North River Tugboat Museum

Largest Collection of Historic
Towing Vessels in the World

Tugboats docked on the Rondout. North River Tugboat Museum, Kingston, NY

The North River Tugboat Museum and Center for Historic Marine Technology are not yet open to the public, but they have already assembled a large collection of historic towing vessels.

The vessels are docked in Kingston, NY, a city with a long and rich history of tugboat manufacture, operation, and repair. However this is not a 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.

As of January 2003, seven significant vessels are in the collection. These vessels will be exhibited and interpreted at the permanent museum. In addition to the vessels, repair shops using traditional machine tools will be part of the exhibits. These vessels represent a segment of America's industrial maritime history which is both important and very appealing.

As new technologies appear, 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 the mission is not only to present these vessels to the public, but simply to rescue them for posterity.

One element of the museum will be traveling exhibits. Each year, the museum will select a tug and barge from the collection to travel from port to port up and down the Hudson River, NY Barge Canal and Long Island Sound.

Steve Trueman, owner of the North River Tugboat Museum presenting tugboat history

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. The museum's traveling program will be like those, but with two important differences. First, the museum's vessels will not be replicas. They are the real things. Second, instead of presenting the era of wooden sailing ships, these vessels will represent the more recent, historic iron industrial maritime era.

Finally, the dry dock offers the only such facility in any museum in the world. In itself, it is an incredible artifact. It will provide education and real repairs. It will be available for use 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.

Seven vessels in the North River Tugboat Museum collection

About the North River Tugboat Museum

North River Tugboat Museum home page

North River Tugboat Museum
300 Greenkill Avenue
Kingston, NY 12401

(845) 340-0506, e-mail: steve@tugmuseum.com

Historic Fleet; Tugboat Museum Seeks Home, Volunteers, Money, Data
From the Sunday Freeman, April 6, 2003