By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Four years before the American Civil War, a legal battle emerged from a situation that occurred aboard a steamship from Savannah to New York. One of the passengers, Thomas Steele,a light skinned man, was accused of being a fugitive slave by another...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A pivotal event in the ending of slavery occurred on December 5, 1860, in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook when the slave ship ERIE was sold at government auction. Its captain and owner, Nathaniel Gordon, was then executed for engaging in the slave...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
One August day in 1896, on a steamship just arrived from Lisbon and docked in Erie Basin, custom officials found stashed in the cabin of a stewardess, four boxes of Spanish thread lace, one box of lace and lace embroidery as well as children's...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In the summer of 1850, an African-American woman was abducted and brought to Red Hook Point - just below the Atlantic Dock - to be taken by schooner to the South. Suspicious workers in the area were told by the captors that the woman was a...
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
The Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor was created in 1953 in response to the pervasive corruption on the waterfront in the Port of New York-New Jersey. A joint state agency it was formed after public hearings revealed corruption,...
Street address: 100 Columbia Street
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201
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By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Frank Schmidt, known to the police as "Dutch Frank," a junk dealer operating in and around Red Hook Point faced trial for dealing in stolen goods, October 1855. Junk dealers made their living buying spare sails, ropes and old iron from...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A small blurb in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle , July 1852 paints an image of scrappy Red Hook. A man named Hayes, who keeps a junk store in Red Hook Point, was taken before Justice King this morning, on a charge preferred against him by David W. Sweet,...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Rum-Runners smuggling liquor on motor boat. The boat's development was an economic one, the rum runners needed faster boats! During the Prohibition of alcohol in the U.S. (1920-1933) rum and other hard liqueurs were frequently smuggled in by boat....
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
During Prohibition (1920 -1933), the piers of Red Hook were among many places that smugglers tried to sneak in large quantities of alcohol, often using innovative speed boats to evade federal agents. On June 3, 1922, agents seized a tugboat laden...
