This is the story of the life and death of a steam powered Tugboat.
The first time I laid eyes on the Feeney Tugboat, it was moored along Staten Islands’ north shore. It was the winter of 2003 and I was on a day long exploring trip with graffiti artist friend Tommy Rebel. We were driving all along the north shore stopping at every dead end and abandoned building we happened across. At the time, there were many locations to see, and not enough time. Coming across the Feeney was a welcome addition to the day. We had no idea at the time that it was moored, slightly hidden at this obscure location.
We originally stopped here to check out several abandoned buildings located at the intersection of Richmond Terrace and Port Richmond avenue. Several storefronts contained wild open front doors and plywood covered windows. A clearly abandoned bar sat decaying nearby, having served it’s last drink ages ago. After checking that out, we noticed a large rusty sign nearby was lettered “Bayonne Ferry” – with an arrow pointing into a derelict lot filled with debris. Here, the Bergen Point Ferry carried passengers across the Kill Van Kull waterway to Bayonne, New Jersey. The ferry, competing with automobiles and the newer (1930s) Bayonne Bridge, stopped operating in 1961. Along the shoreline is where we found the Feeney.
The Feeney on the erie canal, a long time ago…
The Feeney in 2003
The Railroad Barge that sat with the Feeney.
To the naked non-maritime eye, it honestly didn’t appear in too bad of shape. The windows in the cabin were still intact, and all the doors along the sides were sealed. Basically everything above the deck looked fine, though the rear was submerged in water, with a large hole in the ironwork plainly visible. You could easily tell it was abandoned due to the fact that it was leaning heavily to the left where an old wooden covered barge lay moored up next it. It was a bitterly cold winter day, and there were many other, larger abandoned sights to see ( like the SIRT car 353), so we took a few photos and moved on. This wouldn’t be the last time I visited the Feeney though. On the rare occasions I came out to Staten Island’s North Shore I would try to stop by and see if it was still there.
The Feeney was a steam-powered tugboat, originally built in 1892 at Sparrow’s Point, Maryland. The 125 year old Feeney spent much of its life in NYC harbor, the Hudson River, and Erie Canal. Over the years it was renamed several times, originally named the George E. Wood, over the years she was renamed the Russell 9, Martin Kehoe, Peter Spano, Edith Mathiesen, and finally the Philip T. Feeney. According to William Van Dorp, author of NYC’s Tugster blog, Philip Feeney was one of Thomas A Feeney’s sons. Thomas founded the Feeney Shipyard in Kingston New York, which remain a family owned operation today.
I haven’t been able to sort out when it was abandoned here, though the why seems obvious enough: Steam powered. It is also a relatively small tugboat, for which there wasn’t much work left for compared to decades past. Containerized shipping, trucking, decreased use of coal, etc all lead to a decline in smaller boat freight traffic in the harbor.
It bears noting that the barge it was leaning against was potentially owned by one of the many railroads or transportation companies that ferried goods across New York Harbor between New Jersey and New York City. A proper railroad bridge or tunnel suitable for moving heavy freight cars from New Jersey to Long Island was never built. Thus, the varied railroads that serviced the port of New York also had robust maritime operations to bridge the gap. They owned fleets of tugboats, “car floats” (barges equipped to carry freight train cars) and small wooden barges that were used to ferry goods across the harbor to pier-side warehouses.
The exact history of this barge is unknown to me at the moment, though many conclusions can be drawn from its twin sister, the Lehigh Valley Railroad #79 barge. Together, they were the last of their kind in existence. Built in 1914, the Lehigh Valley #79 barge was used to haul freight around the harbor until 1960. After retirement, the barge was abandoned along the decaying waterfront of Edgewater, New Jersey, until finally being bought by David Sharps in 1985 and converted into the Waterfront Museum. It is currently moored at its longtime home at the end of Connover Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
When I revisited in 2015, I was surprised to find that the Feeney had sat in its abandoned state for the last 12 years. It is rare that anything so large would sit abandoned anywhere around NYC for so long. Collectively, those years were not kind to it. The windows were knocked out. Doors along the hood were pried open and any scrap metal of value and easy removal was absconded with. The rear sank further into the muck, and was battered even further by Hurricane Sandy. As time wore on, any hope of savaging or preserving this decaying hulk was washed out to sea. Vandals set the wooden barge she leaned against on fire sometime after 2009. The fire was intense enough to burn the barge all the way down to the water line, leaving almost no recognizable trace that it ever existed here. This surely must have either been a very intense, fast moving blaze, or one that no one noticed. The nearest FDNY firehouse is located directly up Port Richmond avenue, a mere six blocks away. Perhaps it merely completely collapsed during Hurricane Sandy? Whatever happened here, no one seemed to notice or care.
When I originally wrote about this tug, I speculated that it might eventually be scrapped in place. A decade prior, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection forced another notorious NYC area abandoned boat, the former Staten Island Ferry Mary Murray, to be scrapped where she lay along the Raritan River in nearby New Jersey. There was significant concern among officials that any attempt to move the Mary Murray might result in her sinking, and the town of New Brunswick refused to give its owner a new permit to keep it moored at his makeshift, junk filled marina.
Environmentally speaking, the Feeney was a steam powered ship, likely covered in lead based paint and filled with contaminants within it. Removing it from the water, even if by scrapping it in place would ultimately prove a far safer solution than leaving it to sit, rusting and flaking away poisonous lead paint.
The end finally came in October of 2017. A salvage crew utilized a small barge-mounted crane to pick off chunks of the Feeney. The crew worked from the top down, torching off the cabin, engine room and all of the gear above the deck. These parts were loaded onto a barge before what was left of the hull was dragged out of the water and sent on it’s way, likely to a scrap metal processor in New Jersey for recycling.
The Life & Death of the Feeney resembled the life and times of your average human New Yorker. Work until your skills are obsolete, and then linger around awaiting the inevitable. Sure, that’s a pretty grim assessment, but it’s valid, and maybe not anything at all to get worked up over. Few will recall the Feeney, and in the words of Kurt Vonnegut, and so it goes…
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I have photographed the Feeney very sucesfully over the last twenty years I am sad to know that she is gone😧😡💔
Wow, I’ m sorry to read this sad news about The Philip T. Feeney. I did a watercolor painting of her back in 2007. The painting got damaged but survived the Sandy Storm.
Phillip T Feeney was built as steam, but converted to Diesel. I last saw her run in 1979 delivering barges to the west end of the Erie Canal. I even eventually met her engineer from that trip. Had a 550HP 5 cylinder 2 stroke Fairbanks- Morse engine that rattled the house windows when she passed. i had seen her before in ’74. Last tug I saw tow barges astern on the Erie Canal. Used to see tugs all of the time up here . It petered out in the late ’60’s.
She was diesel when I knew her. I helped the mechanics replace one of her pistons. 1977 I think. i went up the Hudson to Troy and twice across the Ny Barge canal to the end ,towing 2 barges each trip. the barges and the Feeny wouldn’t fit in the lock at the same time, so had to winch the barges in with a rope. I was a deckhand . Really sad to see your pictures. She probably rusted to the point of no repair.
My dad Bob Fisk worked on the Philip Fenny for about 10 years. After he served on a Subchaser in WW2 he got a job at Fenny’s boatyard. The Philip was a bare hull and he helped rebuild her. She basically was a brand new tug when they put her to work. My father enjoyed every minute on that boat he said “that was the best job I ever had”. By 1957, with two young boys and my dad being away from home for weeks at a time, my mom asked him to get a job at home. Reluctantly he took a job at the new IBM plant in Kingston.
Last time I knew about the feeny was when united pilots tugboat was still working captain dick was the last one to be in the wheel house.
My son would like to know: What make and model was the Feeney?