Creative History

  May 22, 1878 was a warm spring day in New Jersey.   On that day Irish born American engineer John Philip Holland, a bespectacled school teacher by trade then residing in Paterson, New Jersey, climbed aboard a strange looking craft early in the morning and descended below the surface of the Passaic River.  Before a startled crowd of helpers and onlookers, wearing a three piece suit and bowler hat, he risked his life in an angular sort of tube made of riveted cast iron, that weighed over two tons and was fourteen feet long.  He had named his invention after himself--the Holland Boat-- it was history’s first truly modern, self-propelled, submarine. The Passaic River flows for approximately eighty miles through most of northern New Jersey.  The Passaic River’s source is a picturesque pond called Dubourg located in the affluent suburb of Mendham, while the mouth of the River empties out into the Atlantic Ocean at Newark Bay one of the Garden State’s most urb...

  In the late 17th century,  when New York City was still known to many as Neue Amsterdam, having only recently fallen under British control in 1664; when the Hudson River was still called the North River and the Delaware River was still referred to as the South River, there was a settlement known as Communipaw, on the New Jersey side of the harbor then referred to as the colony of Bergen. Even today, in what is modern day Jersey City, there’s still a neighborhood along the waterfront near Liberty Island sitting in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty that is known as Communipaw.   It is considered to be Jersey City’s oldest neighborhood. In 1896 American author and folklorist Charles M. Skinner, a native New Yorker himself, published a work entitled Myths and Legends of Our Own Land .  In this work he recounted a story called “The Party from Gibbet Island”.  This story centered around the colonial community of Communipaw in present day New Jersey. ...

  After eating dinner on the evening of September 7, 1934 Captain Robert Willmott of the luxury cruise liner S.S. Morro Castle dies suddenly of a heart attack.  After the unexpected tragedy Chief Officer William Warms is named acting ship’s Captain. Almost immediately, as soon as Officer Warms assumes command of the ocean liner, the weather takes a turn for the worse. The skies off the New Jersey coastline grow cloudy and a strong northeasterly wind begins to blow.  Within hours of Warms’ assuming command a full on nor'easter is buffeting the hull of the Morro Castle with pounding waves and gusting hurricane force winds. Since 1930, for a roundtrip price of $65 (or $1200 in today’s money when adjusted for inflation) the S.S. Morro Castle with its ornate staterooms and countless amenities has shuttled passengers back and forth between New York City and Havana, Cuba in the lap of luxury.  Those with the money to spend have been able to escape the bleak reality o...

  Early morning, London, England, May 23, 1701. It is windy, rainy and unseasonably cold.   A crowd has gathered around the place called Execution Dock in the neighborhood of Wapping along the banks of the River Thames.  The cold wind whips an icy spray onto the faces of all those assembled, but the crowd standing before the single raised gallows remains pensive and still. Execution Dock, located just beyond the low-tide mark of the River Thames, is reserved solely for those who have been found guilty of committing crimes against the British Admiralty on the high seas. Those who commit mutiny, murder, smuggling even sodomy while at sea all meet a cruel and very public end hanging from a shortened rope on this single wooden gallows. On this day the condemned is the famous Captain William Kidd--found guilty of murder and piracy against the British Crown. He has languished in prison, first in the dank Stone Prison of Boston in the American Colonies and the...