Edna St. Vincent Millay Rides the Staten Island Ferry

With these lines, Edna St. Vincent Millay introduced her poem, Recuerdo. It was the Staten Island ferry she was celebrating--in the way she best knew how, with the music of her words. Like most poets and other artists, Millay was a romantic (apart from her other driving personas); and for romantic New Yorkers, crossing the Upper Bay late at night is a shared expression and experience of love.

Staten Island is one of New York City’s five boroughs. Until the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was completed in 1964, there was no land link with the rest of the city. Charted crossings began in 1750 with a small, flat-bottomed boat, called a piragua; it resembled a canoe, but was masted and had sails. In 1810, sixteen-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt wanted to start a regular terry service across the Upper Bay and asked his mother for help. She told him if he would promise to finish a project he had started on the family she would give him $100 to buy one boat. They each fulfilled the agreement, and Cornelius Vanderbilt established the Staten Island Ferry. According to some sources, paddling was needed to balance the keel-less boat, and it is thought that Cornelius insisted on doing his own rowing.

The first steamboat was used in 1817. And after interim managements the running of the ferry was taken over by the city government in 1905. Round-trip fares were ten cents for many years, eventually increasing to fifty cents; today all rides are free.

The seven-ferry fleet--now diesel-powered--operates 24 hours a day all week, making the 5.2-mile crossing in 25 minutes. Approximately 65,000 passengers are carried each day.

Bob Rush, a former merchant mariner, has been with the Staten Island Ferry for more than eight years. He is a mate, a deck officer just below the captain in rank. He oversees the loading of cars, activities of the deck hands, and the safety of passengers. Standing at the stern on a return trip to Manhattan one evening, ahead the last rays of the sun making the buildings of lower Manhattan glisten and aft a triangle of thick foam in the water, a half-moon high in a still-blue sky, Mate Rush and a deck hand talked about the pleasures of their jobs. The hours... the shifts--they took turns extolling--four days ...thirty-two hours.., the fresh air... "It has the best parts of going to sea," Mr. Rush said "but going home to your family at the end of your shift." The ferry has particular meaning for many of the passengers, he added. He has seen people strewing ashes in the bay. And on his midnight-to-eight o’clock tour, he has overheard marriage proposals.

The biggest passenger loads are during the morning and evening rush hours. The ferry is a lifeline for Staten Islanders who work in Manhattan; some of the boats carry cars on the lower dock. Many people who drive to their job still prefer the ferry route to the Verrazano Bridge; it’s a shorter, cheaper ride, they don’t have traffic problems, and. they can relax in or out of their car before starting the day’s work. Paul, a director for an art restoration company, rides his motor bike onto the ferry. It gives him an extra 20 minutes to get ready for the tensions ahead: thinking, catching up on paper work, or making phone calls. Could there be a better way, he seemed to be saying.

Now that crime in New York is down, there are more tourists than ever; sometimes it’s difficult to find someone to speak to in English. They board the ferries excitedly, many with cameras, and take positions on the open decks on all sides, watching the receding tip of Manhattan and New York Harbor, the Verrazano Bride spanning The Narrows, and, passing quite close, the magnificent Statue of Liberty, France’s gift to America, more grand than expected and a bit breathtaking, even for native New Yorkers.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

1892-1950

Throughout much of her career, Pulitzer Prize-winner Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of the most successful and respected poets in America.

Only through fortunate chance was Millay brought to public notice. Her mother happened on an announcement of a poetry contest sponsored by The Lyric Year, a proposed annual anthology. Millay submitted some poems, and the editor liked them so well that he awarded her the first prize. Meanwhile, Caroline B. Dow, a school director who heard Millay recite her poetry and play her own compositions for piano, determined that the talented young woman should go to college. Encouraged by Miss Dow’s promise to contribute to her expenses, Millay applied for scholarships to attend Vassar. After taking several courses at Barnard College in the spring of 1913, Millay enrolled at Vassar, where she received the education that developed her into a cultured and learned poet.

Millay went to New York in the fall of 1917, gave some poetry readings, and refused an offer of a comfortable job as secretary to a wealthy woman. In February of 1918, poet Arthur Davison Ficke stopped off in New York.