Winter is the busiest time of the year for the Port of Portsmouth. Huge cargo ships bring in fuel oil, propane and road salt. Navigating is a challenge because of the Piscataqua River's furious current.
NHPR Correspondent Marya Danihel spoke with some of the men who make their living piloting vessels in and out of the this challenging harbor.
Amb: engine-water #1
Track 1: The Fells Point, a black and red tugboat with a big white ?M? on the stack, is one of the fleet owned by Moran Towing. It?s usually tied up with three others opposite the chi-chi shops on Ceres Street: a cute picture for the tourists. Today it?s taking Dick Holt, Sr. a couple of miles out to sea, where the Canada Steamship Line ?Atlas? is anchored. Holt will pilot the mammoth cargo ship loaded with road salt upriver to the Sprague Energy dock.
Amb: engine-water 1 up
Track 2: Drawing alongside the ship is like approaching the John Hancock Tower floating on its side: the CSL Atlas is 746 feet long and 105 feet wide. Its deck towers 30 feet above the tug. To scale the side of this behemoth, Holt will use a metal gangplank lowered from the ship. Today it?s as stable as a flight of stone stairs, but Holt says it?s a different story in rough weather:
CUT 3 Holt Sr. when you go out here and you have 10-15 foot waves the tug is just up and down like this, you don?t-- It?s very difficult to get aboard. It?s like jumping off a moving elevator. So we don?t take any chances. If we can?t get on, we just let it wait until the weather calms down.
CUT 4 M: Do you go out at night a lot, or do you try to bring in ships during the day?
Holt Sr.: In the wintertime particularly, we probably do two-thirds of our work in the dark because it?s dark so much. But ships want to come in whenever they get here, day and night or holidays. We work 24 hours a day every day of the year. Other than, this ship here is so big we would not come in in the dark, because of the narrowness of the bridges. You have to be able to see what the ship is doing and when it?s dark you can?t.
Track 3: After Holt leaves the tug, tugboat Captain Lawson Doughty steers it back towards Portsmouth.
CUT 5 Doughty: We?re headed back in the harbor, and we?ll go in by the Coast Guard Station which is just ahead of us and we?ll stop there and wait for the ship to come in and then we?ll go alongside of the ship and put a line up and assist him to the dock from there.
Track 4: Two other tugs are on their way to join the Fells Point and wait for the cargo ship to enter the harbor. Like Border collies herding a sheep, all three tugs will nudge the vessel this way and that until it?s safely anchored at the berth. ADDED: Holt has timed the ship?s arrival for slack water. That?s when the current stops because the tide is changing direction.
CUT 6 M: So I guess there?s a lot of waiting in this job, is that right?
Doughty: Sure is, 90% of it, I guess.
M: But you got to get your timing right, right?
Doughty: Right. Exactly right. With the current in the river, it has to be pretty close, within a half-hour at the dock.
CUT 8 on radio: ?Security call, CSL Atlas inbound Portsmouth Harbor. Passing 2KR buoy bound for Sprague River Road. CSL Atlas.?
Track 5: The CSL Atlas has to get through three bridges. The passage through the middle one, the Sarah Long, is the most perilous: the bridge crosses the river on an angle, but the channel is straight. The ship will have to go under diagonally, with about 20 feet of clearance on either side. What?s more, both the Sarah Long and the Memorial Bridges are lift bridges, with center sections that rise vertically. Dick Holt, Jr., (ADDED), also a river pilot, explains the danger:
CUT 9 Holt Jr.: You need 132 feet of air draft to get the ship under the bridge, and, like, say the bridge has a maintenance problem at 120 feet. It gets jammed or blows a fuse. Well, there are enough cars already that complain that we put the bridges up too early, but, you know, we can?t stop something that weighs that much?You know how hard it is to control your automobile at two and a half tons on a sheet of ice. Well, put something 60,000 tons in a liquid and try to make it do anything in a hurry. (MARK, ON TAPE THIS SOUNDS LIKE HALF A SENTENCE. I?VE INCLUDED AN ALTERNATE ENDING FOR THIS CUT IN CASE YOU WANT TO RESTORE IT)
Track 6: Pilots call for the bridges to go up well before the point of no return. But accidents have happened?the last major one in the early seventies, when an oil barge hit the Sarah Long Bridge and ruptured two tanks. Now all big ships are required to take on a local pilot to negotiate the harbor.
CUT 10 on radio: Why don?t you come up on the bridge starboard side and pitch a line up? OK.
Track 7: The CSL Atlas is now safely through the bridges. With the pilot radioing commands, the tugs push and pull the ship into position at the dock.
CUTS 11 & 12: whistles 1&2
Track 7 continued: The men secure the ship with braided lines thick as a man?s forearm, and, six hours after leaving the Ceres St. dock, (Amb: water-engines 2) the tugs are homeward bound. As the boats cleave through the tide now racing upriver, Dick Holt Sr. leans on the rail of the Fells Point, surveying the water that shines like a steel mirror in the gathering twilight.
(Amb. Continues)
For NHPR, I?m Marya Danihel.
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