New York Harbour Pilots

A day of a New York Tug Pilot
From The Financial Times

The sun is rising somewhere off the starboard bow, lending the East River the reflective properties of burnished steel. Those of us unaccustomed to morning sea-glare stumble across the wheelhouse clutching handrails and trying to stay out of the way of the captain, crew, and especially the docking pilot. Jeff McAllister, you see, is presently occupied with keeping this 17,000-ton, 565ft former cargo freighter from careening into the Williamsburg Bridge.

After 20 years of docking ships in New York Harbor, ­McAllister is impervious to the elements. He claims you couldn’t ask for a finer day to work. Blinding sun, iridescent blue sky, enough wind to unzip your skull. What’s not to love? Pacing the wheelhouse, he seems equally impervious to the looming bridge.


Harbour pilot Jeff McAllister
Five minutes ago, with the help of three powerful tugboats, McAllister hauled the freighter – called the Empire State – out of a maintenance dock in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and swung her north for a three-hour trip to Fort Schuyler in the Bronx. The job is a “dead tow”, meaning the ship’s 17,250hp engine is idle and her rudder locked. Ten storeys below us, unseen off the bow, the tugboat Marjorie B is fastened to the Empire State by hawser line, pulling us along, while another tug, the Ellen J, is tied to our stern for directional control. A third tug, the Charles D, follows behind.

McAllister, a barrel-chested 54-year-old with a frugally exercised smile, directs traffic via a hand-held radio, choreographing a brutish tango between the Empire State and two of the tugs. The 400ft synthetic hawsers tethering the boats together tremble with each shift of direction. Were one to snap, it could cut a crewman in half.

“Marjorie B full stop,” McAllister says, issuing a command that actually means something closer to “slow down”. Caution is king. In the pretzelled exigencies of piloting, what was once starboard is now suddenly to port, and what was once port is now aft, and the entire harbour is shimmering like a strobe light. But never mind that because here comes a 7,000ft suspension bridge carrying a few hundred yawning commuters.

Mark Twain wrote of the ship’s pilot: “He must have good and quick judgment and decision, and a cool, calm courage that no peril can shake.” Twain should know. He was a cub steamboat pilot working the Mississippi River; “mark” and “twain” are piloting terms that Samuel Clemens adopted as his pen name.

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