The Secret NYC Graveyard Where Ships Go to Die

Reaching the marshy spot on southwestern Staten Island where good boats go to die requires a car, sturdy footwear, and a willingness to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Though a sliver of the Arthur Kill ship graveyard is visible from the nearest road, the site’s full grandeur only becomes apparent once you sneak beyond the “No Trespassing” and “Beware of Dog” signs and hack through a miasma of seven-foot-tall reeds that stink of brine and guano.
The thicket finally dead-ends at a colossal pile of junk: thousands of splintered beams of lumber mixed in with broken engine parts. Just beyond this debris field lie as many three dozen ghostly ships in various states of decay, abandoned decades ago in this isolated corner of New York City.
The Arthur Kill ship graveyard was never meant to become such a decrepit spectacle. In the years following World War II, the adjacent scrapyard began to purchase scores of outdated vessels, with the intention of harvesting them for anything of value. But the shipbreakers couldn’t keep pace with the influx of boats, especially once people started to use the graveyard as a dumping ground for their old dinghies. Plenty of ships fell into such disrepair that they were no longer worth the effort to strip, especially since many teem with toxic substances. And so they’ve been left to rot in the murky tidal strait that divides Staten Island from New Jersey, where they’ve turned scarlet with rust and now host entire ecosystems of hardy aquatic creatures.
Like so many relics of our species’ industrial past, the graveyard has attracted a fair number of intrepid artists and vandals over the years. The small ships closest to shore are splattered with spray-painted tags, while those farther out have been frequent subjects for oil painters and water colorists. A South Korean artist, Miru Kim, has even photographed herself wading around the site as part of a series fittingly titled “Naked City Spleen.” But no one has produced anything quite as visually striking as Graves of Arthur Kill, a new 32-minute documentary that features up-close and ultra-rare footage of the graveyard’s most gorgeous wrecks.
The film’s producer, Gary Kane, first learned about the graveyard’s existence in 2010, while engaging in a bit of Internet procrastination. “I spotted some images of these rusting tugboats and dilapidated barges online and aesthetically they were so compelling,” says Kane, a freelance editor and former Associated Press reporter. “Then I came to realize that this was all in Staten Island and I thought, ‘That’s a very bizarre location.’”
Kane was inspired to reach out to the man who had taken the photos, a longtime English professor named Will Van Dorp whose true passion is maritime transport. (A former “human shield” hostage during the Gulf War, Van Dorp recently took an unpaid leave of absence from his tenured teaching gig to join a tugboat crew.) The two men bonded over their mutual fascination with the graveyard and agreed to collaborate on a short film, with Van Dorp as the director. They knew their big challenge would be to gain legitimate access to the site—the company that owns the scrapyard and the ships, Donjon Marine, is typically loath to let strangers traipse about. But after Kane was able to secure an endorsement from the prestigious New York Foundation for the Arts, the company’s president relented and gave him special permission to move forward with the project.

Filming took place in the summer of 2012 aboard a rowboat that Kane and Van Dorp maneuvered around the corroded hulks. The shoot was perilous at times, mostly due to the flotsam that lurks beneath the water’s surface. On one occasion, for example, the rowboat nearly sank after being punctured by a stray rivet. (Van Dorp saved the day—and a very expensive Sony HD camera—by using a hand pump to keep the craft afloat.) The filmmakers may also have accidentally dosed themselves with radiation by getting too close to the USS YOG-64, a Navy gas tanker that was posted near Bikini Atoll during the Operation Sandstone nuclear weapons tests in 1948.
Aside from capturing the eerie beauty of the crumbling ships, Kane and Van Dorp poured tremendous effort into researching the histories of the graveyard’s most photogenic vessels. Kane was particularly fond of a submarine chaser known as the USS PC-1264, which he discovered was the first Navy ship to have a predominately African-American crew during World War II. He was also partial to the USS Bloxom, a 70-year-old steam-powered tugboat that is now stained a brilliant scarlet, as well as the Abram Hewitt, a fireboat that was present at New York’s worst maritime disaster, the sinking of the passenger ferry General Slocum that killed over 1,000 people.
Graves of Arthur Kill, whose $30,000 budget came out of Kane’s own pocket, is almost certain to be the last film ever shot at the haunting site. The filmmakers had a falling out with Donjon Marine toward the end of their shoot, and it seems highly unlikely that the company will ever again cooperate with an artistic endeavor. Guerrilla film crews are free to try their luck, of course, but they’re strongly advised to leave bail money with trusted friends before venturing forth.
Graves of Arthur Kill is currently available on CreateSpace for $11.99.