Tugboats, Yawlboats, and Pushboats
This month we pivot our lens to tugboats, yawl boats, and push boats, waterborne workhorses that enable much larger vessels to sidle into place in crowded harbors. In many cases, the vessels they service have power of their own, but lack fine maneuverability where it’s needed. A freighter with engines for pushing hundreds of thousands of tons over long stretches of ocean at speed is helpless in tight quarters, especially if her draft confines her to a narrow channel in port. The bridge on a cargo ship is perfect for seeing long distances, but a pilot can’t tell what’s happening right down at the water. Enter the tugboat.
Likewise, sailing schooners, still ubiquitous on the coast of Maine thanks to the passenger trade, are either unpowered when there’s no wind, with their sails lowered, or are similarly hindered by sheer bulk where other vessels lie cheek by jowl at their moorings. Fittingly, a tiny yawl boat using its inboard engine to nudge one of these big schooners into place has been a common sight.
Still other vessels lack power altogether. A big barge is useless without a powerful tug. Notable in this group is a photo of a farmhouse being moved to Monhegan Island from Rockland, Maine; the farmhouse didn’t make the crossing.
Yard tug Little Joe underway with a yard crew onboard for trials, about 1947. Bert Snow is in the bow, Maurice McKusic is on the engine box, Bert's father Walter, and Alfred (Ap) Storer, a cousin of Bert's and a partner in SNB, is at the tiller. In her former life, this boat was the coasting schooner Hattie Loring's yawlboat.
The tug WRESTLER hauled out at Wayfarer Marine, Camden, Maine.
“Anne and I spent a week onboard [the schooner ROSEWAY], with the last night in Pulpit Harbor. This photo was taken aboard ROSEWAY as she leaves Pulpit Harbor on North Haven Island, Maine. The schooner STEPHEN TABER is shown from astern being pushed out of Pulpit Harbor, North Haven.” (MB)
During a trip to the northwest for Woodenboat, Maynard admired the lines of this steel-hulled tug tied up in Seattle, probably purchased as government surplus.
In some cases, it’s easier to tow than push. Here, the schooner Mary Day is being led out of Camden harbor, by its yawlboat . The 90' centerboard schooner Mary Day designed by Havilah H. Hawkins was built by Gamage Shipyard in 1962 in South Bristol, Maine.
Doug Lee (at left) and John Foss aboard the yawlboat at the launching of the schooner Heritage (not shown).
In the long tradition of oyster dredging under sail in Chesapeake bay, strict rules govern the use of internal combustion power. Powered push boats are allowed for moving the bugeye out of the harbor until they can sail freely. Here, the Edna Lockwood is getting underway in Saint Michaels, Maryland in 1989.
The bugeye Edna Lockwood gets an assist on a still morning in 1989, heading out of the harbor at Saint Michaels, Maryland.
The schooner Lewis R. French is sailing with a reefed mainsail, and also being pushed by her yawlboat, off of Brooklin, Maine, 1991.
Maine Maritime Academy’s training ship, State Of Maine (left), departing Castine in December 1995, as seen from onboard the Academy’s tug Pentagoet, with the Tugboat Verona providing low power and guidance for the Maine.
The tug Mack Point is shown assisting a freighter to dock in June 1997. Location not known.
The schooner Heritage is shown being nosed along on a quiet evening in August 1997.