Suppose New York's Harbor Were Drained 



It would look like the picture below and show the deep 

 channels dredged for great trans-atlantic steamships 



npi 



^HE ac- 

 I c o m - 

 panying 

 illustration 

 shows how 

 New York 

 Harbor and 

 vicinity 

 would look 

 if all water 

 were drained 

 off. The deep 

 channel of the 

 Hudson River 

 is shown and 

 the exact 

 shore line of 

 New Jersey 

 and lower New 

 York is vivid- 

 ly outlined. 

 But the most 

 interesting 

 single feature 

 is the loca- 

 t i o n and 

 shape of Am- 

 brose Chan- 

 nel, which is 

 the largest ar- 

 tificial harbor 

 entrance in 

 the world. It 

 is through this 

 channel that 

 the great 

 ocean liners 

 must pass to 

 and from New 

 York. 



Ambrose 

 Channel is 

 seven and 

 one-half miles 

 long, two 



The three black lines at the extreme top represent Williams- 

 burg, Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. The black spot 

 below them is Governor's Island and the Statue of Liberty- 

 is on one of the little islands to the left. Coney Island is 

 the stretch of land lying directly below Gravesend Bay 



thousand feet wide, and forty feet deep 

 at mean low water. Sixty-six million 

 cubic yards of material were removed 

 in making the channel, and the cost to 

 the Government was four and one-half 

 million dollars. 



The cost of upkeep is even more astound- 

 ing. Each year the Government spends 



ninety-five 

 thousand dol- 

 lars alone in 

 guarding the 

 channel to 

 prevent it 

 from being 

 clogged by iU 

 legal dump- 

 ing. Because 

 the dumping 

 scows must 

 pass far out 

 to sea to 

 dump their 

 loads of rock 

 and debris 

 there is a 

 great tempta- 

 tion on the 

 part of dis- 

 honest cap- 

 tains to dump 

 wherever con- 

 venient. For 

 instance, the 

 amount of 

 dirt and rock 

 dumped at 

 sea during the 

 past twenty- 

 five years 

 would build 

 seventy pyra- 

 mids the size 

 of the great 

 pyramid of 

 Cheops in 

 Egypt. The 

 increase in 

 late years has 

 been four- 

 teen million 

 cubic yards. 

 Is it any won- 

 der, then, that the Government is so 

 vigilant in its patrol that it forbids tugboat 

 captains to dump the ashes from their own 

 engines in Ambrose Channel? 



To the individual such an injunction seems 

 arbitrary; but an aggregate of all the ashes 

 from all the tugboats that enter the harbor 

 would present a formidable problem. 



184 



