McAllister Sisters & Columbia Freedom depart Baltimore September 9, 2019
The 108.7×33.1ft (33x10m) tugboat McAllister Sisters was built in 1977 by Main Ironworks in Houma, Louisiana for McAllister Brothers Towing Company (now McAllister Towing & Transportation). Check out this page at Tugboatinformation.com which has a lot of information and a brief history on this tugboat.
In September of 2004 the McAllister Sisters was one of four McAllister tugboats among a total of 7 tugboats required to free the grounded bulk freighter ship Bahama Spirit at the entrance to Charleston Harbor according to page 3 of McAllister Towing’s newsletter, “At The Helm“.
On page 5 of a more recent edition of this newsletter are some photos and details of this tugboat’s most recent rebuild in 2010.
The 345.5×94ft (105.3×28.7m) (according to this WorkBoat article) container barge Columbia Freedom was built in 2016 by VT Halter Marine (according to this shipbuildinghistory.com page) in Pascagoula, Mississippi and is owned by Columbia Group. It can carry up to 900 TEUs.
This very interesting 2017 article on JOC.com talks about the benefits of using barges to transport containers between ports and suggests this barge costed $10 million. The final page of the article indicates the regular route of this barge is from Norfolk to Baltimore to Philadelphia then back to Norfolk. The points made in the article make me wonder if container barge service would eventually make sense to Cambridge, Maryland or even Salisbury or Seaford on the Eastern shore!
This WorkBoat.com article (same as referenced two paragraphs above) talks in more general terms about Container on Barge (COB) service in the United States and how it can be used to cope with congested highways in areas where navigable waterways exist. With the coming of a second post-panamax berth in Baltimore, Maryland perhaps an increase of COB traffic will also be seen.
In my video below this tugboat and barge combo can be seen heading out of Baltimore, Maryland at sunset. Note the variety of containers on the barge! All photos and video in this blog entry were taken by me while aboard my friend Mike’s boat who is the owner of the Baltimore & Chesapeake Bay Ship Watchers Facebook group. Be sure to check it out!