A New York Ferryrider’s Account of the World Trade Center Disaster

By John Bollinger

The two highly agitated people that got onto the uptown Seventh Avenue subway line were the first indication that something was wrong. Getting out at the 50th Street station and seeing everyone standing around using cell phones in Rockefeller Center was another. Getting into the office and seeing the two gaping holes and hearing the word terrorist sent me straight out the door.

God, my wife and six-year-old.

My wife, Ellen, was on a later ferry heading into Manhattan and knowing that I couldn’t get in touch with her, I left the building before it was evacuated and started to walk toward the East River, knowing that all public transportation was stopped. I was hoping to make certain that at least one parent was home for my son. I lucked out and got a cab right in front of the office, driven by a Sikh in a turban. A good half hour before the towers fell, I assured him that I understood that he was not responsible. I basically commandeered the cab for the next hour.

Because we couldn’t get on the FDR Drive heading to Wall Street, I asked him to stop by my wife’s office, thinking that by that time, she might have made it there. She wasn’t and I got back into the cab and asked him to get me as close to the Wall Street area as he could.

About three blocks above the Brooklyn Bridge in Chinatown, I gave the driver a twenty dollar tip on the $15.00 fare and told him to go home to his three children that we had talked about on the ride down.

From there I swam against a sea of people straight out of a George Romero movie heading due north as I headed due south praying to find that the 11:00 AM boat was there.

I ran into Kathy, another regular commuter, who told me that before she left her office she had checked the Seastreak USA website and that they were "evacuating" out of ferry terminal at the foot of Wall Street.

Fifteen minutes later or so, we were both at the terminal. We pulled out our ticket books and started to get on the boat just ahead of a group of 30 or so Indians or Pakistanis, One of whom I knew from buying cigarettes at his newstand. The Seastreak deck hands refused to take the tickets and told us all to get on the boat.

After scouring the boat to find anyone that I knew I found no one I went to the back top deck feeling somewhat secure about my child by being on the fastest fast ferry in North America. Almost alone at that point, I watched as the thick blackish gray smoke billowed down Wall Street taking pages and pages of office papers in its wake to Brooklyn.

Stunned and silenced, I started what has been a mantra in the New York city area for the last ten days.

"Are you okay?", I asked Bill, a trader that I had ridden with for about five years who had just gotten on.

"Yes", he said but he then started to tell us of standing across the street and watching people jump. I went to the bar downstairs and got vodka for me and a beer for him.

The ferry and the top deck began to fill up with lots of people that I didn’t know. We all stood in silent horror. With some desperately trying to reach people on cell phones. Around the ferry terminal every ferry that I have ever seen in the New York Harbor started pulling up and taking people on in an orderly fashion. Again, no money was being transferred. From the smallest to the largest to the most pedestrian to the most ornate, by 11:00 every ferry available was getting people to any safe haven.

We pulled away riding low in the water at about 11:10. I made certain that I had the best viewing position on the boat, dead center back deck. Just before we left, a group of four NYSE traders still in their floor jackets got on as did a 45-ish executive from Brown Brothers Harriman and a 65 year old man who was covered from head to foot in ash.

"Are you okay?", to the brokers.

"Yeah. Now that was a real Market crash." said one giving the only humor on the 40 minute ride.

"Are you okay?" "I think so. Thanks for asking", said the Brown Brothers executive.

"Do you know where this boat is heading?", he added.

When I told him Atlantic Highlands, he called his wife in Scotch Plains, forty miles northeast in New Jersey and told her to try to come and pick him up. He, Bill and I talked the entire way back about witnessing the devastation.

The traders worked their way into the conversation and let us know that the older gentleman had been right at the site and watched the towers come down around him. They went over to him and asked if he was okay and he said yes and told them where he was when the towers came down. The traders all got very quiet and stood with him for a while, moving away about five minutes later, as he stared off at the smoking gap in the skyline that had been his office.

As we got about five minutes from docking, I asked the older gentleman again if he was okay and he took the wet rag he had been clutching since we left Manhattan and said "Thanks, yes." When he first got on the ferry I had tried to ignore the perpendicular erection that I thought that might just have been jostled clothing. Thirty-five minutes later it was still there.

Obviously he was in shock and we all made certain that the hundreds of EMT’s, firemen and police that awaited us when we docked got to him quickly.

I got to my car and home as fast as I could.

My wife, Ellen, was home. She had witnessed the second plane crashing from her ferry that only stopped in Manhattan to pick up escaping people. For the rest of the day, she and I had the same experiences as most of you reading this did. Scores of telephone calls and countless "Are you okay?’s".

Wes, our six-year-old was fine. They kept them in school, which gave us very precious time to pull ourselves together before we had to tell him.

Our small ranch house is on a cliff a hundred feet high overlooking the New York Harbor. The World Trade Center was dead center of the view of Manhattan twenty miles away. We sat in our two Yankee Stadium seats (purchased during the last renovation) and cried and talked and cried.

We tried to get in on Thursday, but the ferries were being used to move supplies, workers and the injured.

On Friday we both made it into our offices by ferries, but were held for four hours at the 34th street piers on the way home because Bush was touring the pit and the city and harbor were locked down. Three F-16’s did computer-precise arcs over the city as we went to the nearest deli and purchased most of the cold beer they had in stock.

Brokers, traders, advertising people; it was the usual group of ferry riders, save those who were desperately working in the pit to find survivors, iron workers and firemen (who had spent the last three days in the pit).

We spoke to a Chaplain who had been in the pit from the first day. "Are you okay?"

He was. We talked about what is was like in the pit and how everyone was holding up. He refused a beer a couple of times. I asked if he felt that in this case his god would be okay with what we would most likely have to do to other people. He just said, "Justice".

Finally the harbor was open and we trooped on. We thanked the Monmouth County Marshall on the boat.

We got on the ferry at about 8:30 PM, which this time of year is in almost, but not complete darkness. We got seats and a few more beers and talked as we went down the East River.

When we got to about Governor’s Island, which is at the tip of south end of Manhattan, I told Ellen and our friends (some of them newly made that afternoon) that I had to go to the back of the boat.

Three days before, from the perfect vantage point on the back of the ferry, after I asked "Are you Okay?", I would look back at a perfectly clear late summer morning and fight crying as the smoke and the paper billowed. I didn’t think that anyone needed to see me cry there and then. Yes, a needless male trait, but I’m male and it looked like war. Instincts that I never knew I had took over that day.

Friday night the air was even clearer and the winds were blowing directly north, so that the island wasn’t obscured. In the morning when we ferried in, it was rainy and very overcast. We couldn’t see much of anything. But that night the view couldn’t have been more crystalline.

I have spoken with several people about the sight and so far all I have been able to muster is that I wish that there is an appropriate way to describe it, because, I’m not Shakespeare, Keats or Thomas Wolfe, but here goes.

Diamond-like klieg lights being pulled to the Heavens. Shining a fear that we can not fathom. Yet, gloriously silhouetting the buildings still there. Letting us know that they are okay.

Of the twenty or so people standing on the back of the boat, most were fighting back tears. I didn’t fight it this time, it was dark.

As we reached the Verazzano Bridge about five miles away, those of us on the back of the boat managed to pull ourselves together enough to talk about what should be done and what happened. However, ten minutes was enough and I went back inside, sat down next to Ellen and told her it was good she didn’t go upstairs to see it.

I grabbed her hand and alternately held back tears and let a few flow. It was the first time the tears were from joy.