Super-Soaker
By Robert Sullivan
Nautically speaking, the difference between John J. Harvey, a seventy-eight-year-old engine-room-operated fireboat, and Jessica DuLong, the boat's thirty-six-year-old chief engineer, is that the John J. Harvey has spent a lot more time on the water - putting out the five-alarm fire that burned the Cunard pier in 1932, for instance. Except for a whale-watching trip when she was a child, DuLong has been on the water only since February, 2001. She had just been laid off from her job at a wellness Web site and, after a couple of volunteer events, found herself on the Harvey's crew. On September 11th of that year, the John J. Harvey - after being auctioned for scrap in 1999 and salvaged by preservationists - helped evacuate some of the three hundred thousand people fleeing the World Trade Center. It then used its water pumps to pump millions of gallons of water into downtown. "For the first time I see the boat pumping water with a purpose, doing the important work for which she was built," DuLong writes in her new book, "My River Chronicles: Rediscovering America on the Hudson." The other day, eating a Caesar salad with shrimp, at Pier 66 in Chelsea, DuLong reviewed her career arc, a transition from psychology student to Web-content provider to fireboat volunteer. When she first started on the boat, she picked up a Sawzall to cut some pipes and immediately fell in love with physical work. She went on to get her Merchant Marine license and, eventually, to pilot a boat herself - the Gowanus Bay. Today, she balances engineering with freelance writing; she has contributed to both Today's Machining World ("Women in Machining") and CosmoGIRL! ("The Gender Spectrum"). After a quick tour of the John J. Harvey, DuLong stopped by the wheelhouse to introduce her pilot, Bob Lenney, and then headed down to the engine room. Above deck, it was cool and breezy, with a few dozen kids from the Henry Street Settlement clambering on board. Below deck, the 130-degree heat thrown off by five 600-horsepower diesel engines, combined with bone-crushing noise, created the ambience of a Second World War submarine movie. The boat was actually built before the war - Mayor Jimmy Walker attended the Harvey's christening - and the engine room is, in DuLong's opinion, a tribute to an era of craftsmanship that is very nearly extinct. "We need to stop devaluing hands-on work," she said before the engines drowned her out. DuLong, wearing brown Carhartt work pants and a John J. Harvey crew shirt, was making adjustments when the pilot sent a telegraph signal down. The signal came in simultaneously as a loud bell and as a reading on two brass wheels (one for each propeller) that hang like clock faces on either side of DuLong's head. "He's anxious to go, but I'm not ready," she shouted. A few minutes later, she stepped up to a wall of gauges and throttled up the engines. Because the engine room was built with a six-foot-tall engineer in mind (DuLong is five feet five), she stood on a wooden crate. She reached down to move her propeller controls in accordance with the pilot's signals. When she had executed a command, she reached up overhead to signal to the pilot - the maneuver looked like a cross between Pilates and rope climbing. She finally signalled "STAND BY," and the Captain signalled back "SLOW AHEAD." When the boat passed between the Brooklyn and the Manhattan Bridges, the portholes afforded wave-splashed glimpses of the towers and spans, like frames in a silent film. Then the signal came to let the Hudson River in: valves were slowly opened, and the river water could be felt rushing into the onboard pumps. The pumps fired the water through brass guns on the deck. Above deck, total kid euphoria. Back at Pier 66, as the kids disembarked, soaked and happy, Bob Lenney was in his wheelhouse, where he first started, in 1963. He was full of praise for his engineer."It's almost instantaneous," he said. "She anticipates what I want. We make a good team." ♦ More:
September 11th (9/11)