Staten Island

Driving along Staten Island’s North Shore from St. George to Mariner’s Harbor one passes a string of marine industries: tug boat companies, dredging companies, marine electric companies, dry docks… ending at the sprawling Howland Hook container ship terminal. The marine industry has thrived along the shore of the Kill Van Kull since the days of sail. At points along the drive views of it’s early history can still be seen in the ruins of old wooden piers dry docks.

Many of the current marine businesses are hidden behind high walls and fences, visible only through their driveways. Driving by, one can occasionally catch a glimpse of a large propeller sitting in a yard or a ferryboat in dry dock but most of the work of the modern marine industries is hidden from public view. A new book seeks to change that. Readers can get a comprehensive overview of the past and present operations of New York Harbor’s oldest dry dock in Caddell Dry Dock: 100 Years Harborside.
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Charles Dickens & Charles Dickens Jr., Charles Mackay & Marie Corelli

A poem appeared in the weekly London periodical All The Year Round of April 11, 1869. It is called AT HOME IN STATEN ISLAND. There’s no author identified other than a “home-sick Englishman” There’s a bracketed paragraph at the beginning of the poem that seems inserted like an editor’s note. It describes the differences between the landscapes of England and Staten Island in the terms of one who is familiar with both. The editor was Charles Dickens:

AT HOME IN STATEN ISLAND.

[For the proper understanding of the following
verses, written by a home-sick Englishman while
resident in Staten Island, near New York, it may
be necessary to state that in North America there
are neither daisies, nor primroses, nor skylarks, nor
nightingales, nor any bird with a musical note except
the mocking bird, which is not often heard north
of Maryland. The "dogwood" and the "catalpa,"
of which mention is made, are flowering trees of
great beauty in the vernal landscape.]

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My true love clasped me by the hand,
And from our garden alley,
Looked o'er the landscape seamed with sea,
And rich with hill and valley.
And said, "We've found a pleasant place
As fair as thine and my land,
A calm abode, a flowery home
In sunny Staten Island .

"Behind us lies the teeming town
With lust of gold grown frantic ;
Before us glitters o'er the bay,
The peaceable Atlantic .
We hear the murmur of the sea —
A monotone of sadness,
But not a whisper of the crowd,
Or echo of its madness.  read more »