I CAN’T COUNT the number of movies I’ve seen in which something dramatic occurrs on the Staten Island Ferry. Someone is going home from work. Someone is meeting a spy courier. Someone is going to be exchanged for someone else. But I’ve not been on the Staten Island Ferry, myself. Not until November of last year.
When I think of Staten Island, somehow I imagine an island city that is so distant out to sea that one cannot hope to reach it by any means other than the ferry. But Staten Island really isn’t like that. It is out across a pretty big piece of New York Harbor past the Statue of Liberty and past Ellis Island (the trip takes about 25 minutes). The Borough is right there by New Jersey, separated from it by a strait about the size of the Delaware River at the point at which the Benjamin Franklin Bridge crosses it between Philadelphia and Camden.
SETTING SUN. So, anyway, I have finally taken a ride on the Staten Island Ferry on my way to visit clients who live on Staten Island. It is early evening and the sun is setting as we debark. Parenthetically I will offer that I am a huge fan of ferries, and will go out of my way, when traveling, to avail myself of the opportunity to ride one. I’ve been on some really tiny ferries in Iowa and rural Washington State. And big ones running between Seattle and an archipegalo of Islands arrayed 170 degrees from southwest to northwest. I’ve been on the coal-steam powered ferry that crosses Lake Michigan in a six-hour voyage; and a ferry that connects Denmark and Sweden (that one carried autos and the train on which I had been traveling). In this case, I’ve not gone out of my way to ride the Staten Island Ferry. It is there crossing the water between where I was (which happened to be Battery Park) and where I need to be.
FERRY FEVER. I am like a little kid on ferries. I want to get all around the ship and see what’s there. But on this trip I am drawn permanently to the stern where the darkening and twinkling Manhattan skyline is receding. After some time passes, a woman about my age standing next to me offers: “Quite a sight isn’t it.” I heartily agree. Nothing like it. Not in this country, anyway. So we chat. She is a clergywoman who has a church and congregation in Manhattan. She is on her way home from work, as are the vast majority of people on the ship this evening. And she always rides in the stern on her way home favoring the view of Manhattan. She shares that she was on this ship on her way to work on Sept. 11, 2001. She sees the look of awe in my eyes and goes on to describe what could be seen from her terribly good vanage point (there was a ferry on its way to Manhattan when the first plane struck, I have since learned. The captain turned the ferry around and returned his passengers to Staten Island. I guess this woman must have been on that trip because the ferry did not carry passengers to Manhattan after that. The captain was ordered to return empty to the Battery Park terminal and begin evacuating people 6,000 at a time).
She tells her story matter-of-factly but not without affect. Of course she has told it many times before but it is not a story one can stop telling.