About the Museum
The North River Tugboat Museum
and Center for
Historic Marine Technology
are not yet open to the public.
We
do however travel each year to different locations with a tug and barge to give
tours.
We have already assembled the
Largest collection of Historic towing
vessels in the World.
A collection that is
expanding every year!
There will be three main elements to the North River Tugboat Museum:
Permanent Museum
Traveling Exhibits
Dry Dock and repair facilities of the Center for Historic Maritime Technology
As of January 2003 we have assembled seven significant historic vessels. These will be exhibited at the permanent Museum. These vessels will be interpreted by exhibits and live docents. In addition to the vessels, repair shops using traditional machine tools will be part of the exhibits. Orientation exhibits and a gift shop will be in an historic replica building at the Museum entrance. The Museum will be heavily promoted and will be open to tourists, school class groups, bus tours, and other groups.
These vessels represent a segment of America's industrial maritime history which is both important and very appealing to the public. As new technologies are appearing, historic tugboats, railroad barges, and floating wooden dry docks are rapidly disappearing. Historic tugboats are sinking and being cut up for scrap every month. Part of our mission is not only to present these vessels to the public, but simply to rescue them for posterity.
All of the vessels which will be part of the Museum are currently docked in Kingston, New York. Kingston is a city with a long and rich history of tugboat manufacture, operation, and repair. It is the logical place for the Museum and would fit into the City's plans to develop the waterfront as a major tourist destination. However, to date, the museum has no permanent site. The vessels are located on a fenced off, rented bulkhead which is not accessible to the public. Permanent sites for the Museum, both in Kingston and in other cities are being investigated. One other city is actively courting the Museum to locate there. It is expected that within only a few years after opening, the Museum will attract 60,000 visitors per year.
One element of the
Museum will be traveling exhibits. We envision that each year we will select a
tug and barge from the collection to travel from port to port. They will travel
to ports up and down the Hudson River, Barge Canal and Long Island Sound where
scheduled educational programs will also be offered.
Full sized exact
replicas of a number of wooden historic sailing ships like the Half Moon, the
Providence, the Earnestina, and the Clearwater already travel from port to port
presenting educational programs for schools and the public. Our traveling
program will be like those, but with two important differences. First, our
vessels will not be replicas. They are the real things. Second, we will not be
presenting the era of wooden sailing ships. Instead, we will be presenting the
more recent, historic iron industrial maritime era.
Finally, our dry dock offers the only such facility in any museum in the world. In itself, it is an incredible artifact. However, it will provide both education of the public and real repairs to visiting historic and replica vessels. We will not only display it; we will use it! It will be used by various nonprofit organizations which operate replica and historic vessels. These vessels frequently need to be taken out of the water to make repairs below the water line. In commercial shipyards, this is a costly proposition. In contrast, we will offer the use of our dry-dock for their repairs at a lower cost in exchange for making the repair process open to the public. This will provide a contiguously changing, live public education and will keep alive historic ship repair trades.
The dry dock and associated repair shops and the maritime trades which will be taught and used will constitute the Center for Historic Maritime Technology portion of the Museum.
Check back with us here on our web site as we make progress toward opening our museum.