By The Red Hook WaterStories team
HE SAW THE NORTH POLE - The Intelligencer - Wheeling W. Virgina - May 17 1888 The Intlligencer, a newpaper out of Wheeling, West Virgina, ran a colorful story in the Spring of 1888 (likely printed in many other papers accross the country too)...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In the afternoon of June 24, 1924, the Egremont Castle, a 9,000-ton capacity oil ship of the Union Castle line was being loaded when the ship’s winch seized while lowering a 100-gallon drum of gasoline causing its load suddenly jerk upwards....
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Local 1814, International Longshoremen's Association, AFL-CIO commemorated their 20 th anniversary in 1974 with a publication celebrating their accomplishments and with a positive outlook for the future. Higher wages, job security, health...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Pietro "Pete" Panto was an Italian American longshoreman and union activist who was murdered by the mob for speaking out and organizing against currupt union leadership. The Red Hook WaterStories team has not written an entry about him yet but...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Huge waves crashing down on the deck as hail, steamers burning through their coal just to stay in place against the wind, ships being thrashed by the storm and everything, and everyone, frozen and encrusted in ice. These are the stories that the...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Blacks were one of the first groups to arrive in Brooklyn during the Dutch colonial period, usually as slaves, though there were also freemen. To provide an overview of some early Black history, PortSide commissioned this article by Charles Foy...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
On Saturday March 14, 1885, workers at Finlay's Stores were told that they hourly rate would be cut to 20 cents an hour, down from twenty-five. They refused to work for less pay and the company replaced them with about fifty Swedes and Norwegians....
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The area between Erie Basin and Columbia Street was home to a makeshift shantytown community known as Tin City, made up largely of unemployed and under-employed maritime workers in the 1920s and 30s. In the winter of 1932, The New York Sun ...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
" Albert Anastasia and Dandy Jack Parisi were frequently seen in the union offices at 33 President Street, Brooklyn, associating with union officers. The so-called City Democratic Club, located in South Brooklyn, was a hangout for racketeers where...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Philip Kasinitz and Jan Rosenberg in their paper, Missing the Connection: Social Isolation and Employment on the Brooklyn Waterfront (1996) conclude that: "few local residents hold local jobs in the private sector. A survey of local employers...
