Gallery: The Secret NYC Graveyard Where Ships Go to Die
Will Van Dorp01Hila
The Arthur Kill ship graveyard was never meant to become such a decrepit spectacle.
Will Van Dorp02Tugs
After World War II, the adjacent scrapyard began to purchase scores of outdated vessels, with the intention of harvesting them for anything of value. But the shipbreakers couldn’t keep pace with the influx of boats.
Will Van Dorp03Barge
Ships fell into such disrepair that they were no longer worth the effort to strip, especially since many teem with toxic substances.
Will Van Dorp04Wreakage-of-Ferry
The producer of *Graves of Arthur Kill*, Gary Kane, learned about the graveyard’s existence in 2010, and reached out to the man who had taken the photos, a longtime English professor named Will Van Dorp.
Will Van Dorp05Rusted-Lifeboats
Kane and Van Dorp managed to get access to the site, thanks in part to an endorsement from the prestigious New York Foundation for the Arts.
Will Van Dorp06Partially-Submerged-Ferry
Aside from capturing the eerie beauty of the crumbling ships, Kane and Van Dorp poured tremendous effort into researching the histories of the graveyard’s most photogenic vessels. Kane was particularly fond of a submarine chaser known as theUSS PC-1264, which he discovered was the first Navy ship to have a predominately African-American crew during World War II.
Will Van Dorp07YOG-64
The filmmakers may have accidentally dosed themselves with radiation by getting too close to the USS YOG-64, a Navy gas tanker that was posted near Bikini Atoll during the Operation Sandstone nuclear weapons tests in 1948.
