IT’S A BRISK WINTER EVENING. There’s no problem keeping the six-pack cold underneath the thwart of my 12-foot Whitehall. I’m rowing about 300 feet from my boat to the tugboat Pegasus, where I’ve been invited to dinner. Looking back on these frequent wintertime rows, I wonder, was I crazy? The last place you want to be on a cold night is dumped in the Hudson, should something go awry.
Back then, in the mid-1990s, the Pegasus was tied up near the entrance to the Morris Canal, catty-corner from the Liberty House restaurant. Pamela Hepburn, who is now president of the Tug Pegasus Preservation Project, was living on the vessel with her daughter Alice. In a waterfront version of Friends, a bunch of us used to drink beer on the deck on summer evenings and gather around the galley stove on cold winter nights.
We’ve all seen these little workhorses of the harbor—towing barges and aiding cruise ships. I’m not alone in loving them, and I’ve always been curious about what accounts for the tugboat’s enduring allure.
“First, tugs are off limits to most people,” Pam says. “They don’t get to go on them, and they’re curious. Then there is the overall spirit of what they do. Picture a tugboat assisting a passenger liner. They’re dynamic little vessels assisting a huge vessel.”
Pam, who was an art major in college, adds another dimension. “In a visual sense, their configuration offers a profile of a little vessel doing serious work.”
Though Pam claims to be inarticulate on the subject, I think she’s hit the nail on the head. Tugboats may be the epitome of industrial chic. Their entire raison d’être is to serve industry, whether it’s the cruise industry or the sanitation industry. If a tug were a horse it would be a Clydesdale.
PAM’S LOVE OF THE MARITIME may be in her DNA. Her father was a naval architect, and she started sailing in Essex, Mass., when she was a young girl. She has built two boats of her own—the Petal, a pram rowboat for her daughter, and the Ibis, a 21-foot racing dory.
“After college I looked for a job on the waterfront,” she recalls, “but it was an impossible situation to break into. I had no connections, and young women couldn’t just go cruising on the piers looking for work.”
Her break came when a friend got a job as a cook on a tug, and Pam tagged along. She spent four years learning the ropes and then over the next decade ran her own company, Hepburn Marine, and also worked for major outfits like Moran, which is responsible for that big “M” you’ve probably seen on many a tugboat stack.
In 2000, Pam founded the Tug Pegasus Preservation Project, embarking on an extensive renovation project that turned the 102-year-old Pegasus into a museum. Artist Glenn Garver (See “The Studio,” ) has done a lot of the fine restoration work on the vessel. Pam says, “I wanted to give back to the business and share my love of the maritime with the public. It was also a way to preserve a really cool period of our industrial history.”
Among the project’s many offerings are a maritime adventure program for teens, a tug and barge tour, a volunteer program, and the Pegasus itself, a living museum that will be located somewhere on the Hudson. Currently, it’s berthed at the very end of the Morris Canal.
Maybe it’s just me, but I still remember with fondness the slight smell of diesel fuel when you boarded the tug—either from the water or from land along the makeshift wooden gangway at low tide. Everything about the tug is sturdy and heavy—from the huge lines coiled on the deck to the massive steel parts, and traditional rope fenders. The living quarters are cozy, with lots of original varnished wood and large bronze port lights. Seeing the engine room with its electrical board, control box, pumps, and motors was for me an ongoing thrill.
As Pam says, “People are really, really enthralled when they come aboard.”JCM
The Tug Pegasus Preservation Project
tugpegasus.org
info@tugpegasus.org