake Erie, completing a navigable water route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes. The canal contains 36 locks and encompasses a total elevation differential of...
in 1825 to the upper Hudson River
Hudson River
The Hudson is a river that flows from north to south through eastern New York. The highest official source is at Lake Tear of the Clouds, on the slopes of Mount Marcy in the Adirondack Mountains. The river itself officially begins in Henderson Lake in Newcomb, New York...
ensured that New York would be the center of trade for the Eastern Seaboard, and as a result, the city boomed. At the port's peak in the period of 1900-1950, ships moved millions of tons of freight, immigrants, millionaires, and GI service men serving in wars.
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Cornelius Vanderbilt , also known by the sobriquet Commodore, was an American entrepreneur who built his wealth in shipping and railroads. He was also the patriarch of the Vanderbilt family and one of the richest Americans in history...
started his empire with a sailboat and went on to greatness with the New York Central Railroad
New York Central Railroad
The New York Central Railroad , known simply as the New York Central in its publicity, was a railroad operating in the Northeastern United States...
, incidentally owning many tugs.
After the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, New York became a focal point of railroads including the Erie
Erie Railroad
The Erie Railroad was a railroad that operated in New York State, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, originally connecting New York City with Lake Erie...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Railroad
The Pennsylvania Railroad was an American Class I railroad, founded in 1846. Commonly referred to as the "Pennsy", the PRR was headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
, B & O, Lackawanna, and Long Island
Long Island Rail Road
The Long Island Rail Road or LIRR is a commuter rail system serving the length of Long Island, New York. It is the busiest commuter railroad in North America, serving about 81.5 million passengers each year. Established in 1834 and having operated continuously since then, it is the oldest US...
. New York's geography, with Manhattan separated from the main part of the continent by the large Hudson River, presented a problem. Ferries took people over to the New Jersey side to board westbound trains. Freight was a more difficult problem which was solved by the car float
Car float
A railroad car float or rail barge is an unpowered barge with rail tracks mounted on its deck. It is used to move railroad cars across water obstacles, or to locations they could not otherwise go, and is pushed by a towboat or towed by a tugboat...
, or car barge which would take loaded boxcars into town for unloading at freight sheds. Each railroad had its own freight sheds. Over 600,000 railcars were moved around the port annually. 19th century pictures of New York show the island bristling with hundreds of piers. Freight was manually unloaded from the boxcars, still on the barge, and wheeled by dolly across ramps onto the freight shed.
To move the large number of barges, steam tugs were used. Each railway had dozens of tugs and the harbor was a hive of activity. New York was also a busy international port with large ocean ships docking, which needed berthing tugs. A ship as large as the RMS Queen Mary
RMS Queen Mary
RMS Queen Mary is a retired ocean liner that sailed primarily in the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard Line...
needed many tugs. Passenger ferries to Brooklyn, New Jersey, Staten Island and Long Island, however, didn't use tugs.
The Port of New York was really eleven ports in one. It boasted a developed shoreline of over 650 miles (1,046.1 km) comprising the waterfronts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island as well as the New Jersey shoreline from Perth Amboy to Elizabeth, Bayonne, Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken and Weehawken. The Port of New York included some 1,800 docks, piers, and wharves of every conceivable size, condition, and state of repair. Some 750 were classified as "active" and 200 were able to berth 425 ocean-going vessels simultaneously in addition to the 600 able to anchor in the harbor. These docks and piers gave access to 1,100 warehouses containing some 41000000 square feet (3,809,024.6 m²) of inclosed storage space.
In addition, the Port of New York had thirty-nine active shipyards, not including the huge New York Naval Shipyard on the Brooklyn side of the East River. These facilities included nine big ship repair yards, thirty-six large dry-docks, twenty-five small shipyards, thirty-three locomotive and gantry cranes of fifty ton lift capacity or greater, five floating derricks, and more than one hundred tractor cranes. Over 575 tugboats worked the Port of New York.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard
Brooklyn Navy Yard
The United States Navy Yard, New York–better known as the Brooklyn Navy Yard or the New York Naval Shipyard –was an American shipyard located in Brooklyn, northeast of the Battery on the East River in Wallabout Basin, a semicircular bend of the river across from Corlear's Hook in Manhattan...
had its own fleet of tugs to handle it own products as well as dozens of other naval vessels visiting the harbor. The New York City Department of Sanitation
New York City Department of Sanitation
The New York City Department of Sanitation, or DSNY, is a uniformed force of unionized sanitation workers in New York City. Their responsibilities include garbage collection, recycling collection, street cleaning, and snow removal...
had tugs to move trash-- city garbarge was collected by carts and loaded on slips onto barges, from there it was towed several miles out to sea and dumped into the Atlantic Ocean. Later it was moved to garbage dumps, the last largest being the Fresh Kills Landfill
Fresh Kills Landfill
The Fresh Kills Landfill was a landfill covering in the New York City borough of Staten Island in the United States. The name comes from the landfill's location along the banks of the Fresh Kills estuary in western Staten Island...
in Staten Island.
Tugs were involved in several incidents in the harbor including the Black Tom explosion
Black Tom explosion
The Black Tom explosion on July 30, 1916 in Jersey City, New Jersey was an act of sabotage on American ammunition supplies by German agents to prevent the materiel from being used by the Allies in World War I.- Black Tom Island :...
where German saboteurs blew up an ammunition pier in 1916; and another where a munition ship SS El Estaro
SS El Estaro
The SS El Estaro was a Panamanian freighter hauling explosives for the war effort in April 1943 and caught fire due to leaking fuel oil below the boilers. The ship had 1400 tons of explosives aboard. It was being loaded near Bayonne, New Jersey in New York harbor...
caught fire in the harbor with
almost 2000 tons of tnt aboard in 1943. German U-boats prowled near the harbor of New York (U-123), and the USS Turner
USS Turner
USS Turner may refer to:, a Clemson-class destroyer commissioned in 1919; converted to a water barge in 1936 as USS Moosehead in 1943; scrapped in 1947...
sank after an internal explosion in January 1944. Over the years there were many marine boiler explosion
including the ferry Westfield.
In 1946 a tugboat strike seriously impaired the operations of the port.
New York City developed its own style of tugboat. The vessels had tall, narrow houses, sitting up
high to see over the barge and boxcars tied abreast, painted in a dull, worn red. Machinery was unique in
that the compound steam engines were non-condensing and exhausted to the air. Old films
of the harbor exhibit puffs of steam as the tugs make their journey. This feature was unique in
tug marine architecture. Hulls were usually iron or steel and boilers were fired with Appalachian anthracite
coal.
In the last half of the 20th century, trade moved to cars, trucks and airplanes. The Port Authority hastened this end by putting a tariff on barge traffic after the war. Railroads went bankrupt, new tugboats used diesel motors, and not one of the hundreds of New York City steam tugs built still serve the harbor.
See also
- Tugboat AnnieTugboat AnnieFor the 1957 syndicated television series, see The Adventures of Tugboat Annie.Tugboat Annie is a 1933 movie starring Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery as a comically quarrelsome middle-aged couple who operate a tugboat...
- Port of New York and New JerseyPort of New York and New JerseyThe Port of New York and New Jersey comprises the waterways in the estuary of the New York-Newark metropolitan area with a port district encompassing an approximate area within a radius of the Statue of Liberty National Monument...
- Port Authority of New York and New JerseyPort Authority of New York and New JerseyThe Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is a bi-state port district, established in 1921 through an interstate compact, that runs most of the regional transportation infrastructure, including the bridges, tunnels, airports, and seaports, within the Port of New York and New Jersey...
- New York Central Tugboat 13New York Central Tugboat 13New York Central Railroad Tugboat No. 13 is a railroad tug boat built in 1887 in Camden, New Jersey by John A. Dialogue and Sons.It is currently undergoing extensive renovation at Garpo Marine in Tottenville, Staten Island....
- Staten Island FerryStaten Island FerryThe Staten Island Ferry is a passenger ferry service operated by the New York City Department of Transportation that runs between the boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island.-Overview:...
- North River piers
- North River Tunnels
- Chemical CoastChemical CoastThe Chemical Coast is the section of Union and Middlesex counties in New Jersey. It is located along the shores of the Arthur Kill, a heavily used waterway of the Port of New York and New Jersey, across from Staten Island, New York.-History:...
- Weehawken, New JerseyWeehawken, New JerseyWeehawken is a township in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 12,554.-Geography:Weehawken is part of the New York metropolitan area...
- Hoboken, New JerseyHoboken, New JerseyHoboken is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 50,005. The city is part of the New York metropolitan area and contains Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub for the region...
- Mobro 4000Mobro 4000The Mobro 4000 was a barge made infamous in 1987 for hauling the same load of trash along the east coast of North America from New York to Belize and back until a way was found to dispose of the garbage...
- Brooklyn Eastern District TerminalBrooklyn Eastern District TerminalThe Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal was a Rail-Marine Terminal with its main facilities and administrative offices located on 86–88 Kent Avenue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York.-Background:...
- Standard Oil Company No. 16 (harbor tug)Standard Oil Company No. 16 (harbor tug)Standard Oil Company No. 16 is a historic harbor tugboat located at Mariners Harbor, Staten Island, New York. She was built in 1907 by the Skinner Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company of Baltimore, Maryland for the Standard Oil Company. She has heavy steel frames and deck beams. She is 100 feet in...
- Catawissa (tugboat)Catawissa (tugboat)Catawissa was a historic tugboat located at Waterford in Saratoga County, New York. She was built in 1896-1897 by Harlan and Hollingsworth of Wilmington, Delaware for the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad to tow coal barges between ports on the Eastern Seaboard. She was 158 feet in length, 19...
- List of ferries across the Hudson River to New York City
- Binghamton (ferryboat)Binghamton (ferryboat)The Binghamton is a retired ferryboat that operated from 1905 to 1967 transporting passengers across the Hudson River between Manhattan and Hoboken. She was built for the Hoboken Ferry Company of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad and was designed to carry 986 passengers plus vehicles....
- History of New York City transportationHistory of New York City transportationThe History of the New York City Transportation System ranges from strong Dutch authority in the 17th century, expansionism during the industrial era in the 19th century and half of the 20th century, to outright cronyism during the failures of the Robert Moses era...