Boluda Tug VB Peter on the Thames

Aerial photography of the Boluda towage tug VB Peter working the tidal Thames in London.

Ship handling on the Thames is done by a small number of tugs that most people on the riverbank never look at twice. VB Peter is one of them, working for Boluda Towage out of London. This is a straight broadside taken while she lay off Bermondsey between jobs, and it is the frame a towage operator actually wants: the whole vessel, square on, with the towing winch, the staple, the fendering and the wheelhouse glass all legible in one shot. Marketing photographs of tugs are usually taken from a pontoon at deck level, where the hull foreshortens and the working gear disappears behind the sheer. From above and slightly off the beam, none of it hides. Nobody commissioned this. She was alongside, the light was clean, and a tug this well kept is worth a frame.