WESTERN UNION'S STATEN
ISLAND SHIP SPOTTERS
=============================================
My name is Bill Black and for a few summers in the early 1960’s, I
worked in what had to be one of the most interesting but least-known
jobs in the entire city of New York: relief watch-stander in the
Western Union office located at the Quarantine Station in Rosebank,
Staten Island, New York. That’s on the Narrows about a mile or so north
of the Staten Island side of the Verrazano Bridge.
This office was designated “RN” by Western Union, and I will use that
term in this memoir.
The function of the RN office was basically ship-watching: to generate
information regarding merchant vessel movements in New York Harbor to
various clients: harbor pilots, towing companies, ship agents,
government agencies, and so on. It was at the time the only
privately-operated signal tower in the United States, perhaps even the
world.
The watch room was on the third floor of a building on the Narrows side
of the Quarantine Station; the other occupants of the building were
government agencies - the Public Health inspectors, who at the time
were required to board every vessel arriving from a foreign port, were
on the second floor, and the Immigration office was on the first floor.
This paper is not designed to be a work of history - for an overview of
that topic I would ask that readers have a look at two articles I have
received through the kind assistance of Harold Smith, webmaster of the
WU alumni dot com site. These articles were printed in the Western
Union
house organ Telegraph News. “Western Union’s Ship Reporting Service” dates
from February 1959, and “John Brown’s Job” dates
from Spring 1963.
Although we were part of the WU operation - after all, we were the RN
office - the job was an extremely specialized one. RN did not handle
telegrams, Bunnygrams, Santagrams, or any of the other -grams so
dear to the hearts of the marketing types at 60 Hudson Street. That
never stopped them from sending us reams of junk mail: we were a WU
office, so obviously we could sell a few Bunnygrams, right? As a
result of such corporate zeal, RN had more scrap paper than any WU
office had a right to expect.
The signal tower was equipped with an elderly punch-tape teletype - I
think it had been green at one time - that could communicate only with
a particular office in 60 Hudson Street that would re-route RN’s
traffic to the designated recipient. I’m not sure why we couldn’t
communicate directly, but we couldn’t. There was however a ticker that
could send traffic direct to similar units in client offices.
(Apologies once again for my unfamiliarity with official names for
these devices, but you can see some of this gear - along with the
telescope mentioned below - in the photo accompanying the "Ship Reporting Service" article.)
There were no Morse keys or other telegraph paraphernalia when I was
there, although there may have been at one time. The office had been
there quite a while. I would swear that the typewriter we used for
logging ship movements was original equipment from 1883 or thereabouts.
The raw material that justified RN’s existence - ship activity in the
harbor - was obtained visually during the daytime. The Narrows -
through which 90 percent of all New York harbor traffic transits - is
at that particular point about a mile wide, so visual observation with
even limited visibility was easy.
To assist the day watch in reading vessel names, WU had supplied us
with a big telescope - a little bigger but not much younger than the
one Captain Ahab would have had on the “Pequod”. This noble implement
was mounted pointing outwards through the front wall, and you could
move it a few degrees horizontally and vertically to read the vessel
names (there were also binoculars, easier to use but not as romantic).
I often wonder what happened to that telescope after the RN office
closed in the early 1970’s - maybe someone reading these lines has the
answer to that question.
At night the tower would obtain vessel identities by use of signal
light flashing in Morse code, exactly the same way that ships at sea
would communicate with one another.
The operator in the tower, upon spotting a vessel’s running lights,
would use the duty signalling device - I liked the Aldis lamp - to send
the identity query “AA” to the vessel. If all went well, the vessel
would respond with its name and occasionally its four-letter call sign.
The tricky part was spotting the light source from the vessel, since
not all ships used bridge-wing signalling devices. The hardest signals
to read were the ones sent from mast-tops - the lights were often dim
(or seemed to be) and not infrequently got lost in the background
clutter of the Brooklyn shoreline with its highways, streets, and
apartment houses. I well recall spending anxious minutes trying to
figure out what was being sent from a ship equipped with what looked
like a 25-watt bulb on her masthead. Other hazards of the profession
included what we could only hope were cadets assigned to flash the
responses as practice in the fine art of communicating by flashing
light.
As practitioners of the audible Morse art are well aware, a good
operator has what a musician would call a “swing” to his transmitting.
Suffice it to say that a lot of the flashing light that we RN operators
had to read was pretty far removed from “expert” level, but it’s
suprising as I think back on it to realize how few “unidentifieds”
there were on most of the night operators’ logs.
Once the vessel identity was established, the time and description of
the vessel and its movement were typed into a log, then put on the
ticker. In some cases the information was also either phoned to the
client and/or sent out via the teletype.
(For those readers of this little memoir who might be interested, all
traffic from RN - from which office we could almost see 60 Hudson
Street on a moderately clear night - was routed via a line running
along the Staten Island Railroad tracks north to St. George - then as
now the ferry terminus on the island - and eventually across the Kill
van Kull into Bayonne and Jersey City and eventually into downtown
Manhattan. Since much of the line was elderly and exposed to the
weather, line problems were frequent and lengthy, especially if the
wire chief on duty in 60 Hudson had never heard of the RN office. We
considered ourselves lucky if he had heard of Staten Island.)
Each vessel generated two reports, inbound (i.e. arriving from sea) as
it boarded the required harbor pilot at “Ambrose” (i.e., at the pilot
boat on station in the vicinity of the Ambrose lightship, positioned
out past Coney Island at the entrance to the navigation channel), and
again as it passed the Quarantine station. For outbound vessels the
reports were reversed, i.e. passing Quarantine first then departing
Ambrose.
I am happy to say that the “John Brown’s Job”
article verifies that I recalled the history of the tower correctly: in
the early days there was another ship-spotting facility out on Sandy
Hook, a peninsula jutting northwards towards the navigation channel
from the New Jersey shoreline about 9 miles south of the Rosebank
Quarantine Station (where the RN tower was located). The function of
the Sandy Hook tower was also to report the movements of vessels, but
at some point during WW II the authorities discovered that enemy
submarines were using the tower for torpedo sighting purposes, and it
was taken down. At that point the “Ambrose” vessel reports were taken
over by the harbor pilots via a radio link that included the RN office
and the pilots’ Staten Island shore base.
The report from the pilot boat meant that we could expect the vessel in
the vicinity of the Narrows in about an hour, so the tower operator had
some advance notice of a vessel’s arrival off the Quarantine
Station. I should qualify that with the phrase “in most cases”, because
occasionally you’d get a ringer, either a ship that for some reason the
pilots had neglected to report - the lads on the bridge of the pilot
boat could get hugely preoccupied at times - or a ship transiting
between two interior points in the harbor that would not have required
it to pass Ambrose. Fortunately for RN’s reputation, the surprises were
few! (I should add for the sake of completeness that RN received a list
of arrivals and departures from the pilot office via the radio link
every evening, so we had a pretty good idea of what was supposed to be
happening during the next 24 hours. But still ... )
In those days all vessels inbound from a foreign port had to anchor for
inspection by the Public Health, Immigration, and Customs inspectors,
who would board from a cutter that tied up immediately below the tower
window. The clearance procedure normally took an hour or so, after
which the vessel was free to go about its business.
One might have thought that we would log the times of a vessel’s
arrival at and departure from anchorage as well, but we didn’t,
primarily I believe because such information would have been extremely
difficult to obtain at night. Keep in mind that in those days, most of
the tower watch’s information was based on simple visual observations,
and that what might be obvious in daylight would be far less so at
night, especially if the anchorage - almost two miles in length - were
fairly congested (as was often the case).
The VHF radio that supplied the link with the pilot boat and the pilot
office was - like all the other gear in the tower - primitive even by
1960’s standards. These days VHF gear is cheap and reliable, standard
equipment on everything from rowboats to aircraft carriers, but back in
1962 It was pretty exotic. The VHF unit we had in the tower was, like
everything else, subject to frequent problems, and getting it repaired
was a major hassle that we had to undertake ourselves, since nobody at
60 Hudson Street knew anything about it. The radio tech - I still
remember his name - apparently worked out of a marina on Long Island,
not exactly within easy reach of Staten Island in those pre-Verrazano
Bridge days. These were also the pre-cellphone, pre-pager days as well,
so locating the tech was never as easy as dialing a number and talking
to him, not by any means.
The VHF problem was usually a blown something-or-other, and maybe the
tech had the part when he came to check the gear, but usually he
didn’t. Or it might have been a glitch in the landline between the
tower and the pilot office. Or it might have been a bad alignment of
the outer planets of the solar system. We didn’t care as long as it got
fixed.
No memoir of my days at RN would be complete without a recounting of
the Thunderstorm Scenario, as follows:
I am most uncomfortable in thunderstorms, always was and probably
always will be. However, since I was summer vacation relief at RN, it
was inevitable that I would experience at least one thunderstorm in a
little 10 x 10 office surrounded by electronic gear (including a big
rack of relays or something that looked like it had been in the
original “Frankenstein” - you tech types I hope will forgive my utter
lack of familiarity with the machinery I worked with.).
One Friday on the 4-12 watch I got that feeling that most storm-fearers
get, when you can feel the darned thing gathering strength fifty miles
away (my dog and I get nervous around the same time, subsonic
vibrations or whatever). Friday nights at RN were always busy - because
of the crush of vessel departures prior to the weekend, it wasn’t
uncommon to log thirty or forty departures in those days of smaller
ships. That meant that thirty or forty ships had to be signalled,
logged, tickered, and maybe teletyped. And of course there was always
inbound traffic that had to be attended.
On this particular Friday night the squall line was barreling down on
the Narrows from out over New Jersey. The lightning flashes were
getting brighter and more frequent, and the thunder was like a
continuous drum roll. I was bouncing from one wall to the other trying
to get as much clerical work done as I could manage before the squall
line hit; I had the small Aldis signal lamp, paper and pencil ready to
move down to the men’s room on the second floor, which also had a
window facing the water from which I could do my signalling at least -
the logging, tickering, etc. could wait until the storm had passed.
Unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough this night, and before I could bail
out and leave RN to God, a tremendous bolt of lightning smacked into
the flagpole on the hill 150 feet away from the tower. Instantly there
was an arc of some kind involving the Frankenstein machine, the ticker
and and teletype jumped into some kind of weird life, the VHF screamed
and died ...
... and as all this was going on, a veritable elephant parade of
outbound ships was making its way slowly down the storm-tossed Narrows.
I missed a few of them in the time it took me to reassemble my wits,
grab the gear, and get down to the men’s room, but nothing would have
induced me to go back into that office with its ozone atmosphere and
demented machinery until I was convinced that the squall line was
somewhere east of Montauk Point. (I noticed that a larger percentage
than usual of the evening’s outbounders were not responding to my “AA”
- I guess that even sending the cadet out onto the bridge wing under
such weather conditions didn’t seem like a good idea).
When it was all over and operations were back to normal - fortunately
none of the machinery had been permanently damaged - I called a few of
the ticker clients to apologize for my absence. Most of them had
offices in downtown Manhattan that looked out over the harbor, so they
were well aware of what had gone on. In any case I made a note in the
log about the storm, and filled in details as best I could during the
rest of the shift
As I mentioned at the very beginning, the RN job was strictly a
vacation relief one for me, so I would not under any circumstances
consider myself to be a WU person. It was a terrific job that taught me
a lot about responsibility - the watchstander was alone for his shift
and was really a very important link in the maritime commerce of one of
the world’s busiest harbors. I made a lot of friends, and learned
enough about the shipping business to make it my life’s work.
I lost touch with RN when I went into the Navy and did a year in
Vietnam and another year on the West Coast. I was discharged in 1967,
and worked a few more times at RN while I was trying to figure out what
to do with the rest of my life. But when I went back, I got the sense
that RN wasn’t long for the world. From what I understood, 60 Hudson
Street had even less of a clue about our strange little office in 1968
than it had in 1963; the gear had deteriorated to the point of no
return, and no funds were apparently to be supplied to replace it; even
more ominously, the use of VHF by pilots, tugs, and other maritime
interests had expanded considerably, rendering RN’s position as a
communications hub more
and more tenuous. If - as seemed inevitable - technology would
eventually enable everyone to talk to everyone else, what purpose would
RN serve to the maritime community of New York?
I went to work in the shipping agency business in 1968, got married in
1969, and never went back to work at RN again. Its days as a branch
office of WU were numbered, and eventually the office and its reporting
functions were taken over by the Maritime Association of the Port of
New York, a private industry group who ironically had been one of RN’s
best clients over many years. One of MAPONY’s missions of long standing
was to supply New York harbor ship movement information to Lloyd’s of
London. I don’t believe MAPONY operated the Quarantine tower very long
before centralizing all its ship-reporting functions in its Battery
Park office in Manhattan. I’m hoping eventually to find out when the
plug was pulled for the last time - as they say, the research continues.
As of this moment (February 28, 2006), the building that housed the RN
office remains on what is now a Coast Guard base (the Public Health
service turned it over to the USCG fifteen or more years ago, but a lot
of the locals still refer to it as “Quarantine”). It looks as if the
building has been refurbished, but I couldn’t get past the main gate to
visit as of a few years ago - sorry but we can’t let you in, 9/11
security and all that, you know how it is ...
During my shipping agency career I served a term on the Board of
Directors of the Maritime Association, and on my departure I received a
tie - a tie bearing the image of a ship spotter looking through a
telescope. Although the reference is more to the Maritime Association’s
role as a purveyor of ship information than to Western Union’s, I can
appreciate the gift on two levels.
I’ll end this reminiscence with a few names that I remember: John Brown
(the manager), Vince Roberts (retired SMCS USN - my signalling
instructor), Joe McGuire (Navy RM), Bill Dunn, Bill Duffy (Navy RM), ?
Hornbeck (USCG BM) ... and “Mac” (full name available on request).
“Mac” worked (perhaps “was assigned to” would be more accurate) the
midnight - 8 am shift and commuted from Long Island somewhere - three
trains, a ferry, and a bus to get to work. Not surprisingly, he’d
occasionally miss a connection and wind up arriving at the tower two
hours late. The comical (in retrospect) part was that if Mac made all
his connections, he’d be at the tower somewhere around 11:45. If that
happened, he would find somewhere in the building to hide until the
stroke of midnight - never in the years that I worked there did he ever
relieve the 4-12 watch early, even when he had been two hours late the
previous night!
I remember coming up to the tower after midnight one time to pick up a
check. In so doing I surprised Mac, who I noted had removed the Sacred
Telescope from its embrasure and had positioned it out the tower’s side
window for careful observation of activities in the lovers’ lane right
next to the station. The signal light was still under the desk
somewhere - not a good sign. Instinctively I glanced out the front
window in the direction of the harbor, and sure enough there were a
couple of outbound ships barreling south on a fair tide. Mac seemed not
to care, even when one of the ships started flashing us. “Jeez, Mac, I
think I one of these outbounders is flashing us,” I informed him. “To
hell with him,” growled Mac, adjusting the telescope to add another
arrival in Lovers’ Lane to his field of observation. “I’ll get him when
they take the pilot off.” Only then did I notice that, for reasons of
his own, he had turned off the VHF. I grabbed my check, mumbled some
inanity about having a good night, and got downstairs and into my car
as quickly as I could.
I checked Mac’s log for that watch when I next came to work. Sure
enough, two “unidentified vessel passing out Quarantine” at
approximately the time I was seeing all of this. Nothing in there about
the Lovers’ Lane arrivals and departures...
As Irish people say, “God be with the days.” It wasn’t high tech but it
sure was fun, most of the time.
But what happened to the telescope?
- Bill Black
Falmouth MA
zouki@earthlink.net
Additional notes
(included as they pop into my consciousness):
The telescope
------------------
A conversation with Nick Cretan, retired Director of the Maritime
Association of the Port of New York - who took over operation of the
tower from Western Union in the early 1970's - revealed that the
telescope was sold by MAPONY to Western
Union International. What happened to it after that is subject to
further research.)
Quarantine cutter
----------------------
The Quarantine cutter used to transport the boarding parties back and
forth was named “Welch”. Henny Miller was Captain and his brother Eddie
was a deckhand.
Inspection procedures
----------------------------
Vessels requiring inspection (i.e., all vessels arriving from a foreign
port) that had anchored overnight would be boarded commencing at 6 a.m.
unless the vessel agents had requested a “special quarantine
(inspection)”, which could take place at any time. Special inspections
could be ordered so that a cargo vessel could be in berth and ready to
commence cargo operations alongside by 8 a.m. - the longshoremen’s
union starting time. In the case of a loaded tanker, an earlier
inspection could be arranged in order to ensure that a favorable
berthing tide would not be missed. (The boardings at anchorage by
Public Health inspectors ceased in the early 1970's
when a procedure called "radio pratique" - enabling vessels to submit a
health report by radio prior to arrival - became widely used.
Immigration and Customs continued to board at anchorage, but using
privately-owned launches for transportation instead of the
Quarantine cutter. There have been additional changes in inspection
procedures subsequent to the 9/11 attacks.)
Flag signals
---------------
The day signal for a vessel requiring Quarantine inspection was a Q
flag (solid yellow), most often flown in combination with the
I flag (white X on blue; meaning = Immigration inspection required) and
the J flag (white horizontal bar on blue; meaning = Customs
inspection required). The night equivalent to the "Q" flag was a red
and white light shown at the vessel's signal mast.
Names
---------
USINS inspectors: Don Gray, Frank Nieder, and Vinnie Esposito. There
was another inspector named Gene D’Albero but he may have been a Public
Health Officer instead of Immigration.
Customs / USCG
----------------------
There was no Customs boarding office at Rosebank until after the tower
had ceased operation. The Coast Guard came to Rosebank after Governor’s
Island shut down.