Page 23: of Marine News Magazine (March 2006)

22 24

March, 2006 • MarineNews 23 boat business was a lot more complex than that, of course, with harbor masters and agents and scalpers of varying back- grounds and levels of honor promoting or exploiting business for tug owners in the days before telephones. "That the water- front in general and the milieu of the tug- boatmen in particular was beginning to accumulate multiple layers of extortionate characters did not bode well for the port."

They're presumably no longer part of the fabric, though the tug owners, then as now, endured something of a dichotomy about making their activities known.

Word should get out to stimulate more business, but word should be kept quiet to avoid attracting competition. The book describes many other intricacies of tug- boat dealings as common as steamboats in their time, and now just as vanished.

Whether these business structures were unique to New York or were indigenous to other ports as well is not clear, though their parallels must have existed else- where. With luck, the success of the pre- sent volume will encourage equally learned tomes under titles like "Tugboats of Philadelphia" or "Tugboats of Nor- folk." It would be interesting to compare.

Principles of tugboat design, machin- ery, and operating characteristics are abundantly covered in the book, although the majority are more-or-less generic and not New Your specific. It's probably a safe bet that some of the author's observations about the business were applicable else- where. "Salesmanship, competence, wit, and charm also became important busi- ness attributes. A towing competitor might easily duplicate the qualities of a specific tug, but to duplicate a personal relation- ship was a different matter. Reserves of common understanding and trust became as important as horsepower."

Also likely common elsewhere, "The business at all levels was populated by individuals who operated privately and by their own wits. This independent quality defied most attempts at regulation. Water- men have a well-documented taste for individuality.... Throughout the nineteenth century they defied all efforts to establish a uniform pricing system in the harbor.

The result was a boisterous oversupply of boats and of the characters who ran them."

Maybe for the better, the author a few pages later compares the past and future boatman. "Today, there is no official patience for [the past's] sort of man. Coast

Guard licensing procedures are viewed as a matter of national security. The rules have been altered to make it all but impos- sible for a prospective captain to obtain a license by virtue of work experience and training on board ... The various mer- chant-marine academies, faced with the almost total disappearance of jobs in deep-sea employment for their graduates, have turned to training young men and women for careers in inland and coastal towing. Acting as advisers to the Coast

Guard in drafting new licensing rules, the academies have been allowed to write their own curricula into the new rules, ensuring that their graduates will get first crack at whatever jobs there are. Under this influence a new style of officer has emerged, buttoned down and bureaucrat- ic. They are undeniably diligent and intel- lectually well equipped for the job, but their arrival represents a clean break from the ancient unruly traditions of the har- bor."

While an unregulated harbor may equate with an unruly harbor, a corollary is that an unregulated harbor spawns, insists upon, the honorable personal rela- tions that also bob up periodically through the course of the narrative. The chapter "Trust and Honor: The Rescue of the

Dalzelline" illustrates the spirit in a New

York anecdote, which also has its parallels elsewhere when a "pressing need for quick action" dictated that "the [business] agreement was an entirely verbal one but bore within its understandings a wealth of integrity and tradition." The spirit pays homage to "the inviolability of a verbal promise."

Most of the people we know would roll their eyes over the proposition that tug- boaters represent the pinnacle of honor- able conduct, especially after bitter labor disputes and endless, sometimes vexing competition from their brethren. Still, most would mean what they're saying, and stick up for it.

The contrast is not exclusive to New

York here, either. "The bond of a promise has been shrugged off in much of today's business world, but in most corners of the harbor the principle that a man's word is his bond still persists." A man's word and bond is also his reputation, in a self-con- tained society like a harbor's. The tugboat business has always been a B2B business. "The basic measure of a boatman's con- duct in business affairs is that he did what he said he was going to do ... For such widespread commerce to function, a pre- sumption of all parties' good faith and enterprise was essential."

There was of course the strike, that is the big one that is recent enough for most people to remember and remark upon, and which the author likens to two bald men fighting over a comb. Power struggles are no stranger to New York Harbor, though the strike at the end of the1980s apparent- ly had no winners. But such conflicts express a state of madness of sorts, the body turned against itself, institutional in contrast to the I've-got-to-trust-you bond that can emerge on deck. The author describes of his tug operations, ordered by strangers on the phone, "an agreement on a price was struck, and I performed the service ... I sent the customer the bill, and 3IMPLEX #OMPACT ¤ SLAE3 -DAEONLY IN'ERMNAY A3L VRE3SERAP3SEIO.NIECRTREM!HIAC 3I PMLXEEM!RISAC#,,NOLY   INF S OIPML EMAXERISACOCM

Circle on 239 Reader Service Card

Tug Chancellor makes her youthful appearance in Tugboats of New York, and here she is in 2002 while in the care of the North River Tugboat Museum, strutting into that year's Waterford Tug Roundup. History marches on — Chancellor is now under restoration by the Waterford Maritime Historical Society. (Photo:

Don Sutherland)

You could tell the direction of the tide in 1998, by the way these ex-railroaders were leaning on the

Arthur Kill. The book shows such classics in happier days, but declares the present to be the best of all times for tugboats in New York. (Photo: Don Sutherland)

MARCH MN2006 3(17-24).qxd 3/3/2006 2:47 PM Page 23