Kai Hansen Tugboat Stories April 22, 2021

April 15 I got to sit town with Kai again while he relayed a story by one of his deckhands, but first some background information on how the tug Athena works. Watch the video below! Transcription is below the video.

Below is the transcription (by Shana Henry, check her Fiverr page) of the above video:

Hello there, I’m Kai Hansen and I’m a former tugboat captain, now retired. I have operated the old tug, Athena mostly out of Fells Point for 15 years in the late 80s and all through the 90s. I just want to explain to you how the Athena worked and because she was an all DC boat, built in 1939 up in Cohoes, New York on the Hudson River. In 1940, she was sold to the Navy and they turned her into a submarine net handling boat at the New York shipyard in Brooklyn, New York. Soon after that, she was sent up to Boston and, supposedly, that’s where she spent the rest of the war. But there are some inconsistencies here that I’m trying to figure out, or maybe somebody can figure it out. It said that they changed her name and all the Navy tugs were named for Indian tribes.

She was from the [inaudible 01:31]. Her name was changed to— I forget what the name was. [Inaudible 01:42] from the Indian tribe, I guess. And then she had a number, N something 52 or something like that. And then in 1946, she was struck from the records and sold back to the private industry. She was sold to Boston Towing who had her up until I believe it was 1966. Then she was bought by Charles Harbor in Baltimore. And she handled coal barges there between Bethlehem Steel and the coal pier down here, and also down to Norfolk sometimes. 

I’ll show you that the picture here; this is a picture from probably1946 or 47 after she was sold back to Boston Towing. She was a canal boat with a low wheelhouse, low stack. This is what she looks like after 1966 when they put a higher stack on her and a taller wheelhouse. She was a DC boat, meaning everything was DC: direct current. Here is a picture of the— let me see if I can get a hold of this. It’s a little slippery here. Okay, here we go.

This is the electric board. It might look familiar to some of you people who watched Frankenstein because that’s the same kind of board that he used to jumpstart the monster. Here is what the engine room looked like down there. It was ac 8567 C block DM diesel and 830 horse and 830 RPMs. Here we go. There are the two DC generators down below, and that shelf up on top is an AC generator that we bought from a guy who had bought it from a traveling service. That was an AC, and so then we started changing the boat over slowly from AC to DC by rectifying some of DC motors. And then of course we had the AC motor. We were able to get a microwave and a TV and all the AC goodies that people are used to today that you didn’t have back in the old days.

In order to have hot water, I don’t know how they did it in the old days, but somebody had put in a regular AC water tank, like a 30 gallon water tank in one of the showers. The problem with AC being fed DC is that the light bulb and a toaster and a water tank, they don’t know the difference, but the thermostat does. So you cannot have a thermostat running on DC, at least as far as I know. Whoever put in that water tank, they had raked it up with a switch and then they had put a light bulb on top. So whenever the power was on, the light bulb was lit, and then they had a copper tubing plumped into the safety valve, and that went all the way down underneath the engine.

If somebody forgot to turn off the water tank after taking a shower or after washing dishes or whatever, when the thing blew steam and blew the safety valve, the steam would come out underneath the engine. Sometimes the engine room was full of steam. That’s the reason why normally we would not have that tank on, and normally there would not be any hot water on the boat. The only hot water we had would be the coffee pot. 

I have a story that was told to me by my one of my deck hands. His name is Wayne Keats, better known as Spider. I’ll try to look it up and read it to you as best as I can. This is an observation from the deckhand. We handled some oil barges up on the Delaware River and we would go up the Schuylkill River. For those of you who don’t know, the Schuylkill River runs across Pennsylvania from almost the central Pennsylvania and down to Philadelphia. It comes down south of Philadelphia and it comes out just between the Navy yard and the airport. 

Up the Schuylkill River, there was a bridge there; it was the Passyunk Avenue Bridge. And back then, that was a lift bridge. It was a lower one than the one that’s there now. You had to have it lifted in order to go through. So here is the story. This is one of the winters back in the eighties. It was a cold blizzard. We were coming down to Schuylkill with an empty barge on the hip with an ebb tide. As we are getting closer to the bridge, I’m calling the bridge operator on the radio. Here is what the deckhand said:

Can’t get ahold of that bastard; he is sleeping. I’ve got to wake him quick, so Kai pulls the horn, the big horn, and nothing happens, no sound. The horn won’t work. He pulls it again, and still no sound. Spider, go clear that ice and snow off that horn now, as quick as you can. So I picked my way up on the top of the wheel house and clear the horn and still nothing. Then inside of the horn is a block of ice. I slide back down and report to Kai, it’s frozen up solid. Well, go get the coffee pot and pour it on their horn. Okay, aye aye, I said. And I hurried back down and I worked my way down to the deck and back to the galley. Did I mention it was a blizzard? The deck and the rail is a sheet of ice. The [inaudible 09:55] is frozen shut, so I slip and fall my way down to the galley hatchway, which I got open. My glasses fogged. They fogged up in the galley, so I have to blindly grab the coffee pot.

I walked my by way back onto the deck. Now, the [inaudible 10:18]  really begins as my steamed up glasses, ice up and freezes as I’ve worked my way forward on the icy deck, up to the wheelhouse and up on the top of the roof, again. Between the coffee and [inaudible 10:36], I get the horn clear. Did you ever have your face inches away from a tug boat horn when it blasts off? Thank you, Kai. So I’m not only bruised, frozen and blind, I’m also now deaf.

Well, the operator wakes up and sticks his head up and to bridge starts opening up. So we were on our merry way again. I made it down back to the wheelhouse and collapsed on the bench. Kai looks around at me, and I can read his lips, Spider, get off your ass go get some coffee.” Thank you.