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ments everyone that a copy on eBay sold for over $40 a couple months back.

Mr. Maikowski says that without the support of its benefactors, the book would have carried at least a $44.95 list. About three-quarters of the first printing had been sold as of our conversation early last December, but subsequent press runs could hold the line on price because the parts of the enterprise that received under- writing do not need redoing. The Dibner Fund, the Wal- ter Ferguson Foundation, and an "industry member" in

New York who has requested anonymity were the sup- porters mentioned. They backed a good bet.

Aside from some of the stiff and not quite sponta- neous-looking pictures of crews in their engine rooms and gallies, there are plenty of vibrant period photos that exude the texture and the spirit of the tugs of the times — these are your grandpa's tugboats — occasionally tying into the present with today's museum tugs at work when they were young. Modern tugs are represented too, like the McAllister tractor in a firefighting demonstration across the back of the dust jacket. But the book is "an illustrated history" with graphic rewards for all. For us it's a pleasure to come across the Chancellor, now under restoration at Waterford, pictured in her youth in New

York, or the K. Whittelsey with her grand mechanics here, her hominess there — including a close-up of a gal- ley shelf as prosaic as can be — for besides all else, tugs are the homes of the people who work them...

If there's a cautionary note at all in the volume, it's that the nostalgia reinforces an impression that seems easy to adopt in New York, that the harbor-as-engine is a past fact of history. There are bears in the woods who believe, or would have others believe, that it all became irrelevant after the day of black-and-white film. It's a harmless belief, unless city planning or legislation takes inspira- tion from it. But George Matteson's text leaves little question about history, or the fact that it's ongoing and living.

History (Cont'd)

There are a few millionaires around, but not many peo- ple in the tugboat business, as this book recalls them, made particular fortunes. Most, it would seem, were mar- ginal most of the time, some broke, some broken by the business.There may be traditions, but they'd have devel- oped against a continually changing background. It's been years since railroad car floats were big business, but it's been even more years since block ice and brick were major tows in New York, and more years still since the square riggers. The context of towing keeps changing, but the necessity does not. As long as there is water there is an opportunity to move things, and tugs are still the motors. Today, in New York, it's petroleum products most of all. Tomorrow it could be all kinds of things, as social requirements and economic balances realign. Mean- while, where there's petroleum nowadays, there are

ATBs.

The author shares a dichotomy on the subject, part of which recalls the old skipper who insisted upon crossing at the Statue. Some things have always been, and vari- ance can be disapproved on principle alone. "The move to large-scale ATB systems is not only because of navi- gational and safety considerations. Tugs and barges have always been subject to far simpler construction and man- ning requirements than have conventional ships, so any arrangement that allows a vessel to be defined as a tug and barge ... vastly reduces its construction and operating cost. This wrinkle in the law has resulted in a few so- called tugs that are so ungainly when not married to their barges that they are barely able to traverse a sheltered harbor in flat calm. Furthermore, the perpetual marriage of a tug to a single barge violates one of the basic effi- ciencies of tug and barge operations, namely, that the tug, which generally represents the bulk of the capital outlay of a barging operation, can shft off to other profitable employment while its barge is idle or held in port for loading and unloading."

And steam tugs were quieter, but the author, like the industry as a whole, knows a good development when he sees it after all. "Recently, the ability to push in virtually any weather has been achieved by a variety of systems," he states some pages later, "that allow the tug and barge to make their attachment solely in the notch at the stern of rhe barge. ... These "articulated tug-barge" (ATB) designs have revolutionized the transportation of petrole- um and chemicals along coastal routes. ATBs as large as full-sized tankers, carrying as much as a quarter of a mil- lion barrels of cargo, are now operating on the coast in all weather."

In some ways, it might seem, the good old days of New

York tugboating are still ahead. "Starting in 1929 the towing industry became habituated to a defensive pos- ture. Starting with the depression years and continuing to the end of the century, traditional harbor business with- ered, as companies battled one another toward extinction.

A dogged conservatism, enforced by tenuous profit mar- gins and rigid labor practices, locked the towing industry into a downward spiral that seems only recently to have abated.

With new tugbot construction and the promise of a few enduring markets, the tugs of New York Harbor appear to have weathered a long and mighty storm and today, as ever, have another tide to catch."

So in 270-odd pages we've gone from the unfath- omable past to the unforeseeable future, or at least a dimly-envisioned near-future. Is this book a history or a forecast? Does it cover New York, or a national industry?

What is this book about, really?

The epilogue gives the literal last word on the subject, and is set nowhere near New York. It's way upstate on the canal, and although it opens on a tugboat, its focus becomes babies and railroad trains. It's a delicious little morsel about something else that flows through the book, another recounting that could occur anywhere if people would let it, about folks looking after one another. Like the earliest geological formation of this broad and demanding harbor, it provides a clue to the nature of the tugboats of New York.

March, 2006 • MarineNews 27

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