City's Oldest, LIC-Built Tugboat Offering Harbor Tours Again

LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — For the first time since the pandemic, you can take a ride around the New York Harbor in the city's last surviving wooden tugboat, which was built in Long Island City.

W.O. Decker was built in Queens by the Newtown Creek Towing Company in 1930, a time when tugboats filled the city's harbor, moving items and people between the port city's different boroughs.

“Decker was built as a small harbor tug so she was used for shifting barges,” Captain Jonathan Boulware, president and CEO of the South Street Seaport Museum told CBSNY. Thanks to the museum, the tugboat has retired from shifting items around the city, and is now used to take New Yorkers on a tour of the harbor.

In 2019, after a decade of restoration, W.O. Decker started taking people out on the 75-minute water tour, CBS reported, but that stopped during the pandemic — until Friday, when tours resumed.

The harbor cruise showcases city landmarks from the water, including the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Brooklyn Bridge, and Governors Island.

Boulware, who leads the tours, has been on boats his entire life — he told NY1 that his first time in a boat was when he was six days old — but maintains that Decker is "the cutest boat in the harbor, possibly anywhere in existence."

In addition to being a piece of history, the captain said that Decker is in tip-top condition.

“Even though her principal business is getting people out on the water, she is still actually a tugboat,” Boulware told NY1.

The South Street Seaport Museum will run three tours each Saturday, from July 31 through Aug. 21. The tours will depart at 1:15pm, 2:45pm, and 4:15pm. Tickets cost $30 for adults, $25 for seniors and students, and $15 for kids under 18-years-old.

Buy a ticket here — and don't wait if you want one, since they're almost sold out.