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
Rich Naruszewicz was interviewed by PortSide NewYork's Jenny Kane in 2014. Scroll down to bottom of the page for audio recording Synopsis of Interview (times are approximate, text is not word-for-word but provides a gist of the audio recording) I...
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 to go work...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In honor of the ship MARY A .WHALEN reaching its 80th year PortSide NewYork invited the Urban Sketchers to come and be inspired by her views. Below is some of the artwork made that day. Scattered on, around, and in the Red Hook neighborhood of...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The sounds of the Mary Whalen are more than just the ship moving in the water, and the NYC ferry idling at the dock, it is also, the call of gulls, the quack of ducks, and on this night, the very loud trill of a cricket.
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
A few ducks and geese are often to be found in the waters of Atlantic Basin in the the Spring and Summer. The ducks in this video, shot from the aft end of the MARY WHALEN, are swimming in water near the City's combined sewer overflow pipe. The...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Swallows live under the piers with fendering (wooden cross piece's of piers) and like the dock lines and mast and stack stays on the Mary Whalen They arrive around April 9 and leave around August 23
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
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 oil tanker MARY A. WHALEN was launched May 21, 1938 . The ship is PortSide NewYork's ambassador to the BLUEspace and site of our offices and many programs. Why she is significant? She is the the last of her kind in the...
