The Port of New York boasted a developed shoreline of651 miles .... (It) included some 1,800 docks, piers, and wharves of every conceivable size, condition, and state of repair. ... praise for this tiny band: ... the tremendous volume of waterborne traffic . .. was to tax their abilities to the utmost. Tugs and tows going upriver could not follow the rule of keeping to the right,for their tows would have ended up in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Instead, a short distance before reaching Corlears Hook, they started pulling for the Manhattan shore, and on reaching the Hook , headed for the Brooklyn shore to even off. Aside from narrow, confined channels and treacherous currents and mid-stream rocky areas, there were 22 changes of course in the 16-mile run. Between 1 January 1942 and 31 May 1945, the Hell Gate pilots took 14,539 vessels through these waters without loss of a single ship .... A large number of vessels carried sufficient ammunition to . . . destroy [a large portion of] the metropolis and millions of people. On their busiest day of the war, the Hell Gate pilots guided fifty-eight ships out into Long Island Sound. Maritime management of the port was vested in the office of the Port Director, New York [PDNY] , a naval function subordinate to the Third Naval District. Broadly interpreted, PDNY 's mission "was to be the link between the Navy and other governmental and private shipping interests and was to effect the coordination of harbor activities and overseas and coastal shipping which would be necessary in time of war." The office would experience explosive growth after it became operational on 15 October 1939. On that day, Captain Frederick G. Reinicke, USN (Ret) reported for duty to the Commandant of the Third Naval District as Port Director. He established himself in a one room office at the Third Naval District Headquarters with a staff of one officer assistant and a secretary. On 8 May 1945, the day on which hostilities with Germany ceased, four floors of the Whitehall Building at 17 Battery Place were occupied by approximately 1,200 Naval personnel who were actively engaged in managing the world's biggest marine traffic job. Ships entering the harbor, once through the submarine net and MTB boom , found themselves in the busiest harbor in the world. At the peak of wartime effort, the Port of New York accommodated a daily average of over four hundred ships and averaged a ship clearance every fifteen minutes. The second factor contributing to the preeminence of the Port of New York was the economically developed condition of the port itself. Eleven ports in one, really, the Port of New York boasted a developed shoreline of 651 miles comprising the waterfronts of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, the Bronx, and Queens as well as the New Jersey shore from Perth Amboy to Elizabeth, Bayonne, Newark, Jersey City, and Hoboken. The Port of New York included some 1,800 docks, piers, and wharves of every conceivable size, condition, and state of repair, 750 of which were classified as "active" and 200 of which were able to berth 425 ocean-going vessels simultaneously. These docks and piers gave access to 1, 100 warehouses containing some 41 million square feet of enclosed storage space. In addition, the Port of New York had 39 active shipyards, not including the huge New York Naval Shipyard located on the Brooklyn shore of the East River. These facilities included 9 big-ship repair yards, 36 large dry docks, 25 small shipyards, 33 locomotive and gantry cranes of 50-ton lift capacity or greater, 5 floating derricks and more than 100 tractor cranes. Some 575 tugboats worked the port. 14
In early March 1943, the view through the windows of the Port Director's offices at the Battery offered a typical wartime image of the great anchorage of New York's Upper Bay and up the Hudson River. Well over 100 merchant ships could be seen. Fully loaded and low in the water, they would all swing first one way and then another as the tides turned. They were waiting to be formed into convoys SC.122 and HX.229 and commence their hazardous passage across the Atlantic. As was often the case, there were so many ships in the harbor that there were a number of collisions. From the book Convoy, Martin Middlebrook 's classic study of the fate of these two convoys, comes this description of some of the difficulties at anchorage, in the words of Captain W. Luckey on the MY Luculus: One evening the San Veronico was being anchored ahead of us when she dragged and struck my ship which in turn caused us to drag into mid-stream. Fortunately, a tug was passing at the time with a pilot and we were able to obtain his services before any further damage could be done . We then moved and anchored further up river just below the George Washington Bridge. Whilst at anchor we encountered more ice on the ebb tide and at times it was impossible to get ashore on the launch. Another evening my third officer informed me that the Greek cargo vessel who was anchored ahead of us was dragging her anchor. We tried every way possible to attract her attention but without success and we were struck on the port bow. The cargo vessel dragged the length of our ship before she was clear. During this time we had our engines going to keep the weight off our anchor chain otherwise we would have dragged downstream also . I shall never know how the anchor chains were never fouled . Between Pearl Harbor and VJ Day, more than three million troops and their equipment and over 63 million tons of additional supplies were shipped overseas through the New York Port of Embarkation. First established in 1917, the Army's New York Port of Embarkation constituted the primary military command in the Port of New York. In actuality a "massive network of rail lines , highways, waterways, piers, and storage houses," between 1941 and 1945 it would grow from a single installation, Brooklyn Army Terminal, to a total of ten port terminals scattered through Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island and New Jersey, and would employ over 55,000 men and women. The NYPE included: • Brooklyn Army Terminal, the largest warehouse in the world, with more than 3,800,000 square feet of storage space and room to unload 450 railroad freight cars • Port Johnston Terminal , Bayonne, New Jersey, the principal shipment point for combat vehicles • Claremont Terminal, Caven Point, Jersey City, New Jersey, the principal terminal for explosives and ammunition bound for the warfronts of Europe and the Mediterranean •Howland Hook Terminal, Port Ivory, located on the Arthur Kill, on the back side of Staten Island, the principal storage area and shipment point for petroleum, oil, and lubricants arriving from the refineries of Bayonne and Elizabeth, New Jersey • North River Terminal, the principal troop embarkation terminal of the NYPE. Consisting of seven covered piers on the Hudson River, part of the famous, pre-war "ocean liner row," the terminal permitted troops to arrive by ferry if necessary, and to load directly onto troopships. It was from here that the fast liners, the Cunarders Queen Elizabeth, Queen SEA HISTORY 65, SPRING 1993