Mariners Helped Evacuate Survivors, Deliver Supplies After 9/11 Attacks on New York
From reporting I did during and after the attacks on September 11, 2001
On September 11, 2026, we are remembering and mourning the 25th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C., and the crash of a plane in a Pennsylvania field, brought down by passengers who overpowered the hijackers, diverting it from its target, thought to be either the U.S. Capitol or the White House.
In New York, the maritime industry came to the aid of survivors and rescue workers, and many people worked knowing that friends and colleagues had likely been killed in the attack. The offices for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the office of the New York Shipping Association (NYSA) were in Tower 2. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey issued an early report of their missing employees – nine dead, and nearly 60 missing, including Neil D. Levin, executive director. Some escaped, and some weren’t there that day. All employees of the NYSA escaped or were elsewhere.
The Port of New York and New Jersey was in the process of planning a simultaneous deepening of all its channels to 50 feet, and all the records and drawings for that project were destroyed. Tom Wakeman, who was not in the office that day, later re-created the plans from memory.
The rescue effort, the search for bodies and removal of rubble depended on the construction industry’s equipment, manpower and expertise, on land and on the water. Contractors and manufacturers sent large cranes and related equipment from as far away as Milwaukee, much of it as donations.
Vessels in the area responded instantly to a call on radio channel 13 for all available boats to come to Pier 25 in Manhattan to evacuate survivors. Among the first to arrive at the North Cove Marina a block from the disaster was the GLDD survey/crewboat Potomac River, which had been working in Port Elizabeth, N.J. Bill Miller, captain of the Potomac River, had watched the towers fall and was ready to respond. The Weeks tugboats Kathleen and Elizabeth were nearby and responded. The pilot boat New York was stationed at the entrance to North Cove Marina and directed the flow of waterborne relief traffic. The Sandy Hook pilots spent four straight days on the scene, as did countless others who helped in initial rescue effort.
Jack Akerman, marine superintendent of the Pilots Association, said, “It was really stirring to see what the maritime assets did. Everybody picked up their ball and ran with it. When expertise was needed, it was there.”
When an ironworker came aboard and said they needed 30 crescent wrenches to open the acetylene valves on the cutting torches the rescue workers were using in their search for survivors, a call went out to other boats, and soon there were 30 wrenches available.
A Corps of Engineers boat went to the driving range at Chelsea Docks and asked if they had any golf carts workers could use to move emergency supplies from the dock to the disaster site. The owner put four carts on board immediately, and they were used throughout the initial search and rescue effort.
A fireman came on board asking for fuel for the firetrucks, which were running out. The pilot boat holds 40,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and Akerman began filling two-gallon water jugs with fuel for the firetrucks.
One incoming cargo was many 5-gallon buckets for moving the debris a little at a time while there was still a chance of finding survivors.
The first passenger aboard the Potomac River was an infant, handed to a crew member by a police officer, followed by the child’s mother, carrying another baby. Miller described the evacuees as “every color, creed and age: executives in expensive suits, a blind man whose seeing-eye dog was afraid to board the boat, all covered from head to foot by the dust from the collapsing buildings, then transported a half mile across the Hudson River to the Weeks yard in Jersey City.
The boats brought rescue workers, food, water, ice and medical supplies into Manhattan and helped evacuate a million people from the island. Human chains consisting of dredge and boat crew, Coast Guard personnel, passersby and college students unloaded the supplies as they came in.
Weeks Marine received an early contract to remove all the steel and rubble from the buildings via water. This involved 200,000 tons of steel and unmeasured other debris. (The final count was over a million tons of steel removed to recyclers, and many of the metal recyclers in the area were filled to capacity in the course of the project.)
The barge-loading sites were at Pier 25 on the Hudson River and Pier 6 on the Lower East Side. Both sites had to be dredged to create sufficient depth for the barges – 140,000 cubic yards at Pier 25, removed by Weeks Marine, and 50,000 cubic yards at Pier 6, removed by GLDD.
By November 19, Weeks had removed 100,000 tons of structural steel and 200,000 tons of debris from the site, representing more than 26,000 truckloads loaded onto barges in two locations. The loaded barges were moved to a staging area in Brooklyn, then delivered in tows of three or four barges – the debris to Staten Island and the steel to recyclers in New Jersey. Debris removal was completed by May 2002.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the collapsing towers, but thousands more have died since then from diseases connected with breathing asbestos and other toxins contained in the dust cloud that enveloped the area. Residents in lower Manhattan and western Brooklyn were assured by city of New York officials that the air was safe to breathe in the days and months following the attacks, knowing that the contaminants remained and were a health hazard. On Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2026, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that more than 170,000 documents exist relating to the air quality following the attacks, indicating that city officials knew of the danger and kept the facts from the public. He has opened an online portal where people can access these documents.
