Overview

Ask the average American anywhere in the country to answer the word association question ""Staten Island"" and you get ""Ferry"" in immediate response. What is regularly billed as ""America's favourite boatride"" - not least because a round trip still costs an astonishing twenty-five cents - is the last public survivor of New York Harbour's once immense fleet of those doughty double-ended ferryboats. Dozens of ferryboats in a myriad of liveries crossed the harbour's waterways as recently as one generation ago. Most have vanished as though they never were, leaving in their ghostly wakes only fading memories and a few gorgeously restored ferry terminals. The handsomest of these terminals, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson, is probably the one dubbed by Christopher Morley the Piazza San Lackawanna. ""Over and Back"" captures nearly two centuries of ferryboating in New York Harbour, by a master narrator of the history of transportation in America. In stories, charts, maps, photographs, diagrams, route lists, fleet rosters and in the histories of some 400 ferryboats, Brian J. Cudahy aims to capture the whole tale. The photographs capture a significant footnote in America's past and present; the illustrations preserve some of the stylish rigs in which the owners garbed their boats, despite coal soot, oil smudge and urban grime. A third of the book comprises a statistical compilation. The data show, among other things, that some of the former workhorses of New York Harbour are filling utilitarian social roles elsewhere in the United States and overseas, and that the newest boats in the harbour began life along the Gulf of Mexico and in New England.

Full Product Details

9780823212453

Table of Contents

Reviews

One of those gems that successfully appeals to both the general reader . . . and the specialist. Highly Recommended. * -Library Journal * Power-driven, double-ended ferryboats have crossed New York harbor to Manhattan since 1812. Here is a comprehensive synopsis of ferry service on more than 60 ferry routes that operated between 1812 and the mid-1980s. The narrative is divided into eight distinct time periods, in which the development of private companies, the railroad ferries, the coming of municipal ownership, the decline of ferry services, and the more recent rebirth of ferry consciousness are treated. A variety of photographs provide an impression of the ferries themselves, but this is not a collection of boat portraits. Maps are excellent, defining each route and the physical changes of the harbor lines. Technological changes and engineering details are explained for the nonprofessional reader. Following the text, 126 pages of tables and appendixes offer a wealth of information, including graphs, an annotated bibliography, a listing of all the routes with their operators, and a comprehensive list of every double-ended ferry that operated in New York harbor. Without a doubt, this is an essential resource for the ferries, New York harbor, and the railroads that carried people to Manhattan, as well as for transportation, politics, and life within the city itself. * -Choice *

aOne of those gems that successfully appeals to both the general reader . . . and the specialist. Highly Recommended.a

One of those gems that successfully appeals to both the general reader ... and the specialist. Highly Recommended. -Library Journal

Author Information

Brian J. Cudahy’s books include Around Manhattan Island: And Other Maritime Tales of New York and A Century of Subways: Celebrating 100 Years of New York’s Underground Railways (both Fordham). He lives in Bluffton, SC.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available