I have many special stories I’m trying to turn into movies. On the 25th anniversary of September 11th, it feels appropriate to share this one.
Named in memory of a New York City fire captain who died battling a ship fire a year earlier, the fireboat John J. Harvey was launched in 1931. At one hundred and thirty feet long, with seven internal combustion engines, it was the largest and fastest fireboat ever built.
For sixty-five years the Harvey protected New York Harbor, battling the port’s biggest blazes: the Cunard pier fire of 1932, the SS Normandie fire of 1942, and the El Estero ammunition ship fire during World War II.
But in 1994, after six decades of service, with the Harvey no longer considered big, fast, or useful, it was pulled from the harbor and sent to the scrapyard.
And there it sat for five years.
Until Huntley Gill comes along.
A talented NYC architect, Huntley quite openly prefers things over people. While some consider him an eccentric artist with the bad habit of collecting junk, in truth he has the gift of seeing beauty and value where others can’t.
And so when he stumbles on the Harvey in 1999, it is love at first sight. When he hears that it is going to be auctioned for scrap, he has to have it.
But Huntley is broke. Or at least too broke to buy an old fireboat. And so he does what any man in love might do: he borrows his architecture firm’s elite client list and corrals whoever he can to come and hear a crazy pitch. Over drinks—a lot of drinks—Huntley proves to be relentless.
“Any rich guy can own a Ferrari,” Huntley argues. “But how many people can own a piece of history?”
New York real estate broker Chase Welles is swayed—and swaying—and joins in for a blind bid of $27,100, having heard another group of investors are bidding $27,000.
It turns out the next highest offer… is only $10,000.
Whoops. But also… so what! Huntley Gill has his piece of history.
Unfortunately, after five years in dry dock, nothing on this rusty boat actually works. And if they can’t make the thing seaworthy, they will never recoup their investment.
Frustrated, Huntley heads to New Jersey—home to working class mariners happy to take advantage of Upper West Siders with deep pockets. As usual, Huntley doesn’t beat around the bush.
“The pay is horrible but the boat is special,” he explains.
The workers scatter. All except for one. “How special?” one of them asks.
This is Tim Ivory. Tim is a gifted greaser with dyslexia who taught himself to read using the manual to his ’51 Buick Roadmaster. And from the moment he agrees to help rehabilitate Huntley’s relic, he only cares about one thing: What’s in the best interest of the boat?
While taking the Harvey to meet a rich widow, the fragile boat springs a leak. Tim insists they turn back but Huntley wants to keep going. “She might write us a big check!” Huntley yells.
Tim fires back: “Not if the boat’s at the bottom of the harbor!”
To make things worse, as the list of repairs and bills pile up, the dot-com bubble bursts. Chase Welles panics and wants to sell. Huntley refuses. “From now on the work will have to be done by volunteers,” he declares.
One of those volunteers is Jessica DuLong.
The daughter of an auto mechanic, Jessica fled her blue collar upbringing for a Stanford education and a sexy job at a start-up in the Empire State Building. She volunteers to help Huntley on a whim, but the manual labor ignites a part of her she didn’t know was there. After just one day with the fireboat, she’s exhausted, covered in grease, and inspired.
When Jessica’s start-up tanks in early 2001, Huntley offers her the job of assistant engineer. Tim the mechanic can’t believe what he’s hearing.
“The girl?” Tim says. “She can’t even reach the valves!”
Huntley waves off Tim’s fears. “Please, any monkey can do this!”
Jessica knows that isn’t true. This would be one of the most physically demanding jobs she’s ever done. Naturally, she says yes.
At last, the Harvey is fixed. It’s also deeply in debt. Paying passengers could fix that, but no one is allowed on until the boat passes a test run under the watchful eye of the Coast Guard. And on Huntley’s first attempt, everything that could go wrong does, including a fire that the crew—ironically—can’t extinguish.
The Harvey’s certification is rejected.
Chase Welles is out of patience.
And Huntley Gill is forced to sell.
But before he can end his expensive love affair with the Harvey, a burly man in his mid-60’s climbs aboard. He wanders from deck to deck, then makes his way slowly up to the pilot room.
“Can I help you?” Huntley asks.
“I used to work on this boat,” the man said.
“Oh yeah. What did you do?”
“I was the captain.”
This man is no other than Bob Lenney. A graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy, an FDNY legend, and boss of the Harvey for thirty-one years.
Bob’s knees are shot, and he’s as salty as they come, but Huntley needs him.
“Any chance you’ll take your old job back?” Huntley asks.
Bob looks at the rag tag crew. “With these clowns? Maybe one last ride.”
With the Harvey’s captain at the wheel, Huntley convinces the Coast Guard to give them one more chance.
This time the boat passes. And Bob decides to stay.
The Harvey is in business. With a full schedule of field trips, weekend adventures up the Hudson River, and late night water displays around Manhattan, Huntley chips away at his debt and forges a bond with his misfit crew. When they bump into a boss from the FDNY, they even offer to help with any actual fires they might come across.
The idea is met with a scoff. “Don’t even joke about that,” he tells them.
And then…
Huntley had worked late the night before and unplugged his phone. He only wakes up when Chase Welles bangs on his door.
In a flash, they are fighting their way to the Harvey tied up on Pier 63.
Tim hitches a ride on a boat from Jersey.
Without a plan, but pulled to help like countless other, the crew pushes off, turns south… and watches as the North Tower collapses.
The Harvey’s radio crackles with a desperate Coast Guard plea: “ALL AVAILABLE BOATS.”
As they reach downtown, they see panicked New Yorkers leaping into the cold harbor. Tim ties the boat to a tree along the seawall. They overload the Harvey with survivors and shuttle them to safety across the Hudson.
Over 500,000 people in total are evacuated by water that morning. It is the single largest boat lift of people in world history. Bigger than Dunkirk.
But the heroics of the Harvey have just begun.
Because downtown New York has no water. The World Trade Center collapse has severed all water lines. Infernos rage, and the surviving firefighters have nothing to fight with.
When the Harvey returns after unloading survivors, the same FDNY boss who’d brushed them off a few months earlier is waiting for them at the seawall. “Do your pumps work?” he asks.
Huntley looks to Tim, who gives him a thumbs-up. Yes, their pumps work. What they don’t know is how many of the Harvey’s ancient hose valves they can actually hammer open.
Just three.
That won’t be much help. But Huntley eyes the brass water guns on the deck, the ones they use to douse the third graders on hot days.
They unscrew the tips and measure the valve threads underneath them. They’re a perfect fit. They screw in the hoses, then watch as the FDNY runs them from their humble fireboat and into the dense smoke.
Tim finds a piece of sidewalk chalk and, despite his dyslexia, draws a complex diagram on the wheelhouse to remind himself which hose line is leading to what part of downtown New York City.
Then he turns on the pumps. Within seconds, the Harvey is feeding 18,000 gallons of water a minute from New York Harbor to the flames at Ground Zero.
With the help of this amateur volunteer crew, the fireboat John J. Harvey pumps water for 48 STRAIGHT HOURS.
More than 50 MILLION GALLONS.
On September 13th, when they’re finally given the okay to power down, our crew takes a walk. Bob. Tim. Jessica. They follow the hose lines through the haze… and into the heart of Ground Zero.
They see the horror. But they also see buildings still standing. And first responders still rescuing… in no small part because of a 70-year-old fireboat that had one more miracle in it.
Together, the crew rides home in silence.
The experience is too weighty for words. But as Pier 63 comes into focus, they see something. A crowd. Volunteers and friends and investors who no longer doubt how priceless this old boat really is.
Which brings us back to Huntley Gill. When he bought the boat he knew it would be fun to own a piece of history. But as he laughs and cries with his crew, passing drinks and telling stories, the deeper personal value of the Harvey becomes evident. Because Huntley didn’t really need a fireboat. What he really needed was a family.
And somehow, with all its dysfunction and brokenness and heartache and beauty, the fireboat John J. Harvey gave him one. Maybe even the best one. And that, in the wake of 9/11, was the most precious gift of all.
LINKS:
Support the Fireboat John J. Harvey
Saved at the Seawall by Jessica DuLong
Jessica DuLong on CBS Sunday Morning:
What touched me most is the idea that something already judged obsolete could still be exactly what was needed when everything changed.
The Harvey becomes more than a fireboat here. Its old machinery, the people who refused to give up on it, and the family that formed around it all came together at the moment they mattered most. That gives the story a real emotional weight.
It's a different take on 9/11 that I knew nothing about. There's the boat and a very interesting lead character. I think it could be a good basis for a movie.