I’ve certainly visited plenty of famous cemeteries in various cities, and even an auto junkyard or two, but this was my first time for a graveyard of ships, New York’s own dumping ground for no-longer-loved working craft of the harbor, the water-borne detritus of aging hulls and changing commerce.
It sits in an arm of Arthur Kill, the narrow waterway that keeps New York’s Staten Island and New Jersey apart. It’s been there since the 1930s, started by a marine salvage and parts company named Witte. It was already there when the city turned the marshland north of it into the Fresh Kills garbage dump, and it’s still there even though Fresh Kills is no longer a dump and not yet a park.
The ‘tugboat graveyard’ isn’t open to the public, although it’s not hard to find one’s way to the edge of the water, or when the tide is out, to the edge of the mud, although the largest part of the remains are inaccessible behind a fence belonging to the large marine salvage firm Donjon, which now owns the land and doesn’t welcome visitors.
The official name, now, by the way is Donjon Iron and Metal Scrap Processing Facility. If the name Donjon is familiar it may be because they are among the salvage companies that refloated a stranded container ship in Chesapeake Bay.
Witte, followed by a son and then a son-in-law operated the business, salvaging parts and materials of various kinds for sale, much as you might go to an auto junkyard looking for a mirror or a door panel. But the boats were not in any sense preserved—just tied up and left to inevitably rust and rot, with the wooden ones disappearing entirely over time.
It was a busier place then, as seen in the photo above, taken in 1973, only a few years before the Witte/Coyne family left the business, later to be taken over by several operators and then Donjon.
There are better ways to get close to it all, but not within my reach; serious marine historians and just plain water people have visited by kayak and other small boats over the years. And, there’s hope for the rest of us, as well. The Working Harbor Committee, which works for the heritage and future of New York as a working harbor, does “Hidden Harbor Tours” which include one that visits the graveyard. Tours are on hiatus now, but there’s a signup link for their newsletter. I can hardly wait…
The Rossville area of Staten Island is barely accessible by public transit; there are buses from the St George Ferry Terminal at the opposite end of the island, after a ferry ride from lower Manhattan, but that eats up a lot of day.
More practically, by car, take I-278 from the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge to NY440 South to Exit 4, and turn right onto Arthur Kill Road. Keep an eye on the left for Donjon’s fence, and then continue until you see a small pre-Revolution cemetery; access to the shore is at several points through the cemetery or streets just before it.
Irony: working craft are not the only boats abandoned here, although this one’s in the woods, not the water.
If you decide to make the trip, plan enough time on Staten Island to stop at another site or two; at Rossville, not far from the graveyard, is Sandy Ground, dedicated to the oldest continuously inhabited free black settlement in the United States, dating to the 1820s. It has a small museum, a historic cemetery and a large library documenting the community’s history.
Or, on the North Shore of the Island, there’s the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, an early 19th-century retirement home and farm colony for sailors, and now a center of several museums and performance venues, as well as a Children’s Museum.
Photos: PHeymont and Michael Lightsmith
