Pilot House

Pilot House. . , The structure before you was the elevated pitot house of the car float, or bay barge, Captain Edward Richardson. The barge was built by New York Shipbuilding in Camden, New Jersey for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company (PRR) and launched in December 1948., The Captain Edward Richardson was over 400 feet long and over 50 feet wide. Her deck was equipped with four railroad tracks designed. to hold 32 forty foot freight cars and was towed by tugboat across 26 miles of water between the harbors at Cape Charles City and Little Creek in Norfolk. Above her deck was a pilot house with steering gear, a galley, captain's quarters, and bunking facilities for a crew of five., The Captain Edward Richardson remained in service longer than any other barge in the Chesapeake Bay service, while its associated railroad changed hands four times. On March 13, 1981, she began to take on water a few miles from Cape Charles and sank just 30 feet from the dock, loaded with tank cars, boxcars, a switching locomotive, and 10 new pickup trucks. She was salvaged and returned to service only to sink once more, this time in deep water, on October 30, 1981. She was again raised but lost her cargo of boxcars and her pilothouse. A replacement pilothouse was built by a North Carolina shipyard but was removed in the mid 1980s when the Eastern Shore Railroad decided to abandon the vessel's manned steering capabilities and the required crew. The pilothouse was moved into the rail yard at Cape Charles where it served for a time as an office., Originally named for Armel Edward Richardson, longtime boat master on the western side of PRR's Chesapeake Bay service, in 1981 the Eastern Shore Railroad renamed her Nandua in keeping with a trend to give vessels names with local meaning. The Nandua continued to operate with her capacity downsized to 20 to 25 freightcars, often carrying loads too high or wide for railroad tunnels. In 1992 and again in 2009, she was refurbished at considerable. cost. She last sailed in 2012 and was sold in 2018 to a used equipment dealer called Iron Planet, then resold to a contractor specializing in marine construction, dredging, and other marine services.