HOLLAND (WHTC) — A tugboat-barge crash on New York’s Hudson River Saturday killed three people. That tugboat, operating under the name “Specialist,” spent a dozen years as a familiar sight on Lake Macatawa — operating under the name Curly B.
The body of one victim of Saturday’s crash was recovered immediately; after recovering a second victim’s body, rescue divers stopped searching Sunday night.
Curly B., owned and operated from 1994 thorugh 2006 by Lake Michigan Contractors, Inc., cruised on Lake Macatawa.
The 84-foot, steel-hull tug was built in 1956 by the Houston-based Parker Brothers Incorporated, accordng to tugboatinformation.com. Originally named “Waverly,” the tug’s name was changed to “Brother Collins” in 1974 by its original owner, the Sioux City and New Orleans Barge Lines. In 1997, the company sold “Brother Collins” to the Chicago-based Calumet Marine Towing Corporation, which dubbed the tug “Curly B.”
Calument Marine sold the boat in 1992 to another Chicago firm, Kindra Lake Towing, which in 1994 sold Curly B. to Lake Michigan Contractors. Curly B. was sold in 2006 to Oris R. Ritter of Mobile, Alabama, and renamed “The Chief.”
The tug, acquired in 2007 by New York Marine Towing Incorporated of Montauk, New York, was renamed “Specialist II” and in 2010 renamed “Specialist” by the same company, according to tugboatinformation.com.
