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From
the deck of the John J. Harvey, southern Manhattan looked oddly
gap-toothed. Gone were the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, replaced
by a pall of dense smoke. The Harvey is a fireboat, and she was
about to participate in one of the greatest fire and rescue operations
in American history. The difference was that the Harvey was officially
retired, her crew entirely amateur.
The
waters on that bright, warm September morning were a maelstrom churned
by heavy traffic, requiring absolute concentration on the part of her
pilot, Huntley Gill. Beside him stood Chase Welles and Tomas Cavallero.
Below decks, in the engine room, were Tim Ivory and Andrew Furber. As
they approached the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan, they saw
thousands crowding the verge as watercraft ranging from heavily bearded
tugs to party boats butted the seawall and took on evacuees. It was a
modern-day Dunkirk.
To firemen
who had survived the terrorist attacks, the Harvey must have seemed
an apparition, an old warrior coming out of the mists of memory to do
battle one more time. That she was there at all is a credit to devotion,
luck, and determination.
Based
on the naval architecture of Henry J. Gielow, the John J. Harvey
was launched on October 6, 1931, at the Todd Shipbuilding and Drydock
Corporation in Brooklyn. She had been commissioned by the City of New
York and was named for the pilot of the fireboat Thomas Willett,
killed when the liner Muenchen exploded at North River Pier 42
on February 11, 1930. She is 130 feet overall with a beam of 28 feet and
a draft of 9'0". Able to exceed 18 knots, she weighs 268 gross tons
and cost $594,000 to build.
Her
design is classic: a plumb-bowed steamboat-like steel hull with graceful
sheer sweeping back to an elliptical stern, surmounted by an upright pilothouse.
She carries eight deck pipes (“monitors” or water cannons):
one at the bow, two above the pilothouse, two on a platform abaft the
boat deck, and three on a platform aft. The largest deck pipes have a
capacity of 3,000 gpm. Together all eight can discharge 18,000 gpm, equal
to 24 fire engines. The pressure is sufficient to send water over the
roadway of the George Washington Bridge.
Next page >
Part 2: A hero on the waterfront for decades
> Page 1, 2, 3
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