It’s true of most complex relationships . . . the more details embodied, then the more satisfaction grows the longer you look, pay attention in any way. I’ve been looking closely at the harbor for almost 20 years, sharing images since 2006. My perception when the boro adopted me was vastly different than it is now.
Like this, whatever names or labels they carry now, it’s a fact that juxtaposed here is a research vessel once named Western Magellan, a Singapore [Kwong Soon Engineering] built research vessel and a barge of scrap that may include stuff I once owned now waiting to be shipped overseas for transformation into something else I may or someone on any other continent may own.
Here a 12-year-old US built truckable tug pushes a deck barge between Liberty Island and the dock on Staten Island. On the barge is a law enforcement vehicle escorting–I suppose–technicians with whatever is in the framed pallet. In the background, a scow with an Athens (?) sign and thousands of containers from everywhere waiting to deliver.
Framed by the Left Coast Lifter, a bridge, a jet flying into Newark International, and a tanker, it’s a box ship coming in from Oman, one that no doubt transited Houthi harrassed waters before Maersk stopped sailing box ships through there. In the foreground between the buoys, two escort tugs and likely a line handlers boat.
A-frames serve similar purposes on these two boats, although different fish are involved. In the Brooklyn background, silos now over a century old that have been empty for most of their existence.
Cruising past the New Jersey shoreline and the Newark Bay I-78 bridge, housing, and a church [is that St. Vincent de Paul?] steeple, it’s a 1961 Osprey
with its upper wheelhouse folded down. I’d love to see a 1961 view from roughly this perspective of that skyline. Maybe in the not-too-distant future, augmented reality will provide a viewer allowing us to point the device, select a time period, and we’d see what this view looked like 20 or 200 years ago.
All photos, any misperceptions, any errors, any fanciful whimsy, WVD.
