boatyard


	FORGOTTEN NEW YORK HarperCollins, ORDER from Amazon: paperback or hardcover


	FORGOTTEN NEW YORK T-SHIRTS and more!

I return often to the dead boatyard at Rossville, Staten Island, at the literal and figurative end of New York City (at least its southernmost end). There are wrecks of tugboats, steamships, fireboats, cargo vessels and ferries here that go back to the beginning of the 20th Century; somewhere in here is the remains of the Abram S. Hewitt, one of the fireboats that attempted to assist victims of the infamous June 1904 General Slocum excursion boat fire that claimed over 1000 lives. With a good zoom lens you can get excellent photos of these ships, while hundreds of wreck-seekers have clambered aboard the ships at low tide for an up-close look. The scrapyard has been in operation since 1964.

Plenty of websites and photo pages chronicle the Boatyard; probably the best is by Shawn O'Boyle, whose site is linked above. There's Steve Duncan's Undercity, occasional ForgottenAssociate Pro-Zak, Darren Caffery, and many others; googling "rossville" and "boatyard" will probably find you quite a few more.

I've said the Boatyard is in one of NYC's spookiest locales because, if you walk up Arthur Kill Road a few feet from Rossville Avenue you will stumble upon a shaded grotto full of impossibly ancient tombstones. This was originally the colonial-ra Sleight family burial ground, also known in its time as the Blazing Star burial ground, named for a nearby tavern, the New Blazing Star Inn and a ferry that crossed the Arthur Kill to New Jersey (the Old Blazing Star Ferry was situated at the foot of what is now Victory Boulevard in Travis).

Stones from 1803 and 1811

Susannah Marshall, 89, 1801. Probably one of the very latest uses of the "long s" in orthography; they resembled small f's. The inscription says, "My flesh here slumbers in the ground/Till the last trumpet's joyful sound/Then burst the chains with sweet surprise/And in my Saviour's image rise"

One of the oldest stones I found, Jacob Sleight, either 1781 or 1731.

erpietri@earthlink.net

Your webmaster is on facebook