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spike in business meant calling-in rein- forcements. The Robert E. McAllister came up from Newport News, the J.P.

McAllister from Baltimore, while the

Stamford came down from Portland.

More McAllister tugs could have been summoned from afar, but beyond a point it makes more sense to hire locally. Every- one seems to agree that the spot market has changed in New York, with many of the independents on charter. Last year,

Kosnac's June K and Metropolitan's Nor- mandy were among those subcontracted to augment the McAllister tugs. This year, they were chartered to Roehrig and Penn respectively. So among the fleet firing-up that Wednesday morning in Mariner's

Harbor were the Miriam A. Moran and the

Marie J. Moran.

Staged since 1984, Fleet Week New

York is described as "the City's celebra- tion of the sea services." It is a designated spectacle, meant to draw stares, and this year's was a classic for the harbor services as well. Most of the tugs glistened in fresh paint. To the spectator ashore, it all made a tableaux they'd seen in pictures — icon- ic red tugboats in continuous action.

Navy Meets Navy

Three of the tugs bound for the river were built by the Navy itself, as YTBs of the type common from the 1960s to 1975, according to Capt. Brian McAllister. "On dry-dock their molded hulls almost look more like yachts than tugboats," said

Capt. McAllister. "The Navy had very good fortune with them. They crossed the ocean all the time, and there were no loss- es that I know of. Their maintenance was constant, they were kept in excellent con- dition."

Their sole shortcoming, in a world pre- occupied with moving petroleum, is their single-screw drive. "If you were to build a new single-screw, first-class tugboat today for three million dollars," says Capt.

McAllister, "you could probably get eighty thousand for it."

But although McAllister can move about anything, their specialty is ship docking. And single-drive boats are legal for that. The company acquired a couple

YTBs for the purpose, retaining their orig- inal drives.

A turn in Capt. McAllister's thinking came, he reports, at a ferry convention he attended in Venice years ago. On-hand was a state-of-the art ferry built for the

Grand Canal with a single Z-drive, which looked interesting to try out. "I told them

I was a tugboat captain," says Capt.

July, 2006 • MarineNews 21

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Deckhand Matthew Graillat on the Beth McAllis- ter stands ready as she and two other YTB Z-drive conversions — the Robert E. and the Stacy — begin the docking evolution for the Kearsarge. (Photo: Don Sutherland.)

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