Tim Ivory News

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.

According to the Baltimore Sun last April 21, 100,000 visitors came to town the day before, just to see the boats. Most had arrived for the Volvo races, an endurance test of sorts. But without so much press, from as far off as Seattle, another 48 came for a ship whose endurance was legend already. For a near half-century with the Coast Guard, the Tamaroa fought famously bad seas - and before that, enemy fire. Her quiet admirers arrived Balto with scrapers in hand, wrenches at the ready, plans in mind. Tamaroa had taken world wars and nature's wrath in stride. But civilian life got her down. Her preceding nine years were spent in near-isolation, open to intruders and the elements, gathering rust. April 20 was the day all that would change. Some of the 48 came to relive, some to renew.

When contractors Brasfield & Gorrie accepted a job to rehabilitate a dam for a local power company, their first foray into marine work was far from routine. With no navigable passage into the deep-water side of the 150-ft. tall dam, most workboats couldn't even reach the job site. The Birmingham, Ala.-based company decided a new equipment purchase was their best option. They bought a 25.3 x 14 x 4.5 ft. tugboat and transported it in two pieces that were offloaded by crane and assembled on site. What this job required was a truckable tug. And as the company soon learned there were many more jobs that could take advantage of such a tug.