1,613 Comments for Staten Island Boat Graveyard

......"This is the captain speaking-we are going to do this flooding drill until you clowns get it right!"

......."begin leapfrogs and tick -tacks-AND NO COLLISIONS THIS TIME!"

"anchor's -aweigh" "all ahead 2/3" ....... "Bridge main control".."bridge eye" "Is everything alright up there?" ......"Bridge?"

@Chief Johannes:
No, not common rail at all. Common rail is where all injectors are piezoelectric or high speed solenoid high pressure units mounted along a single rail carrying generally over 1000 bar (+14000 psi) pressure. The advantages are that the faster acting piezo injector can use a technique called pilot injection to begin combustion with a limited portion of the fuel before adding the balance of the amount for the cycle. The result is a smoother combustion with some reduction in noise. One simple effect of that is the clatter sound of a common rail engine being a lot less pronounced than a conventional diesel with poppet or unit injectors. A more important effect is that because of the smoother and more controllable combustion characteristics of common rail engines, percussive stress on the bottom end of the engine is drastically reduced. This reduction in stress allows more fuel to be burned (and more power to be produced) with a given size and weight of piston, wrist pin, connecting rod, and crankshaft.
The other advantage of the common rail technology is that the piezo injector valve can switch at a higher fuel pressure, delivering the fuel through a tighter nozzle which atomizes it better, leading to more complete fuel combustion and thus more power out of a given amount of fuel (efficiency!)

This engine does seem to have a single rail fuel distribution manifold which appears to feed individual accumulators for each injector, which would then be driven off of a cam shaft in the engine. This technology is called Unit Injection. This is a reference to how each injector works as an independent unit, developing its own pressure. Distribution rail pressure would be only an amount sufficient to ensure that the unit injectors are not starved of fuel, and would be provided by a gear driven (or possibly electric, though rare) fuel pump.

The principal difference would be that the pressure of the rail is different by at least a factor of 1000, and the injectors on the common rail are electrically fired, not mechanical and cam driven.

Common Rail has just recently found its way into marine applications, including some pretty big stuff, like the Wartsila-Sulzer RTFlex96C, which is the successor to the unit injected RTA96C. The 12RTFlex96C (12 inline) works at around 100 RPM and if I remember correctly has displacement of 1.8 million cubic centimeters per cylinder and power of around 90000 HP. Its family was, as of when I read about if a few years ago, the most efficient internal combustion engine in the world, exceeding 40%. It's also approximately as big as a house. Now find me one of those engines and photograph that!

a great uncle of mine owned a tug line out of new york called the meseck lines. any one with info on this please e-mail me. i saw some pics on this site but they dont seem to match the pics i have of when the boats were in service.

Fabulous pictures most enjoyable to reminess with the past makes you wonder if in the future a boat you've traveld on will wind up in a place like this,hopefully without us onboard.

You need a shallow-draft vessel to get close to the ships.

Can you walk around the shipyard or is it totally inaccessible except by water?

that is lame it dont even show you all of the pic

... "The great shipwreck of life" ...

what, no wallpaper?

I pass by this ship graveyard all the time. Always wondering if there is a way to see these boats up close. During the winter season when there are no leaves on the trees you can really see some of these boats from the road(about 100-200 ft away). There is also a very old Cemetary nearby dating back to 1700's that adds to "spookiness" that everyone feels when looking at these pictures. Many THANKS to MOTTS and FB JIM for the great pics and Information ! You guys make a great team.

Like everything else, time is slowly taking the wrecks away, Witte Marine ran the yard for many years and slowly cut up boats but many that were sunk stayed where they were. Every ;winter and every storm eating away at the remains. In the 70s complete boats were there, now only the heavy metal of the hulls and boilers and engines remain, mostly under water. It is a cemetery of sorts, so much history was here, history of New York Harbor, NYC ferrys and fireboats, fireboats that responded to the GENERAL SLOCOM fire and the NORMANDIE fire as well as dozens of Railroad tugs, barges, lighters, derricks ect. Now these work boats of the harbor sit quietly being eaten up by the water they worked in. let them kind of "rust" in peace.

I've lived in NY my whole life and how is it I never heard or seen this? I must not get out enough.

Nope. It's an old mk1 radar set, built by Raytheon. They had a rather large dual band vaccume tube magnetron controller, but only put out 40 watts, which is why the screen was only 4 inches across. That other boat wasen't a "subchaser" or anything like that. They didn't have the 'walk wings" on each side of the bridge because it would have gotten in the way of fire control for the guns. They DID, however, have a need for them on harbor net tenders, (looking at the steel on the bow, I'd say it may have been a net tender) minsweepers, and YTB's (yard tub, big- used by the Navy or the Army. Yes, the Army had tugboats, more than the Navy did, believe it or not).
The black and grey buttons at the top right were to change the display color from yellow to red for night time use. No, they weren't green. The Mk 4's were green,and had a hoodscreen to look thru. The round control at the bottom right is the distance ranging switch, for high (12 miles) and low (2 miles). The toggle switch under the display was the power switch. it took 5 full minutes to warm up, ran on 125 volts DC power, and each magnetron tube only lasted 1000hrs before burning out.
I ws an ET in the Navy before I cross rated to OT. I really loved the chances I had to work on historical gear that still functioned.