Busy as are the piers on Manhattan Island they are devoted almost exclusively, so far as freight is concerned, to the shipments intended for the business houses located in Manhattan. The congestion always noticeable along West Street is due to the unfortunate location of the principal borough of New York City on an island, and little of this busy district is given over to the handling of foreign commerce.
A TUG BOAT
The bows of these boats are often protected by pads to which much wear often gives an appearance of a tangled beard.
Were the facilities for handling freight more highly developed, a large percentage of the cost of shipment would be eliminated. While the port of New York is fortunate in many respects, its plan is such that it is difficult to see how a highly efficient system of freight transfer could be installed without disproportionate expense. Lacking this system, there is a great deal of freight handled in the most expensive possible way—by hand—which could be handled more cheaply were it practicable to instal the most highly developed mechanical assistance. This manual labour necessitates higher rates for the shipment of freight. How great these costs are is apparent when one realizes that once aboard ship, a cargo of coal could be carried from New York to Rio de Janeiro for what it would cost, to move by hand, a pile of coal the same size as the cargo, a distance of sixty feet. Such a statement gives one a little grasp on the huge costs of unnecessary freight handling.
What I have termed the “American type” of ports are those that have piers built on piles out from the shore line. Alongside these piers the ships are tied up, and largely with their own derricks they hoist their cargoes from their holds and deposit them on the pier. Sometimes these piers are two stories high, with one floor intended for incoming and the other for outgoing freight. These piers may be from a few hundred to a thousand or more feet in length, and the longer they are the broader they must be in order that there may be enough space between the freight on both sides for the trucks that cart the freight to or from them, for the longer the pier the more freight it will have and the more trucks it will need to accommodate in order to have it moved.
But piers are not the best arrangement for handling freight. A more nearly ideal arrangement is a warehouse served on one side by ships and on the other by a railroad and trucks. In this case the warehouse becomes a reservoir capable of taking quickly into storage the huge cargoes of many ships. From this reservoir of imports freight trains can be loaded conveniently without congestion. On the other hand, exports sent to the warehouse by rail can arrive in trainload or carload or even less-than-carload shipments and can be stored conveniently until a cargo is on hand, when it can quickly be put aboard ship. In such a port as New York such a warehouse would need, as well, to be equipped to load and unload lighters and canal boats. Were all of the piers of the port of New York rebuilt along these lines—and that is practically impossible—the port could handle with ease and the minimum of expense many times its present tonnage.
A NEW YORK HARBOUR FERRY
While these double-ended ships are large, they do not compare in size with the liners. Yet they carry hundreds of thousands of passengers to and fro across the Hudson and the Upper Bay.