Docking a ship

"The Last Mooring" by Tom Freeman should give you some ideas.  It depicts the final  mooring of the Arizona at Pearl, before the Vestal came alongside. 

Note the tug in the mid-distance.  Yard and district craft should have a black hull and Ocean Gray (5-O) upperworks.   Corsair Armada makes a 1:700 scale model of the USS Hoga, a tug who assisted several ships, including the Nevada on Dec 7.   Battlefleet Models makes several tugs and yardcraft , including YTL-17, lighter that was instrumental in fighting fires. 

Iron Shipwright makes a 1:350 scale model of the Hoga. 

A seamule is a type of tug - similar to a river towboat.  It usually has a small pilothouse structure on it, and a pair of push knees on the bow. 

Who makes a model of the Vestal and in what scales?

Scott

 You can find a nice resin model of USS Vestal AR4 (1941) at commander series models.  Hank  Support the troops  Garry owen

It's essentially a metal box with windows and a door aft. It is taller than wide and large enough to house one or two occupants, a helm console (throttles and engine mounted gages here), compass binnacle (a small one, on top of the console), a radio mounted on the overhead (often, just a handheld walkie talkie) and a horn. There is often a small mast for navigation lights and a flag. I've seen a very few with a navigation radar.I found this picture showing a sea mule in the foreground. Its pilot house is a little larger than usual, but not too much. Actually, this is a pretty nice sea mule.

The pilot house is aft. Look at the photo above.

Go to this website for the photo:

http://www.hazegray.org/navhist/canada/gallery/40_october_19_2004.jpg

Here's a picture of a sea mule at the USCG yard - http://images.military.com/fp-photos/pix2/00375_s.jpg.  

65 air cav vn wrote:

What are the two round things on either side of the pilothouse?  Thanks  Hank  Support the troops  Gary Owen

raised scuttles to the engine compartment

EdGrune wrote:

65 air cav vn wrote: What are the two round things on either side of the pilothouse?  Thanks  Hank  Support the troops  Gary Owen raised scuttles to the engine compartment

OK, I hope that the picture is visible, it is of the Chrysler. The dirty gray rectangular area aft of the two blue squares is where the pilot house stood. It has been cut away for the conversion that the owner is performing. You can see a dark area in the center of this rectangle where the helm console was installed. Sea mules are push boats but I can imagine that they could tow if they had to but aren't intended to do this. Sometimes they are used to move camels and caissons at times but these are tied alongside the sea mule, not pulled behind them. There isn't a lot of control with an object being towed. The predominent material for padding in the past was simply firehose nailed to the knees. The knees do extend into the water, about level with the keel. They do extend past the waterline. The bow is scow-like, it resembles the bow of a flatbarge. By the way, these boats are very powerful for their size but are geared and propellored for torque and not speed. They move at maybe 10 knots and leave a tremendous wake when at these speeds. I can't imagine why the owner of this thing wants to make a houseboat out it, they are loud, slow and the worst fuel hogs in the shipyard. Good luck to him.

The USCG mule was used at the USCG Yard in Curtis Bay (Balimore), MD to move some of the smaller boats around.  The curved metal piece at the bow is called a breakwater, and is a splash guard.  Most of the WWII era sea mules wouldn't have a curved breakwater like that. The mule is tied alongside the MESSENGER, an 85' ST tug from WWII. 

Yard and district craft of the immediate pre-war period would likely have been painted with a  black hull.  Superstructure would likely have been Standard Navy Gray #5. 

Ocean Gray (5-O) wasn't ordered until the September, 1941 issue of SHIPS-2, the Navy's painting directions.  Ocean Gray was used during the war on yard & district craft,  but these were low priority craft for getting them painted by December.   Refer to the picture I posted further up the thread of the garbage lighter spraying water on the burning West Virginia.  Black hull & gray superstructure.