Over and Back: The History of Ferryboats in New York Harbor

Brian J. Cudahy

Fordham Univ Press, 1990 - Business & Economics - 472 pages

Ask the average American anywhere in the country to answer the association question "Staten Island" and you get "Ferry" in immediate response. what is regularly billed as "America's favorite boatride"- not least because a round trip still costs an astonishing twenty-five cents- is the last public survivor of New York Harbor's once immense fleet of those doughty double-ended ferryboats.

Dozens of ferryboats in a myriad of liveries crossed the harbor's waterways as recently as one generation ago Most have vanished as though they never were, leaving in their ghostly wakes only fading memories and a few gorgeously restored ferry terminals. The handsomest of these terminals, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson, is probably the one dubbed by Christopher Morley the Piazza San Lackawanna.

Over and Back captures definatively nearly two centuries of ferryboating in New York Harbor, by a master narrator of the history of transportation in America. In stories, charts, maps, photographs, diagrams, route lists, fleet rosters, and in the histories of some four hundred ferryboats, Brian J. Cudahy captures the whole tale as concisely as one could hope.

The transportation expert, the ferry buff, the model builder, the urban historian: each will find grist for his or her mill. The photographs capture a highly significant footnote in America's past and present; the colored illustrations preserve some of the stylish rigs in which the owners garbed their boats, despite coal soot, oil smudge, and urban grime.

Fully a third of the book comprises the most complete statistical compilation that the nation's public and private archives permit. The data show, among other things, that some of the former workhorses of New York Harbor are filling utilitarian or social roles elsewhere in the United States and overseas, and that the newest boats in the harbor began life along the Gulf of Mexico and in New England.

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• Prologue: 7
• How It All Got Started 18121824: 20
• Years of Growth 18241860: 42
• Years of Growth 18241860: 65
• The Civil War 18611865: 90
• Patterns After Appomattox 18651900 110: 126
• The Road to Municipal Operation 19001910: 147
• A Statistical Interlude: 184
• Here Comes Red Mike 19101925: 204
• The Dream Fades 19251955: 248
• But Doesnt Die 1955 and Onward: 292
• Contemporary action A Annotated Bibliography: 355
• that links lower Man: 366
• land the 1982built: 465

Popular passages

Page 36 - ... such and so many ferries around Manhattan's Island alias New York Island, for the carrying and transporting people, horses, cattle, goods, and chattels from the...

Page 1 - Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg'd waves! Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me ! Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers! Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta ! stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn ! Throb, baffled and curious brain!

Page 40 - Cross the East River ere the advent of steam : Sometimes the old driver the horses would straddle, And sometimes ride round on the circling beam. " The old wheel would creak, and the driver would whistle To force the blind horses to pull the wheel round ; And their backs were all scarr'd and stuck out in bristles, For the driver's fierce stick their old bones would pound. " The man at the gate, in fair weather or rainy, • • Stood out in the storm by the cold river-side, « With pockets capacious,...

Page 26 - In a new combination of this kind it is not to be expected that everything should work to the best advantage in a first experiment or that every requisite should be foreseen. The boat which I am now constructing will have some important improvements, particularly in the power of the engine to overcome strong ebb tides, from which, again, other improvements will be made, as in ali new inventions.

Page 32 - I shall instantly insist on all rights to which I am entitled in law and justice. . . ." Stevens promptly replied, "Your letter of this date is couched in terms so very offensive that I shall not have deemed it incumbent upon me to have returned an answer. . . ."147 At the same time Roosevelt was pressing his claims through his father-in-law. Latrobe wrote his daughter, "Fulton I respect & love & believe him to be honest, tho

Page 24 - To give her more strength, she is held together by four-inch braces, each two inches square, which pass through her one foot above the water line, and key on strong plates on the inside of each boat. Reflecting on a steam ferry for Hudson River, the waves usually running up or down, I found a great breadth of beam absolutely necessary to prevent the boat rolling in the trough of the sea. This is attained by two boats and one space, giving 30 feet beam. Second. By placing the propelling water wheel...

About the author

Brian Cudahy has served as the director of the office of transit management with the Department of Transportation. He writes on Urban Architecture, focusing on the historical aspects of transit systems. In Under the Sidewalks of New York: The Story of the World's Greatest Subway System, he chronicled the development of the subway and provided a chronological overview of rapid transit. He has also written histories of the Boston subway, Hudson tubes, Pennsylvania railroad tunnels, and the Chicago rapid transit system.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Over and Back: The History of Ferryboats in New York Harbor
• Author: Brian J. Cudahy
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Fordham Univ Press, 1990
• ISBN: 0823212459, 9780823212453
• Length: 472 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Industries / Transportation; History / United States / State & Local / General; Transportation / General; Transportation / Ships & Shipbuilding / General; Transportation / Ships & Shipbuilding / History