Tugboats, the Thomas the Train Engines of the water world, are the ambassadors to the shore. Tugboats are the obsessive-compulsive roommate of the boat world. Everything has to be in its proper place and it is up to tugboats to push and pull other boats in the harbor to their proper destination. Tugboats appreciate orderly fashion so much they don’t die in the wild all willy nilly like say, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, they put themselves in their proper place just like elephants.

When elephants are ready to die they say goodbye to their herd and travel to the elephant graveyard, their final resting place. Humans tend to consider the elephant graveyard a myth but obviously we have minimal proof of its existence, we’re not elephants and elephants don’t reveal their special locations to google maps.

The closest humans have come to discovering the elephant graveyard was with Operation Dumbo Drop in which they parachuted an elephant out of a plane thinking it would lead them to the mythical lands. Although most details on this operation are still classified it is thought the elephant, Bo Tat was actually an elephant mole, used to gain intel on the humans and to see what information we had recovered on the graveyard’s location. Bo Tat quickly found out we had no lead and went back to her herd and told the elephant kingdom of her success.

Tugboats, just like elephants have a specific resting place. While the location of the elephant graveyard still eludes us, we know exactly where the tugboats go when they’re ready to retire. Staten Island.

The tugboats working in the New York City have an easy trip to Staten Island and their final resting place but the tugboats coming from far away, such as San Francisco must answer their death call a whole year before their final tugging days. Some may say the Panama Canal was built mainly to ease the trip of tugboats to the Staten Island Tugboat Graveyard.

If you’ve ever heard the story of the Little Engine That Could based on no research it is posited the original story was about a tugboat in Shanghai making its journey to Staten Island. It was train propaganda that made it about a train. Such loco motives.

Hemingway’s Old Man and The Sea is thought to be an ode to the Tugboat That Could. Sporting such quotes as:

I may not be as strong as I think but I know many tricks and I have resolution.

Or

Everything about him was old except his eyes, and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.

Or

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.

And so like Hemingway attested, through sheer grit tugboats make their way to Staten Island where they can finally be at peace. At their height there were 200 retired tugboats aimlessly floating and bumping into each other along the banks of Staten Island. Over time they sink to the ocean depths, maybe forming new coral reefs for sea life. Maybe tugging sunken ships to Davy Jones’ Locker. Maybe tugboats die just like how they live as told by R. Kelly, “with a little bump and grind.”