LUNA (tugboat)

Launched June 29, 1930, the tugboat Luna is presently (1983) tied up at Pier 10, Boston Marine Industrial Park, South Boston and is being restored as a living museum. A captain and crew live aboard. The Luna (see Photos #1-6) is an oil-fired diesel-electric tugboat of wood construction (oak and longleaf yellow pine) with trunnel fastenings. Her overall length is 97' 3", register breadth is 24' 8" and draft is 13'. The hull speed is a maximum 12.5 knots and the vessel's displacement is approximately 325 tons; the gross tonnage is 165 tons. Propulsion is provided by two six-cylinder, single acting, four-cycle Winston diesel engines with a single, four-blade 8' 9" screw in a diesel-electric drive system which delivers 760 brake horsepower.

The Luna a ecomodated an average of six crew members: captain, mate, engineer, cook, deckhanä, and oiler. The-captain occupied the cabin directly aft of the wheelhouse, the mate and engineer occupied the two cabins in the main house aft of the engineroom fidley, while the unlicensed crew lived in the forecastle below deck. Architecturally, the Luna is a classic wood tugboat. She was traditionally designed, traditionally built, and massively constructed. The hull and house design was representative of the harbor tugboars that worked along the coast in protected waters in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. launching paonted yiaht winte wo te her house interoor and extego were Vaxnas, exterior were varnished.

The door stiles and,rails, window sash, staçk and walestrakes (fenders part of the hull) were painted black. The decks were kept oiled and all of the brass was kept polished (all of the exposed hardware was solid brass).

/Architect M. M. Davis & Sons/John G. Alden Co. Statement of Significance (in one paragraph) The tugboat Luna possesses integrity of location (in Boston Harbor), setting, design, materials, workmanship and association. She is significant both for the high quality of her design which combines a traditional overall appearance with the most innovative mechanical drive system of the time and which marks an important transition in tugboat architecture inithe second quadter of the 20th century. She was the first of her class built for a commercial tugboat company and one of the last wooden-hulled tugboats constructed; she remains the only original diesel-electric tugboat still running in the United States.

Additionally, the Luna possesses an enduring and outstanding career in association with the maritime history of Boston Harbor from 1930 to the present. The tugboat Luna thus meets criteria A and C of the National Register of Historic Places. The City of Boston owes much of its greatness to the merchantships -- as many as fifteen ships a day -- which used the ldeep water port during the 18th and 19th centuries. Prior to the introduction of the steam engine nurie: Paor to in the early 19th century, sailing ships entered, docked and departed at the mercy of the weather and tides. The steam engine permitted both larger bulk transportation andthe development of small powerful tugboats built to tow or push barges, freighters and liners and for salvage operations.

The Charlotte Dundas was the first, built in Scotland in 1802. In the United States, the Rufus King was among the earliest built for the New York Dock Company in 1825. Like her British counterparts, she utilized a coal-fired steam engine and paddle-wheel propulsion.