France, circa 1860
by Claude-Marie Ferrier

The tugboat was invented in 1802 by William Symington of Scotland, but it wasn’t until the 1820s that tugboats were built specifcally for towing sailing ships into and out of commercial ports. Tis photograph, taken by the Frenchman Claude-Marie Ferrier, is a wonderfully framed image of a tugboat pulling a tall ship out of the port of Le Havre in Northern France.