D B General

I don't want you to get too jealous, but this baby's moored about 50 yards from my office right now: D.B. General: 700 Ton Floating Crane

The D B General is no ordinary crane, having been recently used in the Bay Bridge construction project, as well as other local large-scale projects.

You can tell it's a special crane, because it's listed in Wild Crane Photos, no. 16:

This is the DB General picking a Manitowoc 222 from a barge and setting in on the deck of the new Benicia Bridge in California. The General is a Clyde 52

That's nothing for the D B General, though, once known as The largest derrick barge on the West Coast

It was a surreal scene for onlookers standing on the shore at Shine Tidelands State Park, many who waited all day to see the lift that, by engineering standards, was no big deal considering the DB General's 700-ton lift capacity.

Once the 280-foot-long, 70-foot-wide and 40-foot-tall truss was in the air -- almost a million pounds of steel hanging there like a toy -- tugs gently pulled the DB General directly backward. Two other tugs then nudged another barge into perfect alignment under the truss.

Although the General was once the largest barge crane on the West Coast, it is now of course dwarfed by the Left Coast Lifter.

Here at home, we didn't need the Left Coast Lifter today; the trusty D B General is onsite to complete the task of raising the sunken tugboat "Respect".