blog
from graving dock #1 the bitter winter of 2007
The
Mary Whalen needs your support please
Guide to nautical nomenclature
is at bottom below photos.
Where to find her:
She is in the Red Hook containerport, north side of Pier
9B, just south of the lumberport pier. Thanks to our generous hosts
American Stevedoring! Look for her from the
New York Water Taxi and
Governor's Island.
First tours
Columbus Day weekend 2006!
The Whalen had her coming out event during
openhousenewyork's 2006 tours. We
had hundreds of visitors! more about the
tours
The long term Plan: The Whalen is envisioned as
PortSide's homebase and a physical attraction and event location.
summary
We
have completed several real estate proposals in two years. (ah, joys of
the hot Red Hook real estate market!) We responded to the Atlantic Basin
RFEI (9/06) and RFP (2/07). We requested
waterspace (for docks), to include our partner, the non-profit historic
Tug Pegasus, and upland space to include a waterfront museum, a Bait &
Tackle shop, café, marine career center, tourism center, and youth and
community programs.
The tanker will be
respectfully repurposed and enlivened by changing activities. She will
not be presented as a static historic vessel. She will hold many of the
activities researched in our business plan; however, not all of them fit
aboard. We are looking for space ashore to launch other programs,
especially
Flotsam Project.
The
long tanker shape provides a big deck for patio and outdoor café, and the
tanks below will be opened up to create an exhibit hall and function
space. The cargo tanks will be redesigned in a modern way. The vintage
cabins, wheelhouse and galley will be preserved “as is” meaning we will
not replace bunks etc., that have been removed, but we will not remove any
extant historical stuff.
The Whalen will also
serve as a dock, allowing other vessels to visit Red Hook. These include
educational and historic vessels and commercial vessels (charter boats,
fishing excursion boats, etc). You could take a sunset sail or a fishing
cruise that left from The Mary Whalen. For safety reasons, we
will only allow vessels steered by licensed captains to visit;
recreational boaters without a license will not be allowed.
We
have installed spudwells, (huge steel sleeves through the hull) so we can
use spuds (internal pilings). Having spuds will enable The Whalen to visit other
communities that lack a pier or piers with tie-up infrastructure. Many new
waterfront parks have no cleats or bollards on their piers, and many
communities lack a formal waterfront park at all. Though she is quite
long, The Whalen is shallow draft (8’ aft) and can therefore visit
many parts of New York's shoreline. All she has to do is drop her spuds
and lower a gangway.
Some History:
She was built in 1938 for Ira S. Bushey & Sons and is 172’ long. Bushey
was a shipyard and fuel terminal at the foot of Court Street. 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 and naval vessels and
workboats.
The Whalen is Mathis hull
#124. The F.A. Verdon was hull #125 and had 30' more cargo tank space.
During the 1940's, Bushey considered adding 30' to the Whalen's cargo
tanks, and we have several blueprints from this period. The expansion was
never completed. We'd welcome information on what happened to the
Verdon.
The Whalen delivered fuel up and down the
Atlantic Coast; and her last years, she delivered fuel to ships. She went
out of service in 1993. In 1995, she came back home to Red Hook
where she served in Erie Basin as a dock and office.
She is named after the mother of Harold
Tabeling who owned Reliable Fuel Transportation, a company that operated her for
years. The boat was rechristened with her name in the 50's. Her first
name was S.T. Kiddoo; we have no information about that name. We are
eager for more information about the person Mary A. Whalen; please get in
touch if you have leads for us. There is a NYC Parks Department
playground in Queens named after a community leader Mary Whalen, but
we don't yet know if this is the same person.
Mariners today benefit from a legal case
involving the The Mary Whalen. The case went to the Supreme Court
which ruled in 1975 that in the cases of collisions at sea, 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.
"before" photos, warts and
all : We need to paint, strip paint,
varnish teak, re-gasket portholes, fix a few leaks, grease seized-up
hatches and cowl vents, fix plumbing and electrical systems, check the
furnace, and customize spaces for PortSide's use. (That's the abbreviated
version of the list!) The engine room needs a good scrub. Volunteers of
all skill levels welcome! Call 718-852-0821 or email:
carolina (at) portsidenewyork.org.
Galley: The wheelhouse and galley
are original as are three of the six cabins. The galley floor is
ceramic tile; the fridge and freezer are in a thickly paneled, wood
cabinet. The galley stove is diesel-fired; chefs are invited to
experiment once we fix the chimney. Everything aboard is built to
account for the boat heeling over: The stools are bolted to the
floor; The table has a little lip around it to keep plates from
sliding off. (There is one break in the lip to sweep out crumbs.)
Wheelhouse: The doors and windows
are teak. They are designed like tug windows to open down so the
captain could yell out to the crew. (This boat was built before there
were PA systems.) Each window drops into a little box that has a
drain to run out the water that invariably leaks in. Some numbskull
filled the aft window drains with putty which drove water back into
the boat, rusted out the boxes and then ran water down into the
captain's cabin, damaging its overhead and some old log books that
were hidden under the drawers of the captain's bunk. These steel
window boxes now all have to be removed and checked for leaks, which
means we will have to take out the wooden cabinetry to get at the
windows.
Fidley deck: the level over the
engine. A massive engine, probably bigger than your bedroom, lurks
under the grating. It is a 1938 Fairbanks Morse direct- reversing
diesel engine. It has been cannibalized. We need heads, pistons and
rods. The shaft is also scored at the aftmost journal (cylinder). The
shaft needs to be reground or replaced. For now, the Whalen can
provide programs without a running engine. If she needs to move, we'll
call a tug.
Half of the future PortSide store:
two cabins that were combined into one by the former owners. Only the
hanging lockers remain from the original built-in fixtures. All
bunks, lockers and shelves were built in as furniture would slide or
crash around.
View
from the wheelhouse (left). The long rectangle is the deck over
the cargo tanks. There are eight of them, four either side of a
centerline bulkhead. They are 104' long and the width of the boat
31.5' for a total of 2,800 square feet below deck. The raised area up
forward (the foredeck) covers the pump room, the pump engine room, and
a space way up forward called the forepeak. The pumps were used to
empty and fill the cargo tanks with the fuel products the tanker
delivered. We will remove them so these spaces can be re-purposed.
The cargo boom was used to move the fuel hoses. We will use it to move
all sorts of stuff. The center of the deck is raised (the ullage
trunk); this will be the public-access patio. We need to put up
railings so little ones don't fall over the edge.
Overtime, as the tanks get renovated, the
tank hatches will be removed, a cargo hatch will be cut in the deck
near the boom, two staircases will be installed (we salvaged two from
the old Todd Shipyard) cowl vents will be installed for air.
The lower decks either side will be
"work decks" primarily reserved for PortSide staff, boat stuff, and
landing area for boats that tie-up alongside.
cargo tank P4 (right)
photo by Claudia Steinberg
Nautical nomenclature:
Ship parts: beam: width of the boat bow: front end bulkhead: wall bunk: bed cabin: bedroom cowl vent: chimney to catch the wind and funnel air into the boat,
shaped like an empty cowlneck sweater. They can be turned to catch wind or
avoid rain. galley: kitchen hatch: a specific sort of door. Generally speaking hatches are on
horizontal surfaces (decks) whereas "doors" are vertical. Some doors
(cabin doors) look like house doors are called doors. Other "doors" are
watertight doors and have spinning handles (dogs) that seal them tightly.
Hatches are also constructed to be watertight and are "dogged down" to
seal them.
head: bathroom, and sometimes specifically the toilet locker: a storage area. A hanging locker is a clothes closet with
hangers. overhead: the ceiling porthole:
the round windows characteristic of boats. Their small size, shape and
stout construction prevents their being smashed by waves. In this day and
age, wheelhouse windows are rarely round as the person steering needs to
see in a wide arc, but the Whalen's large rectangular wheelhouse windows are protected by being higher up on
the vessel than you ever want to have waves hit. The Whalen's wheelhouse
windows are effectively three stories high.
spuds: essentially pilings that pierce the vessel, usually barges.
They pin a vessel in place while allowing it to float up and down with the
tide. (New York Water Taxi docks are spud barges.) The spud fits in a
spudwell (a sleeve) that prevents the water from entering the main body of
the vessel. In comparison, an anchor allows the vessel to swing in an arc.
We are being spudded since many neighborhoods lack piers, or have piers
without cleats and bollards (things to tie ships to). stern: back end of the boat.
wheelhouse/pilothouse: the driver's seat; where the boat is steered zincs: or "sacrificial anodes" are attached to the hull and other
important metal pieces (rudder, shaft) to protect the metal from corrosion
that results from electrical action in the water. The zinc is a weaker
metal than the steel or bronze of the boat you are trying to protect,
hence it is consumed by the electrical, corrosive energies first and is "sacrified"
as a way to save your necessary metal stuff. The Whalen will need
about 32 twenty-five pound zincs.
Spatial orientation: aft: in the back (the galley is aft) or behind something
(aft of that porthole)
abeam: off the boat and opposite the middle of the boat (the rock was
abeam us when we saw it.) Compare to midships. astern: behind the boat forward: in front (life rafts are forward) or in front of something
(forward of that porthole) heel: when a boat leans over on its side (as sailboats do most of
the time). Boats all rotate in space, unlike houses; and there is an
extensive vocabulary (heel, trim, pitch, roll, yaw, heave) to describe
their movements along different axis, but we won't tackle that all now.
midships: in the middle of the boat (your cabin is amidships). Compare
to abeam. port: left (as in left or right side; or port and starboard on
boats).
starboard: right(as in left or right side; or port and
starboard on boats).
Ship Lifestyle: paperwork: dreaded; one of the things
you went to sea to avoid, "that's for office people." grub/provisions: food/groceries. weather: often means bad weather, as in "we had some weather." painting: a never-ending activity. watch: your work shift. You stand watch, you don't work your
watch. On NYC tugs, captain's watches are from 6am-noon, and 6pm to
midnight. The mate gets the tougher midnight-6am and noon-6pm slots,
though they refer to it with the 24 hour clock system not a.m. and
p.m. as landlubbers do. logbook: where all activities of the boat are recorded daily.
Weather, nature of the work, course (the ship's direction), visitors
and exceptional events are all recorded. On large vessels (tugs,
tankers, other ships) a separate log is often kept for the engine
room. When there is an accident, the first thing the Coast Guard
wants to see is the log book. (Compare to airplanes' "black box"
recorders except that aboard a vessel, the officers control what's
written.)
Calling all former crew!
We want to tape record your memories and copy your photos.
Please get in touch!
Your advice can help us put The Whalen
back together. join
Thank You's:
Thanks to our friends and volunteers who have helped so far: all-around
whiz and repair impresario John
Gladsky, the three mighty scrubbers
Patti Kelly, Jamye 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 theTug Pegasus Preservation Project
and David Sharps from Red Hook's own
Waterfront Museum and Showboat
Barge.
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. K-SEA, under the name Eklof, was
the last company to run The Whalen as a tanker. To Jan Andrusky at
Weeks Marine, thanks for great
networking and connecting us to the right people.
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
the marine engineer who drew up the spudwell plan pro bono but
wishes to remain anonymous; you know who you are!
Thanks to American Stevedoring, Inc. for
providing us an interim berth while we wait out delays at the shipyard
that will haul out The Whalen.
And last of all, 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 and material support, especially
Bob Hughes, Brian Hughes, Phil Marion and Tommy George.
The
long tanker shape provides a big deck for patio and outdoor café, and the
tanks below will be opened up to create an exhibit hall and function
space. The cargo tanks will be redesigned in a modern way. The vintage
cabins, wheelhouse and galley will be preserved “as is” meaning we will
not replace bunks etc., that have been removed, but we will not remove any
extant historical stuff.
View
from the wheelhouse (left). The long rectangle is the deck over
the cargo tanks. There are eight of them, four either side of a
centerline bulkhead. They are 104' long and the width of the boat
31.5' for a total of 2,800 square feet below deck. The raised area up
forward (the foredeck) covers the pump room, the pump engine room, and
a space way up forward called the forepeak. The pumps were used to
empty and fill the cargo tanks with the fuel products the tanker
delivered. We will remove them so these spaces can be re-purposed.
The cargo boom was used to move the fuel hoses. We will use it to move
all sorts of stuff. The center of the deck is raised (the ullage
trunk); this will be the public-access patio. We need to put up
railings so little ones don't fall over the edge.
Overtime, as the tanks get renovated, the
tank hatches will be removed, a cargo hatch will be cut in the deck
near the boom, two staircases will be installed (we salvaged two from
the old Todd Shipyard) cowl vents will be installed for air.
porthole:
the round windows characteristic of boats. Their small size, shape and
stout construction prevents their being smashed by waves. In this day and
age, wheelhouse windows are rarely round as the person steering needs to
see in a wide arc, but the Whalen's large rectangular wheelhouse windows are protected by being higher up on
the vessel than you ever want to have waves hit. The Whalen's wheelhouse
windows are effectively three stories high. 
