09/13/2026
A notable date for a former TBR Tug of the Year!
in 1996, our 1930 tugboat was listed on the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places. Today, we are highlighting the enterprising woman Mary M. Decker (1914–2006), who named the tugboat after her father-in-law..
Born in 1914 in Elm Park, Staten Island, Mary Miluk did not grow up around boats. When she married Oscar “Opie” Decker (1913–1972) in 1933, her in-laws were new to the maritime industry. The Decker family had been farmers until 1928, when their land near the village of Bloomfield was acquired by the Gulf Oil Company to build an oil depot. After a few years operating the party fishing boat Hippo and running a coal supply business, Oscar and his father, William Oscar Decker (1891–1973) began working on tugboats during World War II, laying mines in lower New York Bay.
After the war, Oscar Decker started talking about owning his own tugboat. According to Mary, she finally told him to buy one—or stop talking about it. In 1946, she bought the tugboat Russel 1 from the Newtown Creek Towing Company, renaming the ship after her father-in-law. Mary became the “brains” of the family business, managing its finances and paperwork, and maintaining the logbooks for their three tugboats: Mary D., Roslyn, and W.O. Decker.
In 1995, when the Seaport Museum was preparing W.O. Decker’s National Register of Historic Places nomination, Mary was in her 80s, and still living in Staten Island, where she and Oscar had begun their married life. According to the official NPS form, she remained proud of having been “a four foot, eleven inch girl running both a household and a tugboat company.”
Since 1986, W.O. Decker has been a beloved member of the Seaport Museum fleet of , helping visitors explore New York’s maritime and industrial history. On weekends during the warmer months, she takes passengers into the Harbor to enjoy views of the Lower Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty and a chance to experience this historic tugboat in action.
📸: Joel Greenberg, photographer. “W.O. Decker underway” ca. 1989. South Street Seaport Museum Archives
