#94 Corlear's Hook and the Pirates of the East River

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 28 November 2009

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Avast ye mateys, there were indeed pirates in New York! Not only did they operate throughout the New York region in the 19th century, most of their grave misdeeds were focused around the East River waterfront, and in particular, Corlear's Hook. Once a sandy beach, Corlear's Hook, at the bend in the river in lower Manhattan, has a history that include mass slaughter, innovations of the shipping trade, the heart of New York prostitution and the birth of the tenement. And in the last half of the 19th century harbored pirate gangs with names like the Daybreak Boys, the Hook Gang and the Tub of Blood Bunch. www.boweryboyspodcast.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Bowry Boys Episode 94, Corleer's Hook, and the Pirates of the East River.
0:05.8	Hey, it's The Bowry Boys!
0:07.4	Hey!
0:09.6	The Bowry Boys is brought to you by EuroChipo.com.
0:13.3	EuroChipo editors personally visit and review the best budget hotels in Europe.
0:18.1	Now with hotels in New York City, on the web at EuroChipo.com.
0:22.6	Hi there, welcome to The Bowry Boys.
0:24.1	This is Greg Young with a solar show for you this week.
0:27.9	I'm assuming a few of you probably did a tiny double take at the subject of this week's podcast.
0:33.6	That would be Corleer's Hook and the Pirates of the East River.
0:37.2	New York isn't exactly the first place you think of.
0:40.6	When you think of Pirates with all of their pirate accoutrements and the parrot and the arg and the wooden leg and all that.
0:47.3	But New York actually has a long, dark history with real bonafide pirates that trace back centuries.
0:53.8	Bedlow's Island and Gibbets Island in New York Harbor would be the site of dozens of pirate hangings authorized by the US government.
1:00.4	Up in fact until 1860 with the execution of the murderous pirate Albert Hicks, who was caught off shore of Staten Island.
1:08.0	Later on, Bedlow and Gibbets Island, these pirate execution sites, would have their names changed to Liberty Island and Ellis Island respectively.
1:18.4	Back in the day, rumors even circulated that Bedlow had housed a forgotten buried treasure of one of the world's most famous pirates, Captain Kid.
1:26.7	Pirates really did bury a treasure of Mexican silver on the shoreline of Coney Island in the 1830s.
1:32.7	And that legendary treasure had residents of the local village of Graves since scrambling over the sand of the beach, digging for coins.
1:40.3	But believe it or not, the center of real, vile pirate activity in New York is not an island, but is actually in the heart of the city itself along the area of Manhattan coastline referred to as Corlears Hook.
1:52.7	Now, this is the area where the island of Manhattan, the lower half, jets out into the East River, approximately the area between where the Williamsburg Bridge is and down to the Manhattan Bridge.
2:02.6	And for the purposes of this story, continue further down the shoreline, almost to the Brooklyn Bridge.
	...

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