Spectacle

From September 1, 1954, Max Hubacher gives us “The Queen Elizabeth leaving New York”:

It’s hard to tell where along the Hudson this was: that’s what a number of the piers look like now, and there were more of them then. They could be piers 59, 60, or 61, now the Chelsea Piers sports complex, but they could just as easily be other piers built in the same style. That hill on the other side of the river could be Castle Point in Hoboken, which is a bit further south.

There’s at least one tugboat with the ship – if we see one on the flank facing us, there’s probably one on the opposite side. Queen Elizabeth would have been moving under its own power, but for a ship 1000 feet long, the roughly mile-wide Hudson is not overly large. The tugs don’t just help ships make the right angle turns to and from the berths, they help, as needed, with maneuvering within the harbor.

Meanwhile, that’s a decent number of people watching the ship sail away. Based on their clothing, they are definitely not dock workers. Maybe it was lunch time, maybe it was just a nice day and people wanted fresh air…the man selling RED HOT FRANKFURTERS seems to be doing decent business.