McNally back again

A tug that has been in and out of Halifax for many years is back again. Mister Joe is a jack of all trades for McNally Construction Ltd, towing their floating plant all over Atlantic Canada, including Newfoundland, and into the Great Lakes. With the award of the Halterm  expansion dredging contract to McNally the tug is back again, first with a pair of dump scows and last night with a crane barge. The two scows do not not bear any visible names, but the crane barge is Derrick No.4 and on its deck is another of McNally's tug/workboats, J.F.Whalen.

The J.F. Whalen was built in 2013 by Chantier Naval Forillon in Gaspé and is a twin screw boat of 540 bhp. It is equipped with push knees and its wheelhouse is demountable for road transport. A sister tug, D.L. Stanyer was built at the same time and is based with McNally's Ontario fleet.

The Derrick No.4 dates from 1963 when it was built by Marine Industries Ltd in Sorel, QC for Dufresne Construction Inc as C-304. They renamed it M-28 in 1966. Ownership passed to Canadian Dredge and Dock in 1972 and they renamed it Derrick No.4  It began to show up in Atlantic Canada in the mid-1990s working for Beaver Marine, which was eventually folded in to McNally. Although the various cranes have changed over the years, the barge itself looks much the same with a moderate size deckhouse and two spuds.

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