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Monmouth County Museum, NJ	1966 from collection Dave Boone	1978 from collection Dave Boone	1980s photo by Barry Masterson

News:
6/23/09. The historic Supreme Court case involving the Whalen is in the news again.  See a superbly written piece in Professional Mariner.

Monday 2/24/09. Most of the parts needed to fix the Whalen’s engine arrived in Red Hook after being trucked from Seattle.  The back story will roll out in installments on the blog  We got 6 cylinders, 6 heads, 6 pistons, 1 connecting rod, a whole fuel pump assembly, the lower half of the engine block with a crank (to be inspected) and flywheel, and 2 davits. What we lack now are 5 connecting rods and 1 davit, and we need more research to determine the crank repair strategy. Our new acquisitions include stuff we didn't need, so we can sell some parts to defray costs.  If you want to help us find more, we need 5 rods for a Fairbanks Morse 37E12, six cylinder, direct reversing engine. 

Fixing the Whalen's engine will happen down the road. Right now, we are focused on finding a home, program development and fundraising.  Engine parts like these, however, need to be acquired when found (if cheap) as they are scarce as hen's teeth and disappearing fast when old boats get scrapped. 

Thanks to those who helped us get most of the parts to fix the Mary Whalen's engine: Stabbert Maritime in Seattle who accommodated the disruption of our request for parts and discounted their fees; Washington State Department of Natural Resources who negotiated on our behalf and who provided history on the Ked and Bushey tankers in general; Gerry Weinstein who donated $5,000 to pay for the parts and more towards the shipping; K-Sea Transportation who donated $2,000 towards the cost of shipping and provided engine info; American Stevedoring who unloaded and is storing the parts in their warehouse; A & P Freight who gave us a nice price on shipping; the fleet of engineers who provided advice on vintage engines: Gary Matthews, Bobby Mowbray, Charlie Chillemi, Tim Ivory, Nobby Peers, Adrian Lipp; Gerry Weinstein who referred us to engineers and whose Archive of Industry provided much info on Bushey engines and davits, Mary Habstritt, President of the national Society of Industrial Archeology who tapped the west coast SIA membership which got Ries Niemi, and Erik Knise involved; the other West Coast site crew Antonio Salguero of Coastwise Marine Design and Kris Lindberg.  Big thanks to Bernie Ente, the King of Newtown Creek, who told us about the Ked in the first place! This is all due to you Bernie!  

Background:
The Whalen was built for Ira S. Bushey & Sons and is 172’ long.  For context, see harbor videos from 1938, the year she was built:

• Manhattan working waterfront
• ride on Alexander Hamilton from Albany to NYC- shows all vessel types on the river

Bushey's was a shipyard and fuel terminal at the foot of Court Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Strangely, they did not build the Whalen, though she appears to be one of their designs. She was built by Mathis in Camden, New Jersey, a builder of many fine yachts, naval vessels and workboats.  Two Mathis links: ship list and history.

The Whalen delivered fuel products up and down the Atlantic Coast, as far away as Maine and Maryland, and up many rivers.  In her last years, she stayed close to home and often worked the Gowanus Canal or delivered fuel to ships. She went out of service in 1993.  Eklof cannibalized the engine so competitors could not put her in service. In 1995, she came back home to Red Hook where she served in Erie Basin as a dock and office for Hughes Marine, a sixth-generation firm self-described as "the clearinghouse for marine difficulties."

The Whalen made history: 
Mariners today benefit from a legal case involving the the Mary A. Whalen.  She went aground on the Rockaways, here in New York, on Christmas Day 1968.  (see old Daily News clipping at right)  A Coast Guard light was out and the Whalen's owners blamed the Coast Guard.  The case went to the Supreme Court, which split the blame between both parties but - for the good of all of us - ruled in 1975 that in the cases of marine accidents, damages should be apportioned according to blame.  Sounds logical, but prior to this lawsuit, damages were split 50/50 regardless, and those at fault could shirk the financial consequences of their actions.

This 1975 decision overturned US maritime law in effect since 1854 and had the USA finally join maritime practice common in other nations.  The ruling begins "The precise origins of the divided damages rule are shrouded in the mists of history;" and Judge Learned Hand dismisses U.S. admiralty law on this issue as an "obstinate cleaving to the ancient rule which has been abrogated by nearly all civilized nations." 

November 2008, during a cocktail party, we learned that Charles Cushing went aboard the grounded Whalen as a young naval architect to figure out how to get the boat afloat.  The Whalen's grounding was one of the first jobs taken by C.R. Cushing & Co which subsequently grew into an international firm of note.  Charles remembered the event well!  More info to come from that quarter.

Odd original name:
The Mary A. Whalen began life with an odd name, S.T. Kiddoo.  We had no idea who Kiddoo was until the day before her 70th birthday party in December 08, when Mary Habstritt, President of the national Society of Industrial Archeology, emailed us this info: "I was boning up on history of Whalen and saw that her old name S.T. Kiddoo was a mystery.  I searched just the last name and got several threads about the surname on www.Ancestry.com that mentioned A history of the Kiddoo family in the United States, 1780-1981 which is full text on the Brigham Young University libraries digital collections site.   On p. 188, it tells of a Solomon Thomas Kiddoo (1883-1965) who, after a career in banking in, of all places, Wall SD, became Secretary-Treasury of Fairbanks Morse.  Hmmm.  I think it cannot be a coincidence that the ship had the same name as an officer of Fairbanks Morse and the ship has a FM engine."  We also know that Bushey was a distributor of Fairbanks Morse engines, so we are quite sure this is the person for whom she was first named.

Other Bushey tankers:
All of these, to the best of our knowledge, have been destroyed or have left the USA.  Several Bushey boats reputedly made it to South America years ago, but we have no updates on their fate.

A.C. Dodge, collided, exploded & sank 1952, from collection Dave Boone,	Bushey YO-4 trial photo from Gerry Weinstein, Archive of Industry	R.J. Perry, later John J. Tabeling 1966, Patricia N. Gellatly 1992, Nemo, scrapped 2005, from collection Dave Boone	George Whitlock II, later Reliable II 1990, scrapped 2005, from collection Dave Boone

Thank You's:
Thanks for research by Captain Dick Forster, Ed Drury, Thomas Rinaldi (who told us about the Supreme Court case involving The Whalen) and thanks to the folks at K-SEA Transportation, especially Rick Falcinelli, for history and documents, free towing, generous advice and donations.  K-SEA, under the name Eklof, was the last company to run The Whalen as a tanker.  To Jan Andrusky, Dispatcher at Weeks Marine, thanks for great networking and connecting us to the right people again and again.

Thanks too for special services provided by our contractors and suppliers:  Charles Deroko, Surveyor; the pump out folks at Clean Water of New York; Independent Testing; John Tretout of Amorica Paint.  Thanks much to Bernie Mellies, the marine engineer who drew up the spudwell plan pro bono. We send heartfelt good wishes to Bernie who was seriously injured during a fall on the job 9/9/09. His daughter Sarah, a medical student, is blogging his recovery process here.

Thank you American Stevedoring, Inc. for providing us a free home, electricity and labor for over two years and for making the opera event of 2007 a spectacular success.  Thanks to GMD Shipyard who provided us a free home during the winter months of 2008!  Pier D is a great sunny berth and we miss it!

Thanks to our supportive friends at Hughes Marine and Reinauer Transportation in Erie Basin who were so patient over eighteen months while we considered buying the boat, looked for a berth, insurance and a shipyard. They could have sent The Whalen to the scrapyard; but they gave us the time to find a way to save her.  Thanks to them too for advice, material support and equipment storage, especially Bob Hughes, Brian Hughes, Phil Marion and Tommy George.

Thanks to our friends and volunteers who helped, and continue helping, at critical points: the three mighty scrubbers Patti Kelly, Jayme Keenan, and Debbie Romano; muckmaid Erica Reynolds, Richard Brandt, Gary Baum and Amy Sisti, Captain Tom Teague, Captain Mark McDonnell, Julie Nadel of North River Historic Ships, Huntley Gill of the Fireboat Harvey.  Thanks for abundant advice and material from both Captain Pam Hepburn of the Tug Pegasus Preservation Project and David Sharps from Red Hook's own Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge.

And thanks to all of you who have sent historic photos of the Whalen at work:  Steve Cryan; Barry Masterson; Bob Mattson; Dave Boone, and for newer photos and video thanks to Helen Tschudi, Blake McDowell, Jenny Kane, Bernie Ente, Frank Lynch. Thanks to Frank Hanavan for a charming painting of the Whalen based on a Masterson photo.

Thanks to Richard Fleming for sound recordings and two great blog posts about us, and to Ian Cheney for video work.  Thanks to David Bianciardi and Kyle Chepulis for top notch video and lighting installations in 2007 and 2009.

Thanks to the Red Hook businesses who regularly support us: Atlantis, LeNell's, Liberty Sunset Garden Center, Tini Winebar, home/made, Steve's Key Lime Pie.

And thanks to our dozens of volunteers! Your enthusiasm keeps us inspired. Your work keeps us advancing the ball!