Call me Salty Dog...
“Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there. Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the rigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are the green fields gone? What do they here? But look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and seemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder warehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand—miles of them—leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets and avenues—north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell me, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?
– Herman Melville, Moby Dick
OK, so here we go. Evan and I both retired from our professions in New York to embark upon the Salty Dog (our boat) to get a “seaward peep”. Having lived in the Battery of New York and looked out over the water of the splendid New York Harbor for 15 years, we are now embarking upon the inevitable voyage to that other “watery part of the world.”
View of NY Harbor from our apartment in Battery Park City
In this case, it is not to hunt the whales in the South Pacific (actually Melville meant that as a metaphor – more about that later, I suppose) but to circumnavigate the eastern portion of this great country via the Great Loop – to see the Erie Canal, the Great Lakes, the Canadian Canals, Chicago (!) and the extensive river systems of the mid-west going all way down to the Gulf of Mexico, New Orleans (!!), around the Florida peninsula and back up the intra-coastal waterway.
America's Great Loop Routes
The first part of this journey, departing from the Morris Canal in Jersey City - the site of our home port of Liberty Landing Marina – a former 107-mile coal canal across northern New Jersey built in 1829 to connect the anthracite mines of the Lehigh Valley to the innovative New Jersey pig iron factories of the 1830’s, and then ultimately abandoned in the early 20thcentury. The whole story of this journey will be about following the innovators and the innovations that built this country in its early years and still makes up a vital part of the hidden commerce and transport of the economy.
Aerial view of Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City, NJ
Salty Dog's home at Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City, NJ
Part of this journey is also personal. The last name that I carry came to Manhattan in the 1650s with the Dutch and was ultimately chased up the Hudson Valley after the British ascendancy. We plan to visit some of those ancient Dutch villages where my ancestors settled in the Hudson and Mohawk River valleys, from which they ventured forth to fight in the American Revolution and ultimately partake in the industrial awakening of the United States.
--- Roy Waldron
Salty Dog underway