CHAPTER   6

“We’re in the water!”

THAT MANHATTAN IS an island—a fact easily forgotten by modern day New Yorkers and visitors alike—was unmissable in the nineteenth century when, before bridges and tunnels, boats were the only means of travel on or off. The earliest crossings had been made by rowboats and periaugers (sailing craft with the option of oar-power supplementation). That held true until July 2, 1812, when Robert Fulton inaugurated steam-powered ferry service across the Hudson River between Manhattan and New Jersey aboard the double-ended steamboat Jersey. The new, oddly configured steamboat’s regular 20-minute crossings launched the first-ever mechanically powered ferryboat service.

After that July day, steam-powered ferry services multiplied. By 1860, 11 different companies offered no fewer than 20 ferry routes to and from Manhattan. The early 1900s were perhaps the busiest years for New York harbor ferries, as steel-hull propeller boats became more common and city-run service was established. But as options for reaching the island expanded, ferry use began to dwindle.

In 1936, 117 ferryboats plied the waters of New York harbor—64 percent of them railroad-related or privately operated. But by 1975, just nine boats remained in operation, all of them run by the City of New York. Ridership decreased from 112.6 million in 1936 to about 20 million in 1975. As had happened with the Hudson and Manhattan (H&M) Railroad, the construction of bridges and vehicle tunnels drew commuters away from waterborne transit. In response to sharply reducing need, the last of the cross-Hudson ferries ended service in 1967, leaving the publicly owned Staten Island Ferry as the city’s oldest, largest, and last standing ferry service.

For two decades, no cross-Hudson ferry existed. Then, in the mid-80s, the ridership battles between ferries and bridges and tunnels came full circle. With riverside developments cropping up along the Jersey waterfront, trucking company owner Arthur Imperatore recognized a new business opportunity. Bridges and tunnels were operating at peak capacity during commuter hours, which meant a waterborne transportation alternative—especially one offering a compelling four-minute crossing—could gain wide appeal. And so, in 1986, the Port Imperial ferry service was born, operating between Weehawken, New Jersey, and West Thirty-eighth Street, Manhattan.

Soon after, Imperatore’s company submitted the winning bid to the Port Authority in response to its request for an operator to restore ferry service to the World Trade Center, via the World Financial Center terminal. Thus, more than 75 years after the idea of a public ferry service was inaugurated in New York City, a renewed trend toward private ferries began.

Later, Imperatore’s expanding company was renamed New York Waterway, and by 1991, seven ferry routes carried more than 16,000 passengers daily. In 2000, ridership reached 32,000. The growing market soon attracted newcomers, including SeaStreak, sister company of Hoverspeed, an operator of English Channel ferries. On the morning of the eleventh, SeaStreak also lent its assets to the evacuation effort.

Tens of thousands of people were already streaming away from Manhattan on foot over bridges when, at 11:02 A.M., then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called upon everyone south of Canal Street to “get out.” “Walk slowly and carefully,” he said. “If you can’t figure what else to do, just walk north.” If this sounds vague, that’s because it was. There was no plan. Even the planners had no plan for what was unfolding in Lower Manhattan.

“I’m a planner,” explained U.S. Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Kevin Gately in an internal oral history interview conducted eight months after the attacks. On September 11 he’d been a reservist for nearly 22 years, and his job with Activities New York’s Waterways Management Division was planning periodic search and rescue and port readiness assessment exercises. The closest exercise approximation to the September 11 attacks, he conceded, was a series sponsored by the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management that had begun in the spring of 2000. The exercise had played out responses to a supposed terrorist attack on a Port Authority facility using a weapon of mass destruction.

When the events of that morning actually unfolded, he explained, “Our port security response was basically exactly what had been postulated in the exercise.” But there was one significant difference: “The evacuation problem. That was completely unanticipated. That entire thing was improvised on the spot.” The total evacuation of Lower Manhattan, he reiterated, had never been envisioned, was never dreamt of in our philosophy.”

When the South Tower came down, Lieutenant Michael Day was on Staten Island standing in the Coast Guard Command Center, “riveted” to a big-screen television broadcasting CNN. “We got reports there were people congregating on the lower tip of Manhattan,” he recalled. “That’s when it really kicked in—when the first tower collapsed.” VTS cameras showed people stacking up at the shoreline.

Boats of all kinds amassed along the water’s edge, cramming their decks and interior spaces with evacuees, trying to deliver as many people off the island as possible. This unregulated effort raised Coast Guard concerns that overcrowding would cause problems on the water.

The acting captain of the port, Deputy Commander Patrick Harris, had very strategically perched himself on a high stool to coordinate the Activities New York response surrounded by representatives from all relevant departments. Haunted by visions of a Coast Guard boat that he’d seen “almost turning turtle” after being overloaded with refugees during the Cuban boat lift of 1980, Harris dispatched to “highly visible rallying points” a cadre of marine inspectors and investigators “with good strong command voices” who were knowledgeable about vessel capacities to ensure order and safety aboard ferries and to prevent other boat operators from loading unsafe numbers of passengers.

“We weren’t as concerned about the fast ferries and those guys because they knew what they could do safely for passengers,” he explained. “What we were really concerned with were the tugboats and the little private vessels—the guys that don’t normally carry passengers.”

Reports from on-scene mariners—the operators of tugs, small boats, ferries, and other vessels who’d made their way to Manhattan’s shores almost immediately after the planes hit—continued to pour in, helping to augment what Coast Guard personnel at the VTS could see on-screen. But as the scale of the disaster compounded, the need for on-scene leadership became clear. Day would head out with a small team. But instead of using a Coast Guard vessel, Day decided to take Sandy Hook Pilot Andrew McGovern up on his offer for a boat.

The everyday job of the (currently 75 active) highly trained men and women of the Sandy Hook Pilots Association is to board all designated vessels as they enter or leave New York harbor, guiding them safely through the port. For more than 300 years, these local navigation experts have met schooners, steamships, and oceangoing vessels of all sorts at the entrance to the port to guide incoming ships across a series of shoals, called the Bar of Sandy Hook, that separate New York harbor from the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1694, even before New York became a state, the then-colony appointed the first local mariners as Sandy Hook Pilots, employing a term derived from the Dutch words pijl (pole) and lood (lead), which describe an early tool used to sound depths and chart waters. Initially these pilots operated independently, racing to be the first to reach a vessel and thereby secure the job of applying their local knowledge of tides, currents, shoals, and navigational hazards to guide a ship safely into port. In 1895, however, pilots from New York and New Jersey joined forces and established a regular working rotation. In 2015, the Sandy Hook Pilots made more than 10,000 trips aboard tankers, yachts, cargo, and cruise ships. They facilitated delivery of roughly 95 percent of all cargo entering the port.

All vessels longer than 100 feet that are flying a foreign flag or carrying foreign cargo are now legally required to have a licensed pilot aboard while traversing the harbor. This means that 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in all weather conditions and port circumstances, Sandy Hook Pilots stand ready to board passenger liners, freighters, tankers, and other large ships on the open sea at the mouth of the harbor by stepping off the deck of a 53-foot aluminum launch onto the rungs of a ladder hung at midship. The work can be extremely dangerous. As the Sandy Hook Pilots Association president, Captain John Oldmixon, put it, “The chances of getting hurt are great, and the chances of you dying are significant if you mess up, or something goes wrong, or the ladder’s not rigged right.”

Securing the honor of serving in this precarious position is no easy feat. Until recently one had to know someone to land an apprenticeship. Times have changed somewhat, but still very few applicants are accepted into the association’s rigorous five-year training program, which concludes with a four-day exam during which apprentices must reproduce from memory sections of nautical charts including every depth and buoy as well as each rock, reef, shoal, pipeline, and cable. Passing this test opens the door to an additional seven years of training as a deputy pilot before earning the designation (and salary) of full branch pilot. On September 11, the pilots not only knew where boats could safely tie up or load passengers, based on depths, currents, and hidden hazards, they also were familiar—from their work in the harbor every day—with the boats, the companies, and the mariners.

Surely their encyclopedic knowledge of the port and its people could be useful at a time like this. The question was, just how exactly? At this moment, no one was exactly sure. “There wasn’t a preplanned response: This is what we do for two planes crashing into the towers,” explained Day. Instead, “people were scurrying around” trying to figure out next steps.

Pilot McGovern had been driving to Manhattan for a Harbor Ops Committee meeting when the sight of the World Trade Center in flames made him reroute, beelining for the Fort Wadsworth Coast Guard Station where he knew he could get more information and offer up assistance. All our resources are at your disposal, McGovern had told Commander Daniel Ronan when he arrived.

One invaluable resource the pilots could provide was a mobile operating platform for coordinating the Coast Guard’s on-scene response. Day agreed with McGovern that the 185-foot pilot boat New York would offer an ideal vessel for facilitating the maritime evacuation already under way, readily allowing for pilot and Coast Guard collaboration. Normally functioning as a combination command post and floating hotel, the highly maneuverable New York was well suited to staying on station for extended periods and offered a large wheelhouse with 360-degree views that was fully equipped with radar, radios, and other communications equipment.

In addition to the vessel itself, Day recognized the important contribution that the pilots’ rich knowledge base, depth of experience, and strength of relationships with other mariners would bring to this emergency effort. He explained his highly unorthodox choice to join forces and use a non-Coast Guard asset as the base for Coast Guard activity in simple terms: the Sandy Hook Pilots “know that port like it’s nobody’s business.”

Before Day set out to drive the short distance to the pilot station a few piers north, he pulled together paperwork, including nautical charts of the harbor and a copy of the plans that the Coast Guard had spent two years developing for the International Naval Review and Operation Sail (OpSail) event from the previous year.

On July 4, 2000, New York City had played host to a parade of tall sailing ships, naval vessels, yachts, and other ships from all around the world in what was believed to be the largest-ever port gathering, which included hundreds of security vessels as well as tens of thousands of pleasure craft. Managing the harbor traffic that day had presented VTS operators with the most demanding test in the center’s history. Day thought the OpSail plans, which included medical and logistic staging procedures, might prove valuable as he set out across the harbor toward the unknown.

As it turned out, the OpSail event itself was already helping some mariners meet the challenges of the evacuation through the practical experience it had granted. During OpSail, instead of their usual 68 daily dockings at the company’s own slips, New York Waterway captains moved 70,000 soldiers a day, often in unfamiliar territory. “We had to really pull into some bizarre places and offload the soldiers, [like] the sides of ships in a six-knot current,” explained Port Captain Michael McPhillips. “I really think the captains gained a lot more experience doing that.” Although the particulars of mariners’ work on September 11 were unprecedented, OpSail preparations at least offered some guidance.

As he stood in the wheelhouse of the pilot boat New York, bound for Manhattan Island, Day had no concept that he and his team would soon be facilitating the largest waterborne evacuation in history. Or that he’d lose contact with his command.

At least I’ll have a fighting chance in the river, Karen Lacey thought as she hovered at the edge of the seawall, preparing to jump. I can swim. I can tread water. I’m an athlete. I’m not going to be stuck on the top of a building, hanging out of a window. I’m not going to be underground with a building collapsing on me. I’ll have a fighting chance.

From the time that she and Tammy Wiggs had left their other colleagues on the street corner a few blocks from the New York Stock Exchange, Lacey had made steering clear of buildings a priority. She hugged the shoreline as best she could on her way toward the World Financial Center ferry terminal, determined to get home to Hoboken. Now, as the pulverized tower plowed toward her, rolling like magma through the gaps between buildings and onto the waterfront plaza, the river promised salvation.

The sky went black as Lacey stood outside the rail. Chalky particles burned her throat. I’m going in, she decided, and plunged. When she kicked herself back to the surface, she drew a choking breath and then buried her face back in the river, bobbing up and down half a dozen times before the sky changed from black to gray.

The drop to the river had been farther than she expected, and the current much stronger. She quickly kicked off her pumps, which were now making their way downstream, but she refused to drop the bag slung over her shoulder. Not only did it contain her wallet, the keys to her apartment, and tickets to that night’s Broadway performance of The Producers, but the Coach tote was her second—a $400 investment she’d made to replace her first: a graduation present that had been ripped off at a bar. She clung to the seawall and to the bag, kicking to stay afloat.

Lacey heard Tammy Wiggs screaming, but Lacey said nothing.

“Now, I’m out to lunch. Now I’m spent. Now, I can’t believe that we’re here,” she recalled. “I was trying to regroup. Maybe when the fog lifted, when the dust went away, I would get my bearings and start all over again but at that point . . .”

“We’re in the water! We’re in the water!” Wiggs yelled.

A gruff voice called back through the cloud, “Who’s in the water?”

Lacey was farther north along the seawall than Wiggs and a good distance from the fireboat, so it took a while before she could see the boat, the ladder, or the bear of a man whose voice, low and booming, with a thick New York accent, served as a beacon in the murk.

The man calling down from the bow of fireboat John D. McKean might well have been firefighter Billy Gillman. It was Gillman’s voice, at least, that rang out across the deck announcing to the rest of the McKean crew that two women were in the water. Engineer Gulmar Parga heard his call, as did wiper Greg Woods. Immediately Woods, an experienced lifeguard, grasped the peril of the situation. If either woman lost her grip on the concrete, the current would pull her downstream toward where the boat’s hull banged against the seawall. She would be crushed.

Woods set off to collect the boat’s Jacob’s ladder, the best tool to bridge the gap between the river’s surface and the deck. Mean while, someone on deck threw a rope over the side. Wiggs heard talk of a ladder but thought that the people on deck were saying they couldn’t find one. With her fingertips still digging into a joint in the concrete seawall, Wiggs considered the line, thick as a Coke can with a loop at the end, as her only chance at rescue. But getting it into her hands wasn’t going to be easy. The rope bobbed about three feet away. To reach it, she’d have to let go of the wall.

“All I could picture was getting sucked in between the boat and the seawall,” she recalled. “It was all about timing . . . One, two, three, let go, push off, and you have one chance of grabbing this line because the current was ripping.”

Wiggs let go. She pushed off. She caught the rope. Worried she didn’t have much strength left, she decided to slip her legs through the loop to sit in it like a seat, and catch her breath. But as she kicked at it with her bare foot, the loop pulled through. Wiggs lost her grip on the line for a second but managed to snatch it back. She hollered up to the boat. “Give me more slack!”

But the people on the bow couldn’t hear her clearly. Instead of feeding her more loose line they called out encouragements: “No ma’am, don’t let go! Don’t give up! Hold on.”

Wiggs yelled up again, louder this time. “No. Give me some SLACK and I’ll tie a knot that will hold!” Years later she’d laugh at herself recalling the moment. (“Here I am talking smack to the guy that’s trying to save me.”) The rope was the only thing keeping her from getting sucked into the gap between the wall and the boat’s steel hull.

Finally, someone slacked out the line and Wiggs applied her sailor’s knowledge to make a loop. Even as she treaded water, working with rope that was five times the size of any she’d ever before handled, Wiggs was able to tie a bowline knot that held. She put both legs through, sat in the loop, and the people on deck began yanking her out of the water.

Wiggs was most of the way up the side of the boat when, at last, the Jacob’s ladder appeared over the side. She used it to step up the last few rungs to the cap rail. Now it was Karen Lacey’s turn.

After she saw Wiggs swing her legs over the cap rail of the fireboat, Lacey inched her fingers down the concrete slab to get closer to the ladder, then pushed off to grab it. But even with her hands wrapped around the ladder’s rope rails, she was still far from safe.

“The current was super strong and the ladder was super wiggly,” Lacey recalled. “I can’t get up the damned thing.”

Although low water had hit the Battery at 8:50 A.M., the currents in this portion of the Hudson were determined by more than just the tide. Sometimes the current continued to pull downstream even as the flood tide began. Such were the conditions on the morning of September 11; many mariners reported a “ripping” ebb well into the ten o’clock hour.

As it dangled from the cap rail, the rope ladder with orange plastic rungs draped against the curve of the hull where it narrowed near the waterline. Simultaneously, the ebb pulled the lowest rungs downstream. The curled and bobbing ladder offered Lacey no leverage to gain her footing. Relying on just upper-body strength to haul herself out of the water proved impossible, and clinging to the ladder brought her even closer to the point where the hull slammed against the seawall. Lacey swayed a few feet from the point of impact.

“Come on. You can do it,” the men called down to her.

“I can’t,” she yelled back. “So they’re screaming at me: ‘Drop the bag. Drop the bag.’ And I was like, ‘I’m not gonna.’ ‘Lady,’ they said, ‘drop the bag.’” I can’t believe I’m losing another one of these things, she thought as she pulled the tote off her shoulder and let it go.

But bag or no bag, athlete or not, Lacey was tired. She couldn’t lift herself up. Woods, the part-time lifeguard, jumped in after her.

“I saw his head bobbing in the water, and I was like, Good idea!” recalled marine engineer Gulmar Parga. He followed close behind, climbing down the pad eyes supporting the bow fender until he reached the water. He grabbed the ladder’s rope side, pulling it taut.

Telecommunications specialist Rich Varela, the civilian who had boarded the boat only a few minutes earlier and was now bare-chested with a piece of shirt tied around his face, had been standing on the bow beside the lifeguard when he dove in. Now he hung over the side to help to stabilize the ladder from above.

Woods dove underwater. In a single swooping movement that left those watching from the deck somewhat awestruck, Woods hoisted Lacey on his shoulders and placed her feet on a ladder rung that Parga was bracing from the waterline and Varela was steadying from above. Once Lacey’s feet were planted, she was able to climb enough rungs that Varela and others on deck could reach her arms and help her the rest of the way.

Finally out of the water, Lacey yanked her skirt back down over her shredded stockings, less embarrassed by the exposure than her inability to climb the ladder. Before her stood the man—wearing bunker pants, his glasses covered with a gray film—whose voice had called out through the cloud. Lacey gave him the first of the umpteen thank-yous she would deliver before deboarding in Jersey City. “I probably thanked him—conservatively—two thousand times. That’s all I said the whole way up the ladder, down across the river, when I got off the boat was thank you.”