Page 27 - Port of Baltimore Sept/Oct 2011
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September/October 2011
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The Port of Baltimore
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25
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Marine transport
Vane’s
VISION
Has Focus On Fleet
Maryland-built tugboats are among many exciting
new vessels for a business that continues to grow.
L
ater this year, The Vane Brothers Company will launch the
Hunting Creek
— the last in a series of six 90-foot tug-
boats built for the Baltimore-based business by Chesapeake
Shipbuilding in nearby Salisbury, Md. Like her sister tugs, the
Hunting Creek
will go into Vane’s fleet of vessels moving petro-
leum and providing ship bunkering at the Port of Baltimore and
elsewhere along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard.
These boats demonstrate Vane’s commitment to its home
state, even as the 113-year-old company has grown to become
one of the East Coast’s major marine transportation businesses.
BY KATHY BERGREN SMITH
The idea to build the six boats in Maryland was suggested
by Senior Port Captain Jim Demske, who had been overseeing
construction of Vane’s new tug fleet for several years in Louisiana.
In fact, Demske was spending so much time there that, after
Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast in 2005, the desk clerk at
the hotel where Demske regularly stayed called to let him know
everyone was okay and the hotel was open.
“I started thinking about the [Chesapeake Shipbuilding] yard
at Salisbury, since I had been by there many times in the tug over
the years and knew they built coastal cruise ships,” said Demske.
In 2007, he took a ride down Maryland’s Eastern Shore, met
with the yard’s manager, Tony Severn, and looked over the facil-
ities. “My thought was, ‘This could be a tug-building yard. They
have skilled workers, an in-house naval architect and deep water,’”
said Demske, who added that he has been especially pleased
with the high-quality “fit and finish” work that Chesapeake
does. “It is definitely more polished than a workboat finish,
because these guys are used to building passenger vessels.”
The Chesapeake-built vessels are the final six in a series of
23 tugboats and 26 barges, plus two large articulated tug-barge
units, constructed within the last decade by Vane. This ambitious
ESY OF VANE BROTHERS COMPANY
