The Statue of Liberty whizzed by without notice. The Lower Manhattan skyline came and went with a shrug. However, the enormous container ship MSC Lisbon elicited gasps from the passengers of the Circle Line boat as it neared, boxes stacked to the heavens across the equivalent of more than three football fields. The sheer scale of the New York-New Jersey’s shipping industry – and the reason for New York City’s economic success and the namesake of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey – became astonishingly clear.
The gasps came from among the 500 lucky Open House New York tour members who scored the summer’s hottest ticket: a seaport infrastructure tour via boat led by Bethann Rooney, the Port Authority’s port director who is responsible for overseeing the operations of the Port of New York and New Jersey. The tour offers the public a well-informed glimpse into the operations of a seaport that is so deeply intwined in the background of the region that even locals don’t realize they live or work among active port infrastructure that move more than $240 billion in goods each year and support half a million regional jobs.
As the Circle Line boat sailed down the Kill Van Kull, Rooney recounted the region’s maritime history and pointed out the towering ships, massive cranes and cargo-handling equipment that looked like it could be from a galaxy far, far away. Over a century ago, the New York shoreline was dotted with finger piers, each privately operated, importing and exporting cargo around the growing metropolis. Activity on those piers led to the birth of the Port Authority in 1921 via a congressional pact to resolve the bickering between New York and New Jersey over freight barged across the harbor.
The narrow, winding waterway separating Bayonne and Staten Island prompted Rooney to highlight the intense training for licensed harbor pilots, who are the expert local captains that board large ships as they enter the harbor and steer them to their waterfront destinations. As part of the harbor pilots’ qualification exams, they’re expected to draw all of the harbor’s obstacles, buoys, and landmarks from memory on a blank sheet of paper. A well-timed toot from the passing Anacostia tugboat prompted a mention of tugboats’ role in the navigational process, linking with large ships to guide the way forward as an added layer of protection.
The underside of the Bayonne Bridge passed 215 feet overhead, as Rooney recounted how the Port Authority raised the bridge’s roadway by 64 feet less than a decade ago to allow the largest container ships in the world to pass en route to the seaport’s container terminals in New Jersey and Staten Island. The raised bridge also capped a multi-year project with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dredge the navigational channel below to 50 feet, as the bigger ships required deeper water.
Golfers, shoppers, and beachgoers owe a debt of gratitude to that infrastructure project, Rooney said, as the dredged material eventually became the Bayonne Golf Club, the foundation for the Jersey Gardens Mall, and beach replenishment down the coast. The Army Corps and the Port Authority are planning a similar project to deepen the channel another 5 feet as ships grow even bigger.
Many on the tour arrived with some connection to the waterfront or shipping world, curious to get a wider view of the industry. One of the lucky tour members who goes by Serafina had done work involving warehouses, but said she had never seen this part of the supply chain: “Seeing the difference in scale between our boat and those ships, you don’t get that perspective anywhere else.”
Dan Freedland, who splits his time between the New York area and Long Beach, Calif., home to another busy shipping port, said he was amazed by its scale, “…how extensive it is, how many workers there are. It’s mind-blowing, really.”
Rooney took questions and pointed out port equipment as the tour neared the Elizabeth-Port Authority Marine Terminal.
Rooney was pleasantly surprised by the amount of interest in the annual tour considering how much of the seaport is visible to the public and how long it has been a part of the region: “It’s great to see how curious people are about what goes on in the maritime industry. We usually don’t hear about the supply chain until some part of it breaks down, but the truth is, it impacts us every day in so many ways. The more we can help people understand that, the better.”
As impressive as the port is, Freedland was more impressed by its leader: “The port is fantastic, but (Rooney) is incredible. As a narrator and as a public official, New York should be very proud of her.”
