~ REMEMBERING ~
REMEMBERING 20 YEARS AGO - JUNE 16, 1987
Photos and Text by Theodore W. Scull
Exploration Cruise Lines’ Colonial Explorer, based on the East Coast, made seasonal one-week cruises from New York to the New England Islands and up the Hudson River.
During her calls at the South Street Seaport, I was hired by the line to give a harbor cruise talk on the first evening, followed a steamed lobster dinner in the dining room.
The 192-foot Colonial Explorer was built in 1984 as the 96-passenger Pilgrim Belle for Coastwise Cruise Lines of Hyannis, Massachusetts. She was to be the first of a series called the “Steamer Class” to make East Coast cruises. However, after an accident off Cape Cod, the line sold the ship to Exploration Cruise Lines of Seattle and she was renamed Colonial Explorer, undertaking similar trips. Exploration Cruise Lines overextended itself and the company went bankrupt. The Colonial Explorer first went to St. Lawrence Cruise Lines as the Victorian Empress then a few years later to Cruise West of Seattle where she currently operates as the Spirit of ’98 on the West Coast.
The Colonial Explorer is docked at Pier 17 East River,
South Street Seaport on the evening of June 16, 1987.
At Pier 16, Clipper Cruise Line’s 207-foot Nantucket Clipper, also completed in 1984,
takes 100-passengers on similar one-week cruises. This last year, she was also sold to Cruise West
and renamed the Spirit of Nantucket. After the close of the 2007 season, she will permanently reposition to the West Coast.
The Colonial Explorer has one of the most attractive profiles of any
U.S. Flag coastal cruise ship, seen here docked at Pier 17.
For several years, the Seaport Line operated the side wheel diesel excursion boat Andrew Fletcher
on short harbor cruises from the South Street Seaport Museum’s dock.
The Staten Island Ferryboat John F. Kennedy, built in 1965, is en route from
Whitehall Street, Lower Manhattan to St. George. 42 years later, the JFK is still in service.
The area facing the Brooklyn waterfront between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges is known as
DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). Here we see “The Clock Tower” formerly Gair Building No. 7
built in 1888 for cardboard box manufacturing (left); the Sweeny Manufacturing Company Headquarters (right),
and the dark red-brick 1885-built Empire Stores (lower right).
United States Lines cargo liners are laid up at the Brooklyn Navy Yard following the company’s bankruptcy.
A scruffy unidentified banana boat is docked at Pier 42 East River with the LaGuardia Houses
and the Manhattan tower of the Williamsburg Bridge in the background. Piers 36 & 42
were purpose-built to unloaded bananas from Central America but this trade would soon shift to Albany,
150 miles up the Hudson, making cargo handling at Manhattan’s East River piers history.
Malcolm Forbes owns 151-foot The Highlander (V), a corporate yacht that has been a fixture in New York harbor since 1985.
There have been four previous Highlanders and the current one, owned by Malcolm’s son Steve, is normally docked at the Chelsea Piers.
The Highlander seen here in the East River has the Brooklyn Docks, Brooklyn Heights and the Jehovah Witness’s cream-colored
Watchtower plant in the background. These piers no longer handle ships and the Watchtower building is being converted to apartments.