Tugs

[Pootle]

How is tiny, little tug able to pull a vast liner or ship which is 30 times its weight? Also, why use a tug at all, what's wrong with using the main engines on the ship?

[andy hughes]

Tugs are small, but they have seriously big engines, able to get a liner moving very slowly, which is all that's required.

They use tugs because liners are very hard to manouvre in relativly small harbour spaces. It takes a lot of power to get a liner moving under its own engines, and more importantly, quite a distance for it to stop. This makes it simple to control them with far more agile small tugs.

[Octavius]

Tugboat engines typically produce 750 to 3,000 horsepower, but larger boats used in deep waters can have power ratings up to 25,000hp (The engine of a typical family car produces approximately 120bhp).  The engines are often the same as those used in railroad engines and are highly manoeuvrable.

Not only are they used to tow ships, barges, disabled ships, or other equipment.  They help guide ships through narrow sea channels, but they are the boats that get things done, the boats that keep the world's commerce moving.  Today's massive tankers and freighters would be helpless in port without tugboats to manoeuver them. Tugs and their intrepid crews move our products, remove our rubbish, fight harbour fires, pilot other vessels into and out of port, perform salvage and rescue operations... and anything else they are called upon to handle.

[Quizmonster]

It's a bit like the little tractor that pushes the massive Boeing 747 away from the terminal...ie powerful and easily manoeuvreable as compared with the thing being shifted.

[amaltman47]

I only learned recently that aeroplanes dont have a reverse gear. That is why they need that wee tractor thing to push them in to a forward going position.

[Quizmonster]

Aeroplanes may not have a reverse 'gear', but they generally have reverse 'thrust'. That's the cause of the sudden roar you hear just after landing, which is - effectively - the engines being used to brake the aircraft. I'm pretty sure that could be used to move the aircraft backwards...the problem is that it would probably blow the terminal away!