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TUGBOAT ALLEY By Don Sutherland "One day maybe it will all be parks and residential towers with water views," con- cludes a newspaper article describing New York's "Tugboat Alley" at the Staten Island shore, "and plenty of people won't miss it. But now," it finishes, "at least for a moment, it remains a place where peo- ple work with their hands, and those hands touch brass and wood." The article, with its sentimental depic- tion of its transient subject ran in August, in a Sunday edition of what is known as a newspaper of record. The term "newspa- per of record" is not strictly defined, but we'd assume, it involves writing-down, for future generations, the way things were. In that future, might wonder arouse from this particular record. "How advanced the brasswork and woodwork must have been in the typical tugboat by the summer of 2005," our descendants might exclaim, "for they'd been develop- ing brass and wood since the Vikings!" Someday, another record might chroni- cle the Eminent Domain Wars and their outcome, the Manhattan-Battery Tug Basin. In combination with the Erie Superbasin — Pier 6 through 65th Street in Brooklyn — receiving the great barges of the NewErie Canal, the original Tug- boat Alley would be described as the backbone of the Big Apple Tugboat Trian- gle that saved the city from economic ruin. Anyone can speculate on the future, and one wild guess is as good as another. There's no way to be sure what newspa- pers will write-down, but we can assume that there will be surprises. Certainly Surviving Surprises already arise with the record written-down in August. "At least 100 tugboats are based along the northern shore of Staten Island," it recounts, "owned and run mostly by Moran and McAllister, but also by some other big names from New York maritime history ... Smaller concerns, like the Kosnac Float- ing Derrick Corporation, have only one tug." "I didn't know we were in the article," said Veronica Marshall, General Manager of the Kosnac operation, "he didn't call us, someone must have told him about us." The someone must not have mentioned that the June K. was barely two years of age, the company's first newbuild in three generations of business. Or that Capt. Fred Kosnac was in Norfolk that month, negotiating to buy a second twin-screw tug, the Vera K. The June K. was one of three sparkling- newbuilds to arrive on Tugboat Alley in 2003. The John P. Brown is the largest and priciest in the Brown fleet, whose origins stem from the 1920s. Another tug of the year, the Normandy, arrived at a price of $3.8 million, according to Metropolitan Marine Transportation's Capt. Paul Mahoney. Many observers would consider that much of an investment to be a sign of a new tomorrow. "This working community," according to the record, "lives amid the wreckage of the heyday of the port. For every going concern there is a deserted old warehouse, or a rotting pier, or a set of rusty disused train tracks, or a sunken tugboat with its wheelhouse windows smashed. But if this stretch of shore is not thriving, it certainly is surviving." The Philip T. Feeney, the tug in the Alley with the broken windows, lies one- hundred feet east of Capt. Mahoney's four-million-dollar tugboat. Rather than a permanent condition or enduring icon of the North Shore, the Philip was to be removed two years ago. But the old canaler thwarted the effort. She was stuck Tugboat Alley Revisited Norwegian Sea joined the K-Sea fleet as part of the $21-million Bay Gulf acquisition last year. She's since had an upper house and a JAK coupler added for a new life as a pinboat. (Photo: Don Sutherland.) JANUARY MN2006 3(17-24).qxd 1/4/2006 7:27 PM Page 18
