The New York Connection

New York City is one of my favorite places to visit. Something worth doing when in the Big Apple is taking the Staten Island Ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island and back. You know, that big orange ferry (official municipal orange so it can be seen in a dense fog).


Approximately 20 million people take 33,000 ferry trips each year. On a typical day somewheres around 70,000 people are shuttled across the harbor in about a hundred or so trips. It only takes a half-hour.

Regularly-scheduled passage was established back in the mid-1700s. By 1817 steam-powered service replaced sailing ships and eventually ferry operations were taken-over by one guy - Cornelius Vanderbilt. Shipping and rail made Vanderbilt possibly the wealthiest guy of his time. He eventually sold the operation to the B&O Railroad.

Anyway, around the the turn of the century, the good people of Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island organized to become part of the City of New York. That event, coupled with a collision and sinking of one of the early ferrys, prompted the NYC Department of Docks and Ferry's to assume ferry operations.

Diesel boats were introduced in 1965 although steam-powered ferrys continued in use until the late 1980s.

The Staten Island Ferry fleet today is composed of four classes of ten boats.

By now you're probably thinking - You're being long-winded again, what's your point?

It wasn't too many years ago that I was out fishing on Green Bay and along comes the Staten Island Ferry.

There was no mistaking it. A big orange ferry - with the name Staten Island stenciled on the side - very much out of place as this is not New York.

It was cruising in Green Bay.

The last three boats - known as the Spirit of America Class - were made in Marinette, Wisconsin. The keel of the Spirit of America was built from World Trade Center steel.

They entered service in 2005. Each vessel is 310 feet long, 70 feet wide, with a draft of 13 feet and six inches, a weight of 3200 tons and a service speed of 16 knots. Each carries 4,440 passengers and 30 cars.