CHAPTER   8

“A sea of boats”

“HELPLESSNESS.” THAT WAS the feeling consuming Lieutenant Michael Day on his approach to Manhattan shortly after both towers fell. Drawing closer to the smoke-choked Battery, he peered through binoculars at a foreign landscape. Lower Manhattan had become an achromatic world churning with dust and paper. The snow-like, debris-clogged gray air contrasted with the blue sky beyond the smoke. “You’d look behind you and it was a beautiful day. The weather was incredible,” Day recalled. “And then looking at Manhattan . . .”

Desperate, ashy people—stacked 10 deep, maybe more—pressed up against the railings along the water’s edge. Though “a sea of boats” had already rallied—tugs, tenders, ferries, and more, pushing into slips and against the seawall to rescue as many as they could—Day could tell that more boats were needed. Now, just before 10:45 A.M., the Coast Guard formalized the rescue work already under way by officially calling for a full-scale evacuation of Lower Manhattan.

“All available boats,” Day began, issuing his first of many VHF marine-radio broadcasts summoning backup, “this is the United States Coast Guard aboard the pilot boat New York. Anyone wanting to help with the evacuation of Lower Manhattan report to Governors Island.”

Back at Activities New York on Staten Island, the VTS had been issuing its own calls for mariners to respond. But Day said he never heard them. Clogged radio channels combined with the loss of one of the Coast Guard’s main antennas from the top of 2 World Trade Center had left Day unable to reach his command. So now, standing in the wheelhouse of the New York, he was the senior Coast Guard official on the scene of what would become the largest waterborne evacuation in history. “I didn’t know I was going there to do an evacuation,” Day conceded. “I was sent there, initially, to observe.”

At 11:02 A.M., the Coast Guard’s evacuation calls were echoed by New York City’s then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. At this point, the evacuation mission grew exponentially. Now it was not only those caught in the immediate aftermath that needed transportation, but “everyone south of Canal Street.” In fact workers were streaming out of buildings much farther north than Canal, all looking for a way home. While these people might not have been in immediate danger—though even that was unclear, given that the extent of the attacks was still unknown—they were still stranded, disoriented, and reeling. Such was the fate of office workers Chris Reetz and Chris Ryan, both sales associates at L90, an online advertising agency.

Oh shit, this is real, thought Reetz. Then, in the space of a breath, his fear mushroomed under the exacerbating sway of isolation. I don’t know anyone here. Sure, the 25-year-old had coworker pals—people he could grab drinks with after work. Some of them were sitting right there with him in the office at West Twenty-third Street and Sixth Avenue when he heard the radio announce that a second plane had hit. But Reetz’s roots were back in Detroit, where he’d been just days earlier. After a month-long layoff from the sales team at L90—a layoff he’d assumed would be permanent—he’d gotten called back to New York. His surprising rehire had felt like a lucky second chance, and this time Reetz had been determined to make it in New York City. Monday had been Reetz’s first day back in the office.

Now it was Tuesday and e-mails and instant messages were popping up on computer screens all around the open-floor-plan office. “Where are you? Are you okay? What’s going on?” Reetz and his colleagues, most of them 20-something transplants like him, typed reassurances to friends and family. Then a friend called from Michigan, frantic. He’d recently left a position at Cantor Fitzgerald, whose offices were located on the upper floors of 1 World Trade Center, and Reetz was the only person in Manhattan he was able to reach.

“What’s going on? Can you see what’s happening?”

“I have no idea. I just got out of a meeting.” Slowly it clicked how many people Reetz and his friend knew who worked in those buildings. Reetz had their faces in mind when he rode the elevator to the top floor of his own building, two and a half miles away from the trade center. He and more than a dozen others stared through a bank of south-facing windows, mesmerized by the unobstructed view of the smoking towers, “almost paralyzed by our inability to look away.” Then the South Tower fell.

I’ve got to get the hell out of here. Out of this building, thought Reetz. I need to get somewhere safe. But where was safe exactly? His inclination was to go home. But home wasn’t in Manhattan. It wasn’t even on the East Coast. The closest thing he had, an apartment in Hoboken, was across the Hudson River in New Jersey—unreachable now that, according to radio reports, the bridges and tunnels were on lockdown. We’re stranded here, Reetz thought. I have no idea where I’m going. I have no idea what to do.

He was still standing, stunned, on the building’s top floor, when a coworker rushed back down to the office, bursting through the glass doors from the elevator with tears streaming down her face.

“The tower fell. The tower fell,” she bawled, making no attempt to conceal her tears. Chris Ryan was there in the office at the time. He was taken aback by the garishness of her horror, the unabashed grief. Her raw emotion—incongruous in the workplace—was so jarring that it took him a moment to grasp the words exiting the woman’s mouth. Then their meaning came into focus. He wracked his brain to figure out what he should do next.

If they couldn’t go home, at least they could get out of the office. In the wake of the South Tower’s collapse, Reetz and Ryan accepted a coworker’s invitation to walk to his apartment a few blocks away to learn what they could from the news. More than just colleagues, Reetz and Ryan were friends. They shared smoke breaks, after-work drinks, and sometimes the PATH train commute to or from Hoboken. After a few rounds of obligatory train small talk, the two had instituted a “no talking on the PATH” rule so they could each read their books instead. They’d wink, hold up their respective books, and dig in for the duration. Now that the PATH train shutdowns had left them both marooned in Manhattan they joined forces, finding solace in solidarity.

At the apartment, glued to the television, Reetz and Ryan watched as, over and over again, a plane plowed into the South Tower. Not until he saw the footage did Reetz fully grasp “the destructiveness, the truly evil act of flying a plane, with individuals on it, into a building, with people in it, with the explicit intent of killing.”

Being stuck on an island with no way out had gotten Reetz thinking about the worst that could happen. We’re under attack. We don’t know where else is going to be attacked. I want to get off of Manhattan. This was paramount for him to feel safer. So when a reporter mentioned that ferries were crossing the Hudson to the Jersey side, Reetz was more than ready to flee. He and Ryan planned to meet up with Ryan’s then-girlfriend and then head west to the water’s edge.

As they stepped into the elevator on their way to street level, a man started railing. “I’m gonna kill any cab driver I see. I’m gonna kill any Muslim guy I see. I’m gonna kick their asses.” Is this what’s going to happen next, Reetz wondered, people beating each other up on the streets? Fear of riots and violence only heightened his resolve to get away. Just as they did on the PATH, Reetz and Ryan skipped the small talk on their walk across town. There wasn’t much to say.

Aboard the Coast Guard’s search and rescue boat 41497, helmsman Carlos Perez was struggling with fractured comms. Despite his efforts to monitor Channels 16, 13, 12, 21, 22, 81, and 83, on both high- and very-high-frequency radios, communications were sketchy at best. Perez and his crew had been suffering through an extended radio silence when the evacuation call finally broke through. Soon after, they received orders to halt any pleasure craft between the Brooklyn Bridge and Chelsea Piers and to transport people from Manhattan to established triage centers. Perez shot, full throttle, toward the seawall surrounding Battery Park where terrorized civilians had fled toward the water’s edge.

The distraught, disoriented, dust-cloaked people that Perez encountered there begged to be taken home to their families. Some were bleeding from cuts and scrapes, presumably sustained from falls on the sprint toward safety. “They did not care to hear that they were being taken to triages to be treated,” Perez recalled. “It was as if every moment away from their families signified years. Rightfully so.”

Every time Perez approached land, whether on the New York or New Jersey side, he had to jockey for position with other vessels, many of which were operating outside of their usual domains. Maneuvering was further complicated by the sheer volume of VHF radio traffic, which hindered communications between boats on the scene. “We had to physically come alongside vessels to communicate and coordinate the evacuation efforts,” Perez recalled. Overall, he was impressed by how well the operators worked together despite restricted communication, taking turns pulling into slips or up to the seawall to board passengers.

Turn taking notwithstanding, reducing the logjams at passenger terminals was critical for ensuring maximum efficiency. Rerouting vessels that were ill suited to using ferry slips quickly became a Coast Guard priority in order to guarantee their availability for ferries.

From the pilot boat New York, Lieutenant Michael Day followed up his request for “all available boats” by asking that vessels report to marshaling stations to keep them from crowding dock facilities. The overwhelming response to the requests for mariner assistance further jammed the already congested VHF frequencies. “It was chaos,” recalled Day. “Every channel you click to, people were screaming, ‘Help! I need people over here! I’ve got someone hurt here!’ Everyone was talking over everyone else.” Initially, the team aboard the pilot boat asked each vessel to check in on Channel 73 with the name, size, draft, and passenger capacities of their boats so they could try to assign vessels to appropriate locations. The airwaves teemed with calls. “One of those tugboats would come in, ‘Hey, where do you want us to go?’ We’d say, ‘Go to this pier.’ . . . When you multiply that by all those different tugs and people checking in and giving them directions it was unwieldy.”

Day said it was Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Jaime Wilson who chimed in with a solution to help streamline operations. “Hey, Lieutenant,” said Wilson, “why don’t you just put them on a route going back and forth, from point A to point B, so you don’t have to talk to them any more?” Day gratefully accepted the suggestion. In receiving, and then implementing, a suggestion from a subordinate, Day was following the example set by his command of having faith in the abilities of one’s team.

From the outset, Acting Commander Patrick Harris had been demonstrating that leadership style from his perch at the Coast Guard station on Staten Island. Made more visible by sitting on that high stool, Harris was communicating that he was available for questions, approvals, and to bounce off ideas for action. “If people had any concerns they could look at me and realize: the boss is right there; I can do this,” he explained.

“People were used to acting on their own and they did a lot of that. . . . I did not have the depth of knowledge to micromanage. And I didn’t pretend that I did. What I had was a depth of knowledge of the people I had working for me.”

Harris trusted his people. And that trust trickled down.

So, with grease pencil on a whiteboard, Day, Wilson, other Coast Guard petty officers, and the half-dozen Sandy Hook Pilots crew aboard the New York collaborated to assign and map out drop-off and pick-up spots for tugs and other workboats that didn’t have regular berths or equipment designed for easily on- and offloading passengers. To locate those spots, they referred to the detailed OpSail 2000 plan that Day had thought to grab on his way out the door. Soon evacuees were being funneled to distinct destinations based on where each vessel delivering them could dock. Deck crews began hanging spray-painted signs made of bedsheets and cardboard announcing their destinations. The makeshift ferries were now in service.

“We kind of thought of ourselves as air traffic control in that we were directing specific boats to specific locations throughout the city,” recalled Day. Like his command, Day hoped the Coast Guard’s presence could help expand, organize, and lend a bit of “legitimacy” to rescue efforts already under way.

As the primary regulatory body of the U.S. maritime industry, the Coast Guard devises and administers rules and standards governing every aspect of shipboard life, from the licensure and working conditions of mariners to the guidelines dictating vessel construction and equipment that affect all day-to-day operations of boat crews. The Coast Guard enforces the thousands of pages of rules contained in the multivolume Code of Federal Regulations (CFRs) that stipulate in exacting detail what is and isn’t allowed on the water. As such, relationships between the Coast Guard and the maritime industry can, at times, become strained. Coasties (as they’re called both affectionately and not so affectionately) don’t only rescue mariners in trouble; they can also cause big trouble for boat crews caught in violation of the CFRs. Like restaurant health inspectors showing up unannounced, the sight of a Coastie approaching one’s boat is not always a welcome sight, despite the vital services that the Coast Guard provides.

The choice that commanders made, in the midst of an unprecedented assault on the country that it was charged to defend, to allow mariners to bend rules in order to more readily assist their fellow citizens demonstrated a flexibility to adapt to the situation at hand that was critical to the success of the evacuation. So too was their choice to collaborate with mariners rather than control them.

For many mariners wishing to help but not yet engaged in evacuation efforts, the Coast Guard’s calls for vessel assistance clarified their mission. Retired 1931 FDNY fireboat John J. Har vey was already bound for the trade center when pilot Huntley Gill heard the evacuation broadcast. The boat, which had been decommissioned and sold by New York City at a scrap auction in 1999, had no current FDNY affiliation or official duties. Nonetheless, several of the boat’s civilian crew members had decided to bring it to the trade center in hopes that they could help. They hadn’t heard the Coast Guard’s earlier announcements that the Port of New York and New Jersey was closed to all nonessential traffic, and they were already pulling away from the boat’s berth at Pier 63 Maritime at the foot of West Twenty-third Street when the cascade of debris from the second tower let loose. While the decommissioned fireboat was, technically speaking, now a recreational vessel, most of the Coast Guardsmen on patrol who were halting other pleasure craft and thwarting them from entering the harbor wouldn’t have known that. Instead, the fireboat was likely considered to be what it looked like: just another municipal asset being called to the scene.

Less than 15 minutes later, Gill nudged the boat against the seawall just south of South Cove where a cluster of people stood along the shoreline near the Holocaust memorial. It looked to Chief Engineer Tim Ivory like people assembling outside during a fire drill. He called out to the crowd, explaining that the boat was here to transport them off the island. But before anyone would climb the ladder down from the top of the seawall to the deck they insisted on knowing where they were going.

“New Jersey,” said Ivory. Nobody would board. Mariners from other vessels later shared similar stories about some people’s reluctance to wind up out of state. Plenty of people in Lower Manhattan that morning lived farther up the island, or in Brooklyn, Queens, or elsewhere and they were likely wary of being stranded in a state they did not know, with no certainty about how or when they would be able to return home.

But when Gill announced over the public address system that the boat would head uptown instead, people poured on. Within minutes, 150 to 200 people had boarded and the fireboat was bound for Pier 40, a little more than a mile to the north. Before the boat made it past North Cove, however, a small police launch raced over, lights flashing. Officers called out to Ivory on deck, telling him to turn the boat around—that it was needed at the trade center site.

“We gotta get rid of these people,” Ivory hollered back. “We’ll go back after we get rid of all these people.”

In that same moment, Gill heard a similar summons over VHF radio. From the wheelhouse of active-duty fireboat McKean, pilot Campanelli was hailing the decommissioned vessel. Firefighters needed it to pump water. Harvey, less than a month away from its seventieth birthday, was being called back into service to do the job for which the fireboat had been built. The order had come down not from top brass—so many of whom had been killed in the towers’ collapse—but from Tom Whyte, an off-duty FDNY lieutenant.

Whyte had heard about the attacks while at home in Hastings-on-Hudson, about 20 miles north of the World Trade Center. Although he wasn’t scheduled for duty aboard fireboat McKean until later that evening, he’d quickly suited up, gathered his gear, collected his 21-foot pleasure boat, then shot south to the site, arriving not long after the McKean had returned to the Manhattan side from dropping off passengers in New Jersey.

Ushered over by firefighters waving them toward the shoreline, pilot Campanelli had docked against the seawall one block south of North Cove at the foot of Albany Street, less than 50 yards west of the Battery Park City townhouse from which nanny Florence Fox had recently fled.

Whyte explained his thoughts that morning as he sped downriver: “You just want to get in there [to help] any brother firemen, any civilians, anyone who’s hurt, trapped. I figured there’s gonna be body parts all over the place. And people stuck and trapped in cars . . . we just didn’t know.” Instead, what Whyte found, after heading ashore, having left his boat with neighbors who’d promised to run it back home, was “this crazy lunar landscape” and an eerie silence. “It was so quiet because everything that was there just got shut down. All the rigs were silent. It was just the weirdest. Red lights going from the batteries but no engines running. It was weird, weird. Scary weird. And the only thing that was on the ground was metal, dust, and paper. Everybody’s personal lives you could pick up and read. You could trade somebody’s stock. It was everything. It was just floating everywhere.”

Whyte horseshoed around North Cove on his way to where fireboat McKean was tied up. When he arrived he was struck by “this crazed look” in the eyes of the crew. “They had a lot of hose lines out already. . . . The job was already under way.”

Varela, the telecommunications specialist with no firefighting training, had been among those who’d stretched the hose. “I remember all hell breaking loose,” Varela recalled of the boat’s return to Manhattan after the second collapse. The deck was littered with debris. Strewn about in the six inches of gray-white powder lay clothing, briefcases, and shoes that the evacuated passengers had left behind in their haste. The shoreline swarmed with people—both firefighters and civilians. “People were rushing the boat,” he said. The McKean crew waved them off. “Walk south! Walk south!” they commanded. Let the ferries and tugboats evacuate people. Fires raged all over the site and firefighters needed the fireboat’s endless supply of river water.

While the crew handed off to land-based battalions every tool they could find—Halligans, crowbars, extra bottles for self-contained breathing apparatus—Sullivan tested a nearby fire hydrant and found it dry. The towers’ collapse had burst water mains. River water would become essential to firefighting operations.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Varela.

“We’re gonna start stretching hose,” Sullivan responded. He and a McKean engineer had located an engine company on Albany Street a block or two away and the goal was to run enough hose to reach them. “Take the threaded end,” continued Sullivan. “The threaded end goes toward the fire.”

Varela followed every order: Take this line. Run it this way. Grab this line. Hook it up there. Run with it. Shirtless ever since he’d torn up his shirt for fellow passengers to use as makeshift dust masks, Varela now wore a life vest he’d gotten from the boat. “I looked like a bandito with this thing around my face,” he later explained.

Before long the hose lines reached their destination, and fireboat McKean began pumping Hudson River water to land-based companies. Seeing that the job was already in progress, Whyte thought he’d head inland, closer to the site, to offer what help he could there. But, Sullivan addressed Whyte, now the highest-ranking officer, asking him to stay: “The officer for today, he’s probably dead. He was there when the buildings came down. There’s nobody here.”

Whyte complied. “We all wanna be where the glory is, but everybody’s gotta be where they’re supposed to be.” Not until another, regularly assigned officer arrived shortly thereafter did Whyte head inland. “I was making my way up Liberty Street and I was meeting these guys that were all banged up and bleeding. . . . Their eyes were big, wide open, you know? Just crazy, you know? They said, ‘There’s no water here anywhere.’” City buses, cabs, cars, and buildings blazed all around them.

While the McKean’s crew had successfully run hose lines on the southern edge of the site to feed a few tower ladders as well as the standpipes of nearby buildings, the whole north end still needed coverage. Out on the river, Whyte spotted the retired fireboat Harvey. Knowing the crew wouldn’t have an FDNY-issued “handy talkie” radio but would carry a VHF marine radio, Whyte picked up his own handy talkie and called Campanelli, who could reach them by VHF. “Ask that old fireboat out there, the Harvey, ask them if they can come in and pump water. Because we got a spot here where there’s nothing.” Eyeing a nearby police boat, Whyte decided to reinforce the urgency with an in-person follow-up message. And so the police boat set out as well.

When Campanelli reported back that fireboat Harvey would return once they’d offloaded, Whyte followed up with another message: “Tell them to come in to Liberty Street [just south of North Cove] and I’ll have some guys there.” Next he rallied a crew of people—office workers, firefighters, and “guys in white shirts, carpenters, just a whole mishmash.” He had them strip down smashed FDNY rigs searching for fittings, lengths of hose, anything usable. Because the 1931 fireboat was no longer in active service it did not carry aboard any of the accessories necessary to take advantage of its massive pumping capacity.

By the time the boat returned, Whyte was ready with supplies. “Harvey pulls up and I remember Timmy. He comes up out of the dungeon there,” Whyte recalled, referring to then-Chief Engineer Ivory, who had just appeared from the below-decks engine room. “We just started heaving hose butts over the side.”

Even after the towers had fallen, firefighters continued to battle multiple fires in surrounding buildings that on any normal day would have been considered big. “There was some good interior, structural firefighting going on,” explained Whyte. But so much equipment had been lost in the avalanche of debris. Fireboats provided critical access to endless water when no other firefighting water could be found.

The minute he learned that the boat was being called to supply water, Ivory had begun preparing for pumping operations. From his four years as a volunteer with the Glen Rock Fire Department in New Jersey, Ivory knew that the ability to start and stop flow to supply lines was crucial for firefighting. So, with pipe wrench and sledge hammer in hand, he set about working to free up seized valves on the antique manifolds at the stern of the boat. Of 20 valves, only two functioned. But that meant he had at least something to work with.

Even before the boat docked against the seawall south of North Cove, Whyte hollered out the all-important question: “Do your pumps work?”

Ivory replied with a thumbs-up.

“Can you take lines?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you need to make this work?”

“I’ve got about 300 gallons of fuel. I can pump for about 15 minutes.” With that pronouncement, Ivory watched Whyte deflate. Days earlier the boat had returned from a run 120 miles up the Hudson River to Albany, New York, and back. “I was running on fumes,” Ivory later explained.

Whyte radioed Campanelli once again. “Harvey needs fuel. Critical.” And within 20 minutes, Hayward, an Army Corps of Engineers drift collection vessel normally charged with clearing the waterways of flotsam and jetsam, arrived with diesel. Meanwhile Ivory, Whyte, and other firefighters struggled to overcome the next hurdle: the decommissioned fireboat’s three-and-a-half-inch valves didn’t match the FDNY’s current standard three-inch hose. Harvey had none of the necessary adapters. Hearing this, Whyte directed McKean’s engineers to gather up as many fittings as they could find.

While Ivory waited for adapters, it occurred to him that the fire department’s three-inch hoses would fit into some of the boat’s deck monitors—the large brass guns that firefighters traditionally used to direct giant powerful streams of river water directly onto blazes by raising, lowering, and pivoting the gun tip. They’ve gotta be New York thread, Ivory reasoned. The boat was too far from the fires to spray water directly so attaching hose lines that could be fed by the vessel’s powerful pumps was the only option. Ivory’s creative problem solving led to an unorthodox use of the deck monitors: he removed the gun tips and screwed on the hose lines directly, creating a makeshift manifold.

As he prepared to fire up the pumps, Ivory worried about how much water pressure would be lost through the deck guns to which he hadn’t attached hose lines. Because he couldn’t gate them down, those deck guns would run freely, diminishing the much-needed pressure through unfettered streams. Then he hatched an idea. He screwed off the nozzles on those unneeded deck guns and stuffed a full, capped water bottle into each one. Those water bottles served to thwart the flow and thus diverted additional pressure to where it was needed: to the hose lines running long distances through the dust to firefighters on land.

When Whyte returned he was impressed by Ivory’s innovative solution. “This is very important,” he told Ivory. “Get a pen and paper. You have to keep tabs on where this stuff is going.” Using sidewalk chalk that some kids had left behind after a past boat ride, Ivory numbered the deck guns and drew a schematic on the side of fireboat Harvey’s wheelhouse, creating a guide to keep track of where each hose ended up so that he could stop the flow to individual lines as needed. One hose, recalled Whyte, wound its way to Fifteen Truck’s tower ladder, which then channeled river water into 10 or 15 hand lines that firefighters were using to confront blazes.

When the Coast Guard issued the call for “all available boats,” a fleet of tugboats were among those who responded. Aerial photos taken by the NYPD Aviation Unit reveal ribbons of quickwater unfurling behind the flotilla of tugs shooting across the harbor toward the tip of Manhattan. Some were small harbor units. Others were huge oceangoing vessels. And on an ordinary day in 2001, these boats would have had no business carrying passengers.

For modern mariners, ferrying and towing don’t mix. Tugs have a very specific job to do—they push and pull barges and other vessels. The notion of them being used to move civilians instead would have been anathema for most vessel operators in the harbor that day. But repurposing tugs as ferries was actually harking back to a much earlier time in the harbor when the demarcations between passenger and cargo transport were not yet so clear.

When Robert Fulton debuted his newfangled North River, the first commercially viable steamboat running on the Hudson in 1807, observers described the odd-looking contraption—150 feet long, 13 feet wide, and drawing just 2 feet of water—as a “devil going up the river in a sawmill” and “a monster moving on the waters defying the winds and tide, and breathing flames and smoke.” At the dawn of the industrial revolution, only a handful of steam engines existed in the country and the devices remained foreign to most people. Alien as it was then, Fulton’s successful experimental vessel established the dawn of the steam era, awing passengers with its ability to operate with a consistency that defied the vagaries of winds and currents.

Soon steam power increasingly replaced wind as the prime mover of both passengers and cargo. By 1850, more than 150 steamboats traveled up and down the Hudson, ferrying as many as 2 million passengers. Steam power also revolutionized the movement of goods over water, and the business of towing began, albeit informally.

Early on, steam ferryboats would sometimes divert from their scheduled routes (often with a full load of passengers aboard) to assist sailing vessels into or out of port. Such tows typically only occurred under extenuating circumstances, like when weather, damage, or crew troubles meant that another boat really needed assistance. In time, however, as shipping vessels doubled in size (making maneuvering more challenging), and the average cargo size multiplied (making offshore offloading more time-consuming and costly), towing became more commonplace.

After the City of Brooklyn passed an 1832 ordinance forbidding steam ferries from ditching their regular runs for more lucrative ship-assist work, the first New York vessel designed specifically and exclusively for towing and shipping-assistance arrived on the scene: the Hercules. At 116 feet long and 192 tons, this substantial towboat was made available 24 hours a day. Alas, before long, limited call for the vessel’s services led its owners to convert operations to passenger ferrying. Over time, however, as more and more freight traveled by barge and all those barges needed towing, New York harbor developed a thriving industry of boats whose sole purpose was to move other boats.

By the late 1800s, the screw propeller-driven, “model bow” tug, built in the iconic tugboat shape still prevalent among children’s toys, was the most common kind of tug in the harbor. Every aspect of the design of these ships was driven by their function. From hull shape to rudder position to propeller number and location, the main concerns were for maximum power, maneuverability, and efficiency.

Among other concerns was the prevalence of boiler explosions, ship fires, and other deadly catastrophes on the water—many due to negligence or greed. These eventually led to ever-stricter safety requirements. Meeting those standards, which would ultimately be enforced by the Coast Guard, called for specialized construction. By the end of the twentieth century, the diesel engine had come to replace steam, entirely dominating the world of commercial marine propulsion.

Tugs facilitated the development of critical industries, including the railroads, by enabling the transport of fuels (first coal and later oil) as well as industrial chemicals. But soon, the shift to containerization from break-bulk cargo, as well as reductions in the transport of Hudson River Valley commodities that had once been industry mainstays (including stone, sand, cement, brick, ice, and coal), led to a significant downturn in New York harbor’s towing industry. By the early 2000s, the fleet of New York tugs had dropped from its 1929 peak of 800-plus to fewer than 300 boats.

Although overall tug traffic had been vastly reduced by 2001, a handful of tug companies still provided services essential to the everyday functioning of the port including ship docking and the transport of petroleum products, chemicals, and dry bulk materials like coal. On the morning of September 11, these tug companies and crews dropped their usual duties to provide another essential service—one for which they had long since lost authorization or design capability: carrying passengers off the island of Manhattan.

Virtually every towing company in and around New York, whether large or small, committed resources to assist with the evacuation of Lower Manhattan. Since tugs tend to work jobs in combinations of no more than a few boats at a time, when Staten Island Ferry Captain James Parese saw “a sea of tugboats” bound for Manhattan, it made an impression. “I couldn’t believe the amount of tugs.”

Among the tug companies that sprang into action was Reinauer Transportation. Marine engineer Glenn Dorhn had been supervising repair work aboard the tug Stephen Scott Reinauer when a welder ran into the bunkroom that was being replated, yelling. “I don’t speak Spanish, but I can tell when somebody’s excited,” he explained. “The boat could have been sinking, far as I know.” So he followed the welders racing onto the dock. The Reinauer Transportation yard, located on the north shore of Staten Island, afforded clear views of Lower Manhattan. From across the harbor, Dorhn could see what was causing all the commotion.

In the Reinauer offices, meanwhile, the higher ups were trying to figure out what action they could take, discussing crew safety and liability issues along with questions about exactly what kind of help their boats, which were completely ill suited (not to mention unauthorized) for ferrying passengers, could provide. After the South Tower collapsed, they summoned the tug captains to the conference room to ask for volunteers. All four captains agreed to go to the trade center site and offer whatever assistance they could. Reinauer’s port captain and safety director, Ken Peterson, who’d been a mariner in New York harbor for more than a quarter century, would head up the fleet.

Before setting out, the crews ransacked the company warehouses and boat lockers, gathering up water, blankets, towels, respirators, extra life jackets, oxygen, first aid kits—anything that might be useful—though they had no idea what to expect, and no clear mission. Long gone were the days of tow boats designed to readily accommodate passengers, but crews aboard the four tugs responding—the Franklin Reinauer, John Reinauer, Morgan Reinauer, and Janice Anne Reinauer—figured they might take civilians on board and cleared the decks of as much towing equipment as they could to reduce tripping hazards. With no assurances that attacks on New York City had ended, tug crews set out from the safety of Staten Island to offer what aid they could. Many did so out of a sense of decency, a sense of duty, and in an effort to quell the unbearable sense of helplessness haunting them.

When the request came down for Reinauer crews to head over, Dorhn grabbed a life jacket and stepped onto the dock. The Franklin and Janice Anne had already pulled out and the John was backing away so he jumped aboard the Morgan just before deckhands released the head line securing the boat to the dock. “I was just going to go to help in any way I could,” said Dorhn. Anything would be better than standing on the dock “watching the smoke rise.”

From the wheelhouse of the Franklin Reinauer, Peterson noticed tugs from other companies also charging toward the southern tip of Manhattan. When he saw throngs of people pressed up against seawall railings, soot-covered and bloodied, wailing, frantic, and desperate to flee, the mission became clear. He radioed the Coast Guard for permission to pull up to the Battery and pick up passengers. With permission granted, Peterson got on VHF Channel 13 and began issuing instructions to other tugs: “Everybody line up, bows-on, and get ready to take people.”

Here, the tugboats had entered uncharted waters. Sure, they’d managed crew changes in dicey situations that demanded that crews clamber up the bow fendering or jump over open waters. But those leaps had been taken by seasoned mariners, not everyday civilians, most of whom had never even seen a tugboat this close-up. As soon as the Franklin reached the seawall, Peterson climbed ashore to help orchestrate the makeshift ferry service, instructing captains to load 100 or so passengers each time, knowing full well that most boats carried no more than about nine life jackets.

The tugs set about delivering people wherever they wanted to go, to any location with enough water for the deep-draft boats. Some headed for Jersey City, others left for the Brooklyn Navy Yard, some went to Port Newark, New Jersey, or Staten Island. “I don’t remember all the destinations,” Peterson explained, recalling several people who wanted to go to Long Island. “Well, take ’em out to where you know that they can get a cab or a bus or something,” he instructed one Reinauer captain. “We did go to the airport,” he said. “We did go to Rikers Island [the site of New York City’s main jail complex, in the East River between Queens and the Bronx].” Once the crowds thinned out a bit, no minimum passenger quota was necessary to justify a trip. “It didn’t matter. The day was just . . .” Peterson explained, trailing off. “If it was six people or four people that was enough.”

Crews spray-painted bedsheets as destination signs. “Hoboken,” read one, its pronouncement granting some semblance of surety to stranded people who had already that morning been through enough mayhem. Once aboard, deckhands greeted the powder-plastered people with towels, sheets, blankets, and water so they could wipe their faces. Their efforts to provide some measure of comfort made all the difference.

When the captain of the Morgan Reinauer first nosed the tug up to the seawall lining the Battery, the park at the southern tip of Manhattan Island was caked in white powder. The leaves on the trees were coated with a chalky dust. A smell hung in the thick, soot-filled air that reminded Dorhn of “burning furniture and hair and debris.” One after another, the crew helped people climb the tug’s bow fender and directed them to the stern, which offered the most deck space for people to congregate.

Deckhands managed to lift a man, and then his wheelchair, up and onto the deck. They assisted an older gentleman who explained that recent knee surgery had left him struggling to run from the cloud. When a tall, slender woman in her sixties with dyed black hair and all-black clothing boarded, Dorhn joked with her about his favorite singer, “Man In Black” Johnny Cash. Soon two mentally challenged men in their fifties boarded, their caretaker following close behind. Twins, dressed alike in dark sweat suits, the men were dust-covered head to toe, all except for their eyes. The places where they’d wiped away the grime left behind matching raccoon-mask streaks.

After escorting all these people to the back deck, Dorhn made his way to the bow just as deckhands hoisted up a little girl in a pink dress. “This was the first child child that I had seen,” he explained. To Dorhn she looked to be about five years old. “She was fairly clean, so I don’t know if she was inside or around a corner when the towers came down and the dust was flying,” he said. The deckhands didn’t set her on her feet; instead they handed her to Dorhn, who held the girl in his arms.

Figuring that she probably wasn’t alone, Dorhn waited. Next over the side was a woman in her twenties, thin, with sandy blond hair, and very noticeably very pregnant in summer clothes. It struck Dorhn as odd, as she climbed aboard, that she didn’t address the little girl or register any hesitation about a stranger holding her daughter. “She was just like a zombie” with a “totally blank stare. I said, ‘Just follow me.’ And she did.”

“My name is Glenn,” he said to the girl, wanting to reassure her. “What’s your name?”

“Natalie,” she said. “Where are we going?”

“The sun is shining and the weather is warm so we are going for a little boat ride,” he replied, leading the two toward the stern bitts at the back of the boat.

“Set down here,” he said to the mother, indicating a coil of eight-inch line that sat about a foot and a half off the deck, figuring it would be a bit softer than the hard steel. He placed the girl beside her.

“Is there anything I can do to help make you more comfortable?”

The woman sat mute. The little girl pointed at the smoke column rising from where the towers once stood. “My daddy works there.”

With that the mother crumpled. “You could have turned on a spigot and it would have been less water than the tears coming down her face,” Dorhn recalled. “I’ll give you some tissues, some napkins,” he said, rushing off to the galley, biting his lip to maintain his composure.

Upon his return, before being pulled away to help board other passengers, he knelt beside them, offering the only other thing he could: “I’ll say a little prayer for your husband.”

Soon after, its decks filled with at least 60 passengers, the tug backed away, bound for Hoboken. The passengers disembarked and the crew returned to the seawall to rescue still more. According to Peterson, 27 tugboats evacuated more than 4,000 people from the Battery over the course of four hours, even as an additional five tugs circled back and forth evacuating people from Pier 11 on the East River side of the island.