Submarines were used 100+ years ago...
What began as an unorthodox art project has become a law-enforcement headache today and the talk of the New York blogosphere.
Duke Riley, a heavily tattooed Brooklyn artist whose waterborne performance projects around the city have frequently landed him in trouble with authorities, spent the last five months building a makeshift submarine — a partial replica of what may be America’s earliest submarine, an oak sphere called the Turtle, which saw action (not particularly successful action) in New York Harbor during the Revolutionary War.
The wood and fiberglass submarine, which was launched into the New York Harbor, made its way toward a far larger vessel — the Queen Mary 2, one of the largest ocean liners in the world, which was docked at the cruise ship terminal in the Buttermilk Channel off Red Hook, Brooklyn.
What happened next was a delicate mixture of performance art and domestic security.
The Police Department released the following statement from Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who did not seem particularly interested in the artistic or historical merit of this project:
A makeshift submarine discovered at about 10:30 this morning by an N.Y.P.D. Intelligence detective on board the Queen Mary 2 in New York Harbor is the creative craft of three adventuresome individuals. It does not pose any terrorist threat.
In addition to assigned posts including Queen Mary 2, N.Y.P.D. Harbor and SCUBA officers patrol approximately 150 square miles of navigable New York City waterways and hundreds of miles of waterfront. They employ advanced underwater camera technology in their portfolio, as well as perform coordinated surveillance under the N.Y.P.D. Counter Terrorism and Intelligence divisions * as demonstrated today.
While our ongoing investigation has so far yielded no suspicious devices or materials other than the vessel itself, N.Y.P.D. detectives will extensively examine Queen Mary 2 to ensure its integrity. The three individuals believed responsible are in custody and may face various charges. Meanwhile we can summarize today’s incident as marine mischief.
Judging from the Web site of Mr. Riley, the founder of the Cherry Bomb tattoo parlor in Brooklyn, he has a different way of viewing the world. Here is the text of his “artist’s statement”:
My work addresses the prospect of residual but forgotten unclaimed frontiers on the edge and inside overdeveloped urban areas, and their unsuspected autonomy. I am interested in the struggle of marginal peoples to sustain independent spaces within all-encompassing societies, the tension between individual and collective behavior, the conflict with institutional power. I pursue an alternative view of hidden borderlands and their inhabitants through drawing, printmaking, mosaic, sculpture, performative interventions and video structured as complex multimedia installations.
I work in the tradition of field naturalists, seeking and gathering data, artifacts and specimens outdoors, transporting them inside for closer observation and study, displaying them in museumlike diorama settings. I combine populist myths and reinvented historical obscurities with contemporary social dilemmas, connecting past and present, drawing attention to unsolved issues. Throughout my projects I profile the space where water meets the land, traditionally marking the periphery of urban society, what lies beyond rigid moral constructs, a sense of danger and possibility.
The Coast Guard issued two citations to Mr. Riley, 35, whose real name is Philip Riley. One citation was for having an unsafe vessel, the other for violating a security zone, The Associated Press reported. Two men from Rhode Island, who were artistic accomplices of Mr. Riley’s and were in an inflatable boat next to the submarine, were taken in for questioning, along with Mr. Riley.
The sub came within 200 feet of the bow of the Queen Mary 2, Petty Officer Angelia Rorison of the Coast Guard said, according to The A.P. “Basically, the vessel was not safe to sail,” she said. “It had no lights, no flares. It was not registered. Instead of safety violations, this could have turned into a search and rescue.”
In addition to the Coast Guard citations, the police issued Mr. Riley two summonses, for reckless operation of a craft and towing in a reckless manner.
Randy Kennedy of The Times was on the scene today and wrote a complete report for Saturday’s print edition.
In June 2006, Mr. Kennedy described an art installation by Mr. Riley in Plum Beach, near Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn: a bar “constructed entirely from found objects in a graffiti-covered cavelike opening in the concrete pilings that supported the humming Belt Parkway above.”
Last October in The Times, Ruth La Ferla noted “an experimental art-meets-fashion project” by Mr. Riley. For the project, Ethan Cohen, another artist, wore “a seersucker jacket perforated with what looked like re-embroidered cigar burns.”
Mr. Riley’s experience with his makeshift vessel bears some interesting similarities to the fate of the original Turtle.
Barnet Schecter, who wrote a detailed account of the Turtle in his 2002 book, “The Battle for New York: The City at the Heart of the American Revolution,” said the vessel was called the Turtle because it was made from two pieces of hollowed-out oak wood placed together, the seam sealed with tar. “It looked like two turtle shells that had been fused together,” he said. “In that space there was just enough room for one mat to sit and operate the controls.”
Mr. Schecter said the Turtle was designed and built by David Bushnell, an inventor in Saybrook, Conn. The colonials experimented with the vessel in the Long Island Sound, off the Connecticut coast. In the Battle of Brooklyn on Aug. 27, 1776, the British captured Long Island. The East River was now hazardous territory. The Americans took the Turtle by land from New Rochelle across Westchester County to the Hudson River.
The Americans took the vessel down the Hudson toward Lower Manhattan, which was still in American hands.
On the night of attack — sometime in September 1776 — Sgt. Ezra Lee, the pilot, got inside, and during the night, he floated and pedaled his way across New York Harbor, making his way toward the H.M.S. Eagle, which was Admiral Richard Howe’s flagship.
From inside the Turtle, Sergeant Lee tried to attach a detachable powder keg to the bottom of the Eagle. Mr. Schecter continued with this account:
He would have succeeded, but an iron bar from the rudder of the Eagle got in the way of a screw that would have allowed him to pierce the bottom of the shop and affix the keg. After several tries, with daylight coming, Lee had to give up for fear of being discovered. He made his way across the harbor and resurfaced just south of Governor’s Island. At that point, the British noticed the strange object surfacing and sent out a boat to get it.
An American schooner came to rescue Sergeant Lee, who released the powder keg from the submarine, hoping the British would be fooled into retrieving it as it detonated. The British did not fall for the trick. The torpedo blew up in the channel between Manhattan and Governor’s Island. British troops on the Governor’s Island and Americans on Manhattan watched the spectacle of the powder keg shooting a column of water into the air. That was pretty much the end of the career of the Turtle.
In Manhattan today, the replica of the Turtle evidently caused just as much of a spectacle as its distinguished ancestor, judging from the blog posts that have been written about the incident.
Gothamist made note of the bizarre maritime incident shortly after 1 p.m.:
Totally weird: Authorities have found a “makeshift” submarine with three men in it near the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. WABC 7 reports that the men may have been trying to “set sail off Brooklyn.”
Right now, police do not believe there was anything terror-related, as a search did not reveal any suspicious materials. There were oxygen tanks, though.
Curbed quipped that Red Hook was under attack: “People, c’mon. You’re not going to stop the new Ikea that easily.”
“It is, as we’ve already made clear, a day to be by the water,” The Daily Intelligencer said, “or, even better, in it. But might we suggest you not attempt to go in the water by building a homemade submarine and launching your Cousteauian adventure in the East River near the Queen Mary 2, which is docked off Red Hook?”
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