|
|
          |
Boston
Towboat began in 1857 as T-Wharf Towing and was owned by Mystic Steamship
Company. The Mystic Steamship Company operated coal-carrying colliers to
transport coal from east coast ports such as New York, Baltimore and Newport
News.
Boston Towboat was later owned by the parent company of Boston Gas, Eastern
Enterprises.
Boston Fuel Transportation was founded in 1932 by Bert Reinauer. In the early 1950's he joined up with Vincent Tibbetts Sr. who then owned Chelsea Fuel. BFT operated a small fleet of motor tankers and barges that called on every New England port including such out of the way places such as Hallowell, Maine and Danvers Mass.
In 1979 BFT acquired Ross Towboat with the Tug
Cornell with its crew, including a
Docking Pilot, and its ship docking contracts such as TFL, US Gypsum and the
freezer ships that went to Cold Water Fish in the Island End River. BFT was now
in the ship assist business. During the next several years BFT
expanded its assist business to include many of the tug and barge units that
frequently visited Boston.
In 1985 Boston Fuel Transportation acquired Boston Towboat including its yard, towboats and name. The resulting combined companies were named Boston Towing & Transportation Companies. When the companies combined many of the crew from Boston Towboat stayed with the company along with several of the docking pilots. Even though BTT's tug division was focused on assist work, the boats still were moving oil. With three medium sized barge the tugs and barges were still frequent visitors to various New England ports such as Portsmouth, Portland and Bangor.
In 1989 BTT was awarded a contract for the
MWRA. Transporting equipment to
from Quincy to Deer Island using Ro-Ro barges for the construction of The Deer
Island Treatment Facility. This contract involved two tugs and two ro-ro
barges and lasted over ten years
The late 1990's saw environmental regulations that called for vapor recovery systems be installed for the transfer of gasoline from shore side. Since the oil terminals in the port opted not to install the systems, the Tug Mathew Tibbetts and most of the barges were transferred to Reinauer in New York where vapor recovery systems were already in place.
After September
11, 2001 there was a call for more security and safety measures regarding the
safe passage of LNG tankers that frequent the Distrigas Terminal in Everett.
BTT entered into a long term contract with
Distrigas
of Massachusetts, a subsidiary of
Suez Energy, and built two new tractor tugs. The Freedom and the Liberty
were built at the Washburn
and Doughty shipyard in East Boothbay, Maine. The Freedom entered
service in February, 2003 and the Liberty arrived in June of the same year.
These tugs are state of the art ASD Tractors. They were built with both
functionality and crew comfort in mind. The addition of these tugs has added
a measure of safety to ship docking that the port had never seen before.
In keeping with its proud tradition the company also has a bright future. BTT has recently been awarded a 20 year contract by Suez energy to support their Neptune Offshore LNG Terminal. This contract includes the construction and operation of two additional vessels, a 128 foot, 5400 hp, controllable pitch Z Drive, FiFi 1 Offshore Support Vessel based in Gloucester, Ma, as well as a smaller 101foot, 5400hp, controllable pitch Z Drive, FiFi 1 tug that will operate in the harbor, as well as acting as backup to the larger offshore vessel. This will increase BTT’s fleet to four tractor tugs in addition to eight other conventional tugs.
The companies of BTT have proudly served the port of Boston for 150 years and will continue to do so with competitive rates and highly trained crews using state of the art equipment.