Hell Gate

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In Hell Gate
1856 nautical map

The Hellgate (dt. Gates of Hell ) is a section of the East River in New York City , who was known in historical times for its exceptionally difficult conditions for navigation and even today is still considered difficult to befahrendes waters.

description

The not exactly delimited term Hell Gate describes the area between Manhattan , Wards Island and the Astoria district in Queens , where the Harlem River flows into the East River and the East River in its continuation to Long Island Sound is a good two kilometers long bottleneck happened. The area was interspersed with numerous rocks, underwater reefs and sandbars . Mill Rock was later formed from the largest rock formations . Names like Heel Tap Rock , Holmes Rock , Hog Back , Holmers Rock and Ways Reef denote some of the danger spots that still exist today. In addition, both the East River and the Harlem River are not rivers, but tide-dependent inlets, the tidal currents between the rocks formed dangerous eddies and the tide change occurred very suddenly in places. In addition, the islands of Wards Island and Randalls Island were previously separated by the Little Hell Gate , which made the current conditions even more complicated. The detailed sailing instructions on a nautical map from 1851 give an impression of the difficult conditions.

On nautical maps, this area was still referred to as Hell Gate in 1965. Only recently has this name been shifted more and more to the narrow point of the East River leading to Long Island Sound, so that the impression arises that this arm of the sea crossed by the Hell Gate Bridge is the Hell Gate.

history

Early phase

The Dutch navigator and explorer Adriaen Block is considered to be the first European to cross the East River and Long Island Sound on his Onrust in 1614 . In his diary he referred to the section of the East River as Hellegat , a term more often used in the Netherlands at that time for the confluence of one arm of the water into another. The expression is said to have referred to a clear, light mouth , examples of the name from the Netherlands rather indicate a difficult passage. The designation was later seen in its anglicized form as an appropriate name for the dangerous place.

During the American Revolutionary War , Admiral Howe sailed with part of his fleet and around 6,500 men from the southern tip of Manhattan through Hell Gate in the morning hours of October 12, 1776, to land at Throgs Neck . Although the ships were surprised by the sudden onset of fog, all but one small boat were able to pass the dangerous section unscathed.

Explosions

Pit and tunnel for the demolition of Hallet's Reef in 1876

As the ships became more numerous and larger from the end of the 18th century, so did the number of shipwrecks in Hell Gate. Therefore, in 1851, people began to blow up obstacles in Hell Gate. In 1867 the United States Army Corps of Engineers commissioned Lt. Col. John Newton to plan the demolition of Hallet's Point Reef and other rock obstacles. Attempts with drilling rigs on floating platforms failed because they all collided with other ships. In 1869 they began to blast a pit in the rock under the protection of a coffer dam , from which various tunnels were driven radially into the bedrock under the reef. In 1876 this work was completed, so that on September 24th a total of 50,000 pounds or 22,700 kg of explosives could be detonated in the re-flooded tunnel. After that, a company was busy until 1882 to get the roughly 92,000 tons of broken rocks out of the water at Hallet's Point.

The Flood Rock was blown up in 1885

For the next nine years, John Newton was busy preparing for flood rock removal using the same method. This time, however, penetrating water had to be collected in underground channels and removed from the pit with powerful steam-powered pumps. Ultimately, 285,000 pounds or 130,000 kg of an advanced explosive had been distributed across 13,000 wells. On October 10, 1885, the largest explosion in history to date was detonated by the 12-year-old daughter of General Newton. The blast created a wall of water up to 45 m high, but no damage to the area.

The explosion is still often called the "largest human-controlled detonation before the start of the test of the atomic bomb , called" although the explosions of the Battle of Messines were significantly larger and stronger.

Further development

After clearing out the large amount of rock debris, the waterways, as in all modern ports, were further developed and deepened again and again. The Hell Gate Bridge of the New York Connecting Railroad was opened in 1916 , and the Triborough Bridge (today: Robert F. Kennedy Bridge ) in 1936 . Today the banks are almost completely built up.

Hell Gate is still considered difficult to pass through today, but during the tide changes it is sometimes so calm that even smaller boats have no difficulty in passing here.

literature

  • John Newton: The Improvement of East River and Hell Gate. In: The Popular Science Monthly , February 1886, pp. 433–449 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive )

Web links

Commons : Hell Gate  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hell Gate and Its Approaches. Nautical map from 1851; on the website of the NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
  2. ^ East River, Tallman Island to Queensboro Bridge, New York. 1965 nautical chart; on the NOAA website
  3. ↑ See e.g. B. Google Maps
  4. ↑ Johan Cornelis Varekamp, Daphne Sasha Varekamp: Adriaen Block, the discovery of Long Iceland Sound and the New Netherlands colony: what drove the course of history? ( Memento of the original from December 31, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / seagrant.uconn.edu
  5. ↑ Vic van Dyck: Hellegat en Hellegats-veer (Dutch)
  6. ↑ Hell Gate . In: Henry Gannett: The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States. 2nd edition, United States Geological Survey; Washington 1905, p. 154.
  7. ↑ Ira D. Gruber: The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution. Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia 1972, ISBN 0-8078-1229-3 , p. 129 ( digitized on Google Books).
  8. ↑ American Revolution; October 12, 1776.Blog from October 12, 2011
  9. ↑ This relocation then led to the battles of Pell's Point and White Plains .
  10. ↑ a b The Conquest of Hell Gate . ( Memento of July 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ; PDF)
  11. ↑ Georg Asmus: The big explosion in "Hellgate" near New York . In: The Gazebo . Issue 46, 1876, pp. 774 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
  12. ↑ G. von Muyden: A giant explosion in the "Höllenthor" near New York . In: The Gazebo . Volume 43, 1885, pp. 711, 712 ( full text [ Wikisource ]).
  13. ↑ Different sources provide very different information about the amount of explosives, the number of boreholes and the height of the water wall.
  14. ↑ See also the list of the largest artificial, non-nuclear explosions

Coordinates: 40 ° 46 ′ 50 ″  N , 73 ° 56 ′ 8 ″  W.