Nathan Ward: Take Me to the River in New York, Finally
[Nathan Ward is the author of “Dark Harbor: The War for the New York Waterfront.”]
...In the Colonial era, the waterfront was the province of those who wanted to go to sea, or at least to unload ships. Cargo-laden clipper ships entering the harbor produced a call for “Men Along the Shore!” — longshoremen. Back then, those men with the patience to keep alert for the flare or flag of an approaching vessel and the physical strength to “bull” cargo were really the only people allowed near the docks.
During the 19th century and early 20th century, the docks were a place of dangerous work done by often desperate men, many of them immigrants. In the 1915 study “The Longshoremen,” the sociologist Charles Barnes described an occupation that “involves such constant risk that a man becomes ‘work hardened’ or indifferent to the dangers around him.” Barnes authenticated 309 longshore accidents on the Manhattan waterfront, 96 of them fatal, in a single year.
By the middle of the 20th century, New York Harbor was the greatest port in the world, with more than 900 working piers. But as commerce boomed, so too did crime. The small-time heists by pre-Prohibition gangs gave way to territorial murders and organized pilferage. (Pier 45 at West Street, now a pastoral portion of the Hudson River Park, was so gang-ridden it couldn’t be rented out.)...
Read entire article at NYT
...In the Colonial era, the waterfront was the province of those who wanted to go to sea, or at least to unload ships. Cargo-laden clipper ships entering the harbor produced a call for “Men Along the Shore!” — longshoremen. Back then, those men with the patience to keep alert for the flare or flag of an approaching vessel and the physical strength to “bull” cargo were really the only people allowed near the docks.
During the 19th century and early 20th century, the docks were a place of dangerous work done by often desperate men, many of them immigrants. In the 1915 study “The Longshoremen,” the sociologist Charles Barnes described an occupation that “involves such constant risk that a man becomes ‘work hardened’ or indifferent to the dangers around him.” Barnes authenticated 309 longshore accidents on the Manhattan waterfront, 96 of them fatal, in a single year.
By the middle of the 20th century, New York Harbor was the greatest port in the world, with more than 900 working piers. But as commerce boomed, so too did crime. The small-time heists by pre-Prohibition gangs gave way to territorial murders and organized pilferage. (Pier 45 at West Street, now a pastoral portion of the Hudson River Park, was so gang-ridden it couldn’t be rented out.)...