September 12, 2022 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, on September 11th, 2001, more people were evacuated from Lower Manhattan than Dunkirk, and all thanks to FDNY fireboats, tugboats, and pleasure boats.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories and with a
story about nine eleven. Doctor Mike McGee is the author
of All Available Boats, which is about Manhattan's trains and
bridges shutting down on nine to eleven and the heroic
evacuation of three hundred thousand people off of the island
by boats that happened to be in the area. It
(00:33):
was a larger evacuation than Dunkirk, and it was executed
by a wide variety of boats that answered the call
for help, from pleasure boats to tugboats. And today Mike
tells us about the Fire Department of New York's fireboats
that bravely served that day. One of them was the
(00:54):
John J. Harvey, which had been decommissioned. It was in
nineteen thirty one. The fat this most powerful fireboat in
the world. It could pump eighteen thousand gallons a minute,
which was just unheard of at the time. It was
named after John J. Harvey, who had died in a
fire on a boat. But the interesting thing about it
(01:16):
is that at the time of nine to eleven it
was completely decommissioned, but it was functional, and the guy
who actually was in charge of the John J. Harvey
was a architectural preservationist who had gotten interested in saving
(01:41):
the John J. Harvey. So this boat, which is about
one hundred and thirty feet long, was formally preserved and
saved beginning in nineteen ninety nine, and Huntley gil was
the guy who raised the funds and coordinated it, and
then he became the captain. He was aided by a
(02:01):
former truck mechanic whose name was Tim Ivory, who became
the chief engineer for the boat. And he just got
a kick out of keeping this thing functioning. It's a
mechanical wonder. And then there was a third person named
Jessica DeLong who happened to be from Massachusetts and was
a maritime historian who had gotten interested in the boat
(02:22):
and became one of the crew members for it. So
at the time of the attack, Huntley Gill was asleep
in his Manhattan apartment, Tim Ivory, who lived on a
houseboat in a marina in New Jersey on the New
Jersey side, was having breakfast at a diner, and Jessica
DeLong was riding a freelance article in her Brooklyn flat.
(02:50):
Within hours, the three of them were on the boat
and the boat was on the Hudson heading south to
the disaster, and the first thing they did when they
arrived there was to over allowed speaker address the crowd
that hadn't gathered to be evacuated, you know, the most
(03:10):
panicky people and those who were injured in the falling
of the towers immediately obviously tried to get off the
south side of the island and they were all gathered there.
So at Pier sixty three on the Hudson River where
the boat originated, it headed south and the first thing
it did was used allowed speaker to tell people, anybody
(03:31):
want to go uptown. In one hundred and fifty people
boarded the fireboat and they took them uptown. Then they
got a call. By the time they reached uptown to
discharge these hundred and fifty people, that got a call
to rush back because the fire trucks had already run
out of water and they needed this retire John J.
(03:53):
Harvey to pump eighteen thousand gallons of water a minute
to fill the trucks that were all out of order.
So that's what they did, and they stayed in action
down there for four days. Now, one of the boats
that was there as well was the John D. McKean fireboat.
(04:16):
That fireboat was actually in service at the time, and
it was a newer boat. It wasn't that brand new.
It had been commissioned in nineteen fifty two, again named
after a firefighter in nineteen fifty three actually who had
lost his life in a steam explosion on a boat.
(04:39):
The captain, though, ed Metcalf, this was only his second
day as captain of that boat, so he had just
arrived and the second day of his command, he gets
this call to come down immediately to the seawall at
Liberty Street. In fact, this was right after to the
(05:00):
first plane had hit and the second plane had not
yet hit. They were down there within about five minutes,
and Metcalf got off the boat to go to the
command center to see what the fire department wanted him
to do next. He subsequently was lost in the turmoil
(05:20):
and the and the collapse of the second building after
the second plane hit, which they all saw, you know,
And that's that's another part of this story. You know,
anyone who witnessed those attacks, or anyone who witnessed all
of the citizens covered in inches of dust and debris
(05:44):
slowly walking either north out of Manhattan or south to
try to be evacuated by boat. Anyone who witnessed those
images has never really forgotten those images. And when ed
Madcalfe didn't come back immediately, one of his crew members,
Tom Sullivan, went to try to find out where he was,
(06:08):
and Tom ended up in some of the wreckage of
the second building collapsing and nearly lost his life as well.
But in any case, what happened was that this boat,
the John D. McKean, which is one hundred and thirty
feet long, It played a major role in the evacuation
(06:29):
and it was not designed obviously to transport people. In fact,
these boats, the way they're designed, they need a gang
plank of about twelve feet to reach the shoreline, and
the shorelines down there were never designed for multiple purposes
(06:49):
at either. I mean, one of the things that we
learned from this event is that that New York carber
area was not well designed for disaster. You know, the
people who run these boats, they talk about the commercial
uses and bringing in liners and shipping containers over on
(07:11):
the New Jersey side, but in general, it isn't a
very good edge between the water and the land for
boarding human beings and not designed for that at all.
So the fact that they were able to move safely
somewhere between three hundred and fifty thousand and five hundred
thousand people off that island in a short period of
(07:33):
time is nothing short of a miracle. And when they
moved the John D. McKean fireboat and started using it,
people were panicked. The towers had just collapsed. People thought
that the entire southern tip of Manhattan was going to
(07:55):
blow up. They didn't know what was coming next, and
they were panicked. And you had had not simply wall
streets covered in dust, but you had babies and nannies
and civilians who lived in the buildings around this area
all trying to get off the island, and the John D.
(08:15):
McKean fireboat really ran into a lot of challenges in
terms of children. Their deck was about eight foot down
from the loading shores, and they were literally throwing some
of the babies to the open arms of these firefighters
on the boat, and then the babies were taken down
(08:37):
and four babies to a cot were placed in the fireman.
We're taking care of the babies as they were loading
the nannies. In one case, a lady who was panicked
actually jumped in the water and got trapped between the
boat and the shore, and the firefighters had to actually
(09:00):
jump into the water and saved them by throwing a
plank ladder down and boosting them up. One firefighter had
to dive under the water to push an exhausted lady
onto the ladder. So this is a very chaotic situation,
and so for the boat captains, who are not used
(09:22):
to doing this kind of work to remain calm and
to as much as possible protect the safety of people
who were inclined to do anything at that moment to
get off the island. One of the common features of
almost everyone that we interviewed was that when the boats
(09:44):
were moving away from the island and looking back, you
could see initially the twin towers on fire, and then
they all witnessed their collapse, and then they were just gone.
The thing that was most in common in every story
(10:05):
was the extreme quietness on the boat itself that was
nothing like they had ever experienced, the solemnness. Everyone was
deep inside themselves. And he is right about the silence,
(10:25):
and that's the silence in New York and also in
washing NDC and ioh Bet it was the quietest time
in American history. People would just shocked. A special thanks
to Monty Montgomery, Alex Cortez for the work. Doctor Mike McGee,
author of all available boats are nine to eleven special
here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories and with a
story about nine eleven. Doctor Mike McGee is the author
of All Available Boats, which is about Manhattan's trains and
bridges shutting down on nine to eleven and the heroic
evacuation of three hundred thousand people off of the island
by boats that happened to be in the area. It
(00:33):
was a larger evacuation than Dunkirk, and it was executed
by a wide variety of boats that answered the call
for help, from pleasure boats to tugboats. And today Mike
tells us about the Fire Department of New York's fireboats
that bravely served that day. One of them was the
(00:54):
John J. Harvey, which had been decommissioned. It was in
nineteen thirty one. The fat this most powerful fireboat in
the world. It could pump eighteen thousand gallons a minute,
which was just unheard of at the time. It was
named after John J. Harvey, who had died in a
fire on a boat. But the interesting thing about it
(01:16):
is that at the time of nine to eleven it
was completely decommissioned, but it was functional, and the guy
who actually was in charge of the John J. Harvey
was a architectural preservationist who had gotten interested in saving
(01:41):
the John J. Harvey. So this boat, which is about
one hundred and thirty feet long, was formally preserved and
saved beginning in nineteen ninety nine, and Huntley gil was
the guy who raised the funds and coordinated it, and
then he became the captain. He was aided by a
(02:01):
former truck mechanic whose name was Tim Ivory, who became
the chief engineer for the boat. And he just got
a kick out of keeping this thing functioning. It's a
mechanical wonder. And then there was a third person named
Jessica DeLong who happened to be from Massachusetts and was
a maritime historian who had gotten interested in the boat
(02:22):
and became one of the crew members for it. So
at the time of the attack, Huntley Gill was asleep
in his Manhattan apartment, Tim Ivory, who lived on a
houseboat in a marina in New Jersey on the New
Jersey side, was having breakfast at a diner, and Jessica
DeLong was riding a freelance article in her Brooklyn flat.
(02:50):
Within hours, the three of them were on the boat
and the boat was on the Hudson heading south to
the disaster, and the first thing they did when they
arrived there was to over allowed speaker address the crowd
that hadn't gathered to be evacuated, you know, the most
(03:10):
panicky people and those who were injured in the falling
of the towers immediately obviously tried to get off the
south side of the island and they were all gathered there.
So at Pier sixty three on the Hudson River where
the boat originated, it headed south and the first thing
it did was used allowed speaker to tell people, anybody
(03:31):
want to go uptown. In one hundred and fifty people
boarded the fireboat and they took them uptown. Then they
got a call. By the time they reached uptown to
discharge these hundred and fifty people, that got a call
to rush back because the fire trucks had already run
out of water and they needed this retire John J.
(03:53):
Harvey to pump eighteen thousand gallons of water a minute
to fill the trucks that were all out of order.
So that's what they did, and they stayed in action
down there for four days. Now, one of the boats
that was there as well was the John D. McKean fireboat.
(04:16):
That fireboat was actually in service at the time, and
it was a newer boat. It wasn't that brand new.
It had been commissioned in nineteen fifty two, again named
after a firefighter in nineteen fifty three actually who had
lost his life in a steam explosion on a boat.
(04:39):
The captain, though, ed Metcalf, this was only his second
day as captain of that boat, so he had just
arrived and the second day of his command, he gets
this call to come down immediately to the seawall at
Liberty Street. In fact, this was right after to the
(05:00):
first plane had hit and the second plane had not
yet hit. They were down there within about five minutes,
and Metcalf got off the boat to go to the
command center to see what the fire department wanted him
to do next. He subsequently was lost in the turmoil
(05:20):
and the and the collapse of the second building after
the second plane hit, which they all saw, you know,
And that's that's another part of this story. You know,
anyone who witnessed those attacks, or anyone who witnessed all
of the citizens covered in inches of dust and debris
(05:44):
slowly walking either north out of Manhattan or south to
try to be evacuated by boat. Anyone who witnessed those
images has never really forgotten those images. And when ed
Madcalfe didn't come back immediately, one of his crew members,
Tom Sullivan, went to try to find out where he was,
(06:08):
and Tom ended up in some of the wreckage of
the second building collapsing and nearly lost his life as well.
But in any case, what happened was that this boat,
the John D. McKean, which is one hundred and thirty
feet long, It played a major role in the evacuation
(06:29):
and it was not designed obviously to transport people. In fact,
these boats, the way they're designed, they need a gang
plank of about twelve feet to reach the shoreline, and
the shorelines down there were never designed for multiple purposes
(06:49):
at either. I mean, one of the things that we
learned from this event is that that New York carber
area was not well designed for disaster. You know, the
people who run these boats, they talk about the commercial
uses and bringing in liners and shipping containers over on
(07:11):
the New Jersey side, but in general, it isn't a
very good edge between the water and the land for
boarding human beings and not designed for that at all.
So the fact that they were able to move safely
somewhere between three hundred and fifty thousand and five hundred
thousand people off that island in a short period of
(07:33):
time is nothing short of a miracle. And when they
moved the John D. McKean fireboat and started using it,
people were panicked. The towers had just collapsed. People thought
that the entire southern tip of Manhattan was going to
(07:55):
blow up. They didn't know what was coming next, and
they were panicked. And you had had not simply wall
streets covered in dust, but you had babies and nannies
and civilians who lived in the buildings around this area
all trying to get off the island, and the John D.
(08:15):
McKean fireboat really ran into a lot of challenges in
terms of children. Their deck was about eight foot down
from the loading shores, and they were literally throwing some
of the babies to the open arms of these firefighters
on the boat, and then the babies were taken down
(08:37):
and four babies to a cot were placed in the fireman.
We're taking care of the babies as they were loading
the nannies. In one case, a lady who was panicked
actually jumped in the water and got trapped between the
boat and the shore, and the firefighters had to actually
(09:00):
jump into the water and saved them by throwing a
plank ladder down and boosting them up. One firefighter had
to dive under the water to push an exhausted lady
onto the ladder. So this is a very chaotic situation,
and so for the boat captains, who are not used
(09:22):
to doing this kind of work to remain calm and
to as much as possible protect the safety of people
who were inclined to do anything at that moment to
get off the island. One of the common features of
almost everyone that we interviewed was that when the boats
(09:44):
were moving away from the island and looking back, you
could see initially the twin towers on fire, and then
they all witnessed their collapse, and then they were just gone.
The thing that was most in common in every story
(10:05):
was the extreme quietness on the boat itself that was
nothing like they had ever experienced, the solemnness. Everyone was
deep inside themselves. And he is right about the silence,
(10:25):
and that's the silence in New York and also in
washing NDC and ioh Bet it was the quietest time
in American history. People would just shocked. A special thanks
to Monty Montgomery, Alex Cortez for the work. Doctor Mike McGee,
author of all available boats are nine to eleven special
here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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