By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The sweet story from the Atlantic Docks, reprinted in full below, ran in the Towanda, Pennsylvania's Bradford Reporter, on December 22, 1864. This good natured human interest story, with little doubt copied from another newspaper, is notable in...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Col. Daniel Richards witnessed the construction of the Erie Canal and understood that there was great potential for a shipping hub in Red Hook, Brooklyn. The Atlantic Dock Company was chartered by New York State on May 6, 1840 with a plan for a...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
D efalcation. John Wright, a storage keeper at Atlantic Docks, N.Y. and a defaulter to a considerable amount, left for France in the steamer United States, on her last passage. One house in New York, it is said, will be a loser by him to the...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
The Atlantic Basin was the home to hundreds of Erie Canal boats during the winter months. Families, including children, lived on the the boats, tending their floating homes, until the ice melted and they could begin shipping produce again. The...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Ships have unintended passengers As ships travel across the oceans between the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and elsewhere they take with them unintended passengers. These stowaways include seeds mixed in with ballast. In order to be properly...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
November 6, 2018, the PortSide crew spots a great blue heron in Atlantic Basin for the first time. So exciting! More about them here https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Blue_Heron/overview Also: Guide to Harbor Herons and Other Colonial...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
In 1872 the Great Western Line was sailing out of Red hook Brooklyn's Atlantic Docks taking passengers and cargo to a port near London and other ports along the Bristol Channel. The cost of a cabin was $70 Today, one can take the Queen Mary 2...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
Ichaboe, a small island off the coast of Nambia, once towered high with mounds of seabird guano - an excellent fertilizer. Large scale exporting of the “white gold” began in 1843 and for a few years 450 ships were streaming to and from the...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
This 1859 map shows the established Atlantic Basin in Red Hook, and a neighboring "Proposed Basin" that was not built as shown. The large Erie Basin, however, was built closer to the Gowanus in the mid-1860s. The towns of Bushwick and Williamsburg...
By The Red Hook WaterStories team
This 1850 map of the City of Brooklyn produced by J. F Harrison and published by M. Dripps shows the Red Hook waterfront in transition. Atlantic Dock has been built by this time but construction of the larger Erie Basin had not begun. Much of...
