Long before Chelsea Piers was a sporting complex and the South Street Seaport a mall, the city was lined with active piers. The city's residents were amply employed by the shipping trade, but containerization needed more land than would ever be available in the city: Massive ports sprouted in Elizabeth and Newark, and ships disappeared from the city. Efficient cranes replaced longshoremen, and the time in port for ships shrank from about a week to about a day. "The technology changed the geography," says William Fensterer, a chaplain who has been with SIH almost since its new building opened in 1964. "It doesn't look like On the Waterfront anymore," he adds. When he started out, he says, he would wander on foot from pier to pier in Manhattan and Brooklyn and board ships, with nary a guard in site. But those piers have largely vanished. And along with them, the seafarer, once ubiquitous in New York, has become invisible.
posted by jason's_planet on Dec 18, 2009 - 14 comments

Is salvaging sunken treasure a form of piracy or the preservation of history? Does commercial for-profit exploration of historical shipwrecks taint the historical legacy of these naval graveyards? Who owns the treasures lost for so many centuries? Marine archeology is testing its legal limits with one man's work. [previous]
posted by infini on Jun 5, 2009 - 25 comments

Built to FLIP!
posted by riffola on Nov 7, 2005 - 23 comments

"Mayday, mayday, Estonia, please." 10 years ago tonight, 852 people lost their lives in the cold dark waters of the Baltic Sea. In the middle of the night the ferry M/S Estonia, headed from Tallinn to Stockholm, suddenly capsized and sank. Only 137 people survived Europe's worst maritime disaster since World War II. (more inside)
posted by mr.marx on Sep 27, 2004 - 8 comments