Museum Pier News

Capt. Fred Kosnac was the first tugboater I ever met. If a career can be considered in spiritual or symbolic or abstract terms to be "a life," then Fred Kosnac would rightly be called the patriarch of mine, as a writer and photographer and admirer of tugboaters and tugboats. The matriarch was of course a tugboat proper, the Hay-De, which Capt. Kosnac, based on a phone call out of the blue in 1980, made available to a curious and impressed young journalist. You mean something that works so hard, and has been at it since 1887, is still intact?

Capt. Jerry Roberts (L) presides over the tattoo competition during the 2003 tug races. Tattoo must be on a part of the anatomy "that can be shown in public." (Don Sutherland.). Capt. Jerry Roberts, master architect of the Intrepid Tug Challenge of the past thirteen years, has announced plans to bring the Labor Day event to the National Lighthouse Museium at St. George, Staten Island, where he recently signed-on as executive director. "We'd have preferred announcing this earlier," said Capt. At presstime, Capt. Roberts expressed hope the event could be held at the Lighthouse Museum's pier on the traditional Labor Day date. "There's an enormous amount to be done, and only a short time.