Two photos taken just a couple of seconds apart…..
The Crow was built in 1963 at the Ira S. Bushey Shipyard in Brooklyn, NY. It was one of their last, an 1,800hp single-screw canal boat still working the Hudson River and New York Harbor today along with the Cheyenne. Notice how stubby the stack is…..
…..this design was originally for the shallow-draft/low-clearance needs of service on the New York State Canal System, including the Erie Canal. The mast is hinged and counter-weighted to lower astern, and the pilothouse is lowered hydraulically into itself to the windowsill level so as to fit under the low bridges. Some of the older ones had Fairbanks Morse direct drive engines, which must stop and then re-start in reverse for astern propulsion, and gave about 10-12 starts off the typical air supply before you were out of air and SOL if you didn’t have a line out and were working on it. If you can drive one of these well then you really know how to handle a tug, and the nature of the work can also breed fine deckhands.
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