New York Harbor Totally Explained

Everything about New York Harbor totally explained

New York Harbor, a geographic term, refers collectively to the rivers, bays, and tidal estuaries near the mouth of the Hudson River in the vicinity of New York City. This is sometimes construed in the sense "the Ports of New York and New Jersey". More narrowly, the term occasionally refers only to "Upper New York Bay".

Geography

In the broad sense, the term includes the following bodies of water and their waterfronts:
Upper New York Bay, Lower New York Bay, North River (for example the lowest part of the Hudson River), East River, Kill Van Kull, Newark Bay, Arthur Kill, The Narrows, Jamaica Bay, Raritan Bay, and Harlem River. This includes about, with over a of shoreline. At peak it contained of developed waterfront in 11 individual, active ports in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, Perth Amboy, Elizabeth, Bayonne, Newark, Jersey City, Hoboken, and Weehawken. Although the U.S. Board of Geographic Names doesn't include the term, New York Harbor has important historical, governmental, commercial, and ecological usages.

Harbor history

Before the Erie Canal

The aboriginal population of the seventeenth century New York Harbor, the Lenape were linguistically tied to the Algonquians, and used the waterways for fishing and travel. They greeted the first recorded European in the Harbor, Henry Hudson, in 1609. In 1624 the first permanent European settlement was started on Governors Island, and eight years later in Brooklyn; soon these were connected by ferry operation. The colonial Dutch Director-General of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant, ordered construction of the first wharf on the Manhattan bank of the lower East River sheltered from winds and ice, which was completed late in 1648 and called Schreyers Hook Dock (near what is now Pearl and Broad Streets). This prepared New York as a leading port for the British colonies and then within the newly independent United States. In 1686 the British colonial officials gave the municipality control over the waterfront.

The Erie Canal and its consequences

In 1824 the first American drydock was completed on the East River. Because of its location and depth, the Port grew rapidly with the introduction of steamships; and then with the completion in 1825 of the Erie Canal New York became the most important transhipping port between the American interior and Europe as well as coastwise destinations. By about 1840, more passengers and a greater tonnage of cargo came through the port of New York than all other major harbors in the country combined and by 1900 it was one of the great international ports. The main immigrant port of entry at Ellis Island had 12 million arrivals from 1892 to 1954.
In 1870 the city established the Department of Docks to systematize waterfront development, with George B. McClellan as the first engineer in chief.
Before the major road improvements allowed efficient trucking, rail freight was ferried to Manhattan from New Jersey, meaning railroads had small fleets of towboats, barges, and 323 car floats, specially designed barges with rails so cars could be rolled on. New York subsidized this service which undercut rival ports.

World War II and later

After the United States entered World War II, Operation Drumbeat loosed the top U-Boat aces against the merchant fleet in U.S. territorial waters in January 1942, starting the Second happy time. The U-Boat captains were able to silhouette target ships against the glow of city lights, and attacked with relative impunity, in spite of U.S. Naval concentrations within the Harbor. Casualties included the tankers Coimbria off Sandy Hook and Norness off Long Island. New York Harbor, as the major convoy embarkation point for the U.S., was effectively a staging area in the Second Battle of the Atlantic, with the U.S. Merchant Marine losses of 1 of 26 exceeding those of the other U.S. forces.
The Harbor reached its peak activity in March 1943, during World War II, with 543 ships at anchor, awaiting assignment to convoy or berthing (with as many as 425 seagoing vessel already at one of the 750 piers or docks). 1100 warehouses with nearly of enclosed space served freight along with 575 tugboats and 39 active shipyards (perhaps most importantly New York Naval Shipyard founded 1801). With a staggering inventory of heavy equipment, this made New York Harbor the busiest in the world.

Maritime

Nautically, the Harbor consists of a complex of about of shipping channels (requiring pilotage), as well as anchorages and port facilities, centered on the Upper New York Bay. Larger vessels require tugboat assistance for the sharper channel turns, for example from Kill van Kull into Port Newark. The Harbor has the main entrance from the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast, between the Rockaway Point and Sandy Hook; it has another entrance via the Long Island Sound from the northeast at the outlet of the East River. The Harbor extends to the southwest to the mouth of the Raritan River, to the northwest at Port Newark and to the north to the George Washington Bridge. Other vehicular routes cross the Harbor include the PATH tunnel and lower down the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.

Port

As the port facilities of New York and New Jersey it's the largest oil importing port and second largest container port in the nation. Although the phrase has always implied the commercial activity of the port of New York City, including the waterfronts of the five boroughs and nearby cities in New Jersey, only since 1972 has this been formalized under a single bi-state Port Authority. Since the 1950s, the New York and Brooklyn commercial port has been almost completely eclipsed by the container ship facility at nearby Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal in Newark Bay, which is the largest such port on the Eastern Seaboard. The port has diminished in importance to passenger travel, but the Port Authority operates all three major airports in New York (La Guardia, 1939 and JFK/Idlewild, 1948) and Newark (1928). New York City is still serviced by several cruise lines, commuter ferries, and tourist excursion boats. A new passenger facility has recently opened in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Although most ferry service is private, the Staten Island Ferry is operated by the New York City Department of Transportation.

Channel maintenance

Responsibilities within the Harbor are divided among all levels of government, from municipal to federal. Port facilities are controlled by bi-state Port Authority, but actual channel depth control is under the US Army Corps of Engineers, which has been involved in the Harbor since about 1826 when Congress passed an omnibus rivers and harbors act. The natural depth of New York Harbor is about, but it has been deepened over the years, to about controlling depth in 1880. By 1891 the Main Ship Channel was minimally . In 1914 Ambrose Channel became the main entrance to the Harbor, at deep and wide. During World War II the main channel was dredged to depth to accommodate larger ships up to Panamax size. Currently the Corps of Engineers is contracting out deepening to, to accommodate Post-Panamax container vessels, which can pass through the Suez Canal. This has been a source of environmental concern along channels connecting the container facilities in Port Newark to the Atlantic. PCBs and other pollutants lay in a blanket just underneath the soil. In many areas the sandy bottom has been excavated down to rock and now requires blasting. Dredging equipment then picks up the rock and disposes of it. At one point in 2005 there were 70 pieces of dredging equipment in the harbor working to deepen the harbor, the largest fleet of dredging equipment anywhere in the world. The work occasionally causes noise and vibration that can be felt by residents on Staten Island. Excavators alert residents when blasting is underway.

Safety and Security

The Coast Guard deals with waterways management, including spills, vessel rescues, and counter-terrorism. Deterrence and investigation of criminal activity, especially relating to organized crime, is also the responsibility of the bi-state Waterfront Commission. The Commission was set up in 1953 (a year before the movie On the Waterfront), to combat labor racketeering. It is held that the Gambino crime family controlled the New York waterfront and the Genovese crime family controlled the New Jersey side. In 1984 the Teamsters local was put under RICO trusteeship, and in 2005 a similar suit was brought against the International Longshoremen's Association local.
In March 2006, the Port passenger facility was to be transferred to Dubai Ports World. There was considerable security controversy over the ownership by a foreign, particularly Arab, of a U.S. port operation, this in spite of the fact the current operator was the British based P&O Ports, and the fact that Orient Overseas Investment Limited, a company dominated by a Chinese Communist official, has the operating contract for Howland Hook Marine Terminal. An additional concern is the U.S. Customs "green lane" program, in which trusted shippers have fewer containers inspected, providing easier access for contraband materiel.

Harbor Ecology

A persistent misconception holds that the Harbor is largely devoid of marine life. In reality, it supports a great variety of thriving estuarine aquatic species. Indeed tidal flow occurs as far north as Troy, over 100 miles north.
The National Park Service now maintains the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Governors Island, Castle Clinton, Gateway National Recreation Area, and Grant's Tomb.

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