Hell Gate - WikiHQ

thumb|Hell Gate and the [[Hell Gate Bridge, looking north]]

thumb|Hell Gate, shown in red, in a satellite photo of [[New York Harbor, separating Wards Island to the west and Astoria, Queens to the east]]

Hell Gate is a narrow tidal strait in the East River in New York City. It separates Astoria, Queens, from Randall's and Wards Islands in Manhattan.

Etymology

The name "Hell Gate" is a corruption of the Low German or Dutch phrase Hellegat, which means "bright gate". It first appeared on a Dutch map as . The name was originally applied to the entirety of the East River, by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block, the first European known to have navigated the strait, who bestowed the name sometime during his 1614–1616 voyage aboard the Onrust circumnavigating Long Island, from its namesake Hellegat on (the mouth of) the Scheldt, in Zeeland back in the Netherlands.

Because explorers found navigation hazardous in this New World place of rocks and converging tide-driven currents (from the Long Island Sound, Harlem River strait, Upper Bay of New York Harbor, and lesser channels, some of which have been filled), the Anglicization stuck.

The strait was also known as Hurl Gate (or Hurlgate), and so labeled on 18th and 19th century maps and annals,

Hell Gate was spanned in 1917 by the New York Connecting Railroad Bridge, now called the Hell Gate Bridge, which connects Wards Island and Queens. The bridge provides a direct rail link between New England and New York City. In 1936, it was spanned by the Triborough Bridge (now the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge), allowing vehicular traffic to pass among Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens.

Clearing rocks

thumb|300px|The excavations and tunnels used to undermine Hallert's Point near the former site of [[Fort Stevens (New York)|Fort Stevens]]

Periodically, merchants and other interested parties would try to get something done about the difficulty of navigating through Hell Gate. In 1832, the New York State legislature was presented with a petition for a canal to be built through nearby Hallet's Point, thus avoiding Hell Gate altogether. Instead, the legislature responded by providing ships with pilots trained to navigate the shoals for the next 15 years.

In 1849, a French engineer whose specialty was underwater blasting, Benjamin Maillefert, had cleared some of the rocks which, along with the mix of tides, made the Hell Gate stretch of the river so dangerous to navigate. Ebenezer Meriam had organized a subscription to pay Maillefert $6,000 to, for instance, reduce "Pot Rock" to provide of depth at low-mean water. While ships continued to run aground (in the 1850s about 2% of ships did so) and petitions continued to call for action, the federal government undertook surveys of the area which ended in 1851 with a detailed and accurate map.

With the main shipping channels through The Narrows into the harbor silting up with sand due to littoral drift, thus providing ships with less depth, and a new generation of larger ships coming online – epitomized by Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Eastern, popularly known as "Leviathan" – New York began to be concerned that it would start to lose its status as a great port if a "back door" entrance into the harbor was not created. In the 1850s the depth continued to lessen – the harbor commission said in 1850 that the mean water low was and the extreme water low was – while the draft required by the new ships continued to increase, meaning it was only safe for them to enter the harbor at high tide.

The U.S. Congress, realizing that the problem needed to be addressed, appropriated $20,000 for the Army Corps of Engineers to continue Maillefert's work, but the money was soon spent without appreciable change in the hazards of navigating the strait. An advisory council recommended in 1856 that the strait be cleared of all obstacles, but nothing was done, and the Civil War soon broke out.

thumb|upright=1.5|The 1885 explosion

In the late 1860s, after the Civil War, Congress realized the military importance of having easily navigable waterways, and charged the Army Corps of Engineers with clearing Hell Gate of the rocks there that caused a danger to navigation. The Corps' Colonel James Newton estimated that the project would cost $1 million, as compared to the approximate annual loss in shipping of $2 million. Initial forays floundered, and Newton, by that time a general, took over direct control of the project.

Newton had begun to undermine Flood Rock, a reef, even before starting on Hallert's Rock, removing of rock from the reef. In 1885 Flood Rock was blown up as well, with Civil War general Philip Sheridan and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher among those in attendance. Newton's daughter once more set off the blast, the biggest ever to that date and subsequently reported as the largest peacetime, man-made explosion until the advent of the atomic bomb

In popular culture

Film

Hell Gate: The Watery Grave (1977), is a 50-minute documentary film, narrated by Alexander Scourby, which covers many aspects of the waterway's history, including the clearing of the channel, the building of Hell Gate Bridge, and the PS General Slocum steamship disaster.
Under Hellgate Bridge (1999), directed by Michael Sergio, is a crime drama/thriller film, set in Queens, that features the bridge.
Gangs of New York (2002), directed by Martin Scorsese; the main character, Amsterdam Vallon (Leonardo DiCaprio), is sent to Hell Gate Orphanage as a child upon the death of his father

Literature

In James Fenimore Cooper's historical fiction novel The Water-Witch, or, The Skimmer of the Seas (first published in New York in 1830), Hell Gate serves as the scene for an exciting pursuit of the brigantine Water Witch by HMS Coquette. The Water Witch is captained by Thomas Tiller, an adventurous sailor with a romantic flair, and HMS Coquette by Captain Cornelius van Cuyler Ludlow, a principled young officer in the Royal Navy and a native of New York.

References

Informational notes

Citations

Bibliography

External links

East River NYC
The Conquest of Hell Gate