BlO—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, October 20,1984
Ferryboats: An idea that won't die
WASHINGTON - In 1967,
ferryboats linking New Jersey and
Manhattan made their last runs
across the Hudson River, the
victims of progress in the form of
bridges and tunnels.
In 1984, planners studying how to
alleviate congestion on those
bridges and in those tunnels have
been urged by New Jersey’s
governor and New York City’s
mayor to consider an old solution;
ferryboats.
The planners will make no
recommendations until the end of
the year, but they are looking
seriously at a resumption of ferry
service. The mere consideration of
the notion shows that some ideas
refuse to die.
PASSAGE TO HADES
Ferryboats have played a role in
civilization for millennia. Greek
mythology tells of the first
ferryboat captain, Charon, who
ferried entrants to Hades across
the rivers Styx and Acheron for a
fee of one oblous.
When the first explorers came to
America, many, like Hernando Oe
Soto, were ferried across rivers by
Indians. Though the building of
bridges and tunnels has obliterated
hundreds of American femes,
many have survived. Others have
revived. There is something about
ferries that maintains a hold on the
popular imagination.
Walt Whitman wrote that ferries
“afford inimitable, streaming,
never-ending poems.” And Edna
St. Vincent Millay wrote of the
days when “We were very tired,
we were very merry, We had gone
back and forth all night on the
ferry.”
All this is heady stuff for the
unpretentious ferryboats* of this
world. Unlike cruise ships, ferries
rarely have anything luxurious or
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even comfortable about them
They are designed for a workaday
job: to carry people and their
possessions from one side of a
river, lake, or sea to the other.
“The ferry,” wrote historian John
Perry, “is the people’s boat and its
history is theirs.”
For all intents and purposes, a
ferry is simply an extension of a
highway. But it links highways in a
limitless number of ways, and
man" femes have taken on a
legen and a lore all their own.
Probably the most famous
American ferry links Manhattan
and Staten Islands. One early ferry
on that run was started in 1811 by
Cornelius Vanderbilt, who
borrowed $lOO from his mother to
launch the service. He soon paid it
back and used his profits as the
foundation of his fortune.
Today’s Staten Island ferries can
carry as many as 6,000 passengers
at a tune. The celebrated nickel
fare has risen to a quarter, though
that pays for a round trip.
ROWBOAT TO BROOKLYN
Vanderbilt’s ferries came long
after the first ferries to dock in
Manhattan. As far back as 1623,
Cornelius Dircksen rowed people
back and forth between Manhattan
and Brooklyn.
But even that came after the
Massachusetts Bay Court helped
set up a penny ferry service bet
ween Boston and Charlestown in
1630. A second ferry, between
Boston and Cambridge, was
established in 1635.
Ferry service between Rocky
Hill and South Glastonbury, Conn.,
was established in 1655. That ferry
continues to operate under the
Connecticut Department of
Transportation, making it the
nation's oldest continuous ferry
operation.
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Maryland’s femes have seen
their share of notable women. The
Tred Avon ferry was home to
Judith Bennett, who married three
different ferry operators and ran
the ferry herself for 10 years
between husbands.
Patty Cannon, who kidnapped
blacks and sold them into slavery
in the 18th century, is said to have
persuaded ferrymen to take her
across Maryland’s Wipomico
River by bribing them with a kiss.
In 1859, the body of John Brown
was ferried across Lake Cham
plain to the grave in which it was to
lie a-moldenng. Brown had been
slain while attempting to free
slaves at (Robert) Harper’s Ferry,
established in 1747 at the junction
of the Potomac and Shenandoah
Rivers, in what is now West
Virginia.
Fur trader John Harris’ ferry
across the Susquehanna River in
Pennsylvania was the site of a
village that became Harrisburg.
Early ferries were canoes or
rafts. Later ferries were sailboats
or “teamboats,” propelled by a
team of horses walking on a
treadmill. Others, including some
still operating, ran along ropes or
cables attached to trees on each
bank.
Today, ferries play an integral
role in government transportation
systems. Ferries carry 40,000
commuters daily between Seattle
and nearby islands. The coast of
Alaska is linked by the femes of
the state’s marine highway
system. Ferryboats operated
along the coast of North Carolina
are affectionateoly known as the
“Tar Heel Navy.”
An extensive ferry system
operates in Canada. There are
ferries connecting Prince Edward
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MARINE HIGHWAY
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A ferry of the Alaska Marine Highway System steams past
Ketchikan along the Inside Passage, a waterway that threads
Canada's western coast and the island-dotted panhandle of
Alaska. Half of the communities in Alaska's southeast are
unreachable by conventional roads. Ferries play a vital role in
linking them together and facilitating travel down the Pacific
coast as far as Seattle.
Island and the mainland, ferries
between Maine and Nova Scotia,
and 30 ferries in British Columbia
alone.
The most unusual is over the
Fraser River between Boston Bar
and North Bend, 8.C.; an aerial
cage suspended on cables crosses
between towers on both banks. It
can hold 40 passengers, or an
automobile and its passengers.
“You’d better see it quick,” says
Frank Clapp, a British Columbia
land survey officer. “Logging has
increased traffic, and a bridge will
repace it in 1986.”
Abroad, the best-known ferries
are those that cross the English
Channel between Great Britain
and the Continent. Almost as well
know is the Star Ferry, which has
plied Hong Kong waters since the
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But the range and number of
ferries is endless. There are femes
between the Soviet Union and
Bulgaria on the Black Sea, scores
of femes on the North Sea and the
Mediterranean, and a ferry bet
ween Sicily and Italy on the Strait
of Messina, where Ulysses sailed
between Scylla and Charybdis.
Someone is always proclaiming
the imminent death of ferries, and
indeed, ferries as famous and
obstinate as Arkansas’s Toad Suck
Ferry are gone. But others, like the
boats that cross Lake Michigan
between Wisconsin and Michigan,
often are saved at the last minute,
and others are revived --
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DEATH NOTICES
PREMATURE
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