Titan and William Dolard

I was nosing around the Detroit and Rouge rivers today and spotted the tugs Titan and William Dolard nestled on the Rouge.

And elsewhere about these 2 tugboats,

From TugboatHunter: "The tug William Dolard ... doesn’t run, and was formerly Princess No. 1. She is tucked up in the Old Rouge behind Zug Island. Titan, a former fish tug, is serviceable but doesn’t do much, if anything. She was previously Gotham."

And see a picture here of the Titan working (from BoatNerd).

I also got a look at the Walter J. McCarthy Jr. headed up the Detroit River.

wow! amazing!

Another amazing photo from ShipSpotting.com

These are ships waiting to be broken up for scrap at the Gadani ship-breaking yard in Pakistan. 

From Wikipedia - "Ships to be broken up are run aground on the beach under their own power, then gradually dismantled. As the weight of the ship lessens, it is dragged further onto the beach until completely scrapped."

tugboats and shipspotting.com

So, on the way to looking something up, I ran across some photos of the Costa Concordia turned on its side somewhere off the coast of Italy (January 2012). You probably already heard about that but I didn't because I don't watch TV news or listen to the radio or read the newspaper.

As I was collecting photos of the Costa Concordia to use as Windows backgrounds, I saw one of the photos was from a site called ShipSpotting.com. Since I like looking at ship pictures, I went there and discovered it was a great site for downloading more pics. You have to register to the site to look at the full screen pictures but it's a small price to pay.

And jackpot! There are many of my favorite - that scrappy, little, harbor worker - the tugboat.