Neptune's Needle

Washed by Hudson River on west, East River on east and Harlem Rivers to the north; New York Harbor empties into Atlantic Ocean. Four of the city's five boroughs (Manhattan; Brooklyn; Queens; Staten Island) are islands, only the Bronx is not. It has some 578 miles of waterfront/shoreline. Area:309 sq miles; 1990 pop. 7,322,564; 2000 pop. 8,008,278), on N.Y. Bay at the mouth of the Hudson R.; 40.7128° N, 74.0059° W. New York Harbor is the greatest natural harbor in the United States.

Giovanni da Verrazano was the 1st European reported to have explored New York Harbor, which he did one afternoon aboard his La Dauphine, in the spring of 1524. In 1609, Henry Hudson took a longer look on his way up the North (later, Hudson)River aboard his Half Moon , in the employ of the Dutch East India Company. It was the Dutch who established a permanent European presence on Manhattan Island in 1624, acquiring it from the local Indians for the reputed equivalent of $24. During forty years of Dutch rule, under peter Minuit and Peter Stuyvesant, New Amsterdam became an important transfer point for furs coming down from the Upper Hudson Valley and bound for Europe. Town and colony taken over by the English in 1664 and made by King Charles II a proprietary colony of his son, the Duke of York (later James II). In the 1690s New York City briefly became a safe harbor for English pirates of the likes of William Kidd. By 1700 it had become a seaport comparable in its export activities among North American ports to Boston, though by the 1730s it was surpassed by Philadelphia.

New York City's merchant community divided in its responses to the American Revolution, during which it was occupied by the British; many of its leading merchants remained Loyalists and departed New York for Canada, the West Indies or England.

The City renewed its maritime commerce in the 1780s, participating in the opening of the Pacific to American trade. By 1800 it had passed Boston and pulled abreast of Philadelphia in its shipping business. Early center for commercial development of steam boat, as per Robert Fulton, Robert Livingston and the launching of the Clermont on the NYC-Albany run in 1807Even before the opening of the Erie Canal, which gave the City water access to the country's interior, it had become both the country's largest city and leading seaport. It remains the country's largest city and one of its three major world ports, along with New Orleans and Seattle, although most of its maritime activities have relocated from Manhattan and Brooklyn to New Jersey.

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Peter Richards