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On The Bookshelf January, 2005 • MarineNews 33 Circle 229 on Reader Service Card Circle 216 on Reader Service Card Circle 245 on Reader Service Card Circle 205 on Reader Service Card es that were imbalanced, and escapist: The children's book is "The little engine that could for our time," according to the Washington Post in a review. "Particular- ly exciting, uplifting, and child-sensitive ... revisits the tragedy without the terror," in the words of another reviewer. But there are some who revisit the ter- ror. They include members of FDNY's marine division. If a book swerves from the course of its title and its stated theme, it's being perhaps expansive. But then it should expand all the way, to include work and life aboard fireboats with the same sense of purpose as tugboats. It's an understandable wish to be "soothed and uplifted" by the events 9/11, but it's also a daydream out of place amid the fresh insights On Tugboats serves-up so broad- ly elsewhere. The second boat presented in Chapter 9 is K-Sea's Adriatic Sea, a tugboat at last, and its skipper, Vernon Elburn, fills-in some sense of what the Evacuation of Lower Manhattan was like. But with bare- ly more than one page of the book, this only scratches the surface. As it reads, the chapter seems as if the source material - so bountiful throughout the rest of the book - had suddenly run out. In fairness to the author, it's probably true that a large number of that maritime community seem reticent to go into the events of 9/11, for public consumption at least. For most of the world, 9/11 was a TV program. It was no videotape on the water that morning. There in the thick of it, having no idea from moment to moment what would happen next, it was an unfolding drama that could lead any- where. Not easy to discuss without sound- ing melodramatic. And in the end, all anyone did was what anyone would do. They did what they could. They did what they had to. And a Few Grins, Too. For all the earnestness of its content and the occasional solemnity it provokes, On Tugboats is also, in places, a funny read. This is because a lot of the gents in the business are funny, in a gallows humor, we're-just-cannon-fodder-and-then- there's-divorce-court sort of way. "'That's another real important aspect of this job -- crew change,' said Len, 'And you try not to talk to each other when you're off. I don't want to hear anything about a tugboat when I'm home. My wife doesn't understand when I want to go sit in the living room by myself, all quiet. I tell her, "You try being penned up in our kitchen for two weeks with the lawnmow- er running.'" How does anyone who works the deck, the engine room or the house, on a cork where the natural environment does not support breathing, explain his existence to residents of the so-called real world? Nei- ther the soap operas nor the Sunday sup- plements, the local PTA nor the barber, have much they can use as a reference. Most folks on your block know more about space, the final frontier, in the 25th century, than about tugboats today. Maybe that's why so many tugboaters have sec- ond jobs or businesses for their days off. It gives the neighbors something they can relate to. And now there's On Tugboats, which could put friends and others on scent. ENGINEERING ? DESIGN ? MANUFACTURING x Bulkhead Systems in Stock – Isolamin x Ceiling Systems B-0 & B-15 x Doors -Fire Rated A-60, B-30, Watertight & Weathertight x Hatches x Toilet Modules U.S. Coast Guard Approved Products Tel.: (514) 636-5555 Fax.: (514) 636-5410 www.joinersystems.com ® In Mobile (Bayou La Batre), Alabama. Sea School’s Premiere Training Center on the Gulf of Mexico. An industry leader in providing STCW-95 compliant training. NEW TRAINING COURSES! STCW-95 Medical Care Provider USCG approved Medical First Aid training required by the STCW Code and 46CFR12.13-1. 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A large number of the pho- tographs are by tugboaters themselves, as only they could see work and life aboard, proving that besides every- thing else, some of these gents have an eye, too. Out of the hundred-plus pho- tos throughout the volume, six are mine, submitted in response to the author's request for contributions on the online tugboat forum. I received no payment for the use of these pic- tures, and have no financial interest in the book or its sales. My sole compen- sation was an autographed copy of the first edition. MN JAN05 3 (25-40).qxd 1/5/2005 10:51 AM Page 33
