The ferry pulls away from the slips revealing the infrastructure and the ferry Scranton on the NJ side of the river. Ferry service has plied these waters for 300 years, and in a few days it will end for a period of decades before being revitalized.
Comments:
L-R: The "Scranton", the "Pocono", and the "Binghamton", making for a stately, graceful, elegant lineup. Not all that long before this photo was taken, these three graceful, turn of the century coal-burners were still in service, carrying well-dressed commuters between Hoboken and lower Manhattan.
On January 1st, 1968, during a gusty storm, the "Scranton" broke loose from her Hoboken moorings and then drifted out into the Hudson, where she sank shortly thereafter. For some time, her stack and one pilothouse were still visible above the murky surface of the Hudson; at the time of her sinking, there were a number of newspaper stories about this once-proud ferry and her fateful, one-way voyage.
One news article claimed that the "Scranton" really died of a broken heart. I well remember seeing her stack jutting eerily out of the water from my brother's kitchen window on the east side of Union City, overlooking the Hudson, in early 1968. A menace to navigation, she was later raised, and, what was left of her, was scrapped at Jersey City. It was a sad ending indeed for a graceful and historic vessel, one that I have many fond childhood memories of.
On January 1st, 1968, during a gusty storm, the "Scranton" broke loose from her Hoboken moorings and then drifted out into the Hudson, where she sank shortly thereafter. For some time, her stack and one pilothouse were still visible above the murky surface of the Hudson; at the time of her sinking, there were a number of newspaper stories about this once-proud ferry and her fateful, one-way voyage.
One news article claimed that the "Scranton" really died of a broken heart. I well remember seeing her stack jutting eerily out of the water from my brother's kitchen window on the east side of Union City, overlooking the Hudson, in early 1968. A menace to navigation, she was later raised, and, what was left of her, was scrapped at Jersey City. It was a sad ending indeed for a graceful and historic vessel, one that I have many fond childhood memories of.