Katherine G Photo: Will Van Dorp

On Friday morning, we posted about the capsize of the “tugboat” Katherine G, off Liberty Island  in New York harbor.  It turns out that the Katherine G is not  tugboat in the conventional sense.  Will Van Dorp at the tugster blog calls it a “lift-boat” rather than a tug.  It has three distinctive “spuds,” vertical columns that can be dropped to the bottom to stabilize or lift the boat, to provide a stable work platform.  It does not appear that the spuds were down when she capsized.

The NewYorkologoy blog  comments that the “Katherine G, …has been identified as both a work barge and tugboat.”  They go on to say that the Katherine G had been “assisting with the interior renovations at the Statue of Liberty” and that it “capsized as it was preparing to transport a 60-ton construction crane off Liberty Island, according to officials from the Coast Guard and National Park Service.”  So it sounds like someone made a serious mistake when loading the crane.  Fortunately, there were no serious injuries.