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By Don Sutherland Everybody talks about the John J. Har- vey, and quite a few of them are doing something about it. The chipping, scrap- ing, and painting you'd expect a 74-year- old fireboat to require has proceeded since the vessel became privately owned in 1999, but that's only the beginning of the discussion. For within the city the fireboat served for its first sixty years, a peculiar love/hate seems to have developed toward the harbor. That, more than leaks, can influence the future of the most historic of vessels, even as it affects contemporary ones doing their daily chores. The John J. Harvey was built for these waters in 1931, launched into them by the Todd shipyards at Brooklyn and serving them steadily, reliably, even heroically. She was New York's first fireboat with an internal combustion engine, and is charac- terized as the first "modern" fireboat. Her missions included the harrowing fire aboard the ammunition ship El Estro in 1943, and the fire that doomed the Nor- mandie the year before. She was placed in reserve in 1991, and declared surplus in 1995. After all that time, after all that work, the vessel might have been consid- ered as inseparable a symbol of the city as the Statue of Liberty. A fixture of the har- bor diorama for three generations, it would seem appropriate to find the old boat in retirement cruising her waters at leisure, as a human retiree might stroll Central Park. Notwithstanding its nobility and service and even its good looks, a fireboat is a tool. Tools wear out, and they get replaced. They may have earned grati- tude, but how to express it? The men at the FDNY possibly thought someone should do something about the John J. Harvey. But as an agency, their mandate is putting out fires. If somebody wants to preserve the sight, the symbol, the inspi- ration of this grand old icon, they're per- fectly welcome to come to the auction. Which is exactly what a group of citi- zens did, outbidding the scrappers by an intended ten dollars. Interesting to consid- er how the outcome might have been dif- ferent, at today's steel prices. Cold Potato Initially a half-dozen owners pooled cash to buy the old fireboat and see to its upkeep, but two in particular are most quoted. "I think I must have had too much to drink one night," said Huntley Gill, an architectural preservationist who had been restoring a wooden boat at Pier 63, North River, "and decided it would be a cool thing to have a fireboat." Pier 63's opera- tor, John Krevey, had previously interest- ed himself in restoring another retired fireboat, the Archer, but plans fell through. There seemed to be little enthusi- asm for providing dockage by the propri- etors of the Hudson River Park, which controls most of the Manhattan shore from the Battery to 59th Street. Then the Harvey became available, and Mr. Krevey already had fireboat-restoration plans on paper. "It was a no-brainer. All I needed was a few fools to help pull it off." Mr. Krevey had taken the water route to find his fools. Raised in Seattle, which he describes as a sliver of land surrounded by boats, an electrical contractor by trade, he found himself one day in Maryland, buy- ing the lightship Frying Pan. It had been sitting on the bottom for a couple of years. "Why buy a sunken lightship? You wake up one morning, and it seems like a good idea." The mind can easily skip the tactics and strategies required to restore a sunken vessel, and go straight to the fruits of it all. "It's like having a country house - except that with the country house, you always go back to the same place. That's boring. With the boat, we could go anywhere." 40 • MarineNews • June, 2005 HISTORYTHE YEARBOOK Talking About the John J. Harvey July 4, 2004, the Harvey makes a detour on its way to the East River fireworks, and pays a call to the Fire Fighter, its 1938-built cousin still in service at Stapleton, Staten Island. (Photo: Don Sutherland.) JUNEMN2005 5(33-40).qxd 5/26/2005 10:58 AM Page 40
