Written sometime in December, 2001
My name is Greg Freitas. Barbara Emerson and I and own and operate the charter boat, Spitfire, in the Virgin Islands. Like most charter couples, we work very hard during the winter season and get away from the islands for the summers. For the last three summers, I have been Captain of the 80-foot schooner Adirondack, sailing out of Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. On a typical day, we sail down the North River (Hudson), buzz the Battery, cross over to Ellis Island, do a close pass to the Statue of Liberty, turn around and sail by North Cove, the Financial District and, of course, by the World Trade Center. Last year, I also ran the Chelsea Screamer, a 1600 HP speed/excursion boat on Saturdays.
Monday, September 10th. It had been a great season so far. Labor Day weekend was the busiest we ever had and we had four charters booked for the week. Besides the fantastic sailing in New York Harbor, my crew and I appeared on Regis and Kelly Live show for a short segment, was filmed by both the BBC and FOX for pilots of shows that probably will never happen, and met the REAL Captain Ron (Kirt Russell). We were also looking forward to duplicating our record-breaking performance in the defense of the Mayor's Cup on the following Saturday.
Tuesday, September 11th, about 8:55 AM. I woke up on the Adirondack to sirens, not unusual in New York City, except these wouldn't stop for the next few weeks. I casually put on shorts and T-shirt, opened the hatch and looked at the beautiful blue sky above me that had a curiously menacing black cloud just to the south. I walked 75 feet into the coffee shop and my friend Roy, the counter guy, pointed to the TV monitor just as the second jet slammed into the South Tower. I ran out to West Side Highway, about 200 feet away, into a crowd of silent, sobbing New Yorkers, who were staring southward at the two blazing towers only 2 miles away. I ran to Pier 63 where the retired Fireboat, John J. Harvey, is normally berthed, but she was not there. I ran back to our floating dock at Pier 62 and found a camera crew from ExtraTV/CNN milling about. They were looking for the owner of the Chelsea Screamer, Sean Kennedy. Sean arrived a couple of minutes later, and without saying too many words, we started the Screamer up, cast lines and headed south.
What we saw defies description. All we could do was just slowly make our way down river, snap a few photos, and stare. From a distance, I have a photo of the South Tower going down. The closer we got, the more horrific the scene became. We eventually were close enough to see people jumping out of windows. Over the VHF radio, we heard that the North Tower was about to collapse and that all boats should clear away NOW. We didn't. We were about 400 feet off the bulkhead at North Cove when it came down. On the CNN film segment of the North Tower collapsing, you can hear me yelling "Holy Shit". Instead of leaving, we went in and were at the ferry terminal, north side of the entrance to North Cove, within minutes. We picked up about fifteen people there in various states of condition. One man was frantically calling for his wife and daughter and said he last saw them at the south side of the entrance to North Cove. We went around and picked up an additional 60 people there, including his wife and daughter, and brought them to Liberty Landing in New Jersey. We dropped them off and went to Pier A at the Battery and grabbed another 55 to 60 people. One man named Harold was going into shock. All he could do is scream "Bring me to New Jersey. Get me out of here, I have to get out of here". We calmed him down, got him to help load people onboard, and by the time we dropped that group off at Chelsea Piers, Harold was ready to go back for more. The New York Waterways ferries were now on the scene and they were a lot more effective in moving masses of people so we didn't go back for the third time. However, people by the thousands, started showing up at Chelsea Piers, wanting to be evacuated to New Jersey. One of my crew members from the Adirondack, Tim, showed up and we helped organize the crowd into lines leading to shade, got them water, and then onboard the Spirit boats. Estimates are that over 10,000 people were evacuated to New Jersey from Chelsea Piers. Chelsea Piers became central in the next week: a temporary morgue was setup on the ice skating rinks, the CIA used the Chelsea Brewery for their command center, a triage unit was organized on the basketball courts, and warehousing was provided for the thousands of tons of donated supplies and materials that were coming in from all over the country.
Wednesday, 6:30 AM. Sean and I left Chelsea Piers on the Screamer with about 20 National Guard troops and dropped them at North Cove. We then wandered around what would be called Ground Zero, going "door to door", looking for victims. We had heard of an old woman with a heart condition in an apartment on Spring Street. As we got close, I saw a burnt out ambulance with an AED flashing on the dash. As I tried in vain to remove this device that was locked to the dashboard, a fireman came up to me and demanded to know what I was doing. When I told him I had just completed AED training a couple of months before and about the old lady, he said that he had a "key" and quickly smashed the dashboard with his ax-pick, getting me the AED. His last comment was, just let him know if we needed more. It turned out that the old lady was already out of her apartment, but we pulled another 20, many with pets, out that trip and brought them back to Chelsea Piers for medical attention.
That night, I hitched a ride back to the site on a small motor launch out of Pier 63 and stayed on the John J. Harvey which was tied to the bulkhead and was pumping water to all the fire trucks. I earned a "crew" T-shirt although all I did was sleep.
Early Thursday morning, I left the Harvey and went to what was left of the South Pedestrian Walkway over West Street and the Marriott Hotel. I saw firemen, policemen, MTA police, ironworkers, OEM officials, all slipping in the mud made up of North (Hudson) River water and "dust" from the collapsed buildings. I grabbed a shovel and started to dig, just as I cleaned snow off the sidewalks as a kid during the New England winters. By 6:00 PM, I had a small army of shovelers, clearing all the walkways and building entrances and picking up debris. At 8:00 PM, I left Ground Zero and got a ride on a Nassau County Police Boat back to Chelsea Piers and my bunk on the Adirondack.
Friday morning, it was raining. Sean showed up and said that we probably should take his event/function tent from the upper deck of M/V Marina III and bring it to site because the rain was ruining all the supplies and goods. Once there, we found about 120 volunteers with nothing to do. After asking, "Who is in charge here?" and getting no reply, I said, "OK, I am in charge" and was instantly swamped by volunteers looking for things to do. We set up Mariner III's tent on site and dubbed it "The General Store". By the next evening, I had acquired four more tents, a perimeter fence, tables, my own private police force, three golf carts, 200,000 baby wipes, and a red badge with the highest clearance from the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management. I would also get only 5 1/2 hours sleep in the next 108 hours. An article about The General Store appeared in "Time Out - New York", issue 313.
We handed out the donated supplies such as respirators, blankets, candy bars, ear plugs, eye wash, safety goggles, gloves, sweet shirts, socks, shovels, underwear, tooth brushes and tooth paste, pick axes, band aids, pants, hard hats, climbing ropes, flash lights and batteries, baby wipes, dog food and dog paw mittens, to an estimated 4000 to 5000 rescue workers. When the National Guard stopped the inflow of donated goods from New Jersey, the Coast Guard started bringing me supplies off a cutter arriving from New England.
With most of the donations, we got letters and notes and crayon drawings. Almost every package had some caption or note to the effect of "God Bless You" or "Thank you". On one envelope, there was a self portrait in pencil of Nicole with the scrawled caption "Thanks for your help!!" Her mother added, "From Nicole, Age 6, New Jersey. She was so proud to put $2.12 in the envelope." From Old Greenwich, CT, came a large package from a pharmacy with much needed supplies and the following note:
"7:45 AM Friday morning - it's raining - here's some umbrellas. I started crying when I tried to stuff them in a bag. Couldn't stop. I finally started to feel like this happened to me too, like I'm a part of this f---ing thing too."
I finally left the site on Tuesday, September 18th at 8:00 PM, just short of 180 hours from the first plane attack. Rumors of the Salvation Army and American Red Cross taking over the General Store started to fly, I was exhausted beyond belief and the owners of Adirondack were anxious to get the boat out of the city and had a charter in New London, CT that weekend. In order for us to transit the North (Hudson) and East Rivers, a vessel would have to get special permission from the Coast Guard, which was near impossible due to security zones and their disrupted telephone service. As it turned out, two Coast Guard officers were making the rounds to all the charter boats, informing them of the new emergency restrictions. Just as one of the officers was telling me that it would be difficult to get permission, I recognized him as someone I hired on Cape Cod in the late 80's to splice mooring lines for the company I worked for. He remembered me and we had our permit about five minutes later.
Aftermath:
I don't remember even one minute of the trip to New London except passing in front of the site and how helpless I felt. We won the schooner race in New London by an extremely large margin, beating both the Pride of Baltimore II and our faster sister ship, Adirondack II, from Newport. The Adirondack II not only had her designer/builder onboard but an old ringer from the Americas Cup circuit. No could understand what made us so much faster than the fleet but the common consensus was that I was a little "too" focused and had some inner hostilities to work out.
Barbara and I flew to Italy for 10 days and had a great time. I drove our rented car and passed every Italian on the road. We returned to Florida and one evening happened upon a benefit for the New York Firemen at a local watering hole. The fireman in attendance, Bob Salvadore, from Brooklyn, recognized me, came up to me, and gave me a big hug and a kiss.
I had been receiving an average of three e-mails each day since September from Ground Zero Volunteers, inviting me to exhibits, fund raisers, the benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, dinners, reunions, etc. On November 7, I broadcasted a "NO MORE" message to all and received this reply the next morning:
"Dear Captain Greg. Before you move on altogether, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for everything you did in September. I know it wasn't for me or anyone else personally, but your being there with your wonderful boat(s) did make a great difference to so many people. Just wanted to thank you for the difference it made to me. And wish you all the best, happy sailing! Love, Elizabeth". I don’t know who Elizabeth is.