CONEY ISLAND'S
ABANDONED SUBMARINE
G'day folks,
Welcome to another graveyard with some history.
Today’s
New York adventure takes place at one of its favourite, and most nostalgic,
vacation destinations: Coney Island. Home to one of the world’s oldest
ferris wheels, a hundred year old roller coaster, and the famous Nathan’s deli,
serving hotdogs since 1916. But twenty minutes walk away behind the famous
Boardwalk is Coney Island Creek, a largely forgotten backwater.
Until the
bridges and landfill turned Coney Island into a peninsular, it was once cut off
entirely from Brooklyn; back then Coney was truly an island. Today
however, the Creek is rarely visited, home to salvage yards, auto repair shops,
and a waste recycling plant. A far cry from the thrills of the nearby fun
fair and beaches, it is also home to the most captivating of abandoned
delights– a ship graveyard.
Even
more thrilling, in the midst of the decaying shipwrecks, is a mysterious,
forgotten submarine, that was once at the centre of a doomed expedition to
search for treasure on the sunken Andrea Doria!
There
are about two dozen shipwrecks in the creek, but no-one knows when they
arrived, or where they came from. In the 1950s, many were still afloat.
“We used to play on them”, recalled Charles Denson, author of “Coney Island
Lost and Found”.
It
is thought some were old whaling ships, ancient US Navy vessels, or forsaken
barges, which were scuttled and left to rot. Over a decade ago, the New York Times went
to explore the ship graveyard. They found, “the ribs of ships emerged from the
shallows like bones.”
Ten
years ago, the Times found a member of a local yacht club, then aged 87.
Armando Gargiulo recalled how, “the creek was a wild place, a rum runner’s
haven, and a dumping ground for everything from bodies to old cars. There was a
time when a Chinese junk sailed into the Creek. Somewhere left in the shallows
to rot, others were burned to their waterlines.”
Walking
over the ice, amongst the ruins of these old ships, there is one that stands
out; mostly because it is painted yellow, and looks a lot like a submarine.
For
years, rumours surrounded the mysterious submarine wrecked and marooned in
Coney Island Creek. Some thought it dated back to the Civil War and the era of
the first submarines, such as the Monitor, built in the nearby Brooklyn Navy
Yards. With its futuristic looking hull, it could well have sprung from the pages
of Jules Verne.
In
reality, the story of the submarine is every bit as fantastic as Twenty
Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. In 1956, the Italian ocean liner, the SS Andrea
Doria, sunk off the coast of Massachusetts. She had collided with the Swedish
MS Stockholm, carrying to the bottom of the ocean 52 souls, as well as a
supposed treasure of a million dollars.
Brooklyn
shipyard worker Jerry Bianco planned to build a miniature submarine from the
scrap metal yards along Coney Island Creek, and dive for the wreck. Denson
recalled the bright yellow submarine, painted not in homage to the Beatles, but
because Bianco snapped up a good deal on cheap, yellow chromium paint. “It was
a honeycomb of steel”, explains Denson. “It was an incredible work of
art”.
Bianco
christened his submarine the Quester I, and she was launched with high hopes in
1970, with the traditional bottle of champagne. Unfortunately, the Quester
immediately tilted sideways, and got stuck in the Creek. According to newspaper
reports, the submarine was eventually righted, but a storm later in 1970, saw
the ill-fated submarine break its moorings. The Quester once more stuck in the
Creek, largely in the position it still holds today. Half submerged, with its
conning tower and upper half of the hull visible, the stricken submarine lists
into the water, as though preparing for one last dive into the ocean.
Clancy's comment: Well, who'd have ever known, eh?
I'm ...
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