Not too many people know about or can even remember New York’s most horrific maritime disaster simply because it never took place. The artist behind the memorial, Joseph Reginella made the whole story up.
The 250-pound cast bronze monument dedicated to the 400 victims on board the steam ferry Cornelius G. Kolff recently appeared in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan. It only remains in place for a day or two,”because the city will come and take it away,” says Reginella, adding that it takes two people to break it down.
The monument depicts a ferry boat being dragged below the waters by giant octopus tentacles and is part of a huge multi-layered hoax that includes a rather slick website, a documentary, a number of fabricated newspaper articles and glossy fliers with directions for tourists on how to get to phantom “Staten Island Ferry Disaster Memorial Museum” across the harbor.
This fantastic and priceless hoax took Reginella about six months to complete, and it all started when he was taking his 11-year-old nephew who was visiting from Florida, on a ride on the ferry between Manhattan and Staten Island.
“He was asking me all kinds of crazy questions like if the waters were shark-infested,” he said. “I said ‘No, but you know what did happen in the ’60s? One of these boats got pulled down by a giant octopus.” Reginella adds, “The story just rolled off the top of my head” and the idea for a mock memorial was born.
The whole thing just took on a life of its own and became “a multimedia art project and social experience—not maliciously—about how gullible people are,” said Reginella, It was the right project for him because he creates artwork for stores and amusement parks.
Reginella says he loves to sit in Battery park when his monument is out, pretending to be fishing, just so he can eavesdrop on tourists when they see his monument. He loves it when he hears someone say, “How come nobody has ever heard of this?”
That’s when he will break into the conversation to offer an explanation saying the disaster took place on November 22, 1963, but the news was dominated by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
To read the full and detailed story of the tragic loss of lives in the sinking of the ferry, you can go to the Staten Island Ferry Disaster Memorial Museum website. There you will find copies of newspaper articles and pictures of artifacts found after the disaster.
The site also has a gift shop with some great looking T-shirts depicting the ferry being pulled under by the giant octopus. This writer can appreciate a really good hoax, especially when no one gets hurt. This is one of those to enjoy.
In case you’re wondering, there really was a ferry called the Cornelius G. Kolff, After ferrying passengers for 36 years, it was retired and became a stationary floating dormitory for Riker’s Island inmates.