All Aboard the Tug Life

“Once you are on a tugboat, you fall in love.” – Paul Vassall, owner of the Jessie T.

The mystique of a tug is like none other and though these working boats may seem an unlikely pleasure craft once retired, the tug community is passionate. ACBS has 6 member tugs, each as unique as its history. The Jessie T. is one, a refurbished Navy boat kept true to her original design.

Owned by Paul Vassall, who comes from a Navy family, when he had the opportunity to purchase a “little” piece of maritime history, he jumped at it. Scouring the internet, Paul had for years kept his eyes open for just the right boat – a tug. Not one recreated with a fiber glass hull and not one that had been repurposed from something else entirely, but a tugboat in every sense of the word. “I served in the Navy from 1971-75, my grandfather served in the British Navy and my father was in the U.S. Navy. My mother, as a Navy wife, was in the Navy too.”  Oh sure, he’d had other boats over the years, but “once you are on a tugboat, you fall in love.”

When the Chester, a 1936 Engineering Corps (now called Army Corps of Engineers) tug made by the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company came available in 2002, all 61-feet of her, Paul had his boat. How to get the Chester, which Paul has renamed Jessie T. after his mother, from New Bedford, Massachusetts back to his home in Detroit was the question. It took two weeks, 1,200 gallons of fuel and six friends/crew members to move the 80 ton, 17-foot wide vessel down to New London, Connecticut, then along the Hudson (“I know it sounds funny but I hadn’t realized that Long Island is so long!” says Paul), past the Statue of Liberty, through the Erie Canal’s 35 locks (where, Paul had been assured, the tug would just fit under the low bridges once everything had been removed from the top of her pilot house – it did!) and on into Lake Erie.

Today, instead of spending her days rescuing sailors and ships as she did while based in Philadelphia during WWII, Jessie T. spends her time docked near Lake St. Claire, where Paul enjoys puttering to keep her in good condition, and cruises along the Detroit River. “There’s a lot of paint chipping, a lot of manual labor,” says Paul of his pride in keeping her in original condition. “It’s neat being different and I like giving tours. She’s like a magnet,” he says. “Here are all these nice big cruisers but everyone comes to see the tugboat.”

As for many whose interest in classic boating turns into a passion, Paul can’t iimagine life without Jessie T. In fact, he’s thought of relocating from his home in Ortonville, Michigan. But, Paul says, “its hard to find a place to dock your 61-foot tugboat!”