From a Photograph. By permission of the Great Western Railway Co.
It is possible that if you were not a sailorman, and your eyes chanced to fall upon such a ship as that illustrated [opposite this page], whether in harbour or at sea, you might feel no more interest in her than in any other craft. And yet this is a little vessel which can go anywhere and tow almost anything from a great floating dock to a disabled liner. Her name is the Blackcock, and she is one of the famous, powerful tugs owned by the Liverpool Screw Towing and Lighterage Company. Captain G. B. Girard, who commands the Blackcock, has been aptly termed the “Grand Old Man” of deep-sea towing, and during the last quarter of a century has covered 200,000 miles over the seas at this work. Quite recently he took the Blackcock to Fayal in mid-Atlantic to fetch over to Oporto a dismasted Portuguese barque. In spite of stiff breezes and heavy cross seas, the Blackcock and her tow made an average of 160 miles per day. It was this same tug which set up an interesting record some years ago by steaming 2,600 miles from Barbados to Fayal without having to stop for coal anywhere. She was towing a 2,000-ton German ship, named the Ostara, from Barbados to Hamburg, a distance of 5,000 miles altogether. In 1894, the Gamecock, a sister of this tug, towed a disabled steamer from Port Said to Liverpool, a distance of 3,300 miles, in twenty-seven days. The Blackcock took an important part in towing from Fayal to Liverpool the Cunard liner Etruria, which had been disabled, and caused the greatest anxiety in consequence of her being lost sight of for so long a period with hundreds of passengers aboard at the time. This towing voyage represented a distance of a couple of thousand miles, and there are many other equally wonderful incidents connected with these well-known “Cock” tugs. If the reader will bear in mind what we said some time back with reference to the origin of the bridge deck, he will be able to see the point well-illustrated in [the illustration before us]. The bridge deck and its sides are joined to the ship’s hull in such a way that in the case of the tug being attacked by a cross-sea she is not likely to founder through the water getting down below to the engines, as in the sad incident that we chronicled at an earlier stage. These tug-boats are necessarily exceptionally powerful, the Blackcock having over 1,000 horse-power.
But it is the Dutch, for some reason or other, who have specialised more than any other country in the towing industry, and they own the largest and finest tugs in the world. The reason for this national development I attribute partly to the nature of the coastline between Germany and France, with its series of nasty sandbanks and shoals always ready to pick a ship up; partly, also, to the numerous straightways with frequently a foul wind. In either case there is plenty of opportunity for the tug to go out and earn a living.
THE 7,000 TON FLOATING DRY-DOCK UNDER TOW BY THE “ROODE ZEE” AND “ZWARTE ZEE.”
From a Photograph. By permission of Messrs. L. Smit & Co., Rotterdam.
The finest fleet of ocean-going tugs is owned by Messrs. L. Smit and Company, of Rotterdam. Besides about a score of river and harbour craft, they have no fewer than ten bold ocean-tugs, which by reason of their high power and large bunker capacity are enabled to undertake towages to almost any part of the world. When the Mauretania left the Tyne for her trial trip this company’s tugs, the Ocean and the Poolzee, had her in tow at the bows. Tugs of this line have also accomplished such interesting long voyages as towing floating dry-docks from the Tyne to Trinidad; an obsolete Spanish warship from Ferrol to Swinemünde; the s.s. Kronprinzessin Victoria from Las Palmas to Antwerp, after the liner had lost her propeller. When the old Inman liner City of Rome was put aside, she was towed by the tug Zwarte Zee from Greenock round to the Weser. [The illustration facing this page] shows the tugs Roode Zee and the Zwarte Zee taking in tow an enormous floating dock, capable of holding vessels up to 7,000 tons, from Wallsend on Tyne to Callao (Peru). To tow so unwieldy a thing as this for any distance at all is a pretty severe tax on a tug; but to take it all the way to Peru on the west coast of South America is about the utmost test which the most severe critic could ever impose. The distance is 10,260 nautical miles. One of the largest and most modern of this line’s tugs is the Zwarte Zee, which was launched in 1906. She resembles very closely the Roode Zee, seen in the foreground of [the accompanying picture], and measures 164 feet long, 30 feet wide, 18 feet deep, and has the extraordinary high horse-power (indicated) of 1,500. It will be noticed that, like the Blackcock, she is well protected by her bridge deck amidships.
The sturdy little vessel illustrated [opposite page 238] shows the salvage tug Admiral de Ruyter. She is owned by the Ymuiden Tug Company, Amsterdam, and is stationed at Ymuiden in readiness to render assistance to vessels in distress off the treacherous Dutch coast. She is capable of facing any weather, and her high bows and bold sheer enable her to keep fairly dry in even a pretty bad sea. An interesting comparison will be seen between this and the Edmund Moran. This represents a typical New York harbour and river tug. No one who has ever come into the American sea-port can have failed to have been struck instantly by the numbers of fussy little tug-boats of a peculiar type that come running up and down the Hudson and across from the New Jersey shore to the great city. Their prominent features include a good deal of sheer, an exaggerated bridge deck with wheel-house in front, at the top of which is usually a golden spread-eagle. In the winter-time, when thick ice-floes obstruct the Hudson and the bitter cold penetrates into the little wheel-house, there are more comfortable though less exciting avocations than those enjoyed by the commanders of these busy steam craft, which now carry on their work in such numbers where little more than a century ago Fulton’s Clermont was scorned and ridiculed by those who never thought that the river and harbour would ever see such steam-shipping.
But the tug-boat has in some cases been enlarged, and super-imposed by a promenade deck, and even given a saloon so as to become a passenger tender. [The illustration opposite page 234], for instance, shows this evolution. This is the Sir Francis Drake, one of the passenger tenders owned by the Great Western Railway Company, and, since the opening of Fishguard Harbour for the calling of Atlantic liners, this vessel has been employed for landing the Mauretania’s and other great ships’ passengers without wasting time. The liner comes into harbour from America, lets go her anchor, and immediately after there come alongside her three of these tenders. One takes the mails as they are shot on to her deck, another receives the baggage, while the third is used for passengers; this third tender is also the last to leave the liner, so that when the passengers get ashore they find their baggage already awaiting them at the Customs platform. In the olden days the tug was a wheezy old lady lacking the smallest attempt at smartness, and exceedingly slow. Her hull was of wood and clinker built, her paddle-wheels gave to her a very moderate speed, and her accommodation was chiefly non-existent. But to-day, as the Sir Francis Drake shows, she has developed in some cases into practically an Atlantic liner in miniature.
