A Watery Grave for Historic Ships on Staten Island

Wooden Shipwreck at Arthur Kill Boat Graveyard.

Do you know how to get to Staten Island’s most remarkable graveyard?  First pass through a centuries-old roadside cemetery, (consisting of a handful of horribly eroded grave markers).  Follow a barely there garbage-strewn path down to the marshy Arthur Kill (kill is the Dutch word for creek, which explains why creepy names like “Fresh Kills” abound in the Dutch-settled Hudson River Valley.)  Once your feet are sinking a few inches into the mud with every step, you’ll start seeing the boats.  Some over a century old, steam vessels, warships, ferries, fireboats, the final vestiges of New York’s shipping era, doomed to die here in a catastrophically polluted Staten Island waterway.  Welcome to the Arthur Kill Boat Graveyard.

Secluded path from the cemetery down to the Arthur Kill.

Operational since the 1930s, Witte’s Marine Equipment company in Rossville served to dredge, salvage, and resell materials from the wrecked and disused vessels of the New York and New Jersey waterways.  Eccentric owner John J. Witte refused to dismantle the majority of the ships that came to rest in the yard, amassing a prodigious collection of over 400 historic watercraft.  As the ships slowly decomposed and the area gained a reputation as a mecca for artists and photographers, Witte gained his own reputation as a ferocious defender of his property, known for scaring off unsolicited visitors personally until he passed away in 1980.  The yard is now controlled by the Donjon Marine Company, which seems to be taking a more proactive approach to actually salvaging materials from the wrecks and keeping the curious out, erecting 12-foot metal walls around the perimeter of the yard with signs prohibiting any and all photography.

The walls presented an obstacle, but after several muddy minutes I made it to the Arthur Kill Shore.  Though the shipyard had lost most of its former glory, the remaining 20-40 wrecks were still an eldritch sight to behold—half submerged in years of muck, leaning at odd angles, corroded in streaks of rust, putrefying elbow to elbow with massive skeleton hulls.  These wade out their final days in the boneyard before being stripped and recycled into automobiles and refrigerators.  So see them while you can, if you dare, what was once the city’s premiere collection of nautical artifacts is sinking fast.

• 1990 NY Times article—”A Lesson in the History of Ships”
• Radio segment and article from WNYC

Rotting hulls jut from their shallow graves at the Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard.

Rusty Boats pile up on the shore.

Oxidized machinery adorns this decaying watercraft.

A salvaged wheelhouse moulders in the marsh.