MANHATTAN BY THE SEA; NEW YORK CRUISE REVEALS ALL: [FINAL Edition]

Abstract

The Circle Line tour does the most dramatic part of Manhattan in the first hour, rounding the tip for spectacular views of Wall St. and the World Trade Centre and Statue of Liberty. Then the boat heads up the East River to the South St. Seaport, the 11-block landmark district including Pier 17 (with its 120 shops, alehouses and eateries) and the historic Fulton Fish Market.

The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Ferry leaves about every half hour from the Battery. The round-trip fare of $6 includes the boat trips, stopovers, entrance to the Statue of Liberty Museum and the Ellis Island Museum. For information call [phone].

Color Photo; Black & White Photo; Cruise features stunning views. Statue is part of air, space and sea museum on waterfront. (COLOR) Columbia University rowing team - New York's waterfront has its pleasant, park-like stretches. Circle Line has been touring New York's waterfront since 1945. Bridge of USS Intrepid soars above the wharves of New York's harbor.(BW)

NEW YORK - The Manhattoes paddled around this island in a canoe. What would they think now, to see the oyster beds replaced by the ventilating towers of the Lincoln Tunnel, their hunting grounds covered over with domes that cover $95-an-hour tennis courts, and chutes through which city garbage zips along at 48km/h to be turned into landfill-to make more Manhattan?

Dumps, garbage chutes, police pounds, abandoned navy yards, ventilating towers, and the grimy underbellies of bridges - these are some of the unsung highlights of the Circle Line Sightseeing Cruise around Manhattan Island - "America's Favorite Boat Ride" since 1945.

The very word "cruise" evokes images of comfort, maybe even luxury. But this old boat ride is just that, the same old boats with the same old funky scuffed hard wooden folding chairs, the same old hot dogs.

Except for the addition of bottled Evian water and nachos with cheddar cheese and a few more jewels in the lower Manhattan skyline, this sightseeing tour is the same as when I took it 24 years ago. Glory be!

Exploring Manhattan by sea is much more relaxing than beating its pavement, braving its subterranean guts, or gawking at its glitter from aloft a swaying skyscraper or a jet caught in a holding pattern.

In the end, it's likely to cost you less money, and you get unique views of Manhattan - from the flight deck of a 275-metre-long fighter-aircraft carrier or a three-masted sailing ship or the crown of the Statue of Liberty.

The Circle Line boat glides under 19 of Manhattan's 20 bridges (suspension spans, cantilever, vertical lift, steel-arched truss spans, swing bridges), over four tunnels and 73 transit tubes. Sailing counter-clockwise around the island (56 km in three hours), you get a vivid picture of New York City's geography, politics and distribution of wealth, and get to see all five boroughs.

It's easy to think of the Big Apple as being a forest of glamorous tall buildings with a splotch of green for Central Park. But the Circle Line tour reveals all - Manhattan's fancy dress clothes and its dirty underwear.

The boat cruise starts on the Hudson River at 46th St. and passes Hoboken, N.J., on the other side. (Hoboken is the birthplace of Frank Sinatra, the guide proclaims. Circle Line guides are usually out-of-work actors, so the commentary is heavily doped with allusions to movies filmed around Manhattan and what star lives where. Our guide is frustrated; his wit is lost on this boatload of German tourists.)

The Circle Line tour does the most dramatic part of Manhattan in the first hour, rounding the tip for spectacular views of Wall St. and the World Trade Centre and Statue of Liberty. Then the boat heads up the East River to the South St. Seaport, the 11-block landmark district including Pier 17 (with its 120 shops, alehouses and eateries) and the historic Fulton Fish Market.

Great age of sail

The South St. Seaport is a nautical museum without walls - a celebration of life in the great age of sail. Here you can explore the 106-metre-long Peking, the second-largest sailing ship in existence; the Wavertree, an iron square-rigger built in 1885 for the jute trade between Europe and India; and the Ambrose, the first lightship to guard the entrance to Ambrose Channel in New York harbor.

The Circle Line continues on past the United Nations and yuppie Yorkville (the snotty Upper East Side), past a wasteland of factories on either side, up to the Hell's Gate railroad bridge.

Hell's Gate, the narrow channel between the borough of Queens and Ward's Island, has a nasty reputation for its tortuous course and powerful currents. The Federal Writer's Project Guide to 1930s'New York says that since 1612, thousands of vessels have perished here, and Washington Irving described the current as roaring "like a bull bellowing for more drink."

Ward's Island is one of these intriguing little islands in the East River with sordid, morbid, lurid or fetid histories. In 1840, 100,000 bodies were moved here from a potter's field in Manhattan, and a century later 771?2 acres were consecrated for one of the world's largest sewage disposal plants. For a while the island was used as an immigration station, until the buildings were taken over by the New York City Asylum for the Insane.

Riker's Island, notorious for its penitentiary, grew to over five times its original acreage through the dumping of refuse, scrap metal, cinders and mountains of dirt from subway excavations. Its prison piggery used to produce 50,000 pounds of pork a year.

Urban junk

I'm fascinated by this stuff, and to see that so much of this 21- km-long Manhattan Island is not glitter, but trees, rocks, ruins, empty railroad yards, small docks, garbage scows and junk yards.

As we headed up the Harlem River and rounded the lush and rocky northern tip of the island to regain the Hudson, we came upon a startlingly idyllic scene. In the golden afternoon light two old men were sitting quietly, fishing with poles from a big rock jutting out into the river, while a graffitti-covered train rattled by on the tracks behind them.

My trip to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island was almost upstaged by an incident in the subway, a hilarious tale of urban survival.

I put my subway token in the slot, but the turnstile wouldn't budge. "Jump it; jump the turnstile!" a wiry young man close to me said. Just as I was looking imploringly at the man in the token booth, the young man bent down, put his lips over the token slot and sucked out the token.

I was flabbergasted at the ingenuity, and at what disgusting ends someone would go to make a few dollars - and without choking himself!

The man in the token booth waved me through the swinging doors, and from the platform I watched 11 more people try to put their tokens in the slots jammed with wads of paper. The man in the booth let the people through the doors, while the con went from one slot to the other, sucking out the tokens.

The token booth man had to have been in on it. Before he left, the con turned to us, and with his arms raised in supplication, said: "Hey, this is how I live. I don't mug or steal or murder no one."

There are 378 steps to climb to the crown of the tallest sculpture in the world - the 91-metre-high Statue of Liberty. Signs all around warn you not to start up the spiral staircase if you have a heart problem.

The day I ascended the statue, heart attacks must have been on everyone's mind. It was a gusty, rainy day. In the cafeteria, everyone had to squeeze around tiny round tables and sit on anti- ergonomic jelly-roll-shaped seats, bumping trays with strangers.

I found a table with two young Japanese women who were quickly supplanted by an elderly German couple with plates of cole slaw. I got a strange feeling. Something was amiss. Then, only six inches from my face, the woman wheezed and slumped over her tray. Her husband, still strung with cameras, tried to lift her up. Before I knew it, there were shouts about full cardiac arrest, a scramble with oxygen tanks and a helicopter beating its wings outside the door.

To add to the strangeness of my visit to the Statue of Liberty, I met Rubin, a young law student from Paris. We did the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island tour with him speaking in Spanish and me answering in French - which made me feel strangely like an immigrant in the country where I was born.

Despite the 25 windows, the view from the crown is disappointing - too many obstructions to get a panoramic view. But climbing the spiral staircase through Lady Liberty's scaffolding - trying to recognize parts of her body - is fun.

At the Statue of Liberty Museum, you can see how she was made (touch the cast of her big toe) and enjoy all the Liberty memorabilia -postcards, political cartoons, miniature replicas - you could ever want to see.

Nothing captures the mood of Ellis Island like a gloomy, rainy day. Its upper rooms, infused with the personal histories of 17 million immigrants, have a spooky hospital or jail-like aura.

You could spend the day exploring exhibits depicting 400 years of immigration history, researching your family history by computer, and gaping at the world's largest wall of names - all the souls who passed through here.

One curious exhibit describes a social service provided for wives immigrating to the U.S. long after their husbands. To spare husbands the shock of greeting wives dressed in homey, drab peasant clothes, the service spiffed the ladies up - makeup, hairdo, short dresses - before they met their husbands. A marriage-saving device, it was claimed. The exhibit includes before-and-after photos of wives who got done over.

Ghost ship

I've never been keen on military history - battles, paraphernalia and that stuff - but one balmy August night while riding up the West Side Highway on the back of a friend's motorcycle, I was stunned to see a monstrous vessel glowing like a plutonium ingot off Pier 86 on the Hudson. "What's that?" I screamed into the wind."

The Intrepid. She sank or damaged 289 enemy ships and destroyed more than 600 enemy aircraft in World War II. The Japanese called her "the ghost ship." She suffered more kamikaze attacks than any other battleship in the war, and three times the Japanese reported to the emperor that she had been destroyed and sunk. In the end they sang her glory.

In June of 1944, this aircraft carrier was the command ship for the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval engagement in history. She served in the Korean War and in Vietnam and was the recovery ship for astronauts returning from the moon.

Now she is a national historic landmark, and a floating sea-air- space museum - seven decks full of vintage fighter aircraft, space capsules, bathyspheres and SCUD missile debris from the Gulf war.

Docked beside the Intrepid is the last all-gun destroyer (no missiles, nuclear or otherwise) on active duty with the U.S. Navy, the USS Edson, and the world's only guided-missile submarine, the USS Growler. To board the submarine, you have to climb through an oval-shaped hole in a cardboard placard that says, "If you can't fit through this space, don't go any farther."

Of course, the tone of the museum and its souvenir shop is "Yea- rah America Aren't We Great," but I must admit I found the museum fascinating. I could have stayed there all day, if the experience weren't so intense.

The museum complex is like a mini-Smithsonian Institution. In addition to all the military hardware, there are exhibits on sunken treasures found in the New York Harbor and exciting films and videos.

I was mesmerized by a National Geographic film about the sinking of the Titanic, and the events surrounding her rediscovery and submarine exploration. I had to decompress slowly to come back to 1991 reality, and to prepare my sealegs for their return to the asphalt jungle.

IF YOU GO: Circle Line Ferry's three-hour cruise around Manhattan Island runs until Dec. 29, sailing seven days a week. Fare is $16 for adults, $8 for children under 12. Until Nov. 10, sailings are at 9:30, 10:30, 1:30 and 2:30.

There are also harbor-lights cruises at 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday through Dec. 29, $16. No reservations necessary. Parking is available at the Circle Line Pier 83, at 42nd St. [phone].

The South St. Seaport Museum's admission fee of $6 for adults, $5 for senior citizens and students and $3 for children 4 to 12 includes maps and guides to the area, and covers entrance to all the ships, galleries, museum, restoration and walking tours, and films.

Ferry every half-hour

For information on scheduled events, call the education department weekdays at [phone]. Piers, ships and exhibits are open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day except Nov. 24, Dec. 25 and Jan. 1. Museum tickets are sold on Pier 16 at the Pilothouse and the Visitor's Centre near the Titanic Memorial Tower at Fulton and Water Sts.

The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Ferry leaves about every half hour from the Battery. The round-trip fare of $6 includes the boat trips, stopovers, entrance to the Statue of Liberty Museum and the Ellis Island Museum. For information call [phone].

The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum is open Wednesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (ticket booth closes at 4 p.m.). Admission is $7 for adults, $6 for senior citizens, $4 for children under 12, and free for children under 6. [phone], Pier 86, West 46th St. and 12th Ave.

Illustration

Color Photo; Black & White Photo; Cruise (top) features stunning views. Statue (right) is part of air, space and sea museum on waterfront. (COLOR) Columbia University rowing team - New York's waterfront has its pleasant, park-like stretches. Circle Line has been touring New York's waterfront since 1945. Bridge of USS Intrepid soars above the wharves of New York's harbor.(BW)

Credit: FREELANCE