W.O. Decker

The wooden tugboat W.O. Decker was built in Long Island City, Queens, in 1930 for the Newtown Creek Towing Company, which specialized in berthing ships and barges in the branch of the East River that separates Brooklyn and Queens. Originally named Russell I for the towing company’s owners, she was renamed W.O. Decker in 1946 after being sold to the Decker family’s Staten Island tugboat firm. One of the last steam-powered tugs built in New York Harbor, she was later refitted with a diesel engine. From the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 through the late 19th century, New York Harbor was filled with many kinds of towing craft, including large sidewheel towboats that moved rafts of canal boats and other craft picked up along the Hudson to the port, where smaller tugs took them to final destinations; oceangoing propeller tugs that towed strings of coal barges from New Jersey to New England; railroad tug fleets that transferred loaded railroad cars by barge to and from freight terminals in New Jersey and Staten Island; and private tug companies that specialized in berthing cargo and passenger vessels. Much of this activity declined in the middle decades of the 20th century as trucking replaced rail and water transport, passenger liners yielded to airplanes, and large fleets of cargo ships gave way to fewer, larger container ships. In 1986, W.O. Decker was donated to a museum, where she is used for tasks ranging from daily waterfront maintenance to private charters.

New York, New York · United States