Comments on Bowery Boys Red Hook history podcast

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Pier 9B, Red Hook, Brooklyn
Posted by Carolina Salguero

A recent podcast on the site THE BOWERY BOYS covers Red Hook history with a strong focus on gangs and crime. 

There is much good about the piece, but it also has some errors, and in dwelling on crime so much, it skews the area's history.  I wrote the creators; and in order to facilitate getting the word out, I post my email to them below.  


In an idea world, I'd have time to upload supporting data, but I don't. I did add a link about the Carnegie Library in the version below.

You can write them yourself at the following email addresses boweryboysnyc@earthlink.net; tom@boweryboyspodcast.com, and/or post a comment here.



Dear Greg and Tom:

I am glad that you love Red Hook and chose to dedicate time to the place, your piece reflects that love; but your history has considerable errors. 

I'm the Founder and Director of PortSide NewYork a waterfront-themed non-profit here in Red Hook.  We are based on the oil tanker MARY A. WHALEN docked in the Red Hook Container Terminal.   

One of our missions has been to research Red Hook history on a water theme and produce related cultural tourism products.  More here. 

I don't have the time to write out a detailed correction of all the errors in your podcast and so will just rattle off some observations.
 
It was Norwegians first, not Irish.  Planners did lay out grid for the streets in the early mid 1800's, but large parts of eastern Red Hook remained watery through the late 1880s.  
Though Red Hook had gangs, as you describe; well before Red Hook was known as the crack capital of the USA, the neighborhood was also home to huge industry and many lower middle class and middle class residents and a booming retail corridor.   

There was a Carnegie library, wealthy people using the Hamilton Avenue Ferry, built to facilitate access to Green-Wood Cemetary and soon used by commuters from what we now call Carroll Gardens to go to work in lower Manhattan's business district.  

In short, Red Hook housed great poverty, but for decades was more mixed economically than your focus on gangland stories describes.  Personally, I find what is most distinctive about Red Hook over the years is the capacity of this small place to hold AT THE SAME TIME a striking economic range in its residents and a striking range of land use from major industry to residences.

Also, residents of Carroll Gardens did not drive the name change of their area, it was real estate brokers who changed the name, my mother being one of them. It was a technique to attract buyers (and lenders) for brownstones who might be dissuaded by the name of Red Hook, which by the 1960s was associated with things dark.  

Your most significant error is to say that the movie "On the Waterfront" is based on Red Hook. That is an easy error to make as that is oft repeated here. I myself made the mistake of writing so in one of our early Red Hook guides.
After additional research, I can confirm that this is not so, nor was Elia Kazan's movie of that name based on Arthur Miller's script.  

In a zeigeist way, a number of people were likely focusing on dockland stories at that time, the issues having been recently been outed by a long expose series in the press. 

"On the Waterfront" is based on another script by Budd Schulberg and based an actual person Father Pete Corridan who was facing issues on the docks on the westside of Manhattan and Union County, New Jersey, not Red Hook.  Note that the Red Hook docks were by then controlled by ethnic Italians and not Irish.  

A full length book, based on in-depth academic research, was recently published about the dockworker issues and the movie.  The book is called "On the Irish Waterfront."  It is a corrective to much popular misunderstand about how the famous movie came to be and the conventional interpretation of the movie as being an Elia Kazan apologia for testifying before HUAC.  

I can put you in touch with the professor Jim Fisher of Fordham who wrote the book. His blog has information about the book, though lately it has veered into more personal terrain, so try this post.  

The book's Amazon listing is here. 

If you do follow ups or corrections, feel free to get in touch.

I may publish the content of this email in some form as a blogpost to facilitate these corrections being available to a wider audience which may be misled by your history.

Regards,
Carolina


Carolina Salguero
Founder + Director

PortSide NewYorkBringing NYC's BlueSpace to life

Boom! meets Pizza!

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Pier 9B, Red Hook, Brooklyn

Posted by Carolina Salguero

Photos by Carolina Salguero unless otherwise indicated.

The first volunteer day of 2012, Saturday, was blessed with GLORIOUS weather with temps hovering around 50 degrees and the sun mostly out all day.  Project

Boom!

is in its final stages. Mike I-love-rigging Abegg tweaked the cable running through the boom's refurbished blocks, attached a block to the end of the boom, running its line through the fair leads used during the MARY WHALEN's days of carrying fuel hose.  We'll use that block instead of  the boom chainfall (so key for gangway tending) to do things like lift pallet loads of hard coal. We'll be getting 2 tons of coal once the boom is back up. Time to play Break Bulk! Better that than Break Back from carrying eighty 50-pound bags of coal up the gangway...

Today's goals:  get shipwork work done, have fun (as always) and learn to make pizza to feed the crew.  It's cold enough to want something warm at the end of the day, and deep inside the container terminal

TWIC

zone as we are, no take-out deliveries are possible.  Today, we received a donated pizza stone from

by

A Cook's Companion

- thank you! - picked up by John Weaver and Karen Dyrland who popped by to deliver my new used Leica digital camera (photos here may improve) and put in an hour of work.  Before the volunteers arrived

Smitty

, a wizard musician on the steel guitar, came and donated to the firewood pile, walnut offcuts from his cabinetry work.

Today's work list was aspirationally long; but hey, Mike Abegg says to make a bigger list than we can do!

First thing I did before shipwork was make the sauce for the pizza. Time for a shout out here to thank Scott Pfaffman and Molly Blieden for donating a stack of saucepans after their tenant restaurant O'Barone closed. This is one of the big ones. So great!

Sauce is being cooked on our Webb Perfection diesel pot-burner stove, a design patented in 1918.

Diesel simply piddles down the pipe, turns right and then heads towards the back and into the "pot," aka a Valjean Burner. The holes allow oxygen to enter.  The overflow safety cutoff is the little chain dangling to the right of the down-sticking overflow pipe. If the pot floods, the extra diesel spills down that pipe and into a cup. Once that cup get heavy (you have to calibrate that), it pulls down on the chain and cuts off the intake. Originally there was a round-bottomed brass cup. Now, we have a bean can with a dead padlock to give it heft. If someone knows where to get such a Webb brass cup, we'd love to know.

First volunteer in, Peter Rothenberg, nets the day's Best Dressed Award.  Pete is painting the boom mast fully and his shirt not very much.

Mike Abegg where he likes to go, up the ladder and into what little rigging an oil tanker has to offer.

Photo by Karen Dyrland.

Though the South Street Seaport is rising like a phoenix and has reactivated their volunteer program, our

Save Our Seaport

friends are still around.  After spending the morning volunteering on the Seaport fleet, Mike Cohen, Nelson Chin and Linda Beal spend their afternoon at PortSide. Here they're pitching in on final stages of Mike Abegg's boom project.

Somehow Linda Beal seems to get involved in projects stretching things out on the pier. This time she handles it without

Chiclet's assistance

. Chiclet punked out this work day and did not supervise.

Me, setting off to cut firewood on the pier. Photo by Nelson Chin.

Linda Beal and Mike Cohen wire brushing the boom guy wires. Heckuva job! I wrote the guy wires off as badly rusted; but after Linda and Mike's diligent brushing, the wire rope looked really good!

Me, cutting wood offcuts donated by Ralph Gorham of

Brooklyn Farm Table

and

Red Hook Lobster Pound

. That's so Red Hook... that kind of range out of one person. I'm sorry to burn such wonderful old timbers and set aside a few for Mike Abegg who is also a cabinetmaker (what was I saying about people with diverse skill sets...). The axe here is a wanna be. I swung it twice and concluded that my shoulder is NOT healed after being hit by a truck on 1/14/11, so it's a good thing that I'm switching the fidley stove from wood burning to coal burning... I'll need much less wood this winter, just enough to start the coal fires...

Speaking of fuel. Here, passing us is the kind of 2nd generation equipment that replaced the MARY A. WHALEN. The first generation after coastal oil tankers was fuel barges pushed by harbor tugs. Now there are these huge "pin boats," ATB (articulated tug and barge units) whose tugs are pinned to double hulled fuel barges.  The MARY is an old single hull. She carried 8,019 barrels.  That's Reinauer equipment passing us, and their bigger barges carry 100,000 barrels and more, all of which constitutes a heads up as to how much fuel consumption has soared from 1938 when the MARY WHALEN was built until now.  Photo by Karen Dyrland. Her father was captain of the MARY A. WHALEN from 1958* to 1978.

The wind really came up by the end of the day; and here Mike Cohen is wrastling the wheelhouse window tarps back into place. They came down for New Years Eve fireworks viewing....

Pizza #4. What you can't see here was the learning curve from Pizza #1, the pizza that was a lesson in corn meal or semolina flour. eg, without it scattered on your pizza peel, you're not getting your pizza off the peel! A nimble committee lept into action and helped me drag deformed Pizza 1 onto the Pizza stone. 

Nelson Chin cutting pizza, Mike Cohen and Mike Abegg  to the right of him.

Matt Perricone of the

Tug Cornell

and

Amy Bucciferro

arrived in time for Pizza #4. Matt was in to pick up two old radar monitors that were donated to us.  We're trading them for work time from Matt.  We all laughed about Lessons of Shipwork, The Shopvac Episodes.  My tale covered why not to use one to vacuum out a diesel stove--clogs your filter in minutes, and there is  no way to clean that off without getting blackened like a coal  miner.   Matt said "never use one without a filter; because if  you do, what was over there, just goes zzzzip over to here."  Matt described cleaning out the MARY WHALEN's boiler chimney on New Year's day. He removed about 15 gallons of rust scale and one dead pigeon.  Minus the bird and friends, could we finally get the boiler to work? Wouldn't central heat be grand....

And with that, I'll leave you with the

Shop Vac Song

——————-
*Subsequent research (including a close examination of Captain Alf Dyrlands notes) places the date as 1962 not 1958.

Christmas in the Red Hook Container Terminal, back in the day

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Every object has a history. Unlocking that history is what interpretation is all about and is something we try and do here at PortSide NewYork with our WaterStories project. Here’s a story related to the crèche you can see outside the Red Hook Containerport.

December 2010, PortSide received an email out of the blue from a Fred DeAngelis. Here are some excerpts.

To whom it may concern,
My name is Fred DeAngelis. I am so glad to have found your website. In short I was practically raised on pier 9.
My dad worked there with JOHN McGrath for over 20+ years. Of course I would like to volunteer my time to support your project. I have not been on the pier itself since 1986 & would love the opportunity to revisit.

Fred and his wife and small child visited the Mary Whalen on 3/12/2011.  While leaving, he spotted the battered crèche inside the shed on Pier 9b. He was very moved. He said “my father built that.”  He got out of his car to photograph it.

When the crèche was installed outside the port this December, I emailed him to tell him it was in place in case he wanted to photograph it. I thought it might not be around forever, what with the changes in the port. He wrote back with a history of Christmas in the port from the 70s and 80s. His father was here from 1972 to 1986 when as he put it “John McGrath was the name of the company that was pier 9.”

The Holiday session on the water front was something literally out of a movie. The surrounding neighborhood wasn't as pretty as it is now becoming and the workers tried to make it as festive as possible.
Now remember these were the tough and rugged Longshoreman of yesteryear. However the special feeling of the holidays touched almost everyone.  As I remember most of the waterfront would decorate a little.

My dad and his friends would cut a damaged container up and make a shed for the decorations that they would put on display. The nativity set was always the center of attraction with a lighted sign that would say "MERRY CHRISTMAS"

Santa was incorporated with strings of lights and the feelings of the holidays approaching would settle in.

Food was also another big part of celebrating the holidays. Through out certain parts of the pier they had what they would call shacks. This is a place where till today I have never tasted an Italian meal so good. Joe Black was the cook and also the forklift operator for John McGrath at the time and a special family friend.

You could picture snow on the ground, ships all docked at the piers and small shacks that would have smoke coming out of a chimney with friends inside eating and drinking together.

Indeed a special time and memories that will last a lifetime.

Happy holidays, whatever you celebrate, however you celebrate it.


From http://saveredhooklights.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/



Boom! and other shipwork projects

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More coming soon about more restoration work on the cargo boom, galley stove, fidley stove and more!

Amy Bucciferro priming parts of the block from the cargo boom. Mike Abegg took all the blocks apart for servicing and we're replacing all the wire in the running and standing rigging.
Mike Cohen (L) and Mike Abegg (R) both of the Save Our Seaport group, giving the gangway some TLC

Hugh McCallion working on galley stove chimney

Hugh McCallion servicing the galley stove.

Carolina Salguero in forepeak removing last of ballast water put in for Hurricane Irene. After 2 pumps burned out, the last bit went out in buckets. Care to donate more pumps anyone?

Dirty forepeak mucking crew Frank Hanavan (L), Carolina Salguero (R) and Mike Abegg who popped by our project (center)

Ben Paolino on top of the wheelhouse capping the tankerman's cabin vent for the winter

Hugh McCallion tackles the stove in the fidley this time, swapping out stove pipe

Our 2009 intern from Germany Yolanda Rother popped by for a surprise visit and jumped right in
 

PortSide AddYourVoice campaign

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Please send us a message that expresses 

what PortSide and/or the MARY A. WHALEN means to you
or what great experience you had with us, etc.

You can post directly to AddYourVoice by adding a comment below or

Messages from our AddYourVoice campaign will be used in grant 
applications and in our quest for a home for 
PortSide and the MARY A. WHALEN.  

We are trying very hard to get out from behind the containerport fence to a place where we can provide programs more often and expand our program mix.Please support this effort and chime in to say why you want us out of here!

As always, you can also deploy the cash option to support us click

Click the link below "View comments" to see submissions to the campaign.
 

Wagenborg failure re-routes SI ferry

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Red Hook, Brooklyn
by Carolina Salguero

For reasons I can't explain, I so love it when the Staten Island ferries whoosh past the MARY A. WHALEN in the Buttermilk. Is it because they are my favorite color (orange)? Is it the wonderful way they stream by leaving no wake? or how they look so big slipping between the land masses of Red Hook and Governors Island?

This afternoon, I spotted one coming up the channel.


I called Staten Island Ferry Captain Jim Parese at 1544 to ask if he was steering the ferry headed my way. 

He called back a while later to say that "that's my boat.. but I'm not on it."  He was just leaving their simulator room. I asked why the ferry was coming this side of Governors Island, and he explained that a small ship in the 250'-300' size had lost steerage and dropped anchor off the range on Governors Island.

Jim Parese is a new friend thanks to PortSide's exhibit on the mariners response to 9/11. Jim evacuated thousands of people on 9/11, and his interview appears in the book "All Available Boats" and you could hear his oral history at our exhibit.

He sent the following photos of Wagenborg vessel which was having the trouble.  

If you have any more info about what transpired, please call or write!


NPYD security training on the MARY A. WHALEN

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Today's New York Times reports on the underwater cameras used by the NYPD. Now that the secret's out, here's some news.

The NYPD trained officers on how to use the new cameras on the MARY A. WHALEN during May of 2007. 

An NYPD boat came along side, and an officer in sunglasses skipped over introductions and said "can we look at your bottom with an underwater camera?"

I said, "I don't show my bottom to just any guy... who's asking?"

Without the hint of a laugh, Detective Keith Duval handed over a card and said he was with the Counter Terrorism Division.  

"All the big stuff is either busy or moving," he explained; so the Mary Whalen would be helpful to him to use. He said the cameras cost some $80,000. 

Elaine Carmichael, our urban planner from Economic Stewardship was visiting NYC.  She and I interrupted our meeting to watch for awhile, and then just let the NYPD do their job. 

Here are some more photos from their visit.






PortSide uses the MARY A. WHALEN as an educational resource in diverse ways and for diverse groups. We have given TankerTours to the general public in English and Spanish.  We have helped train college professors in a City Tech program. We have run workshops and lectures (TankerTalks) aboard, and we've helped train the NYPD.  We look forward to partnering with maritime training institutions to help offer professional training.


If you think your school, academy, or program could use the MARY A. WHALEN in some educational fashion, please get in touch with us at portsidenewyork(at)gmail.com

best
Carolina Salguero

Big Money, Big Ideas for Bklyn Waterfront Today - or not

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Last night Brooklyn Bridge Park officials revealed proposals for development on Pier 1, Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Below we offer a one-stop shop of today's links to Pier 1 coverage to make the proposal images easier to find.


In other (and the really astounding) waterfront news, the Times reports today that the Center for Urban Real Estate, which they call "a new research group at Columbia University" proposes connecting Governor's Island to Manhattan with landfill. The idea comes with a realtor-ready neighborhood moniker “LoLo” (Lower Lower Manhattan).

Hopping hollyhocks! Where to start on this one?  

There's the environmental issue of filling the harbor, there's shutting down a major maritime channel, and then there are other questions such as:

Why give Governors Island to Manhattan? It was once more closely related to Brooklyn. At low tide, people reputedly could walk over from Red Hook, and it is fact that the Buttermilk Channel was dredged as far back as the 1800s to open up a shipping channel. 

Alternatively, if one is to fill, would it be more useful for the city and region at the metalevel to fill out to the pier headline in Sunset Park and put a post-Panamax containerport there? Backers of that idea say the raising of the Bayonne Bridge is too little too late and doesn't address the hard right turn the ships have to make. 

Or how about the idea that maybe what makes Governors Island so great now is that it IS an island?  As LoLo, it's just another development.

Then there is the PortSide way of thinking, eg, it's OK to think big, but what is key is to get stuff happening right away with the infrastructure you have (open up all those city piers with nothing doing on them, make Governors Island piers more used) or build smaller projects to reflect real users (hello, "maritime piers" of 125th Street West Harlem, Pier 25 in Hudson River Park or the upcoming Pier 15 in the East River that are not designed for easy boat use). Hello, LoLo, rather than MegaBuild, how about “small but now”?  Isn’t there a recession on? How about some now now while there is no there there?  

Happy Thanksgiving.

Boom! History + volunteer day

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Time to lower the boom, replace the cables, check, service and maybe replace blocks and paint the boom itself. We finally have a sweet spot to do this. The weather is FINALLY going to give us a long run without rain so it should be possible to get this all done without too many days of disruption.  We get some crane help to lower the boom as the boom winches walked a long time ago.
Project before the start.  Where boom was 11/4/11 Friday morning at 0900.

This project, as so often happens if you are dealing with preserving a historic boat, raised all sorts of questions about what was. So, mixed with the grunt work was all sorts of hypothesizing and checking old photos and plans.

Saturday's s volunteer day had an A team of Mike Abegg, Nelson Chin, Linda Von Voss-Beal (all South Street Seaport people), Carolina Salguero, and supervisor Chiclet. 

While the Seaport has their ship volunteer program on hold, Seaport folks have been stepping up to help over here. Thanks to you all for helping out while you couldn't get on your usual boats!!  

While we have your attention, I thought I'd mention that the Seaport looks very much on the mend after the take-over by the Museum of the City of New York with Susan Henshaw Jones at the helm.  You can follow the progress of the resuscitation of the Seaport on the blog of the group Save Our Seaport, heavy lifters in the cause, here


Where it was Saturday morning 0900 after new volies Jeffrey Jernstrom and Enrico Bazzoni chipped and scraped during Friday
Once the boom is on deck, you start to wonder what all the fittings attached to it were doing, why a bulge here, why a flat bar there. Mike figures out that a run of long shank shackles is a series of fair leads... and they went to the hose winch. But what were the mystery tubular fairleads along the forward edge of the boom?  Carolina and Mike make several trips to the ship plans in the fidley, a photo in the galley, and a photo in the fidley.  
Bob Mattson photo from 1979
Carolina comments that on a visit a while back Charlie Deroko pointed out that the mast and boom in the plans were not what's here now... that they are much shorter and look as if they're wood.  



Mike then points out that in the plans the mast isn't even where it is now - something no one had remarked upon until now. As drawn, the boom was on a pad eye on the ullage trunk, not forward of it; but then again, the drawings don't show the mast on the aft end of the wheelhouse that appear in ST Kiddoo photos...


Carolina hypothesizes that the new longer boom reflects how Mary Whalen's work evolved from delivering to terminals (short boom) to fueling ever bigger ships, necessitating a long boom for reach.


Bingo! Within a day, Carolina has a phone conversation with a Mary Whalen Mate from the 1980s who said that Eklof was very proud of their elongated  "superbooms" used to fuel ships. They found all sorts of ways to add stiffeners, he says, just what Carolina and Mike had been guessing. What a difference thirty years makes. The "superboom" seems mighty unimpressive in comparison to today's hydraulic, telescoping booms.


Mike I-Love-Rigging Abegg prepares to lift the boom with a shackle so we can rotate it to better get at the underside. We'll also clean and grease the pin.


Carolina  & Linda stretch the old boom cable on the dock to measure it.   The boom is not the original one in the ship plan; so until we lowered the whole affair to measure it, we didn't know how much new cable to get.  Amounts to 242' of wire rope.


Ship cat Chiclet assists in the cable measuring process.

Team Abegg & Chin priming the boom. The primer is milk chocolate brown which leads to many jokes about repainting the whole ship brown. Anyone ever seen a brown boat?  Tugster, can you help us here?


The cable measuring team comes up to heckle the boys on the boom. Classic boatwork slogan on the back of that old Wavertree t-shirt there, Mike!

Mike Cohen shows up, a fuel barge goes by, the sun is setting and it's time to get the tools back down below.

Kicking back in the galley after a day's work.

Next thought... might as well lower the mast, while we're at it, and paint that bedraggled thing and redo the mast stays.

Eerie Sea Smoke in time for Halloween

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So WHAT'S with the weather?!

Today's plummeting temperature brought more than snow, it brought sea smoke. Fast moving sea smoke, that is, given the winds. Here's a glimpse.







Last time I saw sea smoke on salt water in such quantities, it was 2 degrees out, and I was shooting my muse, the Janice Anne Reinauer. This summer she was sold to a Nigerian company and left on the Blue Marlin.


 

See what today's sea smoke looks like from the wheelhouse of a tug dockside at Carteret in another evocative video by Bill Brucato, Captain of the Nicole L. Reinauer.

http://youtu.be/OjJ-EXsYQg8 


PortSide Exhibit: Mariners' response to 9/11

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Exhibit on the steamer LILAC - on Hudson River Park's Pier 25, Manhattan

PortSide NewYork, a waterfront-themed non-profit organization, is mounting a multi-media exhibit (photography, videos and oral history) and presentation about the extraordinary and little-known maritime role in 9/11, from evacuation to rubble removal. 

Note:
The exhibit venue Lilac and PortSide's base of operations, the Mary A. Whalen, survived Irene unharmed. Despite Irene's disruptions and delays, we are proceeding with plans for the exhibit.

Sponsors are still being sought for this exhibit. Please contact PortSide NewYork, Director Carolina Salguero,917-414-0565, portsidenewyork(at)gmail.com

Opening:   Thurs 9/8/11 6:00-9:00pm.

Talk:         Wed 9/14/11 7:00-8:30pm by Carolina Salguero, photojournalist on 9/11 and now Director of PortSide NewYork and journalist Jessica DuLong 

Location:   Historic ship LILAC, Hudson River Park’s Pier 25 at North Moore Street, Tribeca,Manhattan

Hours:        During September on Thursdays from 12:00pm to 6:00pm and Saturdays from 1:00pm to 6:00pm, plus scheduled visits by school groups.  Additional open hours for the public may be announced by early September.

Download press release here

related event: U.S. Coast Guard 9/11 New York City Response Retrospective on the Intrepid, Sat 9/10, 10 am to 4pm. Open to the public. more info
 

Photo by Carolina Salguero




The Coast Guard estimated that, on the morning of 9/11, between 350,000 and 500,000 people were evacuated from lower Manhattan by water during just a few hours.

Particularly noteworthy is that the process was started spontaneously by the operators of the boats themselves.  Within hours, five Coast Guard cutters, 12 small boats, and more than 100 public and private vessels operated on scene. For four days following the attacks, the boats continued to provide rescue workers with fuel, crucial supplies, and river water for firefighting.

The marine role continued, largely unsung, for months as all the rubble - 2,400 barges or 93,346 trucks' worth was removed from Manhattan by water, save for the ritual last column which left by truck.  The fact that it was removed by water made it possible to finish the job in just eight months, and spare the city incredible truck traffic.  In creating the exhibit, PortSide NewYork makes the point that the maritime 9/11 story has workaday implications for New York City as it develops new plans for its waterfront.

To bring home the point, the exhibit will be mounted on a ship docked at a pier from which Ground Zero rubble was removed.  PortSide will mount the exhibit on the former U.S. Lighthouse Tender Lilac, at Hudson River Park’s Pier 25, at North Moore Street, New York City in partnership with the non-profit Lilac Preservation Project

The exhibit will include photography and oral history by the award-winning photojournalist Carolina Salguero, who went on to found PortSide NewYork, plus contributions from vessel crews, and other institutions.


Photo by Carolina Salguero

Related talk:


On Wednesday, September 14, from 7:00-8:30pm a related talk will be given by Carolina Salguero (www.carolinasalguero.com) and journalist Jessica DuLong (www.jessicadulong.com), author of the critically acclaimed My River Chronicles: Rediscovering the Work That Built America, and chief engineer of retired New York City Fireboat John J. Harvey (www.fireboat.org), which was called back into service to supply firefighters with Hudson River water—the only water available for days following the towers' collapse. DuLong and her Fireboat Harvey crewmates were recognized in the Congressional Record for valor in aiding FDNY’s rescue efforts, and appear as characters in Maira Kalman’s award-winning children’s book FIREBOAT: The Heroic Adventures of the John J. Harvey.

The Lilac where the exhibit will be installed
As a ship-based museum, our role is to educate New Yorkers about our maritime heritage, and the story of the heroic role of mariners in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks has received little attention," said Lilac's Museum Director, Mary Habstritt.  "We are really honored to help recognize their contributions and to share this story on board a ship, at Pier 25, which itself played a role as a shipping point for debris removal."

Carolina Salguero, Founder & Director of PortSide NewYork said “I was really concerned that the story of the 9/11 maritime evacuation was so overlooked. That was one of the things that prompted me to found PortSide NewYork as a way to bring attention to the waterways. Doing this exhibit is a way to both commemorate what happened ten years ago and to help the city move forward with its new waterfront plan Vision 2020.  PortSide hopes, that by illuminating how those boats worked ten years ago—and the impediments they found—we can help the city better plan its future waterfront for both good days and bad."

"It's an honor to help share the largely untold story of the maritime community's contribution in New York City's hour of greatest need," said Jessica DuLong, chief engineer Fireboat John J. Harvey and author My River Chronicles, "The spontaneous mobilization was truly remarkable, but for mariners it's just a part of the job. Among those who work on the water the notion that panic leads to peril is as deeply ingrained as the tradition of helping those in need."


The exhibit includes:

Photography of the maritime evacuation:
  • featuring the work of Carolina Salguero, Founder + Director of  PortSide NewYork and an award-winning photojournalist. More about Salguero's reporting from ground zero in this video  
  • Photographs from Rich Naruszewicz, Captain of the New York Fast Ferry "Finest" evacuating people during 9/11 and former tankerman on PortSide's Mary A. Whalen
  • Photographs from crew of the retired fireboat John J. Harvey which served at ground zero.
Photography of rubble removal
  • by Carolina Salguero of Pier 25, North River and Pier 6, East River. 
Oral history
  • Of tug crews who evacuated people and removed rubble gathered by Carolina Salguero
Videos:
  • MARAD video "Rescue at Water’s Edge,” a 10th anniversary tribute to the Merchant Mariners who sailed directly into harm’s way on September 11 and evacuated more 300,000 people by water.
  • Video by Mike Mazzei, dockbuilder who worked at 9/11 rubble removal site on Pier 25
  • Center for National Policy new video "Boatlift" the story of the armada of civilian watercraft which came together with no prior planning to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people from lower Manhattan on 9/11.  It was the largest sealift ever – greater even than at Dunkirk during World War I
More about PortSide NewYork www.portsidenewyork.org
PortSide NewYork is a young, innovative non-profit organization. Our mission is to show New York City better ways to use the BlueSpace, or water part of the waterfront, to educate the public and policy makers about the waterfront, and to help revitalize our home neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn while doing that.

We promote sustainable waterfront planning that increases use of the water. This includes fostering waterborne transportation, the greenest way to move people and goods, and providing educational, cultural, and social service programs for the community on a water theme.  PortSide engages in harbor advocacy and runs an H2O Arts program that offers ship tours, talks, walks, readings, concerts, movies, and performing arts.

We use a historic ship, the coastal oil tanker Mary A. Whalen, as our office, mobile cultural platform, and teaching tool.  She was built in 1938 and is 172'  long.  She is famous for her role in incidents leading to the 1975 Supreme Court decision U.S. vs Reliable Transfer.

More about the Lilac Preservation Project: www.Lilacpreservationproject.org
The U.S. Lighthouse Tender Lilac was launched on May 26, 1933. Built for the U.S. Lighthouse Service, she carried supplies and personnel to lighthouses and maintained buoys.  The duties of the Lighthouse Service were later absorbed by the U.S. Coast Guard. Lilac was decommissioned by the Coast Guard in 1972. She was the last ship in the Coast Guard fleet to operate with reciprocating steam engines and is unique in still possessing her original engines. Lilac is on the National Register of Historic Places and is eligible to become a National Historic Landmark. The ship is owned by the non-profit Lilac Preservation Project.

Related 9/11 info:
 
Event: US Coast Guard 9/11 New York City Response Retrospective, Intrepid Sea, Air, & Space Museum. Saturday 9/10 10 am to 4pm. Open to the public. more info


Coast Guard 9/11 oral history project:


National September 11 Museum Interactive timeline
Downtown Alliance list of 9/11-related events and programs

Directions

Hudson River Park's Pier 25. Cross West Street at N. Moore St. or Harrison St.

Subway
1 at Canal Street and Franklin St.
A,C,E at Canal St.
1,2,3 at Chambers St.

Bus
M20 and M22


Sponsors:

Exhibit Design + Planning
provided pro bono by
Paul S. Alter

Lee H. Skolnick Architecture +
Design Partnership


















To join our sponsors of this exhibit
Please get in touch with PortSide NewYork
Carolina Salguero, Director
917-414-0565
portsidenewyork@gmail.com


Emergency call for help with generator installation + moving stuff

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Due to issues in the Red Hook container port, PortSide has have to move a lot of our stuff on the pier tomorrow Monday 8/15. 
If you can help, at whatever hour, please email portsidenewyork@gmail.com or call Carolina Salguero at 917-414-0565.

We have a related emergency need for connect a generator we have installed in the forward engine room. We need the following skilled help:
  • welder to weld new generator in position on old engine mounts
  • plumber to connect exhaust and fuel lines to generator
  • electrician to connect power cord to generator

WHAT A RIGGING JOB IT WAS! 
Michael Abegg (center), Matt Perricone (right), David Black (offstage left)
lower used Cummins 15kw Model 13212E1400 into pre-existing hatch in foredeck underneath one of the vents
 
In it goes by the hairs on its chinny chin chin
It was since rotated 90 degrees clockwise and is sitting on existing engine mounts

Opening by Frank Hanavan, friend of PortSide

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Frank's work lovingly captures light and atmosphere around his two favorite subjects, brownstones and ships. And bicycles, let's not forget the bicycles.  


This Hanavan hangs over the galley sink on the Mary A. Whalen. It is based on a photo by Barry Masterson


Frank says this is his last show for a long time.  We hope not, so come out and buy and keep Frank painting!

Opening info
Monday 7-9pm
@ Mini Bar
482 Court Street in Carroll Gardens
between Luqueer and 4th Place, west side of street
http://www.frankhanavan.com/



    A painting in the show





A Christmas card from Frank Hanavan