New York: Harbour,Tugs, Bridges, Rivers

I love the fact that New York still has a working harbour even if freight has been containerised and moved out to the New Jersey and Red Hook container terminals.

And the tugs are fantastic in their variety and surging power moving bulk freight around the harbour and up the Hudson as far as Lake Erie and the Ear-eye-ee Canal.

The tugs are named after the sons and daughters of their family firms - the Turecamos, the Morans, the McAllisters, the Buchanans, the Bouchards, the Scotts - or far-off places - Norwegian Sea. The Na Hoku from Honolulu.  Odin, Houma, Sea Lion,

The tugs barrel down the East River like sea-bulls, nudged sideways into their huge oil barges.  They stretch their high necks like swans guarding their signets.  They sit for days in the Hudson, moored beneath the Jersey Palisades,  tethered to their charges waiting for a call. 

They head up the Hudson under the George Washington Bridge and by Yonkers, Dobbs Ferry, Tarytown, Ossining, Croton, Montrose, Peekskill, Westpoint, Beacon, Poughkeepsie, Rhinebeck, Catskill, Coxsackie, Albany, Troy and connect to the Erie Canal and via it the Great Lakes and the American Mid-West and Canada.

This cycle of photos starts on the East River, goes out into the Narrows and Red Hook and then goes up the Hudson from the Narrows and can be viewed as a Flash slideshow or an ordinary slide show or by individual thumbnails.

To New York: Buildings and Views