YOU never know what you’re going to find down by the water, which is why I am happy to have been born and raised in a city by the water. Oddly, I have never had much to do with water, other than self-cleanliness. I ride ferries avidly, and have done my time in rowboats, but have never swum a stroke even though I keep saying I will take lessons at the Y (I tried in 1968 as a kid but was too chicken to continue). My father was a strong swimmer and served in the British merchant marine in WWII, as Newfoundland was still under British control at the time; he visited places as far flung as Greenland and Trinidad.
Here’s a shot I squeezed off while meandering around Brooklyn Heights in December 2021. Liberty Enlightening the World you recognize. In the foreground is the M/V North River, a vessel commissioned in 1974 and tasked with transporting sludge, a semi-solid slurry (semisolids suspended in water) that can be produced from a range of industrial processes, from water treatment, wastewater treatment or on-site sanitation systems, between wastewater plants. It’s a dirty job that must be done.
“North River” is an old name for the Hudson River, as it leads to upstate locations and was NYC’s first superhighway for boat traffic. The East River’s name is still obviously in use. But there was also once a South River. Can you guess what it was?
It was the Delaware River, the undefended barrier between New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
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2/16/24
12 comments
Sometime in the early 30s the Hudson froze over and my grandfather was able to walk over to New Jersey
from Manhattan
The winter of 1976-77 was so severe that the Hudson River froze from NY Harbor to Albany. The Coast Guard dispatched an icebreaker so that oil tankers could make deliveries to heating oil depots.
Will you take a swim lesson at some point do you suppose or will you remain a land lubber?
When you took swim lessons at the Y in ’68 was that the time you had the instructor who was
a bully and anus supreme?
My instructors were actually good but I was scared out of my mind, despite that.
I wonder what was the West River if there actually was one.
There is a West River in Connecticut – “a 13.5-mile-long (21.7 km)[ freshwater stream in southern Connecticut. It flows through the towns of Bethany, Woodbridge, New Haven, and West Haven before discharging into New Haven Harbor.” Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_River_(Connecticut).
Also there is a West River in South Dakota but it’s not a body of water. It is “the portion of the state of South Dakota located west of the Missouri River; it contains more than one-half of the land area and between one-quarter and one-third of the population of the state.” Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_River_(South_Dakota).
South River = Delaware River.
As it says in the piece
Remember, the East River is not a River, but a tidal strait connecting Upper New York Bay with Long Island Sound, about a sixteen mile stretch.
The North River ends about 14St where the Hudson begins, has to do with the mix of salt and fresh water.
That section of the Hudson was called “North River” because it pointed magnetic north. Many old maps of the area would place a compass illustration in that section of the river. Here’s one that places the compass near the section: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/77b1f5b0-c5aa-012f-c093-58d385a7bc34#/?uuid=5fd5626f-c11d-bf29-e040-e00a1806082e