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December 12, 2024 50 mins

Tugboats are amazing because they do the dirty work without much recognition. Well that's changing today - ALL HAIL THE MIGHTY TUG!

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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Dude do and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck and Jerry's here too for the present moment,
and this is stuff you should Know.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
That's right, another listener request. These are just kind of
pouring in now, or rather, we're leaning on them more
than we have before, I guess, because they're great ideas.
But this one came also from the live show in Atlanta. Yeah,
and do you remember this guy? Do you remember his name?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yes? I do. It was Thomas, because this episode is
Tugboats for Thomas.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Tug Boats for Thomas, and Thomas I believe works on
tugboats suggested it and this has turned out to be
just a bread and butter stuff you Should Know episode.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah, I remember when he was at the mic asking
the question and making the suggestion. He kept moving around
because he still had a scene.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Right, he's bumping into people. They're like, dude.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
So yeah, hopefully we'll do Thomas proud because we know
a little bit about tugboats now after researching them for
a little while. Big shout out to our friend Dave
Ruse for helping us with this. You could do worse
than going to check out Ruse's podcast Bible Time Machine,
and that has nothing to do with tugboats. But let's
talk about that.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
That's right, because we're gonna we're gonna sing the unsung
like we like to do on the show, because no
one ever thinks about tugboats. You see them all the time.
If you live near harbor or vacation or visit cities
that have harbors, you see those tugboats and those big
ships and barges get all the sexy headlines. But those
tugboats are doing the yeomen's work. That's why they call

(01:43):
them nautical laborers early in their I Guess mission when
they first started coming online on c Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
So we'll get to that in a minute about the
history of tugboats because it actually goes back way further
than you would think, or not as far as you think,
depending on what you're thinking.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
But thirteen twenty Nope, not that far twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
But one of the things that tugboats are that makes
them like the workhorses of the sea, as you can
put it, is that they have really impressive power to
tonnage ratiows. Yeah, so the size of the tugboat. The
actual weight the tugboat weighs compared to the amount of
power output its engines can create, usually in horse power,

(02:31):
is really lopsided, so that these fairly comparatively light boats
compared to like the horsepower they create, can pull pull, pull,
and they can push push push, and they can do
all sorts of amazing stuff, which is why they can
move these enormous huge oil tankers and shipping tanker or

(02:52):
shipping container ships with just the mighty might of their
little hearts. You'd think I would have practiced something like
that because it would have been way better.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah, I mean not to undersell tugboats. They are dealing
with things that are floating in water, which helps. But
these are big, massive things floating in floating in water.
Like you could get in a in a lake, my friend,
and you could you could pull a rope attached to
a pontoon boat. What and you could pull that thing
around a little bit. You could swim that thing around

(03:27):
a little bit because it's floating in water.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
What universe do you live in that maybe.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Where you max out you are the tugboat of the lake, Josh.
If you can do that to a pontoon boat because
these tugboats are a little compared to these huge barges
that are floating around. Does that is that making any
sense at all?

Speaker 2 (03:46):
It's making too much sense. I've never considered myself the
tugboat of the lake. Can I be doing this with
my teeth? Can I be holding the rope with my teeth?
Because that'd be much Uh, that's up to you.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Okay, that'd be better swimming with two arms.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
We'll go do some some thirbig trials for it and
figure out the most the one right way to pull
a pontoon in a lake.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
We should tell them what bollard pull is to because
that's the other big sort of measurement when it comes
to tugging and pushing. A bollard first of all is
that big sort of chunky thing on a dock that
you'll tie a boat to the big daddies, And bollard
pull is the total amount of towing force generated by

(04:28):
a tugboat. And they measure that in killo Newton's.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
They do, And I've seen that often converted to tons,
and it's the same thing. The more killing Newtons you have,
or the more tons you have, the more pulling power,
towing power, pushing power that tugboat has. So there's this
one boat that Dave found called the Island Victory. At

(04:53):
least one article called the most powerful boat in the world.
I saw other articles that name some other shipping contains vessel.
But this, this tugboat, say, it's probably the most powerful
tugboat around. The Island Victory has a ballard pull of
four hundred or four thousand, six hundred and eighty kilo newtons,

(05:14):
which converts to four hundred and seventy seven tons. A
typical harbor tug, which is nothing to sneeze at, has
a ballard pull between five hundred and six hundred kilo
newtons six hundred killing newtons converts to sixty one tons.
So this is an enormously powerful boat. And that's the
whole point. They're not fast, they aren't pretty, they're cute

(05:38):
in a really weird way, but they can generate so
much power that they can push a shipping container vessel around.
More importantly, if you have a really high ballard pull.
The reason that this is this rating is even there
is to find out which tug you can connect to
which vessel because of a vessel starting to go in

(05:59):
the wrong direction and it's about to crash into, say
a bridge. The tugboat has to be able to go
from zero, not moving at all in the water, to
pulling that boat in the opposite direction away from that
bridge in a moment's notice, and it has to have
that much power, and they do. They do.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
I think they are very attractive boats. You can tell
a tugboat because it has you know, they're built to
tug and push. So they have a very wide beam
which is the widest point of the boat. They sit
very low in the water, which is called a deep draft,
and you know they're little short, stubby, wide guys that

(06:42):
sit really low. I think they're adorable and cool looking.
They're very very stable. They're not tippy at all when
you know they're bumping against other things, they're pushing other things,
and so they have to be just super stable. And
also love that they have beards that front bumper or
a or a balfender. They call it a beard in

(07:03):
that lingo, and I think that's pretty great.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Yeah, that's it's just what they use. Like you said,
when they purposely or accidentally bump up against a larger ship.
You can't just have the tugboat like crack up so
you have a bender.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
They're built a bump.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
They are built a bump. And some tugboats aren't necessarily
built with a beard. They'll have tires strung along the
side to use as a bumper as well.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Yeah, I think those are additional. I think the front
always has a built in beard.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Okay, fine, So one other thing that you're going to
find about tugboats that will talk about more in depth
later is that they're extremely nimble. They're agile, they can
move in a different direction very quickly. And that that's
a really important thing too, because one of the big
jobs that the tugboat plays in, say like a shipping

(07:56):
lane at like a port, is to help avoid other
ships coming in or out. So they have to be
able to move not just pull a ship very easily,
but they have to be able to move quickly and
move that ship out of the way of say like
another ship.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, exactly. And I say we take an earlier break
because we're at a great spot to break here before
we talk about the history of these things. You want
to do that. Let's break it all right, let's break
on three all right, I promise talk of history, and

(08:57):
here we go, because if you want to to invent
a tugboat, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a pretty
good time to do it because we were using sailing
ships at the time for transporting people and goods and
all kinds of things. And those things are gorgeous, beautiful
in the water. They sailed great out on the high seas,

(09:19):
but they did not do well, especially because they were
just sailing ships when they got around land in small,
tight spaces, so they would you know, you've seen it
in movies. They would dock or not dock, but they
would anchor, you know, a couple of hundred feet from
shore and then start shuttling people and stuff in little
tiny boats because that's about as close as they could

(09:39):
safely get, and that's not efficient. Taylor would be rolling
over in.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
His grave, that's right. There was another problem too, Even
for a ship that could it was nimble enough to
kind of navigate its way into port, say like the
mouth of a river in a harbor or something, right
once it got in there, it had to wait for
the wind to whip up again to set sail once more.
And this was not something that happened every hour on

(10:04):
the hour, even twice a day like the tide. Sometimes
you would have to wait for days or weeks for
the right wind to come up that you could catch
and ship back out to see again. Also not at
all efficient, So there was like a real need for
tugboats to be invented. But what's nuts is tugboats were
invented and then ignored for decades, and then finally the

(10:27):
guy who invented them, who was just totally made fun
of as we'll see for inventing tugboats, was vindicated. But
I think he was dead.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Already, Yeah, I think he was. He was from England,
eighteenth century inventor. His name, no Lie, was Jonathan Holes.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
That's nuts.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
It is pretty nuts. And he thought it was like
a helper vessel is what he called it. It was
powered by a steam engine. But we were talking about
was tugboats. It could tow a sailboat in and out
of port. This was in seventeen thirty seven when he
filed for a patent. It was called a description and
Draft of a new invented machine for carring vessels or
ships out of or into any harbor, port, or river

(11:08):
against the wind and tide or in a calm and
it was totally genius, thirty years before James Watt's steam
engine hit the scene, and everyone was like, what a
dumb idea.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
Yeah. Not only that, the people in his hometown of Gloucester,
they wrote a song about him. They wrote a song
they wrote like they thought this guy was so terrible
and just such a lousy inventor that there was a song.
I'm guessing people would sing in pubs about him, specifically,

(11:42):
his name's in the song. And when Jonathan Holds with
his patent skulls invented a machine to go against wind
and stream, but he, being an ass, couldn't bring it
to pass, and so was a shame to be seen.
Can imagine sitting there nursing like your mead, Well, everybody
around you is singing that song about you.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
You're not gonna try whip whip up a melody.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Oh oh, Jonathan Holes with his patent skulls invented a
machine to go against the wind and stream.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
You should finish, okay, but you, being an ass, could
and bring it to pass, and so was ashamed.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
To be seen. Wow, you went with the Gilbert and
Sullivan version.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
I guess so all I know is We're getting kicked
out of his pub any second.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Now, They're like, get out of Gloucester.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Yeah, I just stop it. We're gonna get so much
for that.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
So yeah, Holes was definitely ahead of his time, but
it would be sixty years before the first steam powered
tugboats his invention were actually put into good use and
they were deployed in Scotland. Yeah. Yeah, and as we'll see,
actually Scotland was where the tugboat got its name at
the time. I'm not sure what they call them, maybe

(13:01):
still helper vessels, I don't know. But one of the
first things they did was to start pulling cargo along canals,
because at the time, if you wanted to move cargo
easily over land, you did it over water that was
cut into land, and you would do it with a
donkey pulling your cargo along the shore. The donkey was
walking on the shore with the line going from the

(13:22):
donkey to a little barge that was being pulled down
a water filled canal. That was the state of the
art at the time.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Yeah. Have you ever walked along an old river way
that has those built up banks for that purpose?

Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah. Toledo has something called the canal experience or historic
canal experience. There's some canals running through part of the
town from the early nineteenth century that you can walk
along and you're like, wow, this is an old donkey path. Huh.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah. I had my experience doing that in Akron, so
that maybe an Ohio thing. I believe the waterway through
sand Run is where that was. It was the same
deal and Emily or her mom or somebody you know,
because you're up higher and you know it's an obvious
path and they're like, yeah, this this is where the
donkeys and pack horses would pull these things.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Yeah, you donkey.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
There was a paddle steamer named Charlotte Dundas that was
the first tugboat in operation towing for the very pert
strip I think two fully loaded sloops eighteen miles along
the Fourth and Clyde Canal at Glasgow at scorching two
miles and per hour. Yeah, but still like it was working.

(14:37):
That was the key, That's all that mattered. Yeah, they
had all the time in the world, right.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
And you can bet that every donkey in Scotland was
like whow yeah, God they invented these things right.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yeah. Probably.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
So there was also as we talked about one of
the big problems with sailboats as shipping vessels was that
they had trouble getting in and out of harbors. They
had trouble navigating, They had to wait for the wind
so very quickly. It seemed kind of obvious that you
could if you could get one of these boats into
port into harbor, which you could use a tugboat for,

(15:10):
you could also pull it up river. It wouldn't have
to navigate any longer because you could just pull it
by a helper vessel into some of the cities that
were not located on the coast, but they were located
on a river. One example I can think of is
London and the Thames.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
That's right forty miles inland, so that was a huge
boon for London. At the time. There was a steamship
called the Majestic that worked with the East India Company
towing things back and forth up the Thames, and Liverpool
had one as well, so they were getting in on
the game there in the UK.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
They were so like I said, it was in Scotland
that tugboats got their name back in eighteen seventeen in Dumbarton.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
I think I'm saying that, right. Okay, oh, well, how
would you say it? I would say Dumbarton, but I don't.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
I'm just kind it's gotta be Dumbarton. Okay, okay, well
we'll go with one of those two. How about that? Sure,
somebody built a steamship a tug boat that they named
tug They weren't called tugboats until this time, and I
guess that name stuck because it also makes sense practically
you're tugging a boat behind you, so that from that

(16:24):
henceforth on they were known as tugboats.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Yeah, and you know, earlier I was saying that they said, oh,
this idea is so dumb. I don't know if it
was that it was so dumb, But steam power and
stuff that came along a little bit later, Like they
didn't have steam engines at the time, so they wouldn't
have even known it was dangerous. But when they did
come online? Why do keep saying that, I don't think
it fits right.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
It's a little anachronistic.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
I think so. But online doesn't mean just on the internet.
Online just means like it's beginning to function right as
a thing.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, remember that Simpsons where Lenny goes little kid. Lenny's like, oh,
he just logged onto my internet because he pooped his
pants out of he pooped his bathing suit with the
little interneting. So he said he logged onto his internet.

Speaker 1 (17:11):
Oh that's so good. That's a good line. Oh boy, Lenny,
and he logged onto my internet. Where was that?

Speaker 2 (17:26):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah? Steam engines were dangerous. They would blow up a lot.
There was you know, when tugboats first started using you know,
coming online using that steam. They were like I don't know,
I mean, is it is it better to have this
thing that might blow up a port? Right?

Speaker 2 (17:44):
And then the owners were like, well, we don't go
on these boats. We just owned them, so sure, I
mean that's fine, they can blow up. But yes, they
were viewed skeptically, I think, right like it was. It
was not just a done deal that these things were
like gonna save the industry or shipping. Yeah, but there
was a proving ground what ended up being a proving
ground on the Tyne River that connected Newcastle to the

(18:08):
North Sea. They were facing a problem, right. They had
these barges that were they were called colliers and they
were sailboats, but they were coal movers because Newcastle was
a huge coal producer, and these colliers could do a
lot of damage because they were hard to navigate. They
had all the same problems that any sailing vessel had.

(18:31):
So there was a guy named Joseph Price who in
eighteen eighteen was like, I think I've got a solution
to this. I'm going to buy some of these steamships
that they're now being called tugboats, and I'm going to
have them pull these colliers, these coal ships up and
down the tyne, and I think it's going to revolutionize shipping.
And Joseph Price was right on the money. The price

(18:53):
was right.

Speaker 1 (18:54):
Oh man, you almost had it right out of the gate.
So now you could get four hundred ton ships because
you know, I don't know if we mentioned they were
loading like railroad cars onto these things for the first time,
so it was very very heavy stuff. They could go
to Newcastle for the first time. All of a sudden,
people in more distant places could get coal. So it

(19:17):
wasn't just like hey, it made, you know, make things
cheaper and more efficient. It like it was literally changing
like lives all over the world, right, And.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
These new towns that were getting coal for the first
time were able to give up having to burn dried
donkey poop that they scraped up off the donkey trails
along the canals.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
It was huge for them, totally.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
So yeah, Joseph Price Price proved of the world. Like no,
these things are extraordinarily valuable, so much so that they're
going to completely change shipping from this point on. And
they definitely have and they're still just as useful as ever.
And they they made a name for themselves so much
that the when the Royal Navy purchased their first steamships

(19:58):
of any kind, they were tugboats. Yeah, the Comet and
the Monkey, Comment and Monkey. And I can't decide whether
it's a band name or a cartoon name.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Comment and Monkey. That'd be a fun cartoon. I'd watch
that or drug. I'd also take that comment Monkey, just kidding.

Speaker 2 (20:21):
So yeah, they definitely proved their worth pretty early on.
I mean, this is eighteen eighteen, and the first ones
were used shortly before that.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Right, Yeah, And these were paddle boats by the way
up until the late nineteenth century. If you're picturing like
your little friendly tugboat in your mind as we talk
about all these stories, erase that and now picture a
tugboat with two paddles on both sides. It wasn't like
the big paddle in the back, like the sort of
fun things you ride around on at Stone Mountain Park

(20:50):
here in Georgia.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Sure, that's where they're most famous.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
They were paddle wheels on both sides, which seems a
little wider and more cumbersome, but that really really really
made them much more maneuverable and able to steer in
tighter places, and to steer in two different directions like
a right, I got one of those zero turned lawnmowers.
You put those things in two different directions and you're
just spinning like a top.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
It's the exact same thing, because those two paddle wheels
were able to be moved independent of one another. And
once you can do that, yes, you just start doing
doughnuts to show off in the harbor, you know.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
So the nineteenth century came and went and those paddle
wheel tugs were replaced with screw propellers, which is another
term for a propeller like you see on a ship
like that's just called screw propeller. So like any ship,
they were propelled by propellers and then diesel engines came along,

(21:47):
and that's when everything really kind of changed, because when
you have a diesel engine, you can get some amazing
horsepower out of it, way more than steam. It's also
less dangerous. I think we talked about all this in
our Rootolf Diesel episode, and that's when the tugboats became
started to become the tugboats that we think of today.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
That's right, Shall we take our second break?

Speaker 2 (22:09):
You bet?

Speaker 1 (22:10):
All right? We took an early one, so we're gonna
take this one, and we're going to come back and
talk a little bit about well tugboats right after this.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
So you mentioned tugboats strike, right, I didn't. Oh, well,
there's a tugboat strike. We have to talk about. That
really kind of demonstrates how how important tugboats made themselves
over the years. In New York Harbor, in nineteen forty six,

(23:04):
every single tugboat operator, there were three hundred of them
in the harbor at the time, they all went on strike.
And this was very quickly it became evident how essential
tugboats were for everything in New York because there was
coal coming from Lake Erie through the Erie Canal to
the Hudson down to the Harbor and they would be

(23:27):
spread all throughout Manhattan and all throughout New York. Food
shipments came in by barge, garbage went.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
Out by barge.

Speaker 2 (23:36):
New York operated on barges, and if you're using barges,
you need a tugboat to tow or push those barges.
So when the tugboat stopped working, New York stopped working.
And within twelve days the tugboat operators got their demands fulfilled,
which turns out to have just been nicer hats from
what I read.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, they rationed food. They literally shut the lights down
on Broadway. It was their their backup plan of just
you know, using smaller boats to ferry stuff in and out.
They were just like, Manhattan is far too big for
this already, right, And the tugboat operators, I guess, I mean,
what a what a moment to sit back and just
sort of like float, say yeah, now, yeah, gloat a

(24:20):
little bit now now, who was important? The tugboat driver Thomas,
One day we'll be in Atlanta so we could get
the word out about tugboats and New York. Harver was
a great place to sort of make that point, because
you know, if you didn't have tugboats. Then those containers
with all those goods and services are essentially useless.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Right, I said float, by the way, but gloat works
even better.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Oh you said float.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Yeah, they were gloating while we floating. Okay, so there
were some things that changed, stuff you would not at
all connect to why tugboats became less vital over the year.
Still incredibly important, and you can make a case that
world shipping would essentially just stop if tugboats stopped. So

(25:11):
they're really important, but just not in exactly the same
ways as they were before. Because we started getting our
energy over things like pipelines, We started using things that
weren't coal. Trucking and shipping containers became a much bigger
thing than say, barges over the years. So with each
of those things, the tugboat became less and less able

(25:33):
to do what it did in nineteen forty six. And
yet it's still so vital that you just can't do
anything without them.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, for sure, you know they've got they've got electric tugs. Now.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
I saw that there's one called the Ewolf.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
Right, Yeah, it's good looking tug. I mean it's interesting.
I never really thought about electric boats, but that's becoming
more and more of a thing, which is kind of awesome.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
It is awesome, and let's talk about why. Here's why, Chuck.
Remember we said that these things generate crazy amounts of horsepower. Yes,
some harbor tugs or ocean going tugs generate twenty seven
thousand plus horse power. Yeah, it's like having twenty seven
thousand horses just running at the back of this thing,

(26:21):
like kicking their legs all at once, right. Yeah, And
to do that, you use a lot of fuel, a
ton of diesel fuel. Some of these boats can carry
way more than they need in a day, like thirty
thousand gallons of diesel. But I saw that the average
harbor tug, which is working almost constantly, will use about
three thousand gallons of diesel fuel a day. And that

(26:45):
is a lot of fuel to use, right, So it's
using this non renewable resource. It's also putting out crazy
amounts of diesel emissions. Yeah, and that's just one tug
boat using three thousand gallons of diesel a day.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
The reason also, I was like, why do they carry
so much more than they need, because doesn't that make
the tugboat heavier? And therefore you have to use more
fuel to get more horsepower out of it. And the
reason that I came up with that I found was
that time is of such value in a harbor at

(27:22):
a port that it's more costly to stop what you're
doing and go refuel than it is to carry around
all that extra fuel. They have those capacities so that
they have they take way longer in between refuelings. That's
the point. That's how crazy important time as imports.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Yeah, I get it, you know, especially in a place
like New York. Carver very busy, very busy.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
So you talked about that's the motto over the entrance down.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
To the dock. It says that what also you need
to be as maneuverable because it's very busy, very busy.
And you mentioned that a little bit earlier on that
they need to be able to move really in any direction,
very accurately and as quickly as possible. And the asthma
thruster was a big change in that because that is
a imagine a propeller inside a housing sort of like

(28:18):
a you know, sort of like an e fan or
something like that, and it can just turn. That's exactly
what it looks like. Last thing I never.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Thought that, but it can.

Speaker 1 (28:30):
It can turn three hundred and sixty degrees. So it's
not a fixed propeller and a rudder for steering, and
it's not even a non fixed propeller that can move
left and right as a propeller that can spin in
any direction, which means you got one of those little
joystick controllers as a tugboat pilot, and you can inch

(28:51):
that thing in the most minute little ways with just
a flick of the stick.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yeah, isn't that amazing?

Speaker 1 (28:58):
Pretty cool?

Speaker 2 (28:58):
I also read about something called a tractor tug which
has basically two outboard motors like those two side paddle wheels,
and so you can move them independently. And they have
a lot of power too, just not as much as
the asthmuth I think, but they they're controlled by two joysticks.
So it's hard enough just think about using one. Imagine

(29:20):
using two to move a tugboat around like a huge
ship that you're trying not to knock into other ships.
It's just I can't It's got to be one of
the more stressful jobs around piling a tugboat, right, I
bet well, I have to ask Thomas.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
Yeah, we did mention a lot. I mean, we've talked
a lot about moving boats around. That's obviously what you
think of when you think of a tugboat, but they
do a bunch of other stuff too, salvage operations, s
and R or SAR or search and rescue ops that
we've talked a lot about on the show. If there's

(29:57):
ever a you know, if there's a busy canal that's
blocked or something, or a ship that has gone offline,
say that that is gumming up the works, You're gonna
send a tugboat in there to get those things out
of there.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
So we Yeah, we talked about that. The ship that
ever given which blocked the Suez Canal for I think weeks,
which is a huge dent in global shipping, right. We
talked about that in detail, and I could not, for
the life of me, remember what episode that was in.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
Do you what's it in? Do we do one on
the Suez Canal or just.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
The I looked if we did, we didn't name.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
It that which canal? Do we do what episode on?

Speaker 2 (30:35):
I don't remember doing any canal episode.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Oh we did something canals, right, don't it seems very
familiar to me?

Speaker 2 (30:41):
I think we just earlier talking about Donkey Path and stuff.
Did our Canal episode?

Speaker 1 (30:46):
Hmm, wait, guess possible.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
We might have done one that included like the Panama
Canal and maybe yes, I'll bet it was in the
Panama Canal episode. I think we did that one. Yeah,
we did Panama Canal. Okay, there you go, true and
love can we did a little different. But yeah. Also,
by the way, the Navy just unveiled the whole new
group of search and rescue ships. They're they're called Navajo

(31:11):
class tug boats and they're pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (31:14):
Looking, all right, what else firefighting tugboats? Of course?

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Yeah, they're called Fife's cute either Fifi or five Fi.
I've only seen it spelled out.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
I bet it's Fife. Five five would be weird.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, Fife is not weird. And the the see.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
It's well, I don't know, Captain, I don't have my
sea legs, but Fifi is at least a cute See
name five Fi is nothing.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Let's try this out, r Look at that five Fi.
Look at that Fifi. I think five Fi wins the day.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Okay, right, so ice icebreakers and I don't mean at
office parties either.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
Right, A tugboat just goes in between two people struggling
to find something to talk about, and now all of
a sudden they can talk about the tugboat that just
went in between them.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
Yeah, he goes up to uh and says, if you
could invite anyone from history to dinner, who would it be?

Speaker 2 (32:11):
Okay, I hate this question so much.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
It's the worst.

Speaker 2 (32:15):
There's also anchor handling. There's actually special tugboats called anchor
handling tugs appropriately enough. Yeah, and the anchors they're talking
about are oil platform tankers, and these are ocean going tugs,
the ones that carry one hundred thousand gallons of diesel
fuel because they're out to see for indefinite periods of time.

(32:36):
And the anchors that they're pulling around are massive. They're
like keeping oil rigs out in the open ocean from
floating away. So obviously they're really big anchors. But it's
hard to get across how big they are unless you
go look up photos of them. Try to find a
photo of a human being standing or working near an
oil rig anchor, and it'll really kind of drive home

(32:59):
what these tugs are pulling around. Makes it even more impressive.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
All Right, I'm going to look that up and tell
you what I think before the end of the episode. Okay,
good line handling too. Like these tow ropes, if they're like, hey,
we need to get this tow rope out to that ship,
you don't just throw it on a guy's shoulder. Like
these ropes, like those anchors are the most massive thing
ropes you've ever seen in your life. Yeah, and so

(33:23):
there's Thomas saying, just throw it on guys. I got it,
I'll take it out there.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yeah. I was reading an LA Times article about remember
the shipping shut down, the cargo container backup in La
and Long Beach at the pandemic that just killed everything.
The writer went out on a tugboat and was just
kind of chronicling like a morning and the life of
this tugboat. And they were talking about how recently some

(33:49):
two deckhands, one had been injured and one had been
killed by a line tightening and pressing them up against
the side of the tugboat. So oh like jaws, yeah exactly,
but kill them.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:00):
Yeah. So it was a I mean you can just imagine,
like this is a three inch thick rope that just
suddenly is you know, thousands of killing Newton's pressing you
against a metal, a big piece of metal, which is
the inside of the ship. It's not the place that
you want to be. So it is being in deckhand,
which is one of the jobs on the tugboat, is

(34:22):
very dangerous and as we'll see, kind of the job
you want to work your way up out of.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
I think, yeah, you've also got engineers who you know,
they take care of those engines, they take care of
all the getting things online, mechanical systems, electrical systems. You
have your mate, your second and in command and secondary pilot,
and then you got that cap'n the primary pilot that's
running that ship. If you work in let's just pick

(34:51):
out New York City, because people think about tugboats a
lot there in New York. Carver work, Yeah, everyone does.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Okay, I took a pole. Okay.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
They work two weeks shifts, two weeks on, two weeks off.
You live on that boat full time. And then on
those days that you work, you work two six hour shifts,
six hours working six hours off, six hours working six
hours off. And that is I'm sure Thomas would would
verify that this is tough, hard work.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
That is too short. I mean you're like, oh, six
hour shift, that's not bad, but then you have to
eat and sleep in the next six hours. That's yeah.
I don't know why they do it like that. It
seems like you would wear your crew out really fast
with that schedule.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
Would you have them work twelve hours straight and then
twelve hours off?

Speaker 2 (35:41):
No, I think even eight hours. That extra two hours
to unwind and eat and then get six hours sleep
is adequate because I mean, seriously, you think about it,
You're like, you're not doing six hours off and then
you just fall over and sleep where you were just
standing while you were working. Now that you're off the clock,
you're gonna like unwind, you gotta eat, you're gonna just
do whatever, shaved, shower, and then you're gonna get what

(36:03):
three and a half four hours sleep if you're lucky,
maybe five. I think that's a little whack, as.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
They say, yeah, it's whack, But I think it's one
of those things with shift work, like you get used
to sleeping all day and working at night. Those people
probably get used to sleeping in two four hour sets.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Yeah, you know, and I'm sure they're significant like, oh
you're awake again, huh.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
Yeah. But then they're at home for two weeks straight.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
That's what I mean.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Jeez, can you get back to work?

Speaker 2 (36:29):
I don't know, man, it's a hard life. I'm sure
Commas can tell us.

Speaker 1 (36:33):
Oh, yeah, for sure. There are push boats. Uh these
are pretty fun. A push tug that's a towboat that
has a squared off front at the bow and these
padded beams called push knees, and you basically push those
knees against the stern and uh you even lash it

(36:55):
together sometimes and that you're just pushing pushing something around.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
Yeah, no, one's fine. But I like the articulated tug
barge or atb This is it's an improved version of this. Right,
So the barge and the tugboat have like a notch
and a corresponding like pointy part. You put them together
and put a pin through the two, and now you've
got like one single machine. But the tugboat can still

(37:21):
maneuver like fishtail and move that barge and all sorts
of crazy hard angles, right, And I was like, why
don't you just mechanize or motorize the barge? And apparently
they use this mostly for oil tank oil shipping, and
you just get more oil out of it. And the
barges are cheaper because they don't have any self propulsion,

(37:42):
So it's kind of like a shipping container in a truck,
Like the tractor is different than the trailer, and so
you can hook all sorts of different trailers up to
the same tractor time and time again, rather than just
you know, having to pilot that trailer all the time.
It made more sense to me when I was researching
it than it is now that I'm explaining it.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Well, it does sort of lend itself to the question
of like, why don't these huge barges have a little
secondary Asthmuth propeller system that can be deployed.

Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, I think the expense that added expense. I think
they're cheaper because it's just a barge that is just
basically a floating container that a tug can hook onto.

Speaker 1 (38:27):
The well maybe so. And the other thing that I
also regret not investigating now is how the finances of
this work. Is it a tugboat company that just says,
all right, we're going to contract with this barge company
for a certain set of time, yes, and we'll just
handle all your tugging and pushing needs. Basically, in this harbor,
So I.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Think it kind of from what I understand, it bears
a bit of a resemblance to like the shipping like
trucking industry, where somebody needs a toe or an escort
or something like that in or out of the harbor,
and you just contract with somebody. Then I don't know
if like you contract with one specific shipping company or
you just kind of go back and forth depending on

(39:08):
who needs what when, or it's a mixture of both.
I'm not sure, but I know that back in the day,
they it used to be whoever got there first, So
as a ship was coming in, topboats would race out
to meet them, and whoever got there first had that
contract right there because they were the first ones on
the scene and they were the ones who were going
to pull the ship into its berth.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Surely it's an all inclusive thing, though, and it's not
just like, oh, you need to get over there five
hundred bucks, right, you know?

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Yeah, No, I don't think it's like that for sure.
But I read another article. The AP did an article
on the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore. But
last year, earlier this year, you remember when that ship
ran into the bridge and the bridge collapsed.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Yeah, yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
So the there was like heavy criticism because that ship
wasn't being escorted by a tugboat, and everybody's like, where
was the tugboat? Why was this allowed to happen? And
the ap was explaining, that's just not how it works.
Like the tugboat pulls the ship out of its berth
and kind of gets it on its way, and then
it goes back and attaches to another ship, and then

(40:20):
that ship has to find its way out of harbor,
including navigating under and next two bridges and other stuff. Right,
And the reason why is money. It costs an extra
ten grand to pay a tugboat to pull you safely
out into a harbor so you can make way. And
the shipping industry holds the cards now, because if you

(40:43):
start charging more at a port, or you start, say
requiring ships to have a tugboat all the way out
into the harbor, it's going to cost more money. And
if another port nearby doesn't force you to do that,
it's going to be less and so everybody's going to
go to that port and all of your dock workers
are going to lose their jobs and you're not going
to get reelected as mayor Baltimore. You see what I'm saying. Wow. Yeah,

(41:07):
it's crazy how weirdly entrenched it is. And again, it's
just so discouraging. It seems like every episode we talk
about you can trace it back to some group of
people who are cutting corners because of money, and then
something bad happens and nobody does anything about it. I'm
so sick of it.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
Yeah, that sounds like a new episode of The Wire too,
it does.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Okay, Yeah, I'm a right now. Let me just apologize
to Thomas. Sorry, Thomas.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
If you want to pick up your spirits, my friend,
go to New York City and take a ride on
the Wo Decker because that's one of the funding fun
things you can do in New York. I have not
done it yet, but I'm going to make a point
to go to the South Street Seaport Museum in New York,
where you can actually take a ride on the classic

(41:57):
and beautiful Wo Decker tug.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yep, pretty neat.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
I'm gonna do it.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
There's some other stuff you can do too, but that's
probably the best.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
Okay, good, I'd like to do the best thing.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Good. Uh, you got anything more on tugboats, Charles.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
I got nothing. I just love these pictures. There's something
about a tugboat. I like the way they look. Yeah,
it was tires hanging off of them, and they're just
there's something about the utilitarian aspect. And especially that wo
decker with that big old nose on the front. I
don't even know what that is. That's the beard, right, yeah,
but it's it's not a beard that I've ever seen.

(42:34):
It really looks like a beard.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
I was reading like a kid's maritime museum website about tugboats,
and they were trying to explain why everyone loves tugboats,
because you're it's true, like there's nobody who doesn't like tugboats,
especially if you have nothing to do with the industry, right,
you're just watching them from afar, And they explain that
they're very powerful and they're small, but they're also very helpful,

(43:00):
and I think they kind of nailed it on the head.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Yeah, Actually, some of these beers are very beardy.

Speaker 2 (43:04):
So I get it, Okay, So Chuck gets it, and
he mentioned beards twice in quick succession, which of course
unlocks listener nail.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
That's right, And it also conjures Beetlebeard. What sorry? You
know you say beatlejuw three times?

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Oh gotcha? I gotcha, Yeah, I got it.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
I saw that sequel last night.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
What do you think?

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Did you see it?

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (43:33):
You know, I enjoyed it. I thought it was fun.
It's not some great movie. But none of Tim Burton's
movies are great to me.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
But I don't know about that.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
I mean, I think Edward was great, but I think
that's his only truly great film. What I mean, tell
me another.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Edward scisor Hands, Sleepy Hollow.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
I enjoyed Edward Scissorhands. I don't think it's great. Sleepy
Hollow I thought was mid at best.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
He's kind a whole I disagree. Sleepy Hall is one
of my all time favorite movies. That's one of those
ones I can watch like any time.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
Yeah, hey, I like it. I like most of his movies,
but I just don't think they're great films.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
I understand what you're saying. I mean, the nineteen ninety
Batman not the best. I would say that that's not
a great movie too, for sure.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
Yeah, But I mean I like most of his movies.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
I understand what it says.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Fair enough, yeah, yeah, anyway, I thought it was.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
I thought it was good.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
It was fun, It was good enough for what I
wanted out of it, which was a bit of nostalgia.
And I loled quite a few times because I just
think Michael Keaton is really funny and Catherine O'Hara is
really funny.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Yes, I think Catherine O'Hare did great.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Yeah, but you know it was it was.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Just Okay, I keep forgetting to recommend a movie to
you that I I'll see it and remember how great
it was, and then I forget to tell you about
it again. It's called a Dark Song, okay. It's about
a woman who seeks revenge, so she finds an occultist
to help her conjure demons to enact revenge.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
How do you find movies that no one else has
ever heard?

Speaker 2 (45:03):
I don't know how I found that one. I really
don't remember, but it's on Amazon Prime if I'm not mistaken.
And it sounds like a hokey premise, but the research
that the writers did is so like dead on that
it's entirely possible. There's people out there who believe that
you can do this exact thing that they're doing, and
conjure this exact demon. It's nuts. It's really it's really

(45:26):
a good movie. It's pretty rough. I would not watch
it with the kids, but it's a it's a very
good art house horror film.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
Well. Ruby Whent is Megan for Halloween, so she's pretty
into that stuff. But this sounds too dark.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
It's a little there's a part in there that she
should not see.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
Okay, And I'll also say this, I just looked up
a dark song really quickly, and there's a Reddit thread
a dark song is it real? So apparently it's pretty convinced.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
It is very convincing.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
All right, So that's been movie minutes.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Yep. Did you ever read the listener?

Speaker 1 (45:58):
Mal no, man, I'm waiting on the queue.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
I said that you said you said something in quick secession,
and you unlocked listener meal Jerry already ran the chime.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
I got a sidetracked. Hey, buddy, I don't jump unless
you tell me too.

Speaker 2 (46:12):
So I did tell you, and you didn't jump, and
everything broke down as if the tugboats stopped tugging.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Oh that means another lashing tonight.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
I'm gonna last you to the tugboats.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
Uh yeah, put me up there. With the beard. All right, Hey, guys,
love the show, especially the unsolved mystery episodes. Needless to say,
I loved the one a couple of months ago about
the mysteries of the Internet and the mysterious song that
caught my attention.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Oh I know where this one's going.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
Boy. They came pouring in and I have to say,
the mystery seems to have been solved about the most
mysterious song on the Internet. It is not the one
that people sent in right after we published. That was
not even the same song. Those people were lazy, uh,
But yeah, it broke and we've gotten like a hundred
emails that that artist has been identified. There's a reddit thread.

(47:05):
It's a Reddit user tracked it down. The song is
called Subways of Your Mind by the group. I don't
know if it's fex or fex, not sure how they
pronounce it. The user found the band from an old
newspaper article in the NordWest Zeitung archive. While they were
researching houterfests bands bands performed. That music festival was a

(47:26):
lead the subreddit was working on. The article they found
was about a band called Fix from Keel who won
a talent contest in Bremen, September nineteen eighty four. Their
music was described as rock with wave and pop influences
in tracks. The user managed to get in touch with
a member of the band and they produced original tapes
of the recorded song to prove they were the ones
who recorded Wow. I read through the subreddit. They said,

(47:49):
wait a minute before you go wide with this, because
I want to talk to the rest of the band.
First came back and said, I talked to the rest
of the band. They're into it and we want to
like re record it and you know, get back together
and re record this thing now that it's got some fame.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Yeah, they're gonna do an acoustic country version.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Uh, this is for Michael, but big thanks to everybody
who wrote in because it's pretty exciting, you know. Somerton
Man was found on our watch.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
On our watch, right, thanks to us.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
Thanks to us, and this was solved on our watch.
So as the longer we do the show, the more
these mysteries are kind of you know, maybe they'll find
that that guy who disappeared from the airport. Remember that guy.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Oh yeah, that poor kid from Yeah, I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
What island is Swedish or something.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Yeah, that was a sad story.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
Yeah, so we're hoping to clear up all these mysteries.
But yeah, the mysterious song has been solved.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
Great and it was fects subways of your mind? And
who wrote in? Because I mean a million people wrote in.
I don't think we've ever got more more email about
the same thing in less time than on this one.
It was astounding. It was like, yeah, those post so
office workers come in at the end of Miracle on
thirty fourth Street and start dumping Santa letters down to
the judge's bench. It was like that, but with emails

(49:08):
about the most mysterious song on the Internet.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
Yeah, and it's gonna get worse because this isn't gonna
come out because we're front loading for Christmas break and
so like we're going to be getting these emails.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
For a while. Oh dude, we'll be ginning them for years. Chuck,
we got an email from somebody this week and the
subject time was Chuck predicted shark Nato Right. That is
an old, old.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Classic, Oh man, but all they hear about Jared from
Subway and Hugh Jackman Jackman playing pt Bond.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
Who is it the greatest show min yet?

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Anyway? That was for Michael.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
Thanks a lot, Michael, very much appreciated. Thanks to everybody
who wrote in. We don't mean to sound ungrateful. We're
just joshing around.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
Yeah, we love YEP.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
Thank you. Yeah. Keep us informed as best you can
all the time. And since I said that you want
to be like Michael, I should tell you that you
can send us an email. Send it off to stuff
podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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