Staten island boat graveyard8/10/2023 ![]() Drive toward Outerbridge Crossing on Interstate 278.Here is a map and directions on how to find the Arthur Kill ship graveyard: In fact, when I was driving past it, everything GPS related told me I was there, yet there was no driveway or entrance I could take, so I ended up parking nearby and asking for directions.Īs you can see from the above picture, there isn’t really an exact address, just a zip code really. You’d be surprised to know that a Google search isn’t enough to help you find this location precisely, although the area where this graveyard is located is pretty small, there is NO big, official entrance or gigantic sign that says you’re there. Where exactly is the Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard? None of them actually knew it, and I honestly think there are very few people in Staten Island who have ever heard of it. One thing that surprised me was how clueless many of the locals near this area were when I asked them where I could find this place. But when that day to explore it finally arose, he had to cancel, and so I instead invited my grandfather to join me as he also likes exploring new locations. I had no clue such a place even existed until he mentioned it.Īnd so we made plans to one day see it. I first discovered this place from a friend of mine who I go hiking with in the Catskill Mountains, who also wanted to explore it. How I discovered this ship graveyard:Īs much as I love venturing far away from my hometown of NYC for day hikes or longer trips like this road trip across the eastern United States, the truth is, there’s plenty to see close to home.Īnd that brings us to the Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard, a pretty small, but wondrous place where you literally see many old, destroyed ships floating and drowning, close to one another. ![]() I’ll show you where exactly it is and how to access it because there is no main road leading to it and the area that is closest to it is actually private property, but there is a secret path to get to it legally. “Then I came to realize that this was all in Staten Island and I thought, ‘That’s a very bizarre location.6) Other beautiful hikes and spots to check out in New York: Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard (aka Staten Island Boat Graveyard): “I spotted some images of these rusting tugboats and dilapidated barges online and aesthetically they were so compelling,” says Kane, a freelance editor and former Associated Press reporter. The film’s producer, Gary Kane, first learned about the graveyard’s existence in 2010, while engaging in a bit of Internet procrastination. A South Korean artist, Miru Kim, has even photographed herself wading around the site as part of a series fittingly titled “Naked City Spleen.” But no one has produced anything quite as visually striking as Graves of Arthur Kill, a new 32-minute documentary that features up-close and ultra-rare footage of the graveyard’s most gorgeous wrecks. The small ships closest to shore are splattered with spray-painted tags, while those farther out have been frequent subjects for oil painters and water colorists. Like so many relics of our species’ industrial past, the graveyard has attracted a fair number of intrepid artists and vandals over the years. And so they’ve been left to rot in the murky tidal strait that divides Staten Island from New Jersey, where they’ve turned scarlet with rust and now host entire ecosystems of hardy aquatic creatures. Plenty of ships fell into such disrepair that they were no longer worth the effort to strip, especially since many teem with toxic substances. But the shipbreakers couldn’t keep pace with the influx of boats, especially once people started to use the graveyard as a dumping ground for their old dinghies. In the years following World War II, the adjacent scrapyard began to purchase scores of outdated vessels, with the intention of harvesting them for anything of value. The Arthur Kill ship graveyard was never meant to become such a decrepit spectacle. Just beyond this debris field lie as many three dozen ghostly ships in various states of decay, abandoned decades ago in this isolated corner of New York City. The thicket finally dead-ends at a colossal pile of junk: thousands of splintered beams of lumber mixed in with broken engine parts. Though a sliver of the Arthur Kill ship graveyard is visible from the nearest road, the site’s full grandeur only becomes apparent once you sneak beyond the “No Trespassing” and “Beware of Dog” signs and hack through a miasma of seven-foot-tall reeds that stink of brine and guano. Reaching the marshy spot on southwestern Staten Island where good boats go to die requires a car, sturdy footwear, and a willingness to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
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