tugboats

[A. Maberry]

Very true. Both in the Puget Sound area and on the Columbia River, they're
tugboats, whether they are pulling barges or pushing them. I don't recall
ever hearing of towboats here in the PNW.

allen
maberry at u.washington.edu


On Mon, 17 Jun 2002, Wendalyn Nichols wrote:

> Not at all exclusive to Easterners. In the Puget Sound area, folks call
> boats that guide big tankers and push barges 'tugboats' as well. I'm not
> sure about other large harbors in the US, but I'd be interested to know the
> distribution of the term.
>
> At 10:55 AM 6/17/02 -0400, James A. Landau wrote:
>
> >A little while ago a barge hit and knocked down a highway bridge, which made
> >national news for several days.  Many of the news reports referred to the
> >"tugboat" which was pushing the barge.  That is a giveaway of an Easterner.
> >A "tugboat" (there are many in New York Harbor) pushes an otherwise
> >self-propelled ship around the harbor, or less often goes out into the ocean
> >to pull a damaged ship to harbor...
>