Great North River Tug Boat Race 2011 

For photographs taken from shore check out Will’s tugster blog.

A Harbor’s Ugly Ducklings Can’t Resist the Tug of Speed

Photo: Monika Graff for The New York Times

The timing could not have been worse. In the midst of a blistering heat wave in New York City, what has been described as a “catastrophic fire” at the North River Waste Water Treatment plant yesterday allowed millions of gallons of untreated sewage to be discharged from Manhattan into the Hudson and Harlem Rivers.  Officials are warning New Yorkers and New Jersey residents on the harbor against swimming, fishing or launching boats in the Hudson and at four city beaches on Staten Island and in Brooklyn.

After Blaze, Sewage Floods City Rivers

The rivers that run into New York Harbor will be unfit for recreational activities at least through Sunday because of a catastrophic fire that shut down one of the city’s largest sewage treatment plants, the city’s health department said Thursday.

The city has nearly 600 miles of coastline. The health warning covers the waters from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to the Hudson, Harlem and East Rivers. People should avoid activities that could involve contact with those waters.

On Tuesday, just a day before the fire, tests on city waters found them to be in “excellent” condition and fit for swimming, said John Lipscomb, the manager of water quality sampling programs for Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy group.

By Thursday, public boat launches on the Hudson had been shut down. People fishing from piers were told the water was unsafe. Swimmers young and old were being turned away from Riverbank State Park, which sits atop the treatment plant, has three swimming pools and other amenities, and was closed because it had no electricity.

A beach pollution advisory was issued Thursday evening for South, Midland and Cedar Grove Beaches on Staten Island and Sea Gate in Brooklyn. Updates were to be posted on the department Web site, www.nyc.gov/health.

For the slightly more sedate Sunday, the second William Main Doerflinger Memorial Shanty Session will be held  at the Noble Maritime Collection at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center at 1000 Richmond Terrace, building D, in Staten Island New York.  Here is a short video of the last shanty session.

I clearly have chosen an inopportune weekend to be in San Diego.

Clipper City

In January we posted that the Hudson River Park Trust was seeking proposals to dock historic vessels on the newly refurbished Pier 25 in the Hudson River off Tribecca.   Earlier this month the the Hudson River Park Trust announced that the 1907  Tug Pegasus, the 1933 lighthouse tender Lilac and the 1984 tall ship Clipper City, a historic replica, had been selected to be the first vessels to dock at the pier.

Three historic ships find a home at a Tribeca pier

The Lilac Preservation Project, which runs the 1933 lighthouse tender Lilac, plans to co-host music concerts, circus performances and other festivities at Pier 25. The Lilac will arrive at the Tribeca pier by mid-May, in time for a scheduled May 21 onboard wedding. The craft has been docked on Pier 40’s north side, at West Houston St., since 2003.

The 1907 harbor tugboat Pegasus will move to Pier 25 in the summer. Its owner, the Tug Pegasus Preservation Project, plans to organize workshops, guided tours of the ship and a speakers series focused on maritime culture. While most of the programming will be free, some will have nominal entrance fees, depending on staffing needs, according to executive director Pamela Hepburn. The organization also hopes to schedule visits to the tug for neighborhood youths.

Clipper City, a steel replica of a 19th-century wooden schooner of the same name, is the largest active sailboat in New York, and one of the largest operating passenger sailboats in America, according to its owner, Tom Berton.

On this day, sixty nine years ago, the great French luxury liner SS Normandie caught fire at Pier 88 on the Hudson River in New York City.  The fire burned out of control and the next day the ship capsized at the dock.   The liner had been seized by the United States authorities at New York and renamed USS Lafayette at the beginning of World War II.   She was in the process of being to converted to a troop transport when she caught fire.   Her elegant interiors were being ripped out.   It is believed that an arc from a welding machine set fire to the partially stripped ship.

When the SS Normandie entered service in 1935, the 83,000-ton, 1,028-foot long liner was the largest and fastest passenger ship ever built.  Many consider her to be the most beautiful as well, with elegant art deco interior spaces.   Fortunately not all record of the glories of the Normandie has been lost. The South Street Seaport Museum in New York has been hosting an exhibit: DecoDence: Legendary Interiors and Illustrious Travelers Aboard the SS Normandie. Initially intended to run through January, it has been extended through April.  (Note: the website has not been updated. It still shows the exhibit closing in January. )  Definitely worth seeing if you are in the area.

The exhibition at New York’s South Street Seaport museum will feature original interior works by the famous Deco artists that beautified her decks, showing visitors just why Normandie captured the imagination of the world before her tragic end in 1942. The displays will also showcase original furnishings, rare passenger photographs, video footage, voyage logs, uniforms, fashion accessories, and commemorative items from Normandie’s maiden voyage.

Burning of S.S. Normandie 1942

Thanks to Steamboat Bill for tweeting about the anniversary.

Photo: Will Van Dorp

It was a beautiful and busy weekend in New York harbor.  On Sunday, I missed the 18th Annual Running of the Great North River Tugboat Race & Competition but Will over at the Tugster blog has some great photos.   For the real tug fans, the big, annual Waterford Tugboat Roundup starts this Thursday, September 9th and carries on through Sunday, the 12th.  Waterford is about 160 miles north of New York City at the junction of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers.

And by the way, anyone struck with “tug life envy” should definitely read Bowsprite’s recent post, “how to simulate the tugboat feeling.”

On Monday, I launched my almost brand new hybrid inflatable Advanced-Frame Expedition kayak near Liberty State Park in the wupper harbor and paddled up to Hoboken.   It was a glorious paddle on a beautiful morning.  I worked my way north in the eddies along the shoreline and then rode the ebb current coming home. Delightful.

The only unpleasant aspect of the paddle was when the ebb tide seems to turn a reddish chocolate brown color.   It was an algae bloom – red tide, a a roughly ten mile swath in the Hudson.

Beware of the red tide! U.S. Coast Guard says 10-mile-long trail of algae in NY Harbor is dangerous

The worst recent red tide to strike New England was in 2005 in Massachusetts Bay and Cape Cod Bay.  Yesterday’s  outbreak should disperse out to sea in a few days, with luck.

A photograph of the red tide in the Hudson taken by Bowsprite:

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]]> http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2010/09/07/new-york-harbor-weekend-racing-tug-boats-and-red-tide/feed/ 2 http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2010/07/15/18th-century-ship-found-buried-at-new-yorks-world-trade-center-site/ http://www.oldsaltblog.com/2010/07/15/18th-century-ship-found-buried-at-new-yorks-world-trade-center-site/#comments Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:10:03 +0000 Rick Spilman http://www.oldsaltblog.com/?p=12136 Continue reading →]]> Workers excavating at the new World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan have uncovered the remains of an 18th century wooden merchant ship. The ship was found 20 feet below street level,  is roughly 30 feet in length and was probably buried intentionally as land fill.  It was found in an area outside that which had been previously excavated for the original World Trade Center complex and appears to have remained undisturbed since it was buried in the mid to late 1700s.

18th-Century Ship Found at Trade Center Site

In the middle of tomorrow, a great ribbed ghost has emerged from a distant yesterday.

On Tuesday morning, workers excavating the site of the underground vehicle security center for the future World Trade Center hit a row of sturdy, upright wood timbers, regularly spaced, sticking out of a briny gray muck flecked with oyster shells.

Obviously, these were more than just remnants of the wooden cribbing used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to extend the shoreline of Manhattan Island ever farther into the Hudson River. (Lower Manhattan real estate was a precious commodity even then.)

“They were so perfectly contoured that they were clearly part of a ship,” said A. Michael Pappalardo, an archaeologist with the firm AKRF, which is working for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to document historical material uncovered during construction.

By Wednesday, the outlines made it plain: a 30-foot length of a wood-hulled vessel had been discovered about 20 to 30 feet below street level on the World Trade Center site, the first such large-scale archaeological find along the Manhattan waterfront since 1982, when an 18th-century cargo ship came to light at 175 Water Street.

The area under excavation, between Liberty and Cedar Streets, had not been dug out for the original trade center. The vessel, presumably dating from the mid- to late 1700s, was evidently undisturbed more than 200 years.

News of the find spread quickly. Archaeologists and officials hurried to the site, not only because of the magnitude of the discovery but because construction work could not be interrupted and because the timber, no longer safe in its cocoon of ooze, began deteriorating as soon as it was exposed to air.

For that reason, Doug Mackey, the chief regional archaeologist for the New York State Historic Preservation Office, was grateful for the rainfall. “If the sun had been out,” he said, “the wood would already have started to fall apart.”

As other archaeologists scrambled with tape measures over what appeared to be the floor planks of the ship’s lowermost deck, Mr. Mackey said, “We’re trying to record it as quickly as possible and do the analysis later.” All around the skeletal hull, excavation for the security center proceeded, changing the muddy terrain every few minutes.

Thanks to Carolina Salguero at Portside for pointing the article out.

Edge's Windmill

Yesterday we posted about a proposed wind farm on New York harbor between Jersey City and Bayonne.  These will not be the first windmills on the harbor, of course.  In 1815 Isaac Edge finished a windmill on the banks of the Hudson River in Jersey City.   From Jersey City and its Historic Sites by Harriet Phillips Eaton, published in 1899:

EDGE’S WINDMILL

A quaint and interesting landmark of lower Jersey City, for some thirty years, was the windmill near the corner of Montgomery and Green streets ; to be exact, it stood upon a pier one hundred feet in length, seventy-five feet north of Montgomery street, and fifty feet east of Green street.

According to the family traditions this mill, an exact duplicate of one owned by himself in Derbyshire, England, was sent by Mr. Edge, Sr., to his son Mr. Isaac Edge, soon after he settled in Jersey City in 1806, in appreciation of his success in the New World. Every part was marked to insure its proper erection. The motive power was a windmill upon an octagonal stone tower seven stories in height. The fans on the wings were originally of canvas, but these were destroyed by a September gale in 1821, when Mr. Edge replaced them with iron fans. It was quite a celebrated mill and considered the best in America. It faithfully ground its grists until taken down in 1839 to make room for the New Jersey Railroad tracks ; but its days of usefulness were not over, it was removed to Town Harbor, L. I., from there it was taken to Southold, L. I., where it continued to do good work until destroyed by fire on June 25th, 1870.

In connection with the mill Mr. Edge started a bakery, which not only supplied Jersey City people with their daily bread at twenty-five cents a loaf, but ships also. The bakery stood on the southwest corner of York and Green streets. It was burned in 181 1,

but Mr. Edge rebuilt it and the building is still standing. The family still have in their possession the ledger of the old mill and some of the entries are very interesting. The accounts were kept in English currency until i8i6. In 1812 flour was sold at the mill for eighteen dollars per barrel. Abraham Reynolds paid one pound, sixteen shillings to have forty-five bushels of wheat ground and three shillings and six pence for its ferriage across the river. The freight on three barrels of bread sent to Sandy Hook was four pounds, four shillings, three pence. James Parker received for his labor only five shillings a day, while Jabez Spinning received thirteen shillings. Mr. Edge lived at the corner of Green and York streets on the water front.

Pirate Weekend sails into Newburgh waterfront

In other news, eleven men have been charged with piracy in federal court in Norfolk, Va related to two attacks on US naval vessels off the coast of Somalia.

Pirate Suspects From Somalia Charged in U.S.