Cates’ wheelhouse offers unique view of harbour life Martin Millerchip News Reporter martin@nsnews.com “THAT’S her now,” says skipper Doug Montgomery. Search the 10 p.m. shadows under the Lions Gate Bridge as I might, I can’t pick out the freighter with which we are to ren- dezvous. But then [ also hadn’t noticed the speedboat without running lights that had crossed our bow at high speed five min- utes carlier. The Vancouver and North Shore skylines are ablaze with electric light, but the good weather has gone, replaced by heavy cloud and the threat of rain. The Charles HW. Cates 3, or “the Three” for short, is idling in the middle of Vancouver Harbour off the Burnaby Shoal which is marked by a flashing buoy thar, of course, I haven’t been able to pick out of the inky waters. “Falcon, line upon the starboard quarter; Three, line up on the starboard bow.” - The voice on the radio is that of the pilot on board the Blaze Ocean, the 13,706-ton freighter we are here to meet and I still can’t sec. Having ridden along on a couple of berthing jobs earlier in the afteznoon I know that the pilot is not talking a bout lining up in some generic position relative to the freighter, but that he expects us to manocuvre alongside and attach tow ropcs. The Falcon is the Seaforth Falcon and is the other tug that wilt help to berth the Blue Ocean at Burlington Northern's ter- minal on Vancouver’s Gastown waterfront. The wharf is more properly called the Ceres dock, but the tight-knit marine indus- try can’t pronounce it never mind spell it and the Cates dis- _ patcher stil slugs the destination as “BRL” for Burlington on cur job sheet. Twin spotlights suddenly blaze out of the night illuminating the front end of the Blue Ocean. The spots come from the Falcon as it ties on to a spot just under the freighter’s bridgeway. The stern of the ship lies behind the lights and is barely visible so the ship appears to be leaping into the light. And it’s leaping at speed! What a few moments ago had seemed an interesting snapshot of marine industry is now bearing down on us with all the sub- tlety of an iron-clad rhino. . “He’s moving,” Montgomery says succinctly and spins the Three virtually in her own length while pushing the throttles almost all the way forward. The Three will do approximately 12 knots flat out while the Blue Ocean is barrelling, into the harbour at 2 good 10. Seems like there should be power to spare, but the cL : . rtosy Norit Venc . DAN King, Charles H. Cates and an unidentified man aboard the Charles H. Cates ilin 1925. -tide. is ebbing so both vessels are fighting the current. The ‘Three's owin Caterpillar diesel engines develop a total of 2,400 horse power, powerful by any berthing tug standard, but they * don’t match the Blwe Orcean’s power and the needles on our twin "rev counters are in the red zonc as we struggle to match speeds. - Blue Ocean is coming in empty (to pick up a cargo of raw - B.C. logs) because the nose of her keel is well out of the water “— the better to smash through anything in her way. Montgomery adjusts the throttles and jockeys us closer and clos- “er to the red-lead underbelly. of the beast. ~~’ My earlier trips with skipper Terry Jordan on the Charles H. .. Cates Thave already taught me to respect the ability of these tug- boat’ men to judge distances to the point that'I would swear you could put a hand between tug and ship and leave it there with- . out harm. So I am unprepared for the sudden bang as the Three’s side meets the Bite Ocean’s hull. . “That's the hardest part of the job — the suction these big : ships create pulls you in,” says Montgomery. Museum and Archives ~ north shore news UNDAY FOCUS Sunday, July 18. 1999 - North Shore News — 3 NEWS photo tutte iverson CATES skipper Terry Jordan in the wheelhouse of the Z-peller Charles H. Cates 1. Jordan's right hand rats: on one of two “joysticks” that control both the speed and direction of the berthing tug. He adds with a grin, “You've probably already heard the say- ing around Cates — the job is 95% pure boredom and 5% pure terror.” My hearts gradually stops trying to compete with the 6,000 rpm. of the Three as a weighted line snakes down from the Blue Ocean to be tied onto our head line by Scott the deckhand. Back up over our heads goes the head line and behind it the tow rope as Montgomery backs off the winch. The rope looks frayed, but that’s just a woven covering designed as protection. Inside it is Spectra line with a breaking strain of 309,000 tons and a saie working load of around 60,000 tons. - Now we’re just along for the ride, until it’s time to act like a movable propeller for the freighter as it turns across the current and Jines up with its wharf'at Burlington. Here, we mect Seaspan Stormer, the third, and smallest, tug of the berthing team. The Stormer will handle the lines for Blue Ocean, picking them up as they are lowered from the bow and ferrying them all of 20 feet to the dock so that a couple of longshoremen can tie them off. It looks like an easy gig, but the Stormer is the poten- tial pea between the rock and the hard place. She sits at the head ofa cul-de-sac that is slowly being filled by 13,707 tons of mov- ing freighter, calmly acting as the pilot’s forward cyes. The Burlington dock is short and the pilot is determined to get his ship as far in as possible. ‘There's about 25 feet of water left in front of Blue Ocean when the pilot says, “We'll give it another little kick akead,” and asks the Falcon to adjust her posi- tion in case emergency braking is required. __ Unbidden, Stormer backs out of the decreasing gap in front of Blue Ocean and sits next to us until the commands “Easy back, Falcon. Easy on Three” are heard and the freighter’s snail- like forward creep is arrested by the: Falcon while we bump heads at the forward end to keep the Blue Ocean as tight to the dock as possible. There’s just enough room Jeft for the Stormer to slide in and do her job with the lead lines while we sit and stare at steel. “Pretty casy, ch,” says Montgomery. Indced it has been like watching a ballet, albcit one choreo- graphed fcr a moving floor, but the dangers on the job are real: engines can fail, a ship being moved can lose its steerage, a tug can slip off a greasy hull at the worst possible moment and there are the constant problems of wind, tide and crews who speak lit- tle English. “I’ve seen it go from teamwork like that te screaming and selling in no time. flat,” allows Montgomery. : With a bit of pressing he recails the time not long after he started at Cates in 1988 when he was helping to berth a freighter, got caught in its wash and was pushed under the end ofa dock. As the wooden deckhouse gave way, a coupling on the diesel return line was sheared and fuel oil sprayed over the cook- stove. “So the deckhouse is on fire, but I need steerage to get clear of the dock, so I can’t shut the engine down and raw fuel is being pumped straight into the fire. Of course, it’s diesel and only some of it’s burning, the rest is pooling on the floor, and when I go to pass the extinguisher to the deckhand, I slip and fall flat on my ass.” See Crew page On the waterfront: . 100 years of Cates. CATES was the first of several major B.C. marine companies to be taken over in 1992 by the giant - Washington Marine group, a company whose parts now include Vancouver Shipyards, Victoria Shipyards, Seaspan, Kingcome, Norsk and others. Captain Charles H. Cates was a veteran of the New England - clippers. He came to Burrard Inlet in the 1880s and took up res- idence at Moodyville, becoming the first man to establish a busi- ness on the North Shore watertront. : ‘ The Cates Web site chronicles the story this way: | be Every Northwest city of consequence has, it seems, a “Great Fire” somewhere in its history. : ; ae , Vancouver had one in 1886 - am. ; and che town was practically A New Industry. wiped out. One of the first businesses to rise from the ashes was a long cent with a long table down the middle, 2 woodburning cookstove in one end and a sign that said “Restaurant” outside, ; custle‘and bustle. ‘The captais The proprietor, who was 2. sill erece a large wilvanized: iron! first class cook, had- just _ Warehouse, 6ux150 leet ~slongside © - pthe whart, aad will do all hints of removed a large roast fromthe |repaie work in vessels. A’wawimill |: oven, His partner, a frst class “pill instaled immediatly, run waiter, was Setting ready fe il be supplied with iuaber, coal serve i to the customers Who i ee tea tire toa a demolition crew touched off a charge of dynamite:in the townsman, has ctected a gridiron at the. foot al- Rogers Vavenu the Esplanaile, for the requ all kiads of hoats, Me-has repaired the Guverninent dredge and six {' , stows during Use past week. -The |, whard has sor been in use dor geome | * tinie,: hut it: is’ now’ the scenz ‘off’ jpatronage und a successial © busi: negs..~ ois ee 7 rubble outside, there was a terrif. A 1907. item from. The: Express describes Cates’, © ic explosion and a huge. stum sailed through the tent roof, early beginnings. demolishing both cook-stove and 7 roast. : . “This business is too damned dangerous,” the restaurant’s | proprietor, C. H. Cates, announced. “I think I'll go back to sea.” And roughly speaking that is how Vancouver’s oldest tug boat firm, C. H. Cates and Sons got its start. ce “ He took over a remarkable vessei known as Sprat’s Ark (some- times given as Spratts Ark), an ungainly steam scow some 240 fect long with a 40-foor beam. A pair of “sewing machine” engines turned twin screws which gave the Ark a speed of five miles an hour, providing wind and tide were with her. She carried hay and granite from Gibson’s Landing and the North Arm to Vancouver and she hauled the stone for the first Vancouver cour- thouse and the parliament buildings in Victoria. ; The first log of Sprat’s Ark, dated April 1890, records that See Bet pageS. 4 Capt. Chas, Cates, our pioftcer - :