A McAllister Brothers tug heads into the mis/ to pick up the incoming Manga Reva-a four-masted, 2,224-ton bark built in Scotland in 1891, stranded al the Pacific isle of Manga Reva after catching fire in December 1900, and rebuilt in 1902. Acquired by James P. McAllister in partnership with R. W. Geiske in 1914, she served in the New York-San Francisco trade. Painting by Os wald L. Breit.
Towing in Time with McAllister
By Oswald While conversing recently with Anthony McAllister Sr. in his office I noted beyond him on the Hudson River the handsome form and pleasing proportion of a tugboat, looking toylike far below. The familiar red funnel with two white bands topped with black, denoted a McAllister vessel. Mr. McAllister swivelled round in his office chair and picked up a pair of binoculars, handy on the window sill, through which he scrutinised the distant vessel. Smiling, he said how he once caught his son, Anthony Jr., through the glasses, sound asleep in.the sun on a coil of rope, on the deck of a passing McAllister tug, while supposedly working! "He's now 52, and President of the company," said his father. Mr. McAllister described the childhood pleasures of growing up just inside the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge in Brooklyn during the spacious , early years of this century. "When I was a little boy in 1905, I used to play in our shipyard on Saturdays and Sundays; The Creek is not very wide and they had what they called 'float stages', a raft of logs planked over for men to get on and work alongside a barge. I used to get aboard one of these and let the lines go and push myself back and forth across the Creek. When they were building a tugboat I used to climb through the framing when it was on the ways getting ready to launch . I was also fascinated with the workshops, but after a few years they bought the yard in Staten Island and did away with this one." Reminiscing about his early years he told me how his father gave him ''a very general education in the whole industry.' ' While still at school when only fifteen, he spent an entire summer as quartermaster in the big sidewheel passenger steamer Highlander running to Bear Mountain Park, and "that was my first job with McAllister Brothers," recalls Mr. McAllister. "A year or two later when on vacation from school, I helped repair tugboats SEA HISTORY, SUMMER 1981
L. Brett wherever they might be in port, either at a shipyard or pier, and I worked with the chief engineer. "In 1917 my father got me a job with the Sullivan Dry Dock Corporation," continued Mr. McAllister, "who built tugboats, steam tugs, and who did much of the repairs for McAllister Brothers fleet. I worked in the machine shop as an apprentice and became a lathe hand, and an assembler of main engines and so on. This was good background and experience because the next year I went to Stephens Tech." Mr. McAllister later graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He then went to sea as a fireman for eight months in one of the fleet of forty-three tankers which his father managed for the United States Government from 1918 till 1928. After this experience in deep-water ships, Mr. McAllister said that "about 1922 I was starting to get into the management of the shipping business to some degree . I was being sent by my father to meet ships coming in to port from voyages, to see that they were repaired , vittled, and paid off." Later Mr. McAllister had the responsibility ''to supervise the loading of cargoes on our lighters all over the port . If a man didn't show up, somebody had to jump in and load a bale or hoist cargo . I loaded every type of lighter with my own hands, and you worked six days a week. On Sunday my father liked to inspect the progress of work on the harbor, visit terminals and the shipyard. My job on Sunday, my day off, was to drive him around to these places because he didn't drive a car. In those days the lighter was a non-propelled unit, a simple barge of various types, many of them covered entirely by a house, in which case they were called covered barges. Others were equipped with a house on the after end only, which housed a coal burning steam boiler, and a steam hoisting engine; also a mast and boom. They 13