Norway Farewell Transatlantic 2001
Day 4

New York - September 5, 2001
Top deck photographers - NY arrival
 It is an odd feeling to set one's alarm for the early arrival into port, rising in the dark beside sleeping spouse, padding out into the hushed corridors, and heading to the top deck forward where earlier risers are already crowding for a vantage point.
Dawn on Verazzano Narrows, the World Trade Center and Manhattan lie beyond.
Verazzano Narrows and World Trade Center
Manhattan skyline at dawn
 Closer, past that incomparable skyline, never to be the same again.
One nice feature of these port arrivals was the presence of off-duty crew, as intent as any passenger on capturing every possible moment.
 Crew members with cameras
People on pier

Two of the handful of gathered faithful on Pier 88. Sheila Browne with French flag, who boarded at New York and became a new shipboard friend, while Cornelia Mueller was an old one, having been at our table when my wife and I sailed on the QE2 to Bermuda in 1999.
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We edge slowly into the slip. This stretch of water was where Normandie burned and sank while being converted to a troopship in 1942.
 NY pier from bow of ss Norway
ss Norway bow
 Further echoes of Normandie: the classic bow of her successor: knife-like prow, graceful sweep of hull plates up from the waterline, and a French flag on the forepeak
Tied up in the city that was her Western home port for more than a decade.
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ss Norway detail from pier
ss Norway in black & white
 Playing with the black and white setting on my digital camera to take a trip through time, showing the portholes and rivets and promenade deck glazing of a liner of days long past.

Webcam shot of Norway backing out
image courtesy ESB wecam
Leaving the pier we had a mishap, causing minor damage that was later repaired at sea.

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Cruise ship port stays are always ridiculously short in my opinion, and our New York stop was no exception. Just nine hours after docking we pulled out of the slip and headed back down the Hudson. With a sense that we were seeing Norway in this port for the last time, we crowded the decks and snapped skyline views, not knowing that this skyline procession was a farewell to more than just one ship.
 NY skyline departure

 
Hudson River & World Trade Center
 Passing the World Trade Center
Passing the World Trade Center
 Passing the World Trade Center
Passing the World Trade Center
gone forever,
forgotten never ...

 
next:
September 6 - Sea day