CHARLEY SOARES: Working on the river - tugboats and tankers

The loud discharge of the tugs horn was a blast that notified the bridge tenders on the Slades Ferry and Brightman Street bridges that they were coming through. Similar to the pealing of the church bells which called Christians to church services, the tugs signal horns called me to the shore. If I wasn’t already there turning over rocks catching crabs and elvers, or scratching a few clams for the pot, I would drop whatever I was doing, even playing second base in a pickup stickball game. I would bolt toward the boat house where the tugs produced huge wakes left by the power of their massive engines that would rock the gas float and create big surf crashing on the shoreline. For a kid without many other “free” forms of entertainment, i.e., television, computers etc., it was like taking a wild wet ride at the water park.

The caretaker would allow me to use one of the old skiffs, but he cautioned me about getting too close and flipping over. Those old barges were water logged and so heavy that if they did flip and come down on top of you it would be as the old man was fond of saying, “it’ll be curtains for you.” Several of the old timers were merchant seamen who put in their service on tankers and cargo ships with a few having experience on New York and New Jersey tugs that moved hazardous chemical, gasoline and oil barges. One member in particular had worked locally for the Moran Tugboat company before he retired.

That local tug boat mate told me that inshore tug work was the best duty he ever had. Good wages, great chow, comfortable boats and seldom having to deal with extremely rough conditions. Back to that day when we pushed off chasing the tugs wake. I should mention I didn’t have or own a life preserver, in fact very few of the local watermen ever carried a life preserver aboard. Looking back that was callous disregard for safety but I was following the example they set. As a side note the majority of those old vets could not swim a stroke. “Hell, if I fell off the ship, what was I supposed to do, swim 150 miles to the nearest land?

The waves were bigger up close to the channel when the tugs first pushed through then again when they moved closer to the shore where the water was shallow. I never did flip a boat, but I saw one well-heeled young man row out in a pram (flat bowed eight foot dingy) to catch a ride and he made the mistake of taking the first wave head on rather than cutting it at an angle to allow the wave to spill under him and not over him. The first curl caught him broadside and tossed that little boat up and over as easy as the skippers thumb flipped a bottle cap.

The men laughed at first, but when we didn’t see the oarsman one of them jumped into his skiff with the outboard and went out to get him. He was a wet mess. He lost his hat, both oars were nowhere to be seen, and they took the overturned dingy in tow. His new gold wrist watch was ruined, and his expensive leather shoes would soon be tainted with the white crust of dried salt. He took the nearly full pack of Camels from his soaked shirt pocket, tossed them on the planks and rushed out the door, totally soaked and embarrassed.

The cigarettes didn’t remain on the deck for long. Tony picked them up, took them to the kitchen where he carefully removed each one and placed it on newspaper on the the shelf over the stove where the heat and sunlight would dry them out in a day or so. Nothing went to waste back then. My ride that day was exciting as always but my return to shore was a calamity as I nearly avoided a collision with the support pilings that raised the club building well above the high-water mark. A combination of one big wave and a strong incoming tide pushed me way off course and bending the oars as hard as I could I was barely able to ground the skiff on the beach just a few feet from crashing into the supports. The old timers had a good laugh as I struggled trying to get the boat far enough up the beach to secure it as the tide came in. Two kindly old gents came out with wooden rollers which were put under the bow and allowed us to drag the skiff above the high-water mark. While I was putting the oars back in the club locker, I heard one of the curmudgeons criticize, “that damn kid must be crazy. There will come a day when he won’t be running out looking for big waves, bur running away from them.” His words were prophetic.

He was the same old naysayer, who claimed that the oars dumped overboard in the incident of the overturned dingy were lost forever, but I was out to prove him wrong. I ran down the shoreline in the direction I believed the outgoing tide and northwest wind would push any debris and found the first oar 300-yards away, banging against the wall of the dock under the Bridge Diner. I hid it in the grass then searched the entire shoreline all the way to the Coca-Cola plant, finding everything but the oar. On the way back with my head down, I was walking the granite caps on the stone wall behind Lapre’s Blacksmith Shop and the old Sea Scout shack when I heard a strange noise. Looking down I saw the other oar stuck between the tips of the rotting pilings. It was too low to reach, but a sprint to the blacksmith shop to borrow a long boat hook assisted in the rescue. Good oars were a valuable commodity back then and those were custom Shaw and Teeny hand carved from cedar up in Maine.

The caretaker was thrilled and made certain that I received a substantial reward for my diligence. Matt was in the kitchen when I brought back the oars and greeted me with a big smile. “All you have to do is challenge some people with a task and they will strive harder to achieve it. I’m going to rub it in to the old dog that said they were lost.” Matt had been a tugboat deckhand for the Moran tug company who claimed that inshore tug duty was the best job on the water. They had good food, comfortable working conditions and usually great weather inside the rivers and bays, unlike the oceangoing tugs that rode out rough open water towing.

Since the closing of the Montaup Electric, Shell Oil Depot and most recently the Brayton Point Power Station, there have not been many if any tugs plying the lower Mt Hope Bay and the Taunton River, although there could be work for them in the area of the Fall River state pier and Heritage State Park. I can recall watching the tugboat skippers and crews pushing and pulling a huge tanker or coal collier through the narrow passages of the Slades Ferry and Brightman Street Bridges. The heavy timbers and pilings on either side of those narrow channels were bruised and battered from collisions with those big ships but I never saw a tug hit or rub a piling during the hundreds of occasions I watched them guide ships in and out of the basin.

Greater Fall River has an impressive maritime history dating back to the earliest days of our history as almost all goods were moved by water. The Marine Museum is a great place to visit to study and introduce students to very interesting topics such as the days of the celebrated Fall River Line. Many local mariners are unaware that the bones of the Fall River line steamer, City of Taunton rot near O’Neil Point on the Somerset Shoreline. It was towed there to die after it caught fire on the Fall River shore.

Several years ago, I was beating my way into steep breaking seas on my way back to the harbor from fishing near the wreck of the cement barge (the Andrea) with two tubs full of tautog. The weather was changing, and I knew it was going to get ugly if I stayed longer than the change of the tide, but greed won over common sense and I stayed on to fill the second tote and increase my payday. I was crawling along making headway taking advantage of the land mass that blocked some of the stiff breeze. A few miles offshore I noticed huge torrents of spray which turned out to be the bow wake of a little red tug making headway in very difficult conditions. I thought back to the time when I desired to be a crew member or captain of a tugboat. That rough day while I was sneaking home under the cover of the headlands that captain and his crew were heading out into an angry ocean perhaps to Cuttyhunk or the Vineyard to pick up a tow.

The choice of a life on the ocean is a great way to make a living but it comes with its perils. On that day I was thankful that I was a fisherman heading for safe harbor and not the tugboat skipper whose commute was a rough slog on a very sloppy Rhode Island Sound.

PHOTO CAPTION:

Dan Keighley provided this photo of the tugboat Maurania II that the author observed working the river for many years. This photo was taken in the Taunton River along the Somerset shore, while she was making headway towards the Slades Ferry Bridge. The photo was a gift from the well-known tugboat Captain and ocean pilot, Alan B. Lancashire a Somerset native. He was from a family with generations of pilots and sea captains. Captain Lancashire was well known and respected by the members of the Weetamoe Yacht Club and the fishermen throughout the region. He passed away on February of 2019 at the age of 93.