Steve Trueman News

It's been a year since MarineNews linked the dual tugmeets of the first week of September, one in New York City, the other upstate, at Waterford. Coupled, they make an interesting study, for their differences as much as their similarities. The tugs of New York City come in all sizes, but are typically large. Just as New York is a city of (many) skyscrapers, so it's a city of (many) monster tugboats, as harbor craft go. Waterford, a few miles north of Albany, is the gateway to the Erie Canal - is actually on the canal. While New York State's canals have renewed potential for commercial service, they're known most widely as recreational attractions for people who drive (many) large and pricey boats.

You'd think it would be easy to start a tugboat museum. First, get an old tugboat. Clean-up some rust with a pad of coarse steel wool, slap-on a coat of paint, and presto, you're ready to sit in the booth and sell tickets. Everyone would applaud your efforts because, first, everyone loves tugboats and all they represent - solid construction and earnest purpose, hard work and benevolent contributions to civilization. And second, because old tugboats, all spiffied-up, are handsome sights, an alluring environmental decoration wherever they're found. And third, because the design of tugboats, like most of society's tools, has undergone great change, and the old ones are dying-off fast. You'd think everyone would support your labors at preserving a noble cultural heritage.

Everybody talks about the John J. Harvey, and quite a few of them are doing something about it. The chipping, scraping, and painting you'd expect a 74-year-old fireboat to require has proceeded since the vessel became privately owned in 1999, but that's only the beginning of the discussion. For within the city the fireboat served for its first sixty years, a peculiar love/hate seems to have developed toward the harbor. That, more than leaks, can influence the future of the most historic of vessels, even as it affects contemporary ones doing their daily chores. The John J. Harvey was built for these waters in 1931, launched into them by the Todd shipyards at Brooklyn and serving them steadily, reliably, even heroically.

There's N.Y., and there's N.Y., N.Y. They are as unalike as two places can be. One is upstate, the other is downstate. One is composed of small and medium-size towns, the other ranks with the biggest cities in the world. One is a land laced with rivers and canals, the other occupies islands on one of the Atlantic's broadest harbors. Attitudes and styles are different in both places, too. Ed Koch, a television personality who once campaigned for governor, can tell you from experience that a big-city boy never mentions "gingham dresses" north of White Plains. Waterford and Manhattan are a three-hour ride apart, two if you speed, but even the language sounds different in both places. But they both have their tugboats. And everyone loves tugboats.