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| Circumnavigation of Staten Island and other Ferry News (1319918) | |||
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Circumnavigation of Staten Island and other Ferry News |
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Posted by Larry,RedbirdR33 on Tue Oct 21 16:16:39 2014 This is primarily a nautical post but there is a little bit of railroad information at the end.Circumnavigation of Staten Island and other Ferry News The Working Harbor Committee sponsored a boat ride around Staten Island on Sunday, October 19, 2014. The boat was the New York Waterways motor vessel John Stevens. We left from Pier 11 on the East River and headed south across the bay to the Robbins Reef Light. We then turned into the Kill Van Kull and after passing the entrance to Newark Bay turned south into the Arthur Kill which we followed to the south end of Staten Island and then entered Raritan Channel. Our boat then turned north and headed through The Narrows back to Pier 11. The waterways around Staten Island are a center of maritime commerce with container ship terminals, tank farms, dry-docks and related industries. Several derelict and out of service ferryboats are also to be found here. The former Governor's Island ferry PVT. NICHOLAS MINUE is moored on the north side of Staten Island just west of the Bayonne Bridge. She is still afloat but in poor condition. As we passed Port Reading on the Jersey side of the Arthur King we see another Governor's Island veteran; the MAJ. GEN. WM. H. HART. She is partially sunk but still recognizable. Back on the Staten Island side we pass Witte's Marine Yard. A true ship's graveyard. Many vessels of various type have been laid up here over the years and eventually they sink into the mud. I understand that Hurricane Sandy did a lot of damage here and its difficult to identify many of the vessels. One can see remains of the former fireboat ABRAM S. HEWITT. She was one of several vessels that responded to the GENERAL SLOCUM disaster in 1904. One can also identify the SEAWELLS POINT, one of the original electric ferries. Nearby and still identifiable is the Newburgh - Beacon Ferry DUTCHESS which has her own story to tell. The DUTCHESS ran on the Newburgh - Beacon Ferry until November, 1963 when that service came to an end. She was sold to private interests and brought down to New York City where she was placed in service on a short - lived excursion service to the 1964-65 World's Fair. The venture was not successful and she ended up on the backside of Staten Island where she remains to this day. It is still possible to read the legend "New York State Bridge Authority" on the side of the passenger cabin. A little further downriver we come to an active marine scrap-yard. One of the vessels in the process of being dismantled is a former Staten Island ferry of the Merrell Class. I could not identify which boat it was but it might be the VERRAZZANO. (If anyone knows for sure please let me know.) The next bit of news concerns the Seastreak operated ferry service between Lower Manhattan and the Rockaways. This service will come to an end on October 31, 2014. It was begun nearly two years ago carrying passengers from Pier 11 on the East River to Rockaway Park in Queens with a stop at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. Patronage amounted to about 800 passengers a day , 400 each way. This was not enough to justify the city subsidy. The vessels that I observed in this service were OCEAN STATE and MARTHA'S VINEYARD EXPRESS. Larry, RedbirdR33 October 21, 2014 |
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