The Cornelius G. Kolff did exist. It was a steam-powered Staten Island Ferry boat for more than 30 years, starting in 1951, and it met its doom not in a sea monster’s maw, but at the city Department of Correction. The agency turned the vessel into a floating Rikers Island inmate dorm in 1987, then sold it off for scrap in 2003.
But it makes for a good story.
Re: Staten Island Ferry Disaster of 1963
Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 3:38 pm
by Burnt Hill
And whatever happened to these guys?
Re: Staten Island Ferry Disaster of 1963
Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 3:39 pm
by JackRiddler
Are you sure? I remember learning something just like this happened. Could be forces are screwing with the timeline, don't you think?
Re: Staten Island Ferry Disaster of 1963
Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 3:43 pm
by Burnt Hill
The Blue Jean Committee was my favorite band, they heavily influenced Steely Dan, yet no one remembers them?
Re: Staten Island Ferry Disaster of 1963
Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 3:44 pm
by JackRiddler
This is going to be very hard for future archaeologists to sort out, you know. And we're not helping them!
Jack don't be sad, this is great thread you started. Who knows where this will go.
Re: Staten Island Ferry Disaster of 1963
Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 11:35 pm
by Asta
Boy I can't edit on an iPad. Burnt hill don't be sad And thank you jack for the blue jean committe vid. Lots of old memories.
Re: Staten Island Ferry Disaster of 1963
Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 12:49 am
by KUAN
today I returned a book to the library about the whaleship Essex which was sunk by a whale in the Southern Pacific. It's the true story on which Moby Dick was based. A harrowing tale of death and survival. The crew had just finished a gruesome encounter with some smaller whales, when a giant bull surfaced some distance away, swam purposefully towards and into them and then turned around and did it again - and then left them to it. This seemed to trigger similar behaviour in other whaling grounds.
Re: Staten Island Ferry Disaster of 1963
Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 12:55 am
by 82_28
Whales must have been pissed when motorized boats and shit started making noise in their homes at increasing rates.
Re: Staten Island Ferry Disaster of 1963
Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2016 4:21 am
by JackRiddler
82_28 » Sun Sep 25, 2016 11:55 pm wrote:Whales must have been pissed when motorized boats and shit started making noise in their homes at increasing rates.
I doubt they much minded the motorization of boats on the surface, since the harpoons had already been more of a problem for centuries, and many species aren't around any more to be angered about it. But the arrival of sonar and the more recent blasting of high-decibel signals across thousands of miles is further devastating cetaceans generally. Unfortunately, there is not much they can do about it, and it is unclear whether they understand what is happening to them, contrary to images of Moby Dick or the Simpsons episode in which angry dolphins took over Springfield.
Yeah, I discovered the Eastland disaster while thumbing through American Heritage magazines from the 1960s. The Eastland disaster killed more passengers than the Titanic! It wiped out entire families. It's forgotten because the passengers were mostly "poor" as opposed to the Titanic's affluent and influential passenger lis, Not to mention, this disaster reveals a web of deceit and corruption from the top down.
Civil lawsuits to resolve more than 800 wrongful-death claims dragged on for two decades. Maritime law limited liability to the value of the Eastland, set at $46,000. Claims filed by the salvage company hired to tow the vessel from the accident scene and the coal company that supplied fuel took precedence. In the end, victims and families received little or nothing.
Ted Wachholz, president of the Eastland Disaster Historical Society, has a theory on why the Eastland looms so much smaller in the American memory that the Titanic or the Lusitania: "There wasn't anyone rich or famous onboard," said Wachholz. "It was all hardworking, salt-of-the-earth immigrant families."
Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2016 3:11 pm
