Naval architect and ATB pioneer Bob Hill has passed away at the age of 67. Hill played a significant role in the development of articulated /barge design, and he helped shepherd through the U.S. Coast Guard NAVIC to treat the purpose-built ATB tugas a tugboat for regulatory purposes, not as the engine roomof a ship. This opened the door for cost savings, and Hill described it as the “single most important and influential event in the continued development and deployment of the AT/B in America.”
Hill was born in Troy, New York in 1952. As a naval architect, he joined the firm of John W. Gilbert Associates in 1974 and stayed for the first 20 years of his career. In 1994, he set out to found Ocean Tug & Barge Engineering in Milford, Massachusetts. His firm became the leading American specialist in ATB design, and it hasworked on the majority of ATB units in service in the United States today. For Hill’s lifetime of service to the industry, he was named a distinguished fellow of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME) in 2015.
Hill believed that a well-designed ATB could do anything a ship can do, and at lower cost. Relative to a ship of the same deadweight, an AT/B has a smaller mandated crew size, reduced cost of construction, lighter draft, and lower port fees. Maintenance costs are lower because of reduced machinery requirements, and smaller shipyards can be used for drydocking the tug and the barge.
Over the course of his career, Hill worked with all of the commercially-available ATB barge coupling systems and theleading ATB operators. He worked on some of the most iconic units inthe ATB trade, like the OSG “Costwise” series, a set of three HFO-fueled, 12,000 horsepower ATB /barge combinations built specifically forlightering on the Delaware River. Theywere the largest in Americaat the time of construction. In 2017, he helped design what could one day be the world’s largest ATB units: a set of 12 compressed natural gas carriersfor SeaOne Caribbean.
The Costwise-class OSG Vision in the notch (OSG)
