Just another Looking for Whitman weblog

The history of the Brooklyn ferry is quite interesting. The ferry in Brooklyn dates back to 1643. Many of us were too young to understand what this invention had to offer at the time, but it became a great way to travel. Not only were the people on the ferry able to view the sites of New York from on the waters but there they were able to finally just take a load off from their long day and head home.

 

BK FERRY use

Source: http://freepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~slowbell/old_brooklyn_ferry.jpg

 

The Brooklyn ferry was very important and useful to many people. This ferry connected Brooklyn to Manhattan for all those who worked in Brooklyn, but lived in Manhattan. The ferry provided a way for workers to commute back and forth between the two boroughs. It also, during the 1640’s was a primary source of transporting goods between islands.

During the 1800’s there were many different routes on the waterfront in Brooklyn coming from places such as Bay Ridge, Brooklyn Heights and Greenpoint to Brooklyn. These routes had different times that they would come and pick up passengers according to the rush hour and when the ferry boats will be needed.

Not only was this method of travel important to commuters and people who transported goods across the waters to the islands, but also to Walt Whitman, an American poet. Walt Whitman looked at this scene of the masses of people entering the ferry boat to return home and even wrote about his experience actually travelling by ferry. In his poem, “Crossing the Brooklyn Ferry,” Whitman took something as simple as the tides and the journey the boat makes to get to its destination as a deeper meaning of the journey of our spirit and soul. He often found ways to connected to his audience and found that travelling by the Brooklyn ferry was one of them. Not only could the commuters learn and experience what he did traveling, but in turn he would also learn from them and be taught by his fellow peers. Whitman often took the time out to sit and visualize far beyond the expectations of a non-writer, so this adventure of learning what the people around him had to offer wasn’t a hard task.

 

BK ferry 2 (use)

Source: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/ww0005s.jpg

October 20th, 2009 at 9:56 am