The Thomas Gaither is loading water and picking up provisions. Rather than order from the Vane Brothers chandlery of yesteryear, her captain hitches a ride to a supermarket, nearby in Canton. Later that evening, the Gaither will pick up a barge for a tow to Philadelphia. The Vane Brothers other nine tugs are all at sea, as are the company's twenty-nine barges. That means they're all working.
More work is on the way.
Each will have a 30,000-barrel capacity, and be completed early in 1999. The delivery of the two new barges, built with an eye toward the climate of the next century, will serve as a fitting capstone to the company's first one hundred years of service. When Captain William Burke Vane first came ashore in 1898, he had in mind a better way to serve sailors. By continuously reinventing itself, his company has survived and prospered, all the while remaining very much a family concern. The legacy of the Vanes and Hugheses lives on today as Vane tugs ply the waters of the Eastern Shore's Wicomico River and the Chesapeake Bay D0 waters that once knew the billowing sails of the schooners R. E. Powell and the John R. P. Moore .