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Spend 8 Marvelous Minutes Hovering Over This NYC Boat Graveyard
By
Jen Carlson
Published Nov 11, 2015
Modified Nov 11, 2015
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By
Jen Carlson
Published Nov 11, 2015
Modified Nov 11, 2015
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Staten Island's boat graveyard is a strangely beautiful thing to behold, which is typically only seen from sea level. But now we live an the era of drones.
Chad Aaronson took this footage flying his drone over the watery grave in Arthur Kill—it's so vivid and crisp, showing every peeled paint detail, that it makes the whole scene even more surreal:
In 1990s, the NY Times reported up to 200 boats in the the marine-salvage yard, from submarine chasers to tugboats, and some dating back to before WWI. It's unclear how many remain today.
According to an old Wired article, the boats started piling up over there "in the years following World War II... the adjacent scrapyard began to purchase scores of outdated vessels, with the intention of harvesting them for anything of value. But the shipbreakers couldn’t keep pace with the influx of boats, especially once people started to use the graveyard as a dumping ground for their old dinghies." And here we are, with an entire lot of eternally sinking ships, a rusting homage to New York's shipping era.
For more, check out Graves of Arthur Kill, a documentary on the area from 2012:
Tagged
arthur kill
boat graveyard
drone
ship graveyard
staten island
Jen Carlson
Jen Carlson is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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