(found among the papers of the late diedrich knickerbocker)
now i remember those old women’s words
who in my youth would tell me winter’s tales;
and speak of spirits and ghosts that glide by night
about the place where treasure had been hid.
—marlow’s jew of malta.
hell gate
about six miles from the renowned city of the manhattoes, and in that sound, or arm of the sea, which passes between the main land and nassau or long island, there is a narrow strait, where the current is violently compressed between shouldering promontories, and horribly irritated and perplexed by rocks and shoals. being at the best of times a very violent, hasty current, its takes these impediments in mighty dudgeon; boiling in whirlpools; brawling and fretting in ripples and breakers; and, in short, indulging in all kinds of wrong-headed paroxysms. at such times, woe to any unlucky vessel that ventures within its clutches.
this termagant humor is said to prevail only at half tides. at low water it is as pacific as any other stream. as the tide rises, it begins to fret; at half tide it rages and roars as if bellowing for more water; but when the tide is full it relapses again into quiet, and for a time seems almost to sleep as soundly as an alderman after dinner. it may be compared to an inveterate hard drinker, who is a peaceable fellow enough when he has no liquor at all, or when he has a skin full, but when half seas over plays the very devil.
this mighty, blustering, bullying little strait was a place of great difficulty and danger to the dutch navigators of ancient days; hectoring their tub-built barks in a most unruly style; whirling them about, in a manner to make any but a dutchman giddy, and not unfrequently stranding them upon rocks and reefs. whereupon out of sheer spleen they denominated it hellegat (literally hell gut) and solemnly gave it over to the devil. this appellation has since been aptly rendered into english by the name of hell gate; and into nonsense by the name of hurl gate, according to certain foreign intruders who neither understood dutch nor english. may st. nicholas confound them!
from this strait to the city of the manhattoes the borders of the sound are greatly diversified; in one part, on the eastern shore of the island of manhata and opposite blackwell’s island, being very much broken and indented by rocky nooks, overhung with trees which give them a wild and romantic look.
the flux and reflux of the tide through this part of the sound is extremely rapid, and the navigation troublesome, by reason of the whirling eddies and counter currents. i speak this from experience, having been much of a navigator of these small seas in my boyhood, and having more than once run the risk of shipwreck and drowning in the course of divers holiday voyages, to which in common with the dutch urchins i was rather prone.
in the midst of this perilous strait, and hard by a group of rocks called “the hen and chickens,” there lay in my boyish days the wreck of a vessel which had been entangled in the whirlpools and stranded during a storm. there was some wild story about this being the wreck of a pirate, and of some bloody murder, connected with it, which i cannot now recollect. indeed, the desolate look of this forlorn hulk, and the fearful place where it lay rotting, were sufficient to awaken strange notions concerning it. a row of timber heads, blackened by time, peered above the surface at high water; but at low tide a considerable part of the hull was bare, and its great ribs or timbers, partly stripped of their planks, looked like the skeleton of some sea monster. there was also the stump of a mast, with a few ropes and blocks swinging about and whistling in the wind, while the sea gull wheeled and screamed around this melancholy carcass.
the stories connected with this wreck made it an object of great awe to my boyish fancy; but in truth the whole neighborhood was full of fable and romance for me, abounding with traditions about pirates, hobgoblins, and buried money. as i grew to more mature years i made many researches after the truth of these strange traditions; for i have always been a curious investigator of the valuable, but obscure branches of the history of my native province. i found infinite difficulty, however, in arriving at any precise information. in seeking to dig up one fact it is incredible the number of fables which i unearthed; for the whole course of the sound seemed in my younger days to be like the straits of pylorus of yore, the very region of fiction. i will say nothing of the devil’s stepping stones, by which that arch fiend made his retreat from connecticut to long island, seeing that the subject is likely to be learnedly treated by a worthy friend and contemporary historian[2] whom i have furnished with particulars thereof. neither will i say anything of the black man in a three-cornered hat, seated in the stern of a jolly boat who used to be seen about hell gate in stormy weather; and who went by the name of the pirate’s spuke, or pirate’s ghost, because i never could meet with any person of stanch credibility who professed to have seen this spectrum; unless it were the widow of manus conklin, the blacksmith of frog’s neck, but then, poor woman, she was a little purblind, and might have been mistaken; though they said she saw farther than other folks in the dark. all this, however, was but little satisfactory in regard to the tales of buried money about which i was most curious; and the following was all that i could for a long time collect that had anything like an air of authenticity.
[2] for a very interesting account of the devil and his stepping stones, see the learned memoir read before the new york historical society since the death of mr. knickerbocker, by his friend, an eminent jurist of the place.
