All Available Boats! exhibit open

Minutes after the first terrorist-hijacked jetliner hit the north tower, the Coast Guard base on Staten Island put out a call on the harbor maritime network: “All available boats!”

The biggest marine evacuation since Dunkirk took place from the docks of New York city on 9/11 and a new exhibit is open now at the Seamen’s Church Institute in lower Manhatten to commemorate the service of the Coast Guard, the harbor tugs, and all the boats of New York during the attack. The exhibit will only be up through 9/30, so please make plans to stop by if you are in the New York area.

From the AP article:

Minutes after the first terrorist-hijacked jetliner hit the north tower, the Coast Guard base on Staten Island put out a call on the harbor maritime network: “All available boats!” That put in motion what would become the largest waterborne evacuation since a flotilla of civilian craft saved more than 300,000 British soldiers trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk, France, in 1940.

According to “All Available Boats,” a current exhibit at the Seamen’s Church Institute in lower Manhattan, hundreds of craft — tugs, ferries, workboats, fireboats, charter and pleasure craft — answered the call, converging on points along the West Side to collect survivors and take them to safety.