Boston built itself up from the ocean, which is coming back. See also a printed scrapbook. Gray day in Eastie. Misty morning. Not much moving aside from a few ferries and the tugboats that never sleep.
Independence , queen of the Boston tug fleet, takes a short break in Chelsea. The big push tug Pearl Coast has just brought a cement barge in to a Charlestown pier.
The shipyard, which has quite the colorful history , has embarked on an ambitious plan to upgrade its facilities and make them more resilient to climate change. Additionally, an extension to the Harborwalk will offer a welcome link to the Piers Parks just west. As the shipyard has upgraded, it has cleaned out the archipelago. Back to today: In Little Mystic Channel, I saw the first sign of the Army Corps of Engineers working in the harbor, presumably in its collaboration with the city and state to protect the coast.
Rainsford redux. The last day in July is none too soon to paddle out to Rainsford Island. Aside from a family quietly camped out on the western shore, the island was uninhabited, and it was gorgeous as ever. Thimble story. The islet is man-made, with rocks semi-neatly clustered around the rusty remnants of a large iron cylinder. Was this all left over from a navigation aid, perhaps for the 20th-century Squantum shipyard or naval air station??
Thimble was created back around , notes Boston Harbor Beacon, to house that iron cylinder, which was punched down through the seafloor to help build an outfall tunnel across the bay. Sewage works do not loom large in histories of great engineering projects. But this tunnel was impressive for its time, stretching more than a mile through slate rock deep under the bay and incorporating more than 7 million bricks.
