2024 Tug Talks

Saturday

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Title: Rebuilding History: The Seneca Chief and the Erie Canal Bicentennial

Speaker: Brian Trzeciak, Executive Director
Organization: Buffalo Maritime Center

Bio:
Brian Trzeciak is the Executive Director of the Buffalo Maritime Center (BMC), a role he has held for the past seven years. He holds a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rochester Institute of Technology and a Master of Arts in Humanities from the University at Buffalo. Brian brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in design, education, and community organizing to the Buffalo Maritime Center. He is committed to preserving maritime heritage and the values of craftsmanship while expanding hands-on learning opportunities throughout the community.

Description of Presentation:
The Buffalo Maritime Center has built a traditional, full-sized replica of the Erie Canal Boat Seneca Chief, which originally opened the Erie Canal in 1825. The Erie Canal Boat Project has aimed to engage the community through hands-on experiences and historical exploration. In 2025, the Seneca Chief will embark on its Bicentennial Voyage from Buffalo to New York Harbor, commemorating Gov. DeWitt Clinton’s 1825 inaugural journey. This voyage offers Buffalo and communities across New York State a chance to explore the past and plan for the future. Join Brian Trzeciak as he discusses this ambitious project and shares the plan for the historical Bicentennial Voyage.

2:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Title: The Erie Canal and Albany: The Past and the Future

Speaker: Len Tantillo, Historical and Marine Artist

Bio:
Len Tantillo is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and a licensed architect who transitioned to a career in fine art, focusing on historical and marine painting. Since 1986, his work has appeared internationally in exhibitions, publications, and film documentaries. Tantillo is the author of four books, a recipient of two honorary degrees, and a Fellow of the American Society of Marine Artists. His work is included in the collections of the Fenimore Art Museum, the Minnesota Museum of Marine Art, and many other institutions. In 2004, the Metropolitan Museum of Art commissioned him to create a painting depicting the Daniel Winne house as it may have appeared in 1755. He has produced over 300 paintings and drawings of New York State history and was elected a Fellow of the New York Academy of History in 2016.

Description of Presentation:
Len Tantillo will discuss his vision for Albany’s future, inspired by its rich historical connections to the Hudson River and the Erie Canal. He will share his long-term vision of reconnecting the city with its waterfront by potentially unearthing Lock One of the Erie Canal and extending it from the Warehouse District down Broadway. Tantillo's artwork, which includes a painting of the Warehouse District in the late 1800s, serves as a foundation for reimagining Albany’s future.

5:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Title: Bridging the Past and Present: Transporting Buffalo’s Newest Bridge Through America’s Most Enduring Waterway

Speakers:

• Captain Brian Moore

• Captain Tom Feeney

• Organization: Carver Marine Towing

Description of Presentation:
This presentation will discuss the transportation of the Ralph Wilson Park Bridge, a significant component of the redevelopment of Buffalo’s waterfront, through the Erie Canal. The bridge, transported in sections from Italy, traversed New York Harbor and up the Hudson River before reaching the Capital Region. The crew from Carver Marine Towing navigated the complex journey along the canal, traversing 34 locks and managing various clearance challenges. The bridge will ultimately connect Buffalo’s Lower West Side to the transformed Ralph Wilson Park, which is scheduled to start opening in phases in 2026

Sunday

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

Title: A Tugboat Roundup Retrospective: A Discussion on a Bad Idea That Turned Out Great 25 Years Later

Speakers:

• Rob Goldman, Chief Operating Officer of NYSMH

• John Callaghan, Founder of Tugboat Roundup

Description of Presentation:
Rob Goldman and John Callaghan will discuss the formation of the Tugboat Roundup, from its inception as a seemingly bad idea to its growth into a successful event 25 years later. They will share stories from the early days and highlight some of the colorful characters involved in the event’s history.

Tug Talks

Don’t the 2023 Tug Talks!

The Champlain Canal at 200!

Presenter: Russ Vandervoort

Date and Time: Saturday, 9/9/2023, 10:00 AM

Description: Explore the early days of the Champlain Canal, its impact, and the stories of pioneers like John Edlict and Erastus Gay.

Presenter's Bio: Russ Vandervoort is Waterford's Historian and the 2022 Tug Parade Grand Marshal. He is a dedicated advocate and historian of the NYS canal system.

 The Rise and Fall of Russell Brothers Towing including Captains' memories of adventures and daily life on the tugs.

Presenter: Hilary Russell

Date and Time: Saturday, 9/9/2023, 2:00 PM

Description: Discover the maritime activities of the Russell family from 1844- 1962 -- their sail lighterage firm,the tugboat company, shipyards, iron works, and machine shop.

Presenter, Hilary Russell, the author of Tugboats and Shipyards: the Russells of New York Harbor, 1844-1962 will cover the family's immigrant story, technological innovations, the rise of the family business, the forces that contributed to the business' closing, and the daily lives of boatmen.

Matton Shipyard: Preservation & Adaptive Reuse Initiative

Presenter: Andy Kitzman

Date and Time: Saturday, September 9th at 5:00 PM

Presentation Title:

Description: Matton Shipyard, located a half-mile from the site of Tugboat Roundup, is a historic shipbuilding facility situated along the Hudson River. The shipyard's legacy is inextricably tied to the maritime history of the region. This year’s “tug of the year”, James Turecamo, was one of the hundreds of tugs built at Matton Shipyard over its more than 60 year history.

This presentation will explore that history, the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor’s work to preserve the site, and what is next for this historic maritime and cultural treasure. Presenter's Bio: Andy Kitzman is the Assistant Director at Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor and a former curator at the Erie Canal Museum in Syracuse. He is an Erie Canal enthusiast, historian, and expert.

Rewatering Albany

Presenter: Len Tantillo

Date and Time: Sunday, 9/10/2023 at 11:00 AM

Description: Learn about the transformative Albany Waterway project and its potential impact on Albany's historic, social, and economic connections to the Hudson River and Erie Canal.

Presenter's Bio: Len Tantillo is a licensed architect turned historical and marine painter. He has received honorary degrees and is a Fellow of the American Society of Marine Artists. His work is internationally recognized, and he is an expert in New York State history.

And the Tug of the Year is.....

 The J. Arnold Witte!

Historic tugs dominate the list of past Tug of the Year honorees. This year is a little different. The J. Arnold Witte was built in 2020 and will hold this year’s Tug of the Year title. The 78-by-26-foot, 2,400 horsepower tugboat is the newest tug in Donjon Marine’s fleet. 

The J. Arnold Witte was designed by Boksa Marine Design (BMD), a Florida based naval architecture and marine design firm. The triple-screw boat's dimensions, telescoping wheelhouse, and nine-foot-draft are all reflective of what BMD and Donjon Marie see as continuing - and renewing - opportunities to move cargo through the nearly two-centuries-old, 524-mile New York State Canal System and connected waterways such as the Hudson River, New York Harbor, and the Great Lakes.

The 2022 Tugboat Roundup won’t be the J. Arnold Witte’s first pass through Waterford. Donjon Shipbuilding & Repair (DSR) built the vessel at its Erie, PA facility and transited the Canal eastbound in 2021, passing through the Port of Waterford, enroute her homeport of Newark, N.J. 

Check her out in person at the Roundup and to learn more, come to the Tug Talk at 4:30PM on saturday, presented by Bill Sullivan of Donjon Marine, “J. Arnold Witte: A New Tugboat for a Storied Waterway”

Full schedule of Tug Talks and descriptions at https://www.tugboatroundup.com/.../2022/8/3/2022-tug-talks

2022 Tug Talks

The 2022 Tugboat Roundup will feature four tug talks and the Mariners’ Roundtable. All Tug Talks take place inside, upstairs, in the Hurst Harbor Center. The full schedule is below.

Boomland: 140+ years of commercial vessels on NYS Canals

Saturday, 9/10/22, 10 AM

Speaker: Will Van Dorp

Using vintage photos from the New York Canal Society archives, Will’s lecture will portray a time when tugboats & barges were ubiquitous on New York’s inland waterways, particularly on the Barge Canal, which opened as the Erie Canal’s third iteration in 1918.  His talk will examine the different types of cargo vessels that passed through Waterford and other Barge Canal towns during a time the canal was primarily a commercial waterway.

Will Van Dorp is an independent writer/photographer based in NYC.  He grew up near the Barge Canal in Wayne County NY.  His stories/photos have appeared in Professional Mariner, Pacific Maritime, The New York Times, and other publications. Since 2006, he has documented/photographed tug/ship traffic in NYC and elsewhere on the maritime blog at this URL: https://tugster.wordpress.com. He has posted over 5300 times, with tens of thousands of photos, which have been seen/read more than 2.9 million times. He taught English in US, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Cameroon, and Congo, where he first rode on a tugboat four days and four nights non-stop up the Congo River to get to his first professional job. He was director/writer for the documentary "Graves of Arthur Kill," a study of a marine scrapyard in the Arthur Kill between Staten Island and Carteret NJ. From 2016 until 2019, he was onboard lecturer on Blount Small Ship Cruises vessels Grande Mariner and Grand Caribe, the only overnight passenger vessels using the NYS Canals between New York City and the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence River. And most important of all, he worked as deckhand on Urger in the 2014 navigation season.

The Seneca Lake Deep-Water Survey: A Project to Discover Forgotten Canal History

Saturday, 9/10/2022, 11:30 AM

Speaker: Art Cohn

Through underwater exploration, the Seneca Lake Deep-Water Survey aims to preserve the history of New York’s Canals by using state-of-the-art equipment to capture never before seen images of intact Canal shipwrecks from the early 19th century discovered in the deepest parts of the lake. Art Cohn, the project’s principal investigator and scholar, will present on his team’s incredible findings over just two years of survey work, including the identification of the only known intact “Clinton’s Ditch” era packet boat on the bottom of Seneca Lake. The project is a collaboration between the New York Power Authority, NYS Canal Corporation, NYS Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historical Preservation, NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, NYS Museum, the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, Middlebury College, the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, and the Finger Lakes Boating Museum.

Art Cohn, an underwater archaeologist, professional diver, historian, educator and advocate, is co-founder and former director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum and Research Institute. Cohn has coordinated and participated in Lake Champlain’s archaeological projects for the past thirty years. Cohn has a B.A. in sociology from the University of Cincinnati in Cincinnati, OH, and a J.D. from Boston College Law School. In 2000 and 2001 Cohn was a Member of the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations Educational, Science and Cultural Organization’s convention for the protection of underwater cultural heritage. Cohn is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in Maritime History and Nautical Archaeology at both the University of Vermont and Texas A&M University, as well as a member of the Ferrisburgh Volunteer Fire Department, a chaplain and a tugboat captain.

I Was There and Survived: Free Time with Wunder

Saturday, 9/10/2022, 1 PM

Speaker: Captain Steven R. Wunder

Capt. Wunder will take attendees of this talk on a voyage of discovery through the people, vessels, places and stories that mark his long and storied career on New York’s Canal System.  Some material may not be suitable for younger audiences.

Captain Steve Wunder is a lifelong canal and tugboat enthusiast. He is a 32-year veteran of the NYS Canal Corp and long-time captain of the Tug Urger. Captain Wunder was integral to the development of the Urger’s educational program brought the story of the Erie Canal and to thousands of people all along New York’s waterways.

Mariner’s Roundtable

Saturday, 9/10/2022, 2:30 PM

Professional mariners, retired and working, gather to swap stories, tell tales, and take questions.

J. Arnold Witte: A New Tugboat for a Storied Waterway

 Saturday, 9/10/2022, 4:30 PM

Speaker: Bill Sullivan

Bill Sullivan will discuss the design and construction of Donjon’s newest build and the 2022 boat of the year: J. Arnold Witte.  He will discuss why Donjon chose to invest in a vessel capable of transiting the dimensions of the NYS Canal System at a time when commercial utilization is thought by some to be diminishing, but is really seeing a resurgence.

Bill Sullivan, Manager of Regulatory Compliance and Vessel Repair at Donjon Marine. Donjon Marine was founded in 1964 by J. Arnold Witte as a marine salvage and transportation company. Today Donjon operates the largest shipyard of its kind on the Great Lakes and has dredging, recycling, heavy lift marine operations spanning the globe.