Too bad the photographer here didn’t have the luxury of a drone. Of course, in this era, a “drone” was a male bee. And regretfully he didn’t cajole the two men in the foreground into rowing him off to the left to get a photo from the bow perspective.

I’d love to see the cutterhead supported by the A-frame toward the left of the image below. These images of other Barge Canal dredges show the cutterhead end, including that of Kinser’s Montezuma. Dredges must have been impressive machines; in fact, they still are, as seen in this link.

At least two barges are made up to Montezuma here. To the left is a pitched-roof barge with double sliding doors. Equipment storage? To the right, in front of the three crew, a scow?

Is that conveyor to the left for hoisting coal onto Montezuma, or is it receiving some separated portion of dredge spoils? The latter seems unlikely because the dredge pipe to the right would serve that purpose. Would that dredge pipe be fed slurry by a centrifugal pump such as the one in this tugster post from 2010? If so, are there any images inside a dredge such as Montezuma showing the arrangment of machinery?

Would the camera have looked like one of these? How did the photographer arrive at this work location?