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...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Seaman's handbook for Shore Leave , by United States Merchant Marine’s Social Service Bureau. Custom House, published in 1920 listed sailor’s homes – places were sailors could get a bed and sometimes a meal for a night - from...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In 1866, two men and a dog from Red Hook, set sail in a metal life-boat rigged like a sailing ship. Captain Hudson and Mr. Fitch were out to prove the seaworthiness of the lifeboat , RED WHITE AND BLUE, designed by Brooklyn's Oliver Roland...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The MARY A WHALEN is a rare surviving example of a bell boat. On a bell boat, the person steering (the captain or the mate) has no direct control over the speed of the engine, nor whether the ship goes forward or in reverse. The engineer, as the...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The CHANDRA B is a 79 ft by 23 ft double-hull bunkering tanker and part of American Petroleum Transport's fleet of service vessels that work the New York Harbor. As part of APT's fleet, the CHANDRA B delivers fuel to many of the vessels in the...
