Seaboats keeps the new tugs launching: Scott C

Seaboats, a small, family-owned company in Fall River, Mass., continues to build its fleet of tugs and barges with one new tug launched and two barges acquired in the past year.

The newest tug for Seaboats is the 4,500-hp twin-screw conventional tug Scott C., launched at the company’s own shipyard in late 2006 and expected to be in service by mid-2007. Meanwhile, the company has acquired a pair of new double-hull oil barges from the Senesco shipyard in Rhode Island in the past few years, and earlier this spring it acquired a single-hull oil barge from Moran Towing Corp.

As of this year, Seaboats was operating five tugs, three of them of 4,500 hp, and six barges, two of which are new and double hulled. A sixth new tug, also of 4,500 hp, will be under construction soon at the shipyard on Mount Hope Bay, according to Seaboats.

Seaboats builds new tugs and handles maintenance of its tugs and barges at its own riverside shipyard. [Brian Gauvin photos]

Scott C. has the same Caterpillar power, Haley reduction gears and JonRie towing winch as its predecessor tugs built at the same company shipyard. However, this latest tug is about 10 feet shorter in length and slightly smaller in gross tonnage. “We had some tonnage concerns that we wanted to alleviate, so we have made this tug a little bit shorter and just a little bit smaller inside the deckhouses,” said Brendan Maguire, operations manager.

Scott C., measuring 105 ft, is designed for gross registered tonnage of 185 tons, according to company specifications.

The new tug, when ready for work, is likely to be matched with the 324-foot, 80,000-barrel double-hull barge Liberty, delivered from the Senesco shipyard in late 2006. The barges Liberty and Patriot are sister ships, each with the same raised trunk deck, deep-notch design.

For power to move loaded oil barges, Scott C. will call upon a pair of 16-cylinder 3500 series electronically controlled diesels, each linked to 110-inch, four-bladed propellers and oversized rudders. The tug has tankage for about 85,000 gallons of diesel fuel.

Also in the engine room are three Northern Lights generators powered by John Deere diesel engines. JonRie InterTech of New Jersey provided the tug’s electro-hydraulic single-drum towing winch. The winch is set up with more than 2,000 feet of 2 1/4-inch wire rope. Also on the aft deck is a full-width towing bar and four fairlead/turning blocks for the tug’s push gear.

Delaware, the 330-foot oil barge, recently acquired from Moran Towing Corp. [Brian Gauvin photos]

Seaboats is generally involved with contract towing on the Eastern Seaboard. The comany has successfully chartered out its two new double-hull barges since both were introduced new from the Senesco shipyard. The company also sold a newly constructed barge of the same design, built by Senesco, to Moran Towing Corp. in 2003. Most recently, it acquired the 334-foot single-hull barge Delaware from Moran. Now renamed Delaware 65, this barge was built in 1968 and has seven or eight more years of service before it must be retired, according to OPA ’90 regulations.

Delaware was the last single-hull barge in the Moran Towing Corp. fleet. After the sale to Seaboats, Moran was operating eight double-hull petroleum barges ranging from 40,000 barrels capacity to 145,000 barrels, with two more under construction for delivery this year and next.

Seaboats is a family-operated company founded by Donald Church and his wife Barbara in 1972. The company’s newest tug is named after his son, Scott Church. The last new tug was named Donald C., 4,500 hp. The newest tug is the fourth Seaboats tug to be built at the company shipyard, located just off Davol Street in Fall River. Other tugs in the company fleet are Vernon C., also 4,500 hp; King Philip, 2,250 hp; Carl Ray, 2,250 hp; and Capt. Ben 1,200 hp.   

By Professional Mariner Staff