Seaport Museum's Restored Historic Vessel Named 'Tugboat of the Year'

Left: The deckhouse of the W.O. Decker swings into place in the Staten Island shipyard where it underwent a two-year restoration. Right: The tug off Pier 26 earlier this month. Photos: South Street Seaport Museum (left); Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib (right)

It’s been a couple of years since the South Street Seaport Museum’s historic 1930 tugboat, W.O. Decker, underwent its major overhaul, and began carrying passengers around New York Harbor on educational and sightseeing journeys. But it was only this month that the meticulous restoration got its official due. 

New York’s last surviving New York-built wooden tug is now “Tugboat of the Year,” an award presented to the museum at a ceremony on Oct. 1 by the Steamship Historical Society of America. 

“If there’s one vessel that we all believe in, the Decker is it,” said the society’s vice president, Pat Dacey, noting that the award is for everyone who “really contributes to having this great vessel in the water. We know how hard it is to preserve vintage watercraft.” 

Jesse Lebovics, the museum’s director of historic ships and the man who oversaw the restoration, knows the challenge well. The vessel had been in “tough shape,” he recalled. Forty percent of the hull, eaten away by wood boring worms, needed to be replaced. There were extensive repairs to the deckhouse and wheelhouse, and the vessel’s 1964 Diesel engine required a total rebuild. Grants from the National Park Service and New York State Canal Corp., as well as donors, helped make it possible.

Donated to the museum in 1986, the tug began its life as the Russell 1 in Depression-era New York. At the Queens shipyard where it was built, Lebovics said, “everything dried up. So rather than lose the entire workforce [the owners] said build a boat for us. So they built their own tugboat.”

“You wouldn’t make a tugboat out of wood in 1930,” he added, “and you wouldn’t fire it with coal. They used the materials they had to keep the project going.”

Back then it took a crew of five to operate the boat—captain, stoker, engineman, oiler and deckhand. Now, with its upgrades, only two crewmembers are needed. Because it was relatively small, Lebovics said, the tug was highly maneuverable, with a giant rudder that allowed it to turn around in the narrow waterways where it worked. It was also powerful for its size.

Originally painted the usual tugboat red, the W.O. Decker got its more colorful red, yellow and black look in the 1960s. (The name changed after being sold to Decker Towing Co. in 1947.)

As an example of the types of steam-powered tug once common in New York Harbor, the W.O. Decker, Lebovics noted, represents two eras. “The nice thing about the Decker is it represents a transition, between what exists now and what existed then.”

“She’s seen it all,” he added.

The museum runs public cruises on the W.O. Decker on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through Oct. 31. Go here for information.