NYC maritime facts: A seafaring history of Gotham

Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazano enters the New York Narrows, the first European to tour the Hudson River and land on Gotham soil. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge—linking Brooklyn to Staten Island—is later named in his honor.

In a diary entry, a Dutch settler bellyaches that “very large oysters” are so plentiful along the shore that it’s difficult to sell the colossal bivalves in New Amsterdam (present-day New York).

New Yorkers like Frederick Philipse—one of the city’s big-pimpin’ merchants—welcome pirates seeking to relieve themselves of their “found” booty.

The New York provincial government passes an act outlawing both the distilling of rum and the burning of oyster shells within city limits (due to fear of air pollution).

Massachusetts businessmen begin marketing Maine lobster to New York and Boston after the booming canning industry creates an unquenchable demand for the crustacean, leading to lobster’s rise from a poor man’s protein to a gourmet delicacy.

Twelve million oysters are sold in New York. By 1880, the area’s oyster beds are producing 700 million a year. The last year oysters are harvested in city waters is 1927.

An oyster-shucking champion shells 2,500 bivalves in a lickety-split two hours, 23 minutes and 39 seconds.

The Evening Sun reports on a ten-seat Fulton Street restaurant called the Clam—serving more than 50 kinds of preparations—widely regarded as Gotham’s first-ever single-item-focused eatery.

Manhattan clam chowder is deemed such an affront to the New England original that a bill introduced into Maine law makes it illegal to add tomatoes to chowder.

Brooklyn’s fishing industry booms post-WWII, when a number of navy veterans enter the business, converting the War Department’s sub chasers into fishing boats.