An unintended consequence of containerization is the demise of extended on-shore leave for sailors.
In the early years of the Seamen’s Church Institute, sailors arriving from the Atlantic would congregate for prayer in floating chapel barges anchored in Lower Manhattan. The institute replaced the chapels with a pair of hotels on South and State Streets, where in 1913 seamen paid 25 cents for a room.
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The organization’s last ties to Manhattan, its building at 241 Water Street, will be placed on the market this week. The ministry’s 18 employees will report to the institute’s newly renovated center at Port Newark later this month. “We’re actually following exactly what the maritime industry has done,” said the Rev. David Rider, executive director of the institute.
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“The punch line is containerization made it possible to move a box in a matter of minutes,” said Mr. Rider, who said the time a ship stays in port had shrunk to 18 hours from five days. “So, these days, the seafarers coming in to see the world, they may not even get off the ship.”
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In the ministry’s earlier days in New York City, men with names like Astor, Carnegie and Rockefeller regularly provided financing for its mission. Franklin D. Roosevelt was a longtime board member.
About: Founded in 1834 and affiliated with the Episcopal Church, though nondenominational in terms of its trustees, staff and service to mariners, the Seamen’s Church Institute of New York & New Jersey (SCI) is the largest, most comprehensive mariners’ agency in North America. Annually, its chaplains visit thousands of vessels in the Port of New York and New Jersey, the Port of Oakland, and along 2,200 miles of America’s inland waterways….