Unsnug Harbor

Even the gulls floating down the Hudson on chunks of ice seemed perplexed. In New York's great harbor, the hoarse voice of the tugboat was stilled by a tug-crew strike. Great ocean liners wallowed like harpooned whales. Without the usual fuming tugs to nudge them into their berths, the liners had to trust to luck and the seamanship of their skippers to make port. Some made distinctly unhappy landings, others got in safely but tensely, and only a skilled and daring few did the job as though it were nothing at all.

Early in the week there were two near-disasters that gave pier officials the jitters, threatened to close the port altogether. The 6,535-ton American Export freighter Extavia smashed into its Brooklyn pier, leaving a 100-foot section of jagged wreckage. Then the Cunard Lines' green-hulled Caronia knifed through 30 feet of ten-inch concrete and rammed right up to Pier 90's shed before it could be stopped and worked into its slip (estimated damage to the two piers: $150,000).

Next day the task of bringing in the big ships became vastly more complicated because longshoremen had decided not to cross the tugboatmen's picket lines. Steamship company office workers came to the rescue, many of them in natty business suits and overcoats as they lent a hand at the lines.

The Constitution, American Export Lines' gem of the ocean, made it the awkward way. On the big liner's first attempt, the tide was wrong, and the Constitution drifted within a hand's breadth of smashing into its pier. Dangling anchors dropped with a screech, and with engines in full astern the big ship backed off. On the second try, after a tense hour and 15 minutes, Captain Bernt Jacobsen finally inched the Connie into its slip.

When the 81,237-ton Queen Mary made its way slowly up the Hudson toward the Cunard piers, all Manhattan watched breathlessly. The Mary, after a gingerly pass at Pier 90, finally muddled through, corning to rest amidships on the "knuckle'' (pier end), and calling on the white-collar dockhands to pull her in. The U.S. Lines' America followed the Queen Mary's lead, pivoted in after 55 minutes.

The big ones were in safely, worked into their docks with an intense concentration that the watching thousands at dockside and in office buildings could feel. The tense delicacy of the maneuvers made a French sea dog the waterside hero of the week. When Captain Franck Garrigue the beaming master of the Ile de France, brought his 44,356-ton liner abreast of the French Line pier, he did not hesitate. Quick as an eel, he wheeled the Ile around and slid her into the slip in just 19 minutes. Even the pickets cheered. The glory and honor of France were unblemished, and the 1936 song of Jerome Kern's was laid to rest.* "When you are a sailor," explained Captain Garrigue to admiring newsmen, "you must never worry." Then he went off to splice the mainbrace.

* You're just as hard to land as the Ile de

France! I haven't got a chance, this is a fine romance.

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