Moby Dick

Something I did not know. Herman Melville wrote his famous novel MOBY DICK in 1851 but apparently he could not make a living as an author so in 1866 he became a Customs Inspector in the Port of New York stationed along West Street near what is now the meat packing district. He covered the Hudson (North) River all the way up to Harlem inspecting cargoes and ships. His pay was $4.00 per day. This is the area that eighty years later was the focus of U.S. Lines cargo operations (B.C.) before containers - from West 19th Street up to West 22nd Street which is known as Chelsea. Pier 59 at 19th Street handled all the scotch whiskey from Glasgow and you could smell it from blocks away. The movie "On the Waterfront" was filmed in Hoboken N.J. but the cargo handling was the same as found on the Manhattan side of the river.
tjs