and some 771 miles of direct shore line, of which more than 578 miles are
in the five boroughs of New York City. By every significant statistical
measure, this is the busiest seaport in the world. The harbor proper, how-
ever, is generally considered to be made up of the Lower Bay, the Upper
Bay, and the Narrows—the three units that form a direct seventeen-mile
route from the open sea to the Battery.

The Lower Bay lies under the western end of Long Island, sheltered by
the curling arm of Sandy Hook, by Rockaway Point, and by the sand shoals
between them. Of the several channels through the shoals and up the bay,
Ambrose Channel, followed by all deep-draft ships, is the most important.
It is dredged 40 feet deep and 2,000 feet wide, and runs 38,000 feet to
the Narrows, where from either side Staten Island and Brooklyn pinch the
harbor into a wasp waist. The Narrows is a mile-wide tidal strait connect-
ing Lower Bay with Upper Bay.

To many landsmen the Upper Bay is the whole harbor, and it is indeed
the center of the port. Five miles long, from the Battery to Staten Island,
four miles wide, from Brooklyn to the Jersey shore, this is at once the
front door of a nation and the service entrance. Long piers reach out from
every shore. Chuffing tugs wrestle determinedly with car floats and clumsy
barges, single-minded ferries cut one another's wakes, tankers with their
snake-nests of deck hose veer westward to the Bayonne refineries, and
occasionally a deep-chested liner rears through the thin haze, easing her
way to a Hudson River berth.

Staten Island Ferry Trip

The quickest and best way of seeing the Upper Bay is also the cheapest
—a ferry trip from South Ferry, Manhattan, to St. George, Staten Island,
and return, over the route that Commodore Vanderbilt's Nautilus began
traveling in 1817. The Staten Island ferries, operated by the Department
of Docks on a five-cent fare, are a New York institution. The old boats
are double-ended, rather drab old craft with barn-red superstructures, yet
surprisingly swift—they make the five-mile run in twenty minutes. These
are being gradually replaced with sleek, new, partially streamlined boats,
painted a silvery gray.

Even Staten Islanders, many of whom make this trip twice a day, find it
hard to keep their attention on their newspapers as the ferry moves away
from the backdrop of lower Manhattan's fabulous towers. In good weather
they crowd like tourists on the outside decks, while the inside benches are
nearly empty.