06/17/10

Boston Towboat began in 1857 as T-Wharf Towing and was  owned by Mystic Steamship Company.  The Mystic Steamship Company operated coal-carrying colliers to transport coal from east coast ports such as New York, Baltimore and Newport News.   Boston Towboat was later owned by the parent company of Boston Gas, Eastern Enterprises. 

Boston Fuel Transportation was founded in 1932 by Bert Reinauer.  In the early 1950's he joined up with Vincent Tibbetts Sr. who then owned Chelsea Fuel.  BFT  operated a small fleet of motor tankers and barges that called on every New England port including such out of the way places such as Hallowell, Maine and Danvers Mass. 

In 1979 BFT acquired Ross Towboat with the Tug Cornell with its crew, including a Docking Pilot, and its ship docking contracts such as TFL, US Gypsum and the freezer ships that went to Cold Water Fish in the Island End River. BFT was now in the ship assist business.  During the next several years BFT expanded its assist business to include many of the tug and barge units that frequently visited Boston.

In 1985 Boston Fuel Transportation acquired Boston Towboat including its yard, towboats and name.   The resulting combined companies were named Boston Towing & Transportation Companies. When the companies combined  many of the crew from Boston Towboat stayed with the company along with several of the docking pilots.  Even though BTT's tug division was focused on assist work, the boats still were moving oil.  With three medium sized barge the tugs and barges were still frequent visitors to various New England ports such as Portsmouth, Portland and Bangor.

In 1989 BTT was awarded a contract for the MWRA.  Transporting equipment to from Quincy to Deer Island using Ro-Ro barges for the construction of The Deer Island Treatment Facility.  This contract involved two tugs and two ro-ro barges and lasted over ten years

The late 1990's saw environmental regulations that called for vapor recovery systems be installed for the transfer of gasoline from shore side.  Since the oil terminals in the port opted not to install the systems, the Tug Matthew Tibbetts and most of the barges were transferred to Reinauer in New York where vapor recovery systems were already in place.

After September 11, 2001 there was a call for more security and safety measures regarding the safe passage of LNG tankers that frequent the Distrigas Terminal in Everett.  BTT entered into a long term contract with Distrigas of Massachusetts, a subsidiary of Suez Energy, and built two new tractor tugs.  The Freedom and the Liberty were built at the Washburn and Doughty shipyard in East Boothbay, Maine.  The Freedom entered service in February, 2003 and the Liberty arrived in June of the same year.  These tugs are state of the art ASD Tractors.  They were built with both functionality and crew comfort in mind.  The addition of these tugs has added a measure of safety to ship docking that the port had never seen before.

In keeping with its proud tradition the company also has a bright future.  BTT has recently been awarded a 20 year contract by Suez energy to support their Neptune Offshore LNG Terminal.  This contract includes the construction and operation of two additional vessels, a 128 foot, 5400 hp, controllable pitch Z Drive, FiFi 1 Offshore Support Vessel based in Gloucester, Ma, as well as a smaller 101foot, 5400hp, controllable pitch Z Drive, FiFi 1 tug that will operate in the harbor, as well as acting as backup to the larger offshore vessel. This will increase BTT’s fleet to four tractor tugs in addition to eight other conventional tugs.