Newly married and recently widowed in 1890 , Jennie Chandler Young began working as a photojournalist to support herself and her two-month old son. Using the moniker "Brooklyn Girl," she worked until 1915 for the New York Herald as a...
Fugitive Slave Case – Red Hook Point, December 4, 1857
Four years before the American Civil War, a legal battle emerged from a situation that occurred aboard a steamship from Savannah to New York. One of the passengers, Thomas Steele, a light skinned man, was accused of being a fugitive slave by another...
Gary Shiflett about Bushey, 2016
Oral History
Gary Shiflett, currently a fleet manager, used to work for Ira S. Bushey and Sons and Eklof Marine. In 2016, while standing in the galley of PortSide NewYork's MARY A. WHALEN - a "Bushey boat" - he told of some of his memories...
Heidi Benedikt, crew member of the MARY WHALEN, 1986-88: Oral History
Heidi Benedikt - part 1: audio element. Heidi Benedikt - part 2: audio element. Synopsis of interview with Heidi Benedikt, former crew member of the MARY A. WHALEN. Recording times in parenthesis are aproximate. (0:10) The delegate of the...
Ira S. Bushey
Ira S. Bushey and Sons, for three generations was a nationally significant business located in Brooklyn’s Red Hook. Moreover, the tanker MARY A. Whalen, homeship of PortSide NewYork was built for Ira S. Bushey. Ira S. Bushey was born in...
Larry the Bugler, 1889
In 1889, several newspapers reported on Lawrence Grob, a citizen of Red Hook who earned the nickname “Larry the Bugler'' from his neighbors. Every morning, from his residence on Conover Street, near the Atlantic Docks, Grob used his bugle to wake...
Leonard Thomas, aka "The Chicken Man"
Red Hook’s east side is bounded by the Gowanus Bay which funnels into the Gowanus Canal at the Hamilton Avenue Bridge. PortSide’s flagship the tanker MARY A. WHALEN frequently delivered home heating oil to the two Bayside fuel terminals on...
Lost Love Found: Immigration, Romance and the Atlantic Basin, 1913
When the Steamer Uranium, from Rotterdam, via Halifax docked at Atlantic Basin's Pier 38 in Red Hook, all the talk was about love. Love was what people were talking about when the Steamer Uranium docked at Pier 38, Atlantic Basin, Red Hook, in...
Mrs. "Commodore Hamilton": canal boat owner, 1890
In 1890, Mrs. A. M. Hamilton, a widow, was interviewed in Atlantic Basin, and celebrated by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as being equal to any man running a canal boat. Beginning in the mid-1820s, canal boats brought produce from the nation's...
Nancy Kearse Gooding, a Red Hook Leader
Visitation Place in Red Hook, Brooklyn, was co-named Nancy Kearse Gooding Way on December 10, 2023. Red Hook in the 1970s was going through tough times. Longshoremen strikes idled many, and industries that depended on shipping then laid off...