By The Red Hook WaterStories team
1910 US Coast and Geodetic Survey nautical chart of New York City and Harbor area. This was an update of their 1866 chart. Chart includes details on water depth, navigation channels, tables of lighthouses and beacons, locations of life saving...
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...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Gary Shiflett, currently a fleet manager, used to work for Ira S. Bushey and Sons and Eklof Marine. In 2016, while standing in the galley of PortSide NewYork's MARY A. WHALEN - a "Bushey boat" - he told of some of his memories...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Captain Nels Helgesen during his long career which began in 1918, commanded every ship of the New York and Porto Rico Steamship Line. The home port of the steamship line was in Red Hook's Atlantic Basin. Starting in the late 1910s, their ships...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Red Hook's Atlantic Basin was the main port of entry for early Puerto Rican migrants. They traveled on the ships of the NEW YORK & PORTO RICO STEAMSHIP COMPANY" (aka, PORTO RICO LINE). Jose Mendez is quoted in Place Matters , a joint...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The GENERAL SLOCUM ended service as a sinking fireball June 15, 1904, killing over 1,000, most of them women and children. 1,300 were aboard. That made the SLOCUM famous. Her fame was then forgotten and re-remembered by most of the City over the...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Sailors have long looked to the sky for clues to the impending weather. In the morning, when the sun was low in the sky, a red sky was understood to mean that a storm was likely. Just don't tell it to the judge. On November 10, 1939, the seagoing...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Month after month a three-mastered schooner was seen anchored off-shore in the Red Hook Flats. On board was just one man who never went ashore. How he got by was a mystery to the few folk who knew of his existence. He was not hiding; he had...
