Download - Upper Deckhouse RestorAtion Report

Upper Deckhouse RestorAtion report

Tug Pegasus Preservation Project

TUG PEGASUS RESTORATION REPORT

March 2010

Prepared by:

Pamela HepburnDirector

Tug Pegasus Preservation ProjectPO Box 3433

New York, NY 10008

Tug Pegasus Preservation Project 2010 1


Introduction

This report details the restoration the upper wheelhouse of the tugboat Pegasus. The work was completed over two years—2007 though 2009—and includes the replacement of the wheelhouse windows, the restoration of the captain’s cabin and the wheelhouse interior and the rebuilding of the wheelhouse roof. The work was scoped out as three separate projects and funded through three separate appeals: The “Eyes of the Tugboat,” “Pull for the Pegasus,” and the “Upper Deckhouse Restoration – Interior.” We are combining three projects in a single report because, in many areas, the projects overlapped physically and in time. Although this report is not specific to individual funders, we hope that, by including a wide range of the work, we can put the spe-cific projects into context.

Thanks to the support of all of our funders we were able to complete the capital work that al-lowed us to us to begin to fulfill our mission of public access and education. We offered our first public educational trips at the end or 2008, and we served several thousand people through our extensive 2009 programming.

Left: first stage of restoration, Morris Canal Basin, Jersey CityAbove: partially repaired wheelhouse stabilized.

Photo: Donald Sutherland



Wheelhouse Windows

Many of the tug’s original drawings were found at the Museum of Industry in Baltimore in2001 (Figure below left). The following year volunteer Jonathan Jones donated his architecturalservices to produce the drawings needed for a bidding process (Figure below right). The jobwent out to bid in 2006.

Wheelhouse work resumed in 2005 while Pegasus was in the shipyard for extensive hull re-pairs. At the same time that welders were replacing 900 square feet of steel on the hull, restora-tion woodworker Dave Black unwrapped the wheelhouse sheathing and proceeded to replace the tongue-and-groove sheathing with wood that was as close to the original as we could obtain (Please see photos above.) This work is also covered in detail on our web site: http://www.tugpegasus.org/ongoingwork.htm.

Structural work on the wheelhouse began in 1997. The windows were removed (shown above), as were layers of rotten wood. We discovered the uprights were also compromised. These were replaced . The new timbers were back-painted and covered with sheathing to stabilize the work (as seen above right). This project is covered in detail on our website: http://www.tugpegasus.org/vhistory_restoration.htm.

http://www.tugpegasus.org/ongoingwork.htm

http://www.tugpegasus.org/ongoingwork.htm

http://www.tugpegasus.org/vhistory_restoration.htm

http://www.tugpegasus.org/vhistory_restoration.htm



Securing the structure of the upper deckhouse in the early phase of the restoration (as seen above) required the disassembly of the windows. The windows were a hodgepodge and ap-peared to have been altered several times. The windows were at least 50% compromised with dry rot and bad repairs over the years. (Please see photos below.) The original configuration is visible in the photo from the 1950s on the window closest to the door in the bottom. Black and white photo on the following page.



There was the question of the time line. Photographs revealed some changes that were not easy to construe . What we had at the end was a hodgepodge of add-ons. Although our restoration time line is 1953 – the steam engine was removed at that time and the current diesel engine in-stalled–we went back a few years when it appeared that the windows were at least consistent.

Photo: Bob Mattsson Collection

Photo: Mariners’ Museum Collection




The contractors for the wheelhouse windows showed up on the boat in October of 2007 to make templates (Photos below). The bid- winning contractor, Kalle Fauset of MossFauset Woodwork-ing, took his templates and disappeared into his shop all winter, making a mock-up from his templates.

From this mock-up (Photos above left) came the finished pieces: sills (Photos above center), window frames and rails. The finished pieces were assembled in the shop (Photos above right).Below, the finished pieces arrive at the site and are installed ( Photo below right).



Concurrent with the wheelhouse window project becoming a tangible reality, three-quarters of the upper deckhouse had undergone a total repair and restoration. The last part to be worked on included work on the after 12” [one foot] of the wheelhouse roof, the back of the wheel-house, the captain’s cabin roof and the after bulkhead (back wall) of the captain’s cabin. These areas are all connected and are further described below.

Captains CabinIn April 2008 we hired a restoration wood worker, Glen Garver. He started on the deckhouse structure. Predictably, a can of worms was opened (Photo below left). This shows the wheel-house on the left, and the “boot-heel” style [ stepped down arrangement] captain’s cabin to the right with the door on the after bulkhead. The photo below right shows the cabin from the stern opened up: no roof on it and no after bulkhead on the wheelhouse in this period of demolition.

Below left, Glen is rigging a web clamp to straighten the structure that had sagged to starboard. Removal of the very rotten tongue and groove boards revealed the rotten timbers underneath. Note the mildew and the canvas in the photo below right.



The demolition included the very after part of the wheelhouse roof, the after wheelhouse bulk-head, the captain’s cabin roof and the after bulkhead of the captain’s cabin. Canvas was used in a surprising number of ways. Unfortunately on this application it held in the moisture. The in-terior was renovated in the 1980s and the use of pink insulation was heavy. Current practices scorn the stuff. The triangulated beam is visible here. Oddly, there was no triangulation on the side of the wheelhouse.

The deck beams on the captain’s cabin roof were replaced (Photos below). In June and the roof soon followed. Deck Beams, decking material and the facia are developed on the captain’s cabin before we are able to put on the final roof coating.

The corner pieces on the facias were of built up pieces of cedar, glued up and cut out. This “built up” or “chunk” construction was common in vessels with so many rounded shapes. Ac-cess to the bandsaw at the Moss-Fauset shop enabled the smooth production of these pieces (Photos below).



The captain’s cabin roof deck structure is shown completed, below. The coating is a fiberglass fabric, Dynel, with an epoxy system applied over it. This system has been used in yacht restora-tion for many tears and has proven itself. It is not only a tenacious coating but has the addi-tional benefit of looking like the canvas that it replaced; and the maintenance is far less than canvas.

The above photo illustrates the process of rebuilding the upper deck house decks/roofs: the wheelhouse and the captain’s cabin. The captain’s cabin roof was constructed first. The forward end of it runs into the wheelhouse under the after bulkhead/wall of the wheelhouse. This con-struction can be seen in wrecks of the turn-of-the-century as a consistent construction element. It was carried out in steel boats to as exemplified by boats built by Ira S. Bushey and Sons in Brooklyn, NY from the 1930s to the 1970s.

The posts on the side (painted orange primer above in the photo above) also land on this deck, eliminating as many vertical joint seams as possible. Boat builders always consider the force of wind driven elements and how to keep them out. Vertical seams invite seepage and moisture.

The Dynel on the plywood is glued over the round-over on top of the facia piece. This is in re-verse of the traditional canvas construction where the facia would go over the tacked edge of the canvas. It was felt that the epoxy on the outside here would further discourage wind driven moisture, discouraging rot a little more effectively.

The Dynel is then trimmed and the facia primed. There is an edge plank element that wraps around the edge of the deck. Drains are within the edge planking containing the flow of water landing on the vessel, connected to drain pipes that lead to the lower deck, the boat deck. The boat deck has the same arrangement, and drains the water to the main deck and overboard. It’s a boat gutter system.



While the captain’s cabin was getting rebuilt, the fabrication of the wheelhouse windows was finally moving along at the Moss-Fauset Woodworks in Hoboken, NJ.

Wheelhouse RoofIn the beginning of the summer, before the wheelhouse windows arrived, the work on the tug proceeded to the wheelhouse roof. In the interior, the deck beams are most likely the original ones and we were able to leave them in place and also keep some of the original tongue-and-groove overhead in place [below]. To ensure the load bearing capacity of these areas we covered them with ¾” marine plywood, back painting and using roofing paper between layers.

The wheelhouse roof deck has a 5.5 foot radius. The facia pieces were clamped and fastened into cleats that were in between the deck beams. Below, photos show the clamps are used to gently coax the cedar around the radius of the roof.



Like the captain’s cabin, marine plywood covered the whole wheelhouse roof surface (Photo below left) and the epoxy was applied (Photo below right). After saturating the wood with ep-oxy, Dynel, the fiberglass fabric, is put down and it is also saturated and given a couple of coats. The edges are rounded over to allowed the epoxy and fabric to go right over and down to the vertical surface, as they were on the captain’s cabin. The epoxy is applied to the dynel with a squeegee for full saturation and coverage, as shown below right.

The running light screens, the black shapes shown in place on right, were replicated from pho-tos we have of the boat in the early 1950s. The screens are to maintain mandated viewing from certain angles, as per the Code of Federal Regualtions and the United States Coast Guard’s Rules of the Road. The running lights themselves are original issue.

Special fixtures were sought to rebuild all the electric components. The lights were then wired. All the wiring in the wheelhouse is United States Coast Guard specified “armor coated” ca-ble—waterproof and crush resistant. The old wires had rusted through as they had been run through wood, which held moisture. The new wiring still has to be clamped in properly.

Please note corner post with a bevel carved in it: again, a solution not found in the drawings that have survived but a common solution, observed in wrecks of the period.



The captain’s cabin deck/roof was built with a camber, or crown, to shed water. The drains will be installed on the outboard corners, inside the edge planking as previously mentioned. The pipe on the left is a vent for a waste system. It will be taller and painted black.

The windows in the back of the wheelhouse had to be remade. The surviving windows were made of mahogany, a typical material for this task in the period. Doors also were commonly made out of mahogany. Mahogany is a tropical hardwood that is quite rot-resistant and stable, without much expansion and contraction in different conditions.

On the left, the door to the captain’s cabin has been re-fastened and mortised in places, but sur-vives in good shape. All the original hardware will be put back on the door and are shown be-low, beautiful cast bronze pieces [the hinges already installed]. The door frame had to be rebuilt as did the entire after bulkhead of the cabin. (Comments on the bulkhead’s condition can be found earlier in this report.)



Soffits, the under surface of the roof deck over-hang, were installed in the traditional fashion with screws showing so they can be removed for repairs and maintenance. Below left the soffit on the wheelhouse. Below right show the soffits and facias on both upper deck structures, the wheelhouse and the captain’s cabin.



Wheelhouse InteriorAfter the wheelhouse window sills and sashes were installed we could move ahead to building the window wells (Photo below, left). The wheelhouse windows of this type do not hold out water. In the rain the person steering will often open the windows for more visibility. The water then is allowed to drain into the window pan and a drainage system. Compromising this sys-tem with a leaking seam in the pan or a clogged drain has resulted in a frequently observed rot at the bottom of the window well, or bad rust holes in the same location on a steel boat.

Traditionally, the pans were copper or lead. The skill set of working with copper or lead was not readily available and because the wells were out of sight fiberglass was used. Important to the life of the window well is drainage. We used 5/8” copper tubing flared, caulked and peened into place. We also included a sizable inspection port, which can be accessed from the sash weight box, from which one can reach in and clean out the bottom of the well (as shown below, right).

When the window wells were framed out the wells were then fiberglassed. A plywood wrap was then installed around the front of the wheelhouse, shown above, the back of which had been fiberglassed. The access ports had been cut and the inside surface fiberglassed on the wrap before it was attached. Through that the seams of the wrap and the framing were caulked with a high performance polyurethane adhesive sealant.

The original deck is tired. We worried that the weight of visitor traffic would compromise it fur-ther. We built a traditional fir deck on top of the old tongue and groove deck. We back painted and used roofing paper between the two decks. The new deck strengthens the surface and the galley has the benefit of the old beaded tongue and groove surface below.



Machinery, such as the steering stand and the control stands, were lifted up so new oak bases could be installed under them. Above, new oak base under not-yet- painted up steering stand.

Once the deck was in the sash weight boxes were constructed over the access ports for the win-dow wells. The old ones that were removed were a hodgepodge of mahogany and plywood and in very bad shape. Sash weight boxes were rebuilt, and the old rectangular weights are to be installed. Theses are attached to a wire and lead through a pulley counterbalancing the win-dows. The pulleys are those that came with the boat, of cast bronze, shown below left.

After the sash weight box framing was built, the original quarter sawn oak tongue-and-groove could be re-installed onto the front of the interior of the wheelhouse. These pieces were re-moved 10 years prior to this to inspect and replace the uprights of the wheelhouse. The bottom of the tongue and groove wainscoting were compromised with rot so a plinth type arrangement was constructed (shown below right, the landing for the tongue and groove) out of cedar, a wood commonly used in boatbuilding, because of its rot resistance and its ability to bend.



The re-installation of this quarter-sawn white oak tongue-and-groove material was one of the highlights of the job. This material, certainly original to the vessel, is of a quality very rare in these times, and very common when the boat was built. Having removed it a decade ago and finally having the opportunity to re-finish and re-install it was gratifying.

The same quarter -sawn white oak was also re-installed above the wheelhouse windows. The beaded tongue-and -groove, also a treasure, will be carefully scraped and primed and painted one on the many light green colors from the layers of paint chip. This is an odd color but very functional in terms of mitigating glare, a harsh conditions in which the boat operates. Old mariners call the color apple green. This is better seen earlier in the report in the soffits. The color matches paint chips found on the same area of the vessel.



Above shows the back of the wheelhouse with the newly constructed windows described ear-lier in this report. Again the new wiring is not yet clamped down. The panel box in the middle is mounted and not yet refinished and was original to the boat in the 1950s and is typical of WWII era machinery built under military specifications. The engine room is full of machinery of this origin.



This part of the restoration was successful in many ways, chief among them being the ability to bring to the public results of a long-term project. Much of the work done prior to that can only be imagined as much of it is invisible, either because it is out-of-sight, being under water or be-cause it has become part of the fabric of the restored vessel and not obvious when treated with the same coatings as the older structural components. The original wood refinished with tradi-tional varnish and the bronze hardware reinstalled gleams, to the delight of the public.

BudgetThe work is very nearly completed on the items list on our budget in July of 2008. The budget, reprinted here, indicates the work not yet competed. It is highlighted in yellow. One work item was altered: the wheelhouse doors. Eliminating the doors became a safety consideration and the repurposing of the historic vessel being a publicly accessible venue. Seafarers are very used to constantly being on the lookout for trip hazards and are very observant of rules concerning spaces on a ship. The public is not so. Installing the doors into the wheelhouse produces /1/ a trip hazard where the steps/ladder end up on the deck and /2/ allows circulation that could be disruptive to the person steering the vessel when underway. /3/ The wheelhouse was origi-nally without side doors and we therefore felt it was not a stretch to eliminate them from our restoration plan. Additional wheelhouse windows will go in the place of the doors.

The foundation awards were received in the spring of 2007. The work was carried out in the anticipated budget. The scope of the proposal was completed in Summer of 2009.

Please see the budget on the next page.

Teens from the Chinese -American Planning Council aboard the tug Pegasus for the Maritime Adventure Program.

Upper Deckhouse Restoration



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Upper Deckhouse Restoration



ConclusionCompleting the upper deck structure enabled us to operate as a fully functioning vessel able to carry out our long-planned underway, public programming throughout 2009. The tug Pegasus towed the Waterfront Museum, housed on the 1914 historic barge Lehigh Valley No. 79 for our Quadricentennial Tug & Barge Tour. Part I, of the Tug & Barge Tour, was in May: in Red Hook Brooklyn, Pier 84 in Manhattan and in Hoboken, NJ. The Tug & Barge Tour included program-ming for all ages. Hoboken was our longest visit, there we held our Passport-to-the-Hudson™ program, an underway program aboard the tug Pegasus, for Hoboken Public School teens and the Boys and Girls Club of Jersey City.

June, July and August the tug Pegasus and the barge Lehigh Valley No. 79 parted ways to run their separate programs . The Tug Pegasus Preservation Project ran the Passport-to-the-Hudson™ program [P-T-T-H] for campers. The teenagers from the Chinese American Planning Council served as docents for the younger participants and worked on restoration of the 1932 lighthouse tender Lilac. The teens learned about preservation techniques, research and value to the community, in this our Maritime Adventure Program™. Please see more about our pro-grams at: http://www.tugpegasus.org/programs1.htm

In September we resumed the Tug & Barge Tour to participate tin the Working on Water Quad-ricentennial event. We http://www.workingonwater.org/index.php The tug Pegasus towed the barge Lehigh Valley No. 79 to Troy, NY stopping on the way up and on the way down the Hudson River to run our programs. This three week tour along the Hudson River brought the message of sustainability of the maritime, with preserved historic vessels serving the public in an educational capacity.

2009 was a very exciting year for the Tug Pegasus Preservation Project. Now, more than ever people need to be invested in the abundance of maritime resources: commercial, recreational and cultural in the Port of NY/NJ.

Programming debut of the tug Pegasus, September 2008. Photo by Bernie Ente.

http://www.tugpegasus.org/programs1.htm

http://www.tugpegasus.org/programs1.htm

http://www.workingonwater.org/index.php

http://www.workingonwater.org/index.php



The Tug Pegasus Preservation Project served thousands of people, getting them into into the harbor that hosts such important functions of receiving and delivering people and goods all over the Port of New York/New Jersey and beyond.The public needs to gain awareness and to learn the value of our rich maritime life to insure stewardship of these resources. Getting the public aboard the tug Pegasus for a first hand expe-rience of the Harbor is aimed towards the need for understanding and stewardship.

AcknowledgementsWe are extremely grateful to our funders for their support of this comprehensive project: Dibner Charitable Trust of Massachusetts; Gerry Weinstein; Abraham and Lillian Rosenberg Founda-tion; The Hyde and Watson Foundation; J. Aron Charitable Foundation, Inc.; Peter R. & Cynthia K. Kellogg Foundation; Hudson River Foundation; and The 1772 Foundation; and the many individual contributors who responded to appeals and participated in fundraisers of the Tug Pegasus Preservation Project. An added note of gratitude and appreciation to the New York Landmarks Conservancy and the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Pres-ervation, who helped us get to the point where this phase of the restoration could be consid-ered. Special thanks to Tony Tirro of Warren George, Inc. for his generosity in providing a safe berth for the tug Pegasus in protected waters, enabling the restoration to be carried out.

After a full season of programming the tug Pegasus starts the Quadricentennial Tug & Barge Tour towing the showboat and museum barge Lehigh Valley No. 79, September 2009. Photo by Bernie Ente.

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