I COVER THE WATERFRONT

During the heyday of passenger liners, some of the largest ships afloat docked at Hoboken. In this story, I recall some interesting facts about some of them. All ashore who's going ashore. Cast off, matey. 02/23/2016

I COVER THE WATERFRONT.

Hoboken had long been the port of call for three major shipping lines, the North German Lloyd, Holland American and the Hamburg American. When the USA entered WW I, it confiscated the great German liner, the Bremen, which happened to be docked in Hoboken, and converted it to a troop transport.       

The 1930’s depression brought about a significant reduction in trans-Atlantic ship travel. Owners tied up a number of older luxury liners, including the Cunard-White Star’s Leviathan, at Hoboken piers waiting for the world’s economic condition to improve. These majestic ships served as a backdrop to my grade school ball games played in a park that fronted the river.

In New York’s heyday as a major port of call, I witnessed many arrivals and departures of famous ships, including the Normandie, Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, whose captain made headlines on one trip when he guided the giant QM out from the pier into the river without benefit of tugboats whose crews were on strike.

When the Holland American’s ship, the Nieuw Amsterdam, arrived in port, longshoremen would “shape up” hoping to be picked for work that day. Its cargo ultimately made its way to the freight rail line that fronted the pier’s warehouses. Empty boxcars became adventurous playground equipment for me and my friends. We would climb up their ladders, scamper along the tops, and jump from one to another. In this time of innocence I did not catch the drift of those boys who laughed at the imperative sign, “Do not hump,” chalked on some boxcars.

In 1937, the Maxwell House Company opened the world’s largest coffee processing plant in Hoboken. Ships carrying the beans sailed right up to its front door where stevedores, like my father, unloaded the cargo.  In 1940, he broke his leg when some coffee bags fell on him. His leg never healed properly, forcing him to seek other employment.

When WW II began, both the Queen Mary and the Normandie were docked in NYC. Our country confiscated the Normandie and renamed it the U.S.S. Lafayette.  With its sleek hull design, it was considered to be more modern and luxurious than either of the two Queens whose shapes were similar to ships from a much earlier era. Later in the war, the Queen Elizabeth made a mad dash across the ocean and joined the other two ships tied up in New York. From the campus of Stevens Tech, I could see all three vessels.

While being converted for use as a troop ship, a welder's torch set the great French passenger liner ablaze. When fireboats flooded the vessel in an attempt to douse the flames, it capsized. Many people were certain saboteurs caused this disaster. The truth will never be known. Eventually, workers managed to float the ship but never completed the conversion. After the war, the owners scrapped it, the fate of many such ships. .

In 1943, an Irish cousin and member of the British Navy contacted my family while on leave at a rest camp in New Jersey. He had seen battle action since the start of the war, in Norway and the Mediterranean. Now he served aboard the Queen Mary, ferrying troops to England. On a previous trip, in 1942, he claimed the ship had rammed and sunk an escort cruiser off the coast of Ireland. The great ship just plowed ahead, intent on delivering its cargo of 20,000 troops of a U.S. infantry division, not willing to risk being torpedoed if it stopped to give aid to the drowning sailors. He also said that the ship damn near capsized later that year when hit by a giant wave. Since he appeared drunk to me at the time, I did not believe him. After the war, I learned both incidents were factual. 

Hoboken's Bethlehem Shipyards Division’s located in a cove at the northern boundary of the city near the Lincoln Tunnel, hummed with activity during WW II. Ships of every nation came there to be repaired or revamped. Merchant seamen from every corner of the globe could be seen strolling down Hoboken’s main drag, some walking in single file for reasons I could never fathom. When a Russian freighter arrived one day, news spread that its crew included some females reputed to be unattractive brutes displaying hairy bosoms. A number of my fellow teens confirmed the report. You can learn a lot when your time is not taken up with homework.

The Lipton Tea Company’s ten-story building located on this cove dominated the city’s landscape. Kids would linger around the unloading area, hoping to steal whatever might come their way. My friends “scored” some coconuts one day, filching them from a load intended for delivery to the adjoining Bakers’ Coconut plant. We soon learned how difficult it is to break them open. Not worth robbing, we concluded. 

Hoboken is no longer a major seaport.  Air travel doomed the Atlantic passenger liners that once sailed into town. Many of these great ships, including the Leviathan, were scrapped.  The change to containerized freight ended Hoboken’s role as a cargo port as it lacked the space needed to handle this new way to transport goods. Maxwell House closed its coffee plant and sold the land to developers who built high-rise condo towers on the property.  Developers transformed the Lipton Tea Building to condominiums as well.

The city removed the piers, tore up the rail line and constructed a six-block long frontage road named Frank Sinatra Drive, in honor of the city's most famous son. From this vantage point, one can see the New York skyline and harbor, from Battery Park to the George Washington Bridge.           

In 1946, while stationed at Ladd Field in Fairbanks, Alaska, my thoughts kept drifting back to the Hudson River. Visions of all the great ships kept me awake: the Leviathan, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary, Normandie, and Nieuw Amsterdam. Tugboats and ferryboats sailed through my brain. Their mournful and ominous foghorn blasts resounded within my psyche. My blue funk lasted for days.

Prior to being discharged in 1947, I had minor surgery performed at a military hospital located on Governor’s Island in New York’s harbor.  During the ten minute ferryboat ride from Battery Park, I hooted and tooted at all the other ships, glad to speak with all my old maritime friends, glad to be home.

▀

          

  .

.