A History of Red Hook Norman Brouwer, noted maritime historian - the man who basically wrote THE guides to historic ships and some of our national preservation standards for them - graciously wrote this maritime history of Red Hook for...
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
During the 1970s, there was a long-running discussion about what to do with the Red Hook waterfront after the creation of containerization. There was a plan for a larger containerport running the length of the western shoreline that did not...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
" A modern port is made up of many things, one of the most important besides the fact that a good port must be a good natural harbor for ships, is the vast array of manmade contrivances for the physical handling of...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Docked at the German-American pier, at the foot of Ferris Street, in May of 1897 was the clipper ship Belfast - known as a ghost craft in the British Merchant Marine. The World newspaper reported that: "Seamen Burke and...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
By the end of the 19th century, New York Harbor continued to retain its status as the busiest port in the US, and had become one of the busiest in the whole world. The port was lined with shippers and boats, manufacturers who vied to be close to...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A cheat sheet for the bell and jingle code hangs in the fidley of the MARY A. WHALEN. It can be seen in the related entry Bells are Direction, Jingles are Speed which lays out the system. The bell and jingle code was used by the captain...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The Dalzell Towing Company purchased the Red Hook Towing Company in 1925 to expand their operations into Brooklyn. They then moved their offices to the Erie Basin breakwater (the man-made protective pier that encloses the basin)...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
This 1892 map by the Corps of Engineers, titled Improvement of Gowanus Bay , New York Harbor shows, in addition to the existing Atlantic and Erie Basins, a proposed basin between Hicks and Clinton streets.
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In 1951 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle ran a human interest story about Thomas Dunne, an Irish sailor on a comercial vessel who traveled the world but when docked in Red Hook, Brooklyn would not get off the boat for fear of getting lost in the city. Text...
