by Liz Mechem
In addition to their firefighting, emergency, and rescue duties, fireboats sometimes perform civilian service as well, participating in municipal celebrations and holidays. With powerful jets of water arcing in spectacular plumes, a fireboat demonstrating its skills is as glorious a sight for onlookers as it is a welcome one for a ship in distress.
Rotterdam fireboats display their pumping prowess.
A Dutch fireboat extinguishes the flames on a burning ship in Velsen-Noord.
The fireboat John J. Harvey salutes the MV Norwegian Spirit as the massive cruise ship enters New York Harbor. The Harvey served as a New York City Fire Department fireboat from 1931 to 1995. Her owners, who bought her at auction in 1999, restored her and now use her for day trips on the Hudson. She briefly, and brilliantly, returned to service for the FDNY on 9-11, when her owners stepped up to aid in evacuating people from Ground Zero. But she soon got called up for official active service. So many water lines were damaged that day that the FDNY needed her to pump water at the disaster site.
A HEROIC ENCORE
The John J. Harvey was the largest fireboat in the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) and in the world when she was launched in 1931. Named for a fallen hero of the FDNY fireboat fleet, the Harvey boasted a length of 130 feet (39.6 m) and a capacity to pump nearly 20,000 gallons (75,690 liters) per minute. She served her city well for six decades under the designation Marine Two, battling such major fires as the 1942 wreck of the grand SS Normandie. When she retired from active service in 1995, the Harvey would have been sold for scrap had a group of preservationists not stepped in. In 1999, after preliminary restoration, she sailed again. In 2000, the John J. Harvey was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Then came the events of September 11, 2001. Responding quickly to the terrorist attacks, a small group of the Harvey’s owners and volunteers spontaneously converged at their ship and speeded to the fallen World Trade Center. As the old fireboat was evacuating some 150 survivors, the FDNY called her back into service. Reclaiming her old Marine Two moniker, the John J. Harvey spent 80 hours pumping water onto the smoldering wreck at Ground Zero. Her heroism, and the dedication of her volunteer crew, earned her an Honor Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
On February 9, 1942, the Harvey worked with other fireboats to try to douse the fires of the burning Normandie. The French ocean liner was in New York when war broke out. The U.S. Navy seized the ship and was refitting it as a troopship—renaming her the USS Lafayette—when a welding torch set off a blaze. The once-luxurious ship eventually capsized in her berth and sank.
8 · LEGENDS OF THE DEEP
The Ninth Wave by Ivan Aivazovsky, 1850
Noah’s Ark
WRECKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
Animals Boarding the Ark by Jacopo Bassano, c. 1579. According to tradition, Noah took two of every species.
According to Genesis, the first book of the Bible, Noah built an ark as God told him, so that all God’s creatures could survive the coming flood. Noah’s was the mother of all arks, big enough to hold two of every single species living upon the earth. At 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high (137 m by 23 m by 14 m), the ark was large enough for three stories of cages, stalls, and stores. The bilges carried food and supplies; the next level up held humans and “clean” animals. “Dirty” animals, along with insects and birds, completed the scene on the top deck (Jewish tradition deemed animals clean or unclean according to dietary laws). All went as God had planned: while he washed the earth clean in a 150-day-long flood, the ark kept the seeds for a new generation of life alive.
None of the beasts starved, reproduced, or ate each other. The number of passengers aboard after six months of floating the desolate aquatic wasteland equaled the number Noah had started with. This, however, was no pleasure cruise for Noah and his family. God’s appointed caretaker went without sleep for nearly a year while he tended to the myriad beasts of field and forest. And so it was sweet relief indeed when a dove returned with an olive branch in its mouth, and the ark could at last come aground on Mount Ararat, in present-day Turkey.
LOOKING FOR THE ARK
Jewish and Christian scholars, religious leaders, and adventurers have been trying to verify the story of Noah’s ark for thousands of years. Is the tale of Noah’s ark a myth—a sacred tale whose truth is not necessarily historical in value—or could it possibly have been true in a more prosaic sense? Several television programs produced in the 1980s used newly developed satellite imaging technology to “find” suspiciously rectangular shapes on Turkey’s Mount Ararat. These ostensible photos of shipwrecked remains led researchers to the spot, where they purported to find actual wood and remnants of a stablelike structure. Unfortunately, all of these searches were later revealed to be hoaxes (one hoaxer had cooked wood in a mixture of teriyaki sauce and iodine to achieve that perfect “ancient” patina).
FLOTSAM & JETSAM
The word antediluvian, used to describe something very old, literally means “from before the flood.” The flood in question, of course, is the one described in Genesis.
Jonah’s shipmates toss him into the stormy seas.
The dove flies away from the beached ark, before returning with an olive branch.
BIG FISH STORY
ANOTHER MAJOR NAUTICAL ADVENTURE chronicled in the Christian Bible’s Old Testament (the Hebrew Torah) is the story of Jonah and the Whale. While battling a gale on the trip from Nineveh to Jaffa, Jonah’s shipmates determined that Jonah himself was the reason for the storm. When Jonah admitted that they were right, they promptly tossed him overboard to appease an angry God. Their action seemed to work, because the storm ceased. But a giant fish (often translated as a “whale”) overtook Jonah and swallowed him. During his three days inside the belly of the beast, Jonah prayed and repented for his wickedness. God was pleased, forgave Jonah, and ordered the fish to release the wretched man. Returning to Nineveh a changed man, Jonah became a prophet, as God had previously commanded, exhorting the townspeople to repent.
Ship of Faith
SHIPWRECK OF THE APOSTLE PAUL
Few shipwrecks have had as far-reaching effects as the wreck of the Apostle Paul. The first Christian nation was established around 60 CE on Malta after the ship carrying Paul was wrecked on the island’s shores. A vivid description of the incident appears in the fifth book of the Christian Bible’s New Testament, Acts of the Apostles (often simply called Acts). Scholars largely agree that the chapters describing the wreck (Acts 27–28) have a solid historical foundation.
In the years following his conversion to Christianity, Paul undertook a series of three missions to spread his faith throughout West Asia. In 58 CE, shortly after his third mission, Paul was arrested in Judea by Roman authorities. After being held without trial for two years, Paul pleaded to be heard by Julius Caesar himself. His request granted, Paul departed Caesarea for Rome in the fall of 60 CE, accompanied by Luke the Evangelist, author of Acts and of the third Gospel of the New Testament. Paul was one of several prisoners the Roman centurion Julius escorted aboard an Egyptian grain ship, which they boarded in early October at Myra (present-day Demre, Turkey).
THE STORM-TOSSED SEA
With fall well underway, travel in the Mediterranean could be unpredictable and dangerous. The prevailing westerlies forced westbound ships to zigzag or tack to their destinations. The captain of Paul’s ship accordingly headed southwest from Myra, which took them along the southern shore of Crete. The ship put in at Fair Havens (present-day Kali-Limones), where those aboard could observe Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement.
Here the weather began to turn bad. According to Luke, Paul counseled the captain to remain in a safe harbor, warning of “injury and much loss, not only of the lading and the ship, but of our lives.” (Acts 27:10) But the captain pressed on, hoping to reach a larger port in Crete and overwinter there. A gentle southerly wind beckoned, and Paul’s ship set off.
Soon the storm Paul
had predicted struck with a vengeance. The gale is described in Acts as Euraquilo, a Greek-Latin compound that roughly translates as a nor’easter. The captain decided to allow the ship to drift rather than run ahead of the wind. After three days, the crew began throwing the ship’s tackle overboard, terrified of imminent demise. Paul told the 276 men aboard the ship that an angel had assured him that none on board would be harmed—only the ship would be destroyed. According to Paul’s vision, the ship would run aground on an island.
On the fourteenth day of the storm, Paul’s vision was borne out. The ship was driven to the island of Malta, and ran aground bow first on a sandy beach—present day St. Paul’s Bay. The violence of the waves soon broke apart the stern, but all aboard made it safely to shore, either by swimming or by clutching on to the wreckage of the ship.
GOOD GRACES
Paul is said to have performed several miracles on Malta, including healing the father of the local governor, Publius. Malta became the first Christian nation when Publius converted to Paul’s faith.
According to legend, after enduring a raging storm that lasted two weeks, the ship carrying Paul stuck fast into a sandbar as it finally neared land. As the ship began to break into pieces, the soldiers onboard planned to kill the prisoners, rather than let them escape. Julius, the centurion in charge of Paul, persuaded them to let the prisoners live and ordered everyone to jump overboard. Some swam, while others grabbed floating wreckage, but everyone on the ship made it to Malta safely.
A statue of St. Paul stands outside St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Skuldelev Ships
SECRETS OF THE FJORD
Havhingsten fra Glendalough in dock. The Havhingsten is a faithful reconstruction of Skuldelev 2, the second longest Viking longship ever found.
All five of the Skuldelev ships are on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark. Skuldelev 2 is an oak-built, seagoing longship, built for war. At about 100 feet (30 m) long and 12.5 feet (3.8 m) wide, she held a crew of 70 to 80 men. This long, slim ship was built for speed and probably reached speeds of up to 15 knots (28 km/h) with a rowing crew of 60. Under sail she could probably move even faster.
At the dawn of the second millennium, Scandinavia was the site of protracted Viking raids—largely the result of conflict between Denmark and Norway. The Danish capital, Roskilde, was particularly vulnerable to attack by sea. Sometime around the year 1050, five Viking ships, constructed by boatyards as far away as Dublin, maneuvered deftly into position. Their owners began filling them with stones until they sunk into the dark waters of Roskilde Fjord, near Skuldelev. The Peberrenden, a narrow neck of the fjord, presented a natural barrier, defending Skuldelev and Roskilde. The five ships sunk there would have neatly prevented any attack by sea when they were scuttled, and they endured nearly a thousand years, long after anyone remembered that they were there. Fisherman cut a channel through them sometime in the ensuing centuries, and recalled the wrecks merely as underwater navigational landmarks.
And there they lay, five anonymous hulks lying in the silt of a northern fjord, until archaeologists located them in 1962. The shallowest of them lay in only 6 feet (2 m) of water, the others barely deeper. A coffer damn was constructed around the wrecks to allow archaeologists to properly excavate them, board by board. What had originally appeared to be six ships were revealed as five when two of the ships turned out to be fore and aft of the same enormous vessel. The fine silt had perfectly preserved all five ships so well that a window was opened onto the legendary, long-vanished world of the Vikings.
MASTER BUILDERS
Even as archaeologists worked under sprinklers to keep the wood wet, it was becoming clear what a spectacular and valuable find the Skuldelev ships represented. Each of the five ships hailed from a different boatyard, built to varied designs for entirely different uses. Skuldelev 1 was a stout, oceangoing vessel of pine, meant for a crew of eight. The biggest wreck, Skuldelev 2, revealed a warship capable of carrying a crew of 60 or more, propelled by oar, sail, or both. Skuldelev 3 was a smaller cargo ship, and Skuldelev 5 was smaller warship, while Skuldelev 6 completed the catalog of types as a fishing boat. These vessels revealed a treasure trove of information on ship construction, commerce, and politics of the time.
All of the ships showed evidence of multiple repairs, indicating that (quite sensibly) old, well-used ships were put to service for the barricade in their final mission. The widely varying woods and construction techniques displayed on the five ships presented historians with new data, enriching modern views of the lives of Scandinavians some thousand years ago. The Skuldelev ships serve as both grave marker and guidebook to the culture that created and sank them in those cold waters so long ago.
THEORY VS. PRACTICE
THE EXCAVATION OF THE SKULDELEV SHIPS piqued the interest of shipbuilders, who used the detailed plans of the wrecks to construct replicas. The Sebbe Als, one replica of Skuldelev 5, managed to make 5 knots under oar alone and reached up to 12 knots under sail, nearly twice what nautical theorists had predicted. Though it was still difficult to conceive of the bravery of those who would challenge the northern oceans in an open boat, actually building one left no doubt as to the possibilities these sturdy craft presented to their original owners.
The Skuldelev 5
The Sebbe Als, launched in 1969, is a replica of Skuldelev 5. She was built with copies of the original Viking tools. She is still used for day trips, and every summer, she takes a one-to-three-week summer cruise. The Sebbe Als has traveled along most of the Danish and north German coasts.
The Lost Fleet
KUBLAI KHAN’S NAVY
Japan is an island nation, situated only 124 miles (200 km) from mainland Asia at its closest point. Yet over the millennia it has remained culturally distinct from and politically independent of its large and powerful neighbors to the west. This is due in part to two failed invasion attempts in the thirteenth century, which proved so disastrous that Japan has remained independent to this day. The wrecked fleets were the work of Kublai Khan, ruler of the largest superpower of his time.
Kublai Khan ruled the world’s largest empire and commanded the world’s largest navy, boasting more than 700 ships. Yet, within 15 years, Kublai had squandered his massive fleet launching audacious attacks on Japan, Vietnam, and Java.
Detail of a Japanese painting scroll depicting the Mongol invasions
Grandson of Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan founded the Yuan Dynasty and commanded a vast empire at the height of his rule. By the late thirteenth century, the Mongol empire stretched from the east coast of China through all of Central Asia, and as far west as present-day Hungary. After conquering Goryeo (present-day Korea) in 1270 after a series of bloody campaigns, Kublai Khan looked farther east still, toward Japan.
Kublai Khan
At first, Kublai Khan attempted a kind of bullying diplomacy, sending envoys to request “friendly relations” from the Japanese emperor. During this period, however, Japan was dominated by the powerful shoguns—military commanders of large regions of the country. By the time the message reached the emperor in Kyoto, military officers had already rebuffed the Mongol emissary. After numerous such attempts, Kublai Khan settled on a show of force. From newly subjugated Goryeo, Khan assembled a fleet of about 900 ships, which would carry approximately 23,000 Mongol, Korean, and Chinese soldiers.
ILL WINDS
Kublai Khan’s fleet sailed in November 1274 and overtook several of Japan’s smaller islands before landing on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four principle islands. By order of Japan’s shogunate leader, Hojo Tokimune, a force of some 10,000 gathered to meet the Mongol fleet. The Japanese samurai were skilled hand-to-hand combatants, but the invaders brought with them sophisticated battle tactics and weaponry. But weather was on the side of the Japanese; a heavy storm blew in, and the Mongol leaders ordered their troops back to their ships. Hundreds of Mongol ships were lost, and Japanese warriors boarded the others; now their infantr
y combat skills served them well. The remaining Mongol invaders limped back to the mainland.
Undeterred, Kublai Khan launched a second invasion seven years later, in 1281. In the intervening years, the Japanese had built fortresses and a long, fortified wall at Hakata, in present-day Fukuoka Prefecture. Meanwhile, Khan had assembled an armada of more than 4,000 ships and at least 100,000 men. The odds were against the Japanese, but, once again, nature came to the rescue. This time a massive typhoon swept in and destroyed Kublai Khan’s fleet, reducing it by at least half, and securing Japan for a second time.
The pair of samurai victories not only ensured Japanese independence but helped generate a sense of nationality that has endured to this day. Usually, samurai fought amongst themselves in unending feudal wars, but, united against a common enemy, their victories over the Mongols gained legendary status.
THE WAY OF THE WARRIOR
THE VICTORY OF THE SHOGUN leader Hojo Tokimune over the Mongol invaders helped cement Buddhism’s importance in Japanese culture. Tokimune’s spiritual leader was the influential Zen master Bukko, whose thinking contributed to the samurai code called Bushido, or the Way of the Warrior. Bushido combined elements of native Japanese Shinto with Buddhist, Confucian, and Daoist influences. The rigid samurai code of moral and physical conduct is an integral part of Japanese culture.
A Japanese samurai
Ship of Air
THE PHANTOM WRECK OF NEW HAVEN
T he Puritans of seventeenth-century New England were not a frivolous lot. Piety and sobriety were their daily bread, and wild-eyed fancy was roundly shunned. So it is uncharacteristic indeed that hundreds of otherwise levelheaded people should all witness a phantom ship that seemed to melt into the air. Yet such was the case in 1647 in the New Haven Colony, when men, women, and children by the hundreds attested to an eerie apparition that has come to be known as the phantom ship of New Haven.
