John Willmot is old enough to have worked as a deckhand on one of the last steam-powered tugs in New York harbor, but still young enough to have become captain of Moran Towing Corporation’s newest and most modern tractor tug.

In an industry that has gone through radical technological change in the past century, Captain Willmot’s career span is interesting. Growing up on New York’s Staten Island, he watched the comings and goings of MORAN’s tugboat fleet from a favorite shoreline vantage point. When old enough, he was taught the rudiments of tugboating as a young deckhand aboard the tug Brooklyn, where he wrestled with heavy manila hawsers and helped the engineer maintain the tug’s triple- expansion steam engine.

Willmot’s position today, however, almost always finds him in the wheelhouse of one of the newest and most modern tugboats in the U.S. As captain of MORAN’s new 5,100 hp Z-drive tractor tug Gramma Lee T. Moran, based in New York, he represents a company whose history parallels the entire technological history of the tugboat industry. And as he proudly explains, there is very little technology in common between the tug he currently skippers and the old steam tug Brooklyn.

Despite decades of experience as a tugboat captain, Willmot, 63, had to "go to school" for months before taking over Gramma Lee T. Moran this past summer — and even so, he adds modestly, it may be some time before he considers himself truly proficient with such a technologically advanced vessel.

"It’s a whole new world of boat handling," Willmot explains. "Everything is different from what I learned years ago, and from what I practiced and perfected all my life on many different types of tugboats."

Willmot’s new tug is the eleventh Z-drive-style tractor tug in MORAN’s fleet of more than 90 tugboats. The company also has several tugs that are driven by conventional single-screw propulsion aft and a retractable, azimuthing Z-drive thruster located forward. The fleet is in fact the largest collection of tractor- style tugs operating on the Eastern Seaboard, and the third-largest operating in the U.S.

Willmot, who lives in Florida, is actually the newest of about two-dozen trained tractor-tug skippers working for MORAN. He spent three months in Savannah training aboard a sister ship, Diane Moran, before taking delivery of his own tug at the Washburn & Doughty Shipyard in Maine during the summer.

"That was a very humbling experience," he remarks. "For the first two days I just stood back and watched the crews down there. And then when they finally let me get into the chair, it was all I could do for a couple of days just to steer a straight course or perform the most basic maneuvers. It was four or five days before I would dare to go near a ship or a dock. And those guys were right with me all the time.”

The controls of aft-mounted, azimuthing Z-drive thrusters are known to be intimidating to almost all new tractor-tug skippers. The tug’s two electronic joysticks operate independently and in a counter-intuitive manner. Turning one of the joysticks to the left (in a counterclockwise direction) for example, would direct thrust to starboard, which would turn the tug’s bow to starboard. A typical technique for stopping the motion of the tug would be to direct each thruster towards the other, creating opposing forces that cancel one another.

"It’s all in the hands and the link with the brain, and it’s pretty scary at first," says Willmot. "One of the hardest achievements for me was just learning to land the boat at a dock with tidal current running, and with all the variables of current and wind, and just learning to get alongside the dock in a proper manner."

More recently, Willmot has been properly getting alongside some of the largest ships to call in the Port of New York, and has begun training some of his fellow captains and mates.

Peter Keyes, MORAN’s vice president of operations, says Willmot has a classic teacher’s type of personality. "That was my primary reason for pushing John toward taking over this type of tug," he comments. "Training is something that John does well. He relates well to the younger guys. That’s an important part of his new tractor tug career, because as he continues to develop mastery of this vessel, his natural role will be to spread the skills to others."

Willmot’s previous tug was the 1,800 hp, conventional twin-screw tug Kathleen Turecamo (Moran acquired Turecamo Maritime in 1998). Towing barges and doing ship assist work all over the Northeast, Willmot developed a reputation as the training captain for aspiring mates.

"During the 1990s, whenever we were moving a person from deckhand into a steering position, we would try to send them to work under John," says Keyes. "He taught them the ropes. Over a period of 10 years or so we probably had at least a dozen mates who were groomed under John, so he is certainly accustomed to training."

Willmot, along with most other wheelhouse personnel aboard MORAN tugs, has also attended a weeklong bridge resource training course at Marine Safety International (MSI), in Newport, R.I. After undergoing hands-on training from Willmot, other skippers and mates aboard the Gramma Lee T. Moran will also attend the MSI program, which includes both simulator and classroom training.

When sister ship Diane Moran was introduced to service in Savannah in 2000, Moran sent all related personnel and key pilots from the Savannah River to attend a custom-designed MSI training course, in anticipation of scheduled work with liquid natural gas tankers calling at the port.

"We have found it to be very beneficial to put the pilots and wheelhouse people together for training," comments Bill Muller, MORAN’s senior vice president. “That way everybody’s on the same page when they get out there working together.”

One of the biggest training considerations, says Muller, is vocabulary. One way that a tractor-style tug is different from a conventional tug, he explains, is that it may not be working bow-on to a ship. A tractor tug could also have its side or stern in contact with the ship and still be able to apply needed force vectors. The possibilities of different means of alignment by the more modern tug demand different forms of communication between pilot and tug skipper. “You have to think in terms of a tug potentially operating around 360 degrees, instead of just the traditional bow-on perspective,” said Muller. “So a command like ‘Come ahead easy’ would not necessarily have the same meaning that it might have with a conventional tug, and it needs to be interpreted for the modern tug skipper.”

John Willmot notes that when he first got started with the tractor-style tugs, the vocabulary of commands was the last thing on his mind. “For me,” he observes, “it was first just learning how to make a circle or come alongside a moving vessel, and then later it got into some of the more complex maneuvers like indirect towing techniques. But once you get beyond that stage and start putting the tug to work, communication with the pilots is all-important. Without communication and clear understanding of what’s required, we can’t provide the true potential of these types of tugs.” Helping to harness the true potential of MORAN’s newest tractor tug after her delivery was Terry Briggs, the company’s senior tractor tug captain from Norfolk. Briggs, who works on every type of tug in the company fleet and has a reputation as a versatile boat handler, spent several weeks in New York in June and July working with the tug’s main and alternate crews. "We’ve been getting the fine tuning from Terry, and he started with us almost as soon as we arrived in New York," says Willmot. "We’ve been working on everything from techniques for staying out at a 90-degree angle to techniques of indirect towing. We have also been working on getting the most out of the tug where we take those 1,000-foot ships around the corner at Bergen Point. There’s a lot to cover and it includes both the main crew and the alternate crew."

The Gramma Lee T. Moran, powered by a pair of EMD 12- 645 F7B diesels providing up to 5,600 hp, does indeed have considerable potential for ship assist work. Designed collaboratively by MORAN and Bruce Washburn of the Washburn & Doughty shipyard, the tug is capable of providing 136,000 pounds of bollard pull and an escort speed of 13 knots. The engines meet the latest air emissions standards, and the tug is classed by ABS as A1 Ocean Towing with a fire fighting endorsement.

Gramma Lee T. Moran also has enhanced fire fighting capability in the form of two Skum 1,500 gpm fire monitors, fed by a 3,000 gpm Aurora fire pump powered by a 400 hp Caterpillar engine.

The tug is equipped with a Markey electric hawser winch on the bow and Markey capstan on the stern. The bow winch is equipped with 400 feet of nine-inchcircumference Plasma Line provided by Puget Sound Rope of Seattle.

This newest tug in the MORAN fleet is named to honor Lee Tregurtha, wife of Moran Chairman and CEO Paul Tregurtha. 'Gramma' is the name by which she is known to her 14 grandchildren.