MARY A. WHALEN by Ben Bottner, May 2021
May 16, 2021
Greetings!

Here's what we've got for you: Ship birthday events! Proof of the impact of our education programs! How to contribute to NYC’s Comprehensive Waterfront Plan; PLEASE do that!

Next to the MARY A. WHALEN is PortSide’s popup park. Neither snow nor rain deterred kids from using our park's playspace over the winter. This summer, the space has more amenities and will host many of our MARY A. WHALEN birthday events next weekend. BIG thanks to Ports America for letting us use the space, and this year, for allowing us to use their guard house for a free community library. Library opening coming soon!

It is again the MARY month of May, the month we celebrate the birthday of our historic ship MARY A. WHALEN. It’s #MaryWhalen83 on social media this year, (share and follow on FB, Twitter, IG) marking her 83rd year. Several events are planned:
 
  • Saturday, 5/22, a full day of birthday events on our ship deck and adjacent #PortSidePark, ending with a 9pm movie screening (more info below)
  • Tuesday, 5/25, 12:30-1:30pm, learn how our MARY WHALEN is central to a major Supreme Court decision in a talk by Fordham law Professor and Captain Lawrence Brennan about U.S. vs Reliable. This is tailored to a general audience and landlubbers, not just admiralty lawyers. RSVP here.
  • (TBD) virtual TankerTour and reunion for former MARY WHALEN crew and descendants. Please email us dates that work for you!
  • Coming soon, virtual tour of our engine room and discussion of our engine restoration plan with Nobby Peers of Whitworth Marine.
 
Other news below!

Hope to see you here on Saturday 5/22!

Best,
Carolina Salguero 
Founder & Executive Director
Our creative pandemic pivot for #MaryWhalen83

We love the ship. You love the ship, but her interior is way too small for socially-distanced, open-house style TankerTours (or to run all programs we intend, or fully staff our office during Covid); so PortSide has pivoted again and created fun and educational ways to celebrate our ship's birthday on deck and in our park. All info here.

To get 1 of the 2 TankerTours (for up to 4 people) respond to the raffle here.

We will have 2 kids book readings (including memoir of our ship cat Chiclet), Billy Cancel reading his poetry inspired by the MARY, a MARY history talk, plus activities such as line throwing, knot tying for all and "deckhand training" for the littles, free ArtTable, scientist show-n-tell about marine life pulled out of the water here, a massive give-away of used kids books in English and Spanish by Friends of Sunset Park, ending with a 9pm movie screening.

We invite you to wear wear vintage fashion from 1938 or 1958, marking the launch and rechristening date of the ship. A stunning 1950's car on site (plus our ship) will offer great selfies backdrops. The 2 winners of the vintage fashion contest get to have a party on the deck of the MARY for up to 10 people.
Engine restoration needs you

Last year we acquired a vintage 1942 engine from Missouri thanks to great people in Kennett! There is a new urgent reason to restore the engine due to how Covid affected marine insurance: insurers now prefer historic ships with working engines! This was never an insurer criterion the past 14 years. We’re working hard on crafting a restoration plan and budget. Here’s how you can help:
 
Get in touch if you are a COO or port captain at a workboat company who can help us identify some suppliers and/or be a sounding board.
 
This project will need a fundraising campaign. Care to join a fundraising committee?
 
As always, you can help by making a donation here.
PortSide education programs - proof of impact

Spring 2019, PortSide inspired Red Hook’s PS 676 elementary school to become maritime themed. The DOE just decided to transition PS 676 into becoming NYC’s first maritime-themed middle school! The DOE is constructing a new building for this, to open September 2025, just four blocks from us. More on the process here. If you want to join our team developing curriculum for this, get in touch.
 
NYC 2nd graders name NYC Ferry boats. Students from PS 676 named CURIOSITY. They cited our virtual museum Red Hook WaterStories as one of their inspirations. The delightful thinking behind all the new ferry names is here. 
NYC Comprehensive Waterfront Plan (CWP) 5/28 deadline
 
The Department of City Planning will accept feedback on their CWP draft goals and strategies through May 28th via the plan's website and during virtual public meetings on Tuesday, May 25, 5pm and Wednesday, May 27, 5pm. You can register for those meetings here.

In a truly maritime city, innovative, award-winning PortSide would not be struggling after 16 years to get right-sized space. We would not be reduced to a historic ship (beloved though she is). We need building space (last requested via our 4th business plan in 2018), the ability to have visiting vessels, including those that earn us revenue, the ability to have revenue-producing activities on site (all are blocked or outright denied here), the ability to program with less restrictions, and less red tape. PortSide's real estate saga points to what's wrong about how NYC's waterfront is run.

Please read our webpage ADVOCACY for insights. See our 2016 powerpoint about NYC impediments to maritime activity. The two slides below give you a taste of it.
One PortSide suggestion is to have NYC find a way to mandate or encourage maritime use of waterfront property. The city found a way to do it with "waterfront access" (meaning access to the water's edge and a lot of public esplanades) when there is a rezoning; but nothing exists to foster maritime use.

Some results of this are: no means to push ecommerce warehouses being built on the waterfront to use waterborne freight, NYC's maritime sector growth stunted by lack of space; PortSide unable to find a right-sized home. In Red Hook, for example, most waterfront property owners have no maritime uses, though this shoreline was once ringed with every kind of maritime use from recreational boating to heavy industry.

One of our bolder ideas is proposing a political change so that the waterways have representation such as a Harbor Councilmember, rather than 35 council districts with a small slice of “waterfront” which means that few, if any, councilmembers are really conversant about maritime needs and potential and how their little piece fits into the whole. Boats and water move between council districts and are not represented well by having no one speaking for the waterways. 

There is no longer a Department of Docks; the much requested Department of the Waterfront does not exist. Even if it did, most of the big new waterfront parks are run by separate authorities, and then add the NYC EDC and the Parks Department, meaning that NYC public-sector waterfront spaces are run by a welter of bureaucracies with different rules (generally boat-unfriendly) and designed to different standards; and those bureaucracies are unresponsive to input.
 
This CWP is the update to Vision 2020, created in 2010. NYC now makes a new CWP every 10 years; this is the second in the series.

At PortSide, we were excited by Vision 2020’s push to use the WATERWAYS more, to get beyond the focus on WATERFRONT, eg, the edge of land along the harbor. We were excited because we were founded in 2005 to encourage exactly that, to make NYC’s waterfront development more maritime oriented, using our innovative maritime center serving the working waterfront and general public as an example. However, we have yet to get the space - and permission - to make such a maritime center!

Vision 2020 led to few real changes. This was partly because Sandy drowned its good ideas: that storm hit soon after the plan was released, making the waterways seem more like danger than opportunity and shifting the focus to resiliency. However, the resistancy of bureuacracies to change also played a big role in Vision 2020 falling flat.

We think NYC can and should do a lot better. Please read the draft CWP and submit comments!!! NYC's maritime future depends on us all advocating for it.
Below is a draft page from Chiclet's memoir that will be read
on Saturday's #MaryWhalen83 events
Staying in Touch

Missed our last newsletter? Visit the archive.


Our liveliest social media portal is Facebook page Mary A. Whalen due to how long we developed a community there. We are also on Twitter and Instagram.
PortSide NewYork is a living lab for better urban waterways. 

We connect New Yorkers to the benefits of their waterfront, and advocate for better uses of the waterfront and waterways. 

We bring the community ashore and community afloat closer together for the benefit of all. We bring WaterStories to life!
Copyright © 2019 PortSide NewYork. All Rights Reserved.