Erie Basin is home to the Erie Basin Barge-Port co-owned by the Hughes-Reinauer partnership. It is a tight body of water surrounded by a man-made barrier islands and was home to the New York Shipyard, Revere Sugar Company, and numerous small barge concerns. The property surrounding the basin is purported to be home of the most hotly contested real estate issues in the 5 boroughs.
The newest occupant is the IKEA Corp. which acquired the NY Shipyard property and built its newest Brooklyn facility there. The New York Water Taxi calls this basin home as well as the being a holding berth for the Reinauer Shipping Company’s many barges and tugs. The NYC Police department maintains an evidence impound yard here as well. (Not a good place for a vehicle to end up.)
Traffic in and out of this small 240′ wide entrance is year round and large scale. It’s not unusual to see small tugs with sand and trap-rock scows gliding through the “cut” as well as impossibly large tug and oil barge combinations headed for the tie up berths along the NYC Police vehicle impound yard. It was once home to one of the many shipyards that worked here in New York. Getting a ship in this cut was a daunting task for the pilot and assist tugs that had to shape up and then catch the big guy inside the cut and assist the turn. Tricky stuff. This link shows a photo of the basin from over 50 years ago and illustrates perfectly how busy a place it was.
This tiny part of New York’s harbor is one of the most challenging to negotiate with a tug and tow and is a defining skill of every Reinauer wheelhouse man. The currents of the Upper Bay and the East River influence the basin’s approaches and make this a particularly difficult inlet to pilot. Prevailing winds in the winter months are Northwesterly for the most part and will have a tendency to drive and inbound unit southeastward toward the long concrete bulkhead of its 240′ wide entrance.
The summer winds are generally southwesterly and present the north side’s collapsing bulkhead with its ragged profile. The method I’ve used and prefer when towing alongside into the basin is to have the tow made up on the starboard side of the tug. The reason I recommend this to my mates and anyone who asks is that the tow will almost always set toward the south wall, given the nature of the prevailing wind and the anticipated effect of the current. Having the tow on the starboard side allows me to land flat along the south wall and take advantage of the installed rubber fenders that line the wall (thanks to Reinauer). The approach for the opening is affected by crosscurrents flowing either north (flood) or south (ebb) and will require the inbound unit to have a good amount of steerage to safely negotiate the cut. The approach is lined up well out in the upper end of Bay Ridge Anchorage in order to set up the entry and stabilize the slide as the entrance is neared. On the south bulkhead one can see reflective markers that act as a range and will assist the inbounder with detecting the slide as the entrance is approached. The addition of this homemade range was the result of the Reinauer wheelhouse men making a simple suggestion that made the situation a little better.
With a nod to the skills exhibited by the Reinauer workforce, there is a small cadre of men who earn the respect of every real boatman in the harbor as they transit this small cove in the heart of New York. The men running the “Brown tugs” and the men steering for “Buchanan” can rightly claim to be occupational experts when it comes to negotiating Erie Basin cut. These guys do it with loaded sand and gravel barges at nearly any stage of the current in almost any weather and do it every day. It’s a regular thing to see the boys on the Thomas or John Brown taking a loaded scow or scows through the cut with only a couple of soft lines and nothing else as they glide into the bay from the inner berths of the basin. It’s graceful and appears effortless, we all know it’s not.
There’s a special knack for handling scows on soft lines that only years of practice can refine. The amount of boat handling these men do in a day outpaces nearly any other tug in the harbor. They handle more scows into and out of more berths in a week than we in the petroleum transport business do in months. This creates extraordinarily skilled boathandlers and deckhands. It’s a real pleasure to watch them as they untangle a flotilla of 16 or so scows and separate them into various rafts for delivery. These are the largest tows on the Hudson River anymore and are frequently seen transiting the East River for ports east or heading up the Arthur Kill and Kill Van Kull bound for the “stakeboats” in the upper bay. Their “stakeboats” are the moorings on the Jersey flats that serve as staging areas for the empty trap rock scows headed back up north to Clinton Point and loaded ones just arrived and bound for construction sites all over the tri-state area.
Erie Basin is also the staging area for most of the city’s fireworks displays. The Grucci family and others like them set up their pyrotechnic magic inside the confines of the Basin. It’s a regular thing in the summer months to see the firing tubes of these displays being set up and arranged for an evening’s show.
The many operations that originate here are an integral part of the port that is New York Harbor. It’s easy to dismiss this little hole in the wall as unimportant. The next firework display you witness on the Fourth of July will be crafted here. Your roadways and skyscrapers will be supplied by the efforts of the men who move their charges through this narrow portal safely. The gasoline and heating oil that is delivered to your neighborhood is done by the tugs barges that wait patiently for the next order to be loaded and delivered to any of dozens of terminals in the tri-state area.
It’s a big job starting in a small place, right in your backyard.
Back in 2002 I poked my 30 foot Nonsuch sailboat into the Erie Basin to take a look around. I was just starting a cruise that would take me up the North River and along the Erie and Oswego Canals across Lake Ontario to Kingston Canada. A lot of history inside of that basin Thanks for adding a little more detail about today’s activities especially the tugs. I photgraphed one of the Brown tugs passing my boat in Hell Gate in September towing what appeared to be part of a bridge. http://biankablog.blogspot.com/2009/09/electric-sailboat-cruise-to-new-york_26.html#links
Wonder if it wound up in the basin? I have heard they sell a lot of bridges in Brooklyn. I enjoy your blog always something interesting .
Thanks, and they just sell the same bridge over and again. It’s kind of a tradition. bb
Capt bb – nice post, I’m sure the crews on the boats you speak of will appreciate your remarks.
[…] Brown and Buchanan that routinely pilot in and out of there see Capt. Bill Brucato’s post Erie Basin Cut, New York Harbor at his NY Tugmaster’s […]
Erie basin has been a wonder probably since it was built.In the early ’60s, when Isthmian steamships moored where Reinauer barges tie up now, Moran tugs usually did the shifting, placing or removing scows from shipside during offshore loading/discharge operations, usually with a ‘canaller’ or a DPC tug, about 900hp. The slips on the East side were usually filled with foreign freighters.
Todd’s Erie Basin yard was always busy. There was not much room and a lot of traffic. Railroad tugs would arrive, drop a couple barges and leave. Then the shifter had to sort out which went where.
Once, on the Marie S. Moran, a ‘canaller’, the Harbormaster(boss stevedore) insisted that I move a high crane barge with a heavy ship’s condenser in the air from alongside #2 hatch of an Isthmian ship to pierside astern of a Yugoslav ship across the Basin. At surphace level a calm wind, in the lee of the moored ships. Aloft there was a stiff breeze, maybe 18-20kts. Made up to the crane head and toe I maneuvered away from the ship.Then the wind took over. The ‘boss’ says “put it back alongside. “I said “NO”. By letting the wind set the tow I could back and fill, twist and control the rig to a lee on the other side of the basin. We landed gently astern of the Yugo ship. One of Moran’s star deckhands got a line out first try and then another.
The harbormaster finally recovered his breath and said we could go back to Isthmian’s dock and take a few minutes off. He headed back onto the ship…maybe for a nip?
I cut my teeth on a DPC back in the early 70’s as a deckhand and then in the wheelhouse. You really earned your pay with those low-horsepower light draft boats. Single screw boat handling, the bare-bones basics. I’m glad I got the opportunity to work on one. It set me up well for the future. bb
The entrance to Erie Basin was known as the Gap until rather recently. I recall my father and uncles telling about their encounters there with covered barges, stick lighters, grain elevators, etc. with 150-250hp steamboats back in the ’30s and’40s. I still refer to it as The Gap when making my security calls.
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