Marine scrap yards are not a likely place ordinary folks want to spend their leisure time. But for decades people have been risking life and limb, and even spending a night in jail to take a gander at Staten Island’s Arthur Kill Ship graveyard. Also known as the Witte Boneyard, it is a place that once people hear about it, they have to see it themselves despite the long trek and unwelcoming atmosphere of the place.
These half sunken hulls of rusted metal and decayed wood offer a haunting look at what was once state of the art ships.
Over forty acres of waterway, dozens of boats of all shapes and sizes have been left here to rot. Some with legendary tales, other just simply ran out their usefulness.
The vessels lay in southwestern Staten Island in the waterway of Arthur Kill. “Kill” is Dutch for “creek,” though today the spot hardly conjures up creek-like imagery. A tidal strait separating Staten Island from New Jersey, Arthur Kill’s shores are riddled with industrial facilities; all standard landscape in any metropolitan area except for it extraordinary boatyard.
Kayakers often paddle through the waterway for a closer gander, which is perfectly legal as long as they do not get too close. On the water, it is eerily calm and quiet. One can hear the water gently lapping against very oxidized, often jagged hulls, just skeletons now of their once purposeful days. On foot or by land, one will find an array of ships, ferries, tugboats, barges, and even a submarine. Some are well over a hundred years old.
Will Van Dorp, who created a documentary on the ships along with Gary Kane, calls it an, “accidental marine museum.” For amateur urban archeology explorers it is one New York City’s must-sees. He says, “It’s not so much the fact that these hulks of ships and boats are rotting and rusting; it’s that they display a beauty in that state of decay that makes me wonder what beauties they manifested when they were new and functional and filled with the hopes of their crews and owners. This display excites my imagination in the same way that autumn colors do.”
But it is certainly not a welcoming place. From the road there is nary a spot to take a look-see. Twelve-foot solid fencing fortresses the scrapyard yards from the shore. There are plenty of “No Trespassing” signs with various threats peppering the property. The lack of hospitality is certainly not unwarranted by the current owners, Donjon Recycling. People on a regular basis stupidly climb these decaying vessels. Their unstable hulls and decks are precariously weak and unstable through exposure and the passage of time. Jagged metal pieces peer just below the surface almost like land mines just waiting to claim a kayak or inflatable raft. Incredibly, one woman waded through the water naked to have photos of herself on the wrecks as part of an art project. For pedestrians, the Rossville cemetery just down the road gives a bit of a view but nothing compared to being on the water itself. But the intriguing headstones are interesting alone.
The boatyard was never meant to become so big. It started when John J. Witte began buying up obsolete boats in the 1930s. He became a nautical hoarder, accumulating vessels but not dismantling them for scrap. Instead he waited for potential buyers for salvage parts. Then came the end of World War II and a deluge of vessels retiring from military service was added to the collection. Witte died in 1980 leaving what has been called the legacy of the world’s largest depository of historic ships.
Now with it under Donjon Recycling some 400 ships have dwindled down to less than a hundred.
But the yard still draws crowds who are fascinated by these rusting, twisted, dejected looking vessels. Charter boats even make it part one of their stops as part of their sightseeing itinerary. Something that would probably irritate the living daylights out of John Witte. (He was known to aggressively chase people out of the area himself.)
Among the more notable ships is USS PC-1264; a World War II submarine chaser, which was the first to have a mostly African-American crew. There is the Abram S. Hewitt fireboat, which served as command post during the sinking of the PS General Slocum which claimed over a thousand lives—the city’s most deadly disaster before September 11, 2001.
One vessel, YOG-64, was even exposed to radioactive fallout. This Navy gas tanker was posted in 1948 during the Operation Sandstone nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll.
As the remaining ships quietly rot away and are being slowly disassembled, their disintegration and disappearance may be the only thing that will finally stop the curious from visiting this out of the way place in Staten Island.
BLAZING STAR CEMETERY
Several yards from one of the only places one can see bits of the boat graveyard, from the shore, sits is a small ancient cemetery. Mere inches from the edge of Arthur Kill Road, the Blazing Star Cemetery looks completely out of place among the auto repair shops and industrial facilities. It is a poignant example of life and progress doing what it always does—moving on.
This neighborhood was known in the mid-18th century as Old Blazing Star after a local tavern. It was also a popular ferry crossing with some vessels going even as far as Philadelphia.
Today the cemetery is barely noticeable from the road. Its graves is obscured in a partially wooded area with headstones going back at least to 1751. Some have wonderful iconography typical of colonial times.
Blazing Star Cemetery is thought to be an old family burial ground for the Slaight Dutch family. Later other families were buried there like the Marshalls, Poillon and Ayers, Deckers—familiar names in Staten Island history. The last burial took place in 1865.