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
On Saturday March 14, 1885, workers at Finlay's Stores were told that they hourly rate would be cut to 20 cents an hour, down from twenty-five. They refused to work for less pay and the company replaced them with about fifty Swedes and Norwegians....
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Finlay's Stores were described in 1889 as consisting "of thirty-two lots of land and sixteen large double storehouses, eight of which lie on either side of the entrance to the basin... Four of the storehouses are five stories in height and...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Three men, possibly stevedores, loading (or unloading) a large barrel on to (or off of) a freighter, sometimes around the the 1870s. The back of the photograph is inscribed "Atlantic Dock". The photograph is by George Bradford Brainerd , 1845-1887....
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The sweet story from the Atlantic Docks, reprinted in full below, ran in the Towanda, Pennsylvania's Bradford Reporter, on December 22, 1864. This good natured human interest story, with little doubt copied from another newspaper, is notable in...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
D efalcation. John Wright, a storage keeper at Atlantic Docks, N.Y. and a defaulter to a considerable amount, left for France in the steamer United States, on her last passage. One house in New York, it is said, will be a loser by him to the...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Ships have unintended passengers As ships travel across the oceans between the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and elsewhere they take with them unintended passengers. These stowaways include seeds mixed in with ballast. In order to be properly...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
November 6, 2018, the PortSide crew spots a great blue heron in Atlantic Basin for the first time. So exciting! More about them here https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Blue_Heron/overview Also: Guide to Harbor Herons and Other Colonial...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In 1872 the Great Western Line was sailing out of Red hook Brooklyn's Atlantic Docks taking passengers and cargo to a port near London and other ports along the Bristol Channel. The cost of a cabin was $70 Today, one can take the Queen Mary 2...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Ichaboe, a small island off the coast of Nambia, once towered high with mounds of seabird guano. An excellent fertilizer, beginning in 1843, English ships began exporting the guano to eager farmers in Europe and America. By 1844, 450 ships were...
