Controls of the engine of ferryboat Eureka at the Hyde Street Pier, where the national landmark double-ender served San Francisco for decades. This is said to be the only walking-beam engine afloat, in the last wooden double-ender. (Photo: Don Sutherland)
boilers, her side-by-side stacks gave her a distinctive look among New York ferryboats. The Mary Murray is the last surviving -- if "surviving" describes her state on the Raritan River -- of three Art Deco-styled ferryboats by Eads Johnson, built in 1938 by United Shipyards at Staten Island. A 4000 hp double-compound steam engine kept her and her two sisters, Gold Star
Mother and Miss New York built by the same shipyard, in regular service for more than thirty years. Over at Witte's glowers the dwindling ghost of the Seawell's Point, not a New York native -- she was built as the Grenville Kane by American Brown Boveri at Camden, New Jersey in 1926 -- but her role was historic in New York. She was among the first generation of diesel-
electric ferryboats to enter service, between West 23rd Street and West New York, N.J. As the Seawells Point her final service was between East 134th Street and Rikers Island. Diesel-electric propulsion became the method of choice with the Kennedy class boats on the Staten Island run in the mid-1960s. And with similar machinery drives, the newest Staten Islanders, the Molinari class that came into service since the turn of the century, are the biggest ever built for New York. The last large ferryboats built in New York, the Merrell class, fabricated in 1950-51 by Bethleham Steel at Staten Island, were also the last steamboats. The PVT. Joseph F. Merrell, the Cornelius G. Kolff, and the Verrazzano used 4000 hp Skinner Unaflow engines, arguably a pinnacle of technical development for steam power. After their lives running between
Whitehall and St. George, the Kolff and the Merrell were renamed and adopted as floating dormitories for the Rikers Island prison. The ex-Merrell was finally scrapped a few years ago, on the Bayonne side of the Kill Van Kull -- about a mile from where she was launched. The Kolff followed its sister about a year later on the Staten Island side, almost at the spot where it was built. The Verrazzano, the last native New York ferryboat and the last steamer, had spent the past dozen years in assorted havens around the harbor -- at Pier 7, Staten Island, before that City-owned structure collapsed into the narrows a decade ago; then to Atlantic Basin for a spell, then Bayonne about a year ago, most recently the Arthur Kill just south of Witte's -- and then, a couple weeks ago, she was gone. We're still working on where, the rumors carrying her as far as China.
Ex- Cornelius G. Kolff, the 1951-built steamer is shown laid-up at nearly the same spot where Bethlehem Steel put her together at Staten Island. The Kolff and sisters were the first on the run with three passenger decks. Scrapped soon after the picture was taken. (Photo: Don Sutherland)
24 � MarineNews � July 2007