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
Synopsis of interview with Heidi Benedikt, former crew member of the MARY A. WHALEN. Recording times in parenthesis are aproximate. Go to bottom of the page to hear the full interview (0:10) The delegate of the union convinced me...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Ira S. Bushey started his work life driving mules on the Erie Canal in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. By 1895 Bushey began repairing boats, settling up shop in Brooklyn in 1905. His shipyard was located at the foot of Court Street, on...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In 1889, several newspapers reported on Lawrence Grob, a citizen of Red Hook who earned the nickname “Larry the Bugler'' from his neighbors. Every morning, from his residence on Conover Street, near the Atlantic Docks, Grob used his bugle to wake...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In the 1990’s New York’s waterways was less grandiose, than it had been in years prior, but it still had its gems here and there. One such gem, Leonard Thomas, affectionately known as the “Chicken Man'', worked a career that spanned several...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
When the Steamer Uranium, from Rotterdam, via Halifax docked at Atlantic Basin's Pier 38 in Red Hook, all the talk was about love. Love was what people were talking about when the Steamer Uranium docked at Pier 38, Atlantic Basin, Red Hook, in...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In 1890, Mrs. A. M. Hamilton, a widow, was interviewed in Atlantic Basin, and celebrated by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as being equal to any man running a canal boat. Beginning in the mid-1820s, canal boats brought produce from the nation's interior...
Joe Ruggiero, aka “Joey Chips” since he always shows up at a party with a bag of chips, is a WWII vet who is still driving in 2016. He served as a Bosun Mate on the Navy vessel THURSTON and participated in 6 D-Days in 4 years including...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Ralph Packer is a Martha's Vineyard old-timer who coyly won't reveal his age because he doesn't want to retire! Interviewed while taking a break on the Vineyard Haven pier of his Packer Fuel company, Ralph offers a historical perspective on...
Gerard Rokosz is a man deeply in love with his former job as the last dry dock manager at Todd Shipyard. At the time of this 2005 interview, he was working for a marina and nostalgic about the shipyard: "seeing my old office collapsing makes me...
