Steamer Islander, built by the Bath, (Me.) Iron Works, Ltd., for the New Bedford, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Steamboat Co., was launched Wednesday afternoon of last
As the steamer Nobska slipped past the Chops on the ebbing tide late yesterday afternoon, there was none of the celebration that greeted her arrival in these waters just about 50 years ago.
Her decks were empty, her boilers cold. When she left Nantucket slip yesterday she didn’t sound one long blast on the steam whistle people hereabouts have come to know as hers just by the sound - she was on the end of a Coastline Towing Company hawser.
Pennant-bedecked and fresh paint, the Steamship Authority’s newest ($3.8 million) and biggest ferryboat (230 feet, 1,000 passengers, 494 net tons of freight), the motor vessel Nantucket, docked Wednesday at the Oak Bluffs wharf for public inspection. The Regional High School band and hundreds of cheering spectators had welcomed her to Woods Hole at the end of her 871-mile voyage from her Jacksonville, Fla., shipyard birthplace. She goes into service from the mainland to Oak Bluffs and Nantucket today.
The Steamship Authority has purchased the 157-foot diesel-powered motor vessel Auriga for use as a freight carrier. The price was $435,140, “which will be augmented by the cost of modifications for Island service, as well as outfitting and delivery costs.”
According to a statement released by the boatline this week, Auriga will be employed primarily in transporting trucks and freight from Woods Hole to Nantucket during the summer schedule.”
Passersby near the Oak Bluffs public beach were startled yesterday morning when, eerily, out of a thick morning fog, crept the bow of a large white steamer heading straight toward shore.
Thrice blessed, the motor vessel Uncatena slid down the ways at Blout's shipyard in Warren, R.I., with the high tide on Sunday evening. After her fitting out, she will arrive at Woods Hole before long to join the rest of the Steamship Authority's fleet.
The triple blessing came during the christening ceremony, when not just the customary one bottle of champagne but three were smashed against the Uncatena's bow, each wielded by an Authority member's wife, the whole process making for an excess of bubbled and splintered glass.
