November / December 2025

Keeping Up with the C.L. Churchill

Rebuilding a working tugboat, in installments

Rob Thompson • Photographs by Kerry Batdorf

The 34′ tugboat C.L. CHURCHILL was built in Cohassett, Massachusetts, in 1963, and from 1979 to 2023 she operated on Lake Champlain in Vermont. She served for many years as the escort vessel for the replica canal schooner LOIS McCLURE—all the while undergoing a phased refit—and has recently moved to Buffalo, New York, where she will perform the same duty for the Erie Canal boat SENECA CHIEF.

My favorite sweatshirt has just about given up the ghost. I suppose that’s what happens when it’s the piece of clothing you always grab first when you need a layer that might get a little paint on it. It’s a gray cotton hoodie with the word “CREW” on the back and an image of the tugboat C.L. CHURCHILL on the front, accompanied by the words “Celebrating 50 Years of Steady Dependable Service.”

I never served aboard the CHURCHILL underway—not in good weather while she towed her charge, the 88' canal schooner LOIS McCLURE, through slow, still canals (see related article, page 56); nor in foul weather when she was bound tight on the McCLURE’s hip, bouncing in cross chop and wind on the broad Lake Champlain in Vermont. I have not spent a single night tucked into one of her berths nor prepared a meal in her galley. I would only see the CHURCHILL during the off-season, when her work was done. I do, however, know the CHURCHILL well, every bit of her, having rebuilt close to 80 percent of the vessel. Over a period of 16 years (2004–2020), I led the CHURCHILL’s multi-stage restoration and ongoing maintenance. In 2014, when she won “tug of the year” at the Waterford (New York) Tugboat Roundup, her real crew decided I had earned a sweatshirt.

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