Tel the Tugboat and His Tugboat Friends

Hello, I would like to introduce myself too you. I know you recognise me as a ship of some sort, but do you know what type of ship I am? No, then I will give you a clue. Have you ever been to the seaside or visited a dockyard or maybe a naval base of some kind? Well if you have, you would have almost certainly seen vessels like us. You see, we’re called tugboats and wherever you see large ships or large vessels off any kind, especially in harbours, you’re bound to see a tugboat just like myself. That’s because a tugboat is there to help assist larger and sometimes smaller ships to manoeuvre around the confined spaces in harbours, or if a ship needs our help at sea because they may have broken down, we will be there to help. Or maybe they’re too large to use their own engines in harbour so we’ll tow, push, or transport them alongside if they can’t make it on their own. That’s our job and a very important job it is.

As you can see we’re smaller than most of the ships we assist, but don’t let that fool you, we are mainly built for power so we have very powerful engines that give us the power to move such large ships and vessels. As ships go, though, we look quite different from the normal ships that maybe you are used to seeing. That’s because apart from our size we have a very large, well its like a cushion on our bow its made of rope and its tied there to protect the tug as well as protect the ship. There’s one on the stern as well.  That’s because we use our bow and stern to push the ship onto the jetty, or to assist her in any other way to help with her movements. This cushion is called a fender; tugs have them around the sides of their vessels to protect both the tug and ship, especially when we lay alongside her for transporting purposes to another berth.

Then there is the main difference we have a large towing hook on the stern of our tugs. It’s there for all the main towing jobs we do.  They’re used together with wires and towing ropes. You see when we have to assist a ship to sail it usually needs one of us tugs to pull her of the jetty or maybe tow her to the mouth of the harbour. That’s because she may be too large to use her own engines until she gets out into deeper water, or she may have to be assisted to her berth. Sometimes they may have broken down, it depends on the ship’s movement and where she is going. Apart from the safety part of the hook, it can be slipped, that is to say it can be released if there is any trouble with the towing job. Such as a ship going too fast and overtakes us, or if there is a chance we will be pulled over, but you will be told about that later in one of the many stories. So you see the towing hook is very valuable to us.

More importantly, I suppose, is that we carry an engineer. He keeps our engines in working order. Plus a captain - he’s in overall charge of the tug, and two crewman who look after the deck side of things, putting wires and ropes out to secure us to the ship or to put the towrope out for towing the ships, as well as painting us up when we look a bit scruffy, mind you the size of the crew changes with the size of the tug. Now we also need help on the jetty, after all we couldn’t take a ship or large crane alongside the jetty all by ourselves now could we. So we need help to tie the vessel on to the jetty and of course to release them when they sail or have to move. And this help comes in the form of a group of workers called riggers. They stand on the jetty waiting for us to bring the vessel near the jetty then they take the wires off the vessel’s crew to secure her on to her berth while we hold her steady with our engines. When the ship leaves they let her wires go. When they’re done this we can then pull her clear of the jetty enabling her to sail, or maybe she has to be moved to a different berth in which case we will tie up alongside and transport her to wherever she is going. There’s more to the riggers than that though. They also make the ropes we use, as well as fixing our fenders. They do all sort of jobs and we rely on them for quite a bit as they do on us really so I suppose we all support each other.

Then there’s what we call the pilot, not the sort of pilot that aeroplanes use, no, these are the captain of one of the tugs, experienced captains that know all the movements of ships. They go aboard the ship that is sailing or being moved to a new berth, and it is him that all orders are taking from, for example, what part of the ship the tug should lay in order to make the best use of him and who does what with their engines. He also has a very good knowledge of the sea around the harbours so he will tell the captain of whatever ship he is piloting the best and safest way to bring the ship into harbour, so he really is important to any move that is taking place.

It’s not just ships we move though, oh no, its all different types of vessels. We move barges now these barges carry all different types of stores. There are oil barges, ships provisions, water etc. Now these barges don’t have any engines, so they need us to transport them to wherever or whatever ship they are storing or in some cases destoring.  You see all these ships must be kept supplied because in our case we work in a naval base so most of our jobs are working with the navy, which makes us very busy.