Time Ebbs for the Heroes Who Saved the Harbor

New York Times
By CLYDE HABERMAN
Published: May 27, 2008

His best day? For Seymour Wittek, it was the day he met the girl he would marry. There have been other significant days over his 87 years ? when children were born and new jobs were begun, when grandchildren came along. One October day last year, death claimed Anne Wittek, his wife of 64 years. That was a most important day.

But for altering his life, April 24, 1943, stands out. That was the day in World War II when a fire aboard an ammunition ship in New York Harbor threatened to cause a gigantic explosion that could have cost thousands of lives and destroyed swaths of Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island and the New Jersey ports of Jersey City and Bayonne.

He was Seaman Second Class Wittek back then, all of 22 and barely into his three-year enlistment in the Coast Guard. ?That,? he said on this holiday weekend dedicated to remembering military sacrifice, ?was the day that tested who I was.?

Seaman Wittek was assigned to a munitions detail in Jersey City. It supervised the loading of bombs and ammunition that would be shipped to American forces fighting in Europe. It was essential work, even if not the sort that war movies are usually made of. ?We were called ?subway sailors,? ? Mr. Wittek said. ?We were called ?bathtub sailors.? We were called a lot of names that the Coast Guard didn?t deserve.?

That April day, his detail had just finished stowing roughly 1,400 tons of explosives on El Estero, a freighter of Panamanian registry docked at an Army loading pier. Other ships with the same type of cargo were tied up nearby. On the pier sat railroad cars similarly loaded. In all, an estimated 5,000 tons of bombs, depth charges and small-arms ammunition were concentrated there. As evening approached, the Estero caught fire. Oil had leaked into bilges under the boiler room and ignited. The fire threatened to blow up the freighter and then, in a chain reaction, the adjacent ships and railroad cars. Not far away, fuel storage tanks in Bayonne and on Staten Island were in jeopardy as well.

Few who were there are still alive. The crisis has long faded from the collective local memory. Even at the time, most people in New York and New Jersey were only faintly aware of the potential for disaster. ?Wartime secrecy,? Mr. Wittek said, kept many details hidden from the public until many months later.

But he and his Coast Guard mates well understood the consequences should the fire?s heat reach all those bombs and ammo. The explosion would have been enormous. Later accounts said that deaths on both sides of the Hudson would probably have totaled in the thousands, maybe even in the tens of thousands.

The fire erupted on the eve of Easter Sunday. Seaman Wittek was looking forward to time off. He would be married in a few weeks. He planned to return home to New York City to see his fianc?e. ?All of a sudden the bells started ringing,? he said. ?When that bell rings, you go.?

An officer announced that he needed volunteers to board the burning ship and man fire hoses. The freighter?s deck and its holds were becoming perilously hot. ?Nobody looked left,? Mr. Wittek recalled. ?Nobody looked right. Nobody looked backwards. The men that volunteered all stepped forward ? immediately.?

About 60 men raced to the pier, joining others who had been on fire watch and were already pouring water on the flames. Standing on the ship?s decks, Seaman Wittek could feel the heat through the soles of his shoes.

The fire was beyond control. In no time, an order came to scuttle the ship. It was the only way to forestall an explosion. In a race against time, tugboats towed the Estero to deep waters in Upper New York Bay. Coast Guard and New York City fireboats pumped water into the cargo holds. Not quite four hours after catching fire, the Estero sank to the bottom.

As she headed toward her death, most of the coast guardsmen were ordered off her, Seaman Wittek among them. Before he climbed down a rope ladder to a small boat bobbing alongside, some of his mates who had to stay a bit longer handed him their wallets. He remembers one man saying to him: ?Wittek, if it blows, at least they?ll know I was here.?

No one died.

In October 1945, two months after the war ended, Seaman Wittek returned to civilian life. He worked in the fur industry for most of the next five decades, living mainly in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. Eight years ago, retired, he moved to Ossining, N.Y.

It has long rankled him, he acknowledges, that New York City never formally recognized the heroics of those coast guardsmen. The city of Bayonne gave them medals in the 1940s, but not New York. The city honored its own firefighters and the tugboat captains back then, but not the coast guardsmen.

Seven years ago, Mr. Wittek took it upon himself to petition city officials. A mention of the Estero was planned for a Veterans Day ceremony in November 2001, he says, but the terrorist attacks two months earlier changed everything. Later attempts to stir municipal interest went nowhere.

Now, he fears, time is inevitably running out.

?All I want is simple recognition of what the Coast Guard did that day,? he said. ?Not every act of courage requires you to face bullets. These men really put their lives on the line.?

E-mail: haberman@nytimes.com