The Working Harbor Committee is sponsoring its fifth annual Working Harbor Day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on May 20 at Pier 63 Maritime at 23rd St., featuring low-cost boat tours of the working waterfronts of New York-New Jersey, Brooklyn and Staten Island.
Excursion boats provided by New York Water Taxi will leave on the three different tours throughout the day to visit little-known places, including a sunken lightship, giant ship-repair docks, the Brooklyn berth of the new giant liner Queen Mary and emerging waterfront parks.
The reduced rate of $10 for adults and $6 for children 12 years old and younger for harbor tour tickets is being subsidized by private donors to the committee, said Captain John Doswell, head of the committee.
This year is the 50th anniversary of the shipping container, introduced on April 1956 by the trucking operator Malcolm McLean, who sent 58 large metal boxes of freight on the flat deck of a converted tanker from the New York-New Jersey waterfront to Houston, Tex.
“This simple innovation revolutionized shipping worldwide and it all started in New York Harbor,” Doswell said.
The May 20 event on Pier 63 Maritime will include free entertainment, maritime exhibits and open house on the historic vessels the John J. Harvey fireboat and the lightship Fryingpan.
For more information and tour tickets, visit www.wworkingharbor.org.
