Boston Harbor

By Eric Wiberg

This book aims to be unusual; there is very little text, as the images are meant to be self-explanatory. Themes such as weather, geography, wind, snow, rain, fog and dark all become characters of sorts, as do the vessels themselves. Often the vessels being photographed are difficult to distinguish against the buildings and maritime clutter. That

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Books
• Release date: Mar 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9780999437858

Eric Wiberg

Eric Wiberg's career since he began sailing professionally in 1989 has been in the maritime sector, lately as a lecturer and author. He grew up in the Bahamas as part of a large Swedish-American family with half a dozen lawyers. After boarding schools in Massachusetts and Newport, RI, he enrolled at Boston College in 1989. He began racing and delivering sailboats on long voyages, including sailing from the Caribbean to Belgium to attend Harris Manchester College, Oxford for the BC Honors Program. He backpacked in Europe and East Africa and published travel writing in over 20 periodicals. By graduation in 1993 he had bound five collections of prose, poetry, and drawings, then set off on a voyage to New Zealand as mate of the 68-foot wooden sailing ketch, Stornoway, over which he was promoted Captain in the Galapagos at age 23. A year of travel was the basis of his 450-page memoir Round the World in the Wrong Season. On his return to the US a year later, Eric obtained a 100-ton Captain's license from the US Coast Guard then sought work in commercial shipping. He was assigned to the operations desk of a fleet of tanker and bulk ships operated for public company BHO (B&H Oceans). After three years in Singapore and numerous crisis-control situations (including two ship casualties and four deaths), he returned to Newport to work in the Armchair Sailor bookstore and on his round-the-world memoir. Necessity drove him to utilize the captain's license to deliver sailboats to and from New England and the Caribbean, on the back of which he founded Echo Yacht Deliveries in 1999. In 2001 he completed his fourth round-world trip before enrolling at Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, on half scholarship. Under the joint-degree masters/Juris Doctorate program with the University of Rhode Island, he was able to study marine policy and present papers on man overboard rescues, tanker spill legislation, and salvage law, culminating in a 200-page final paper. During school he started a real estate company buying and selling roughly a dozen small lots in the Bahamas. He recruited over 100 sailors for voyages then sold Echo Yacht Deliveries in 2005. Eric has performed more than 30 Bermuda voyages and several trans-ocean deliveries, roughly half as captain. On passing the bar in Massachusetts and marrying Alexandra Gray (they had son Felix in 2007), he was recruited by executive search legend Russell Reynolds to join what became RSR Partners in Greenwich, CT. In late 2007 he left RSR to found Ketch Recruiting, still focusing on the shipping sector. He sold Ketch in 2008 to join Boyden global executive search in Baltimore, then joined the Connecticut Maritime Association in Stamford. After a stint with Titan Salvage in 2009, he spent three months helping salvage an oil platform from the seafloor off Freeport, Bahamas, for Overseas Salvage. In early 2010 he joined TradeWinds, a Norwegian shipping publication until October, 2013. Since then he has been Marketing Manager at McAllister Towing & Transportation in Lower Manhattan for 70 tugs in a dozen ports from San Juan to Portland for a roster of over 1,400 ship owners. In his spare time he is a widely published author, historian and lecturer on non-fiction maritime and naval history as well as memoir and travel. He is on boards or committees of the Steamship Historical Society of America (board), the New York Yacht Club (library), and Lyford Cay International School (editorial) in Bahamas.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank the many persons who have provided me the training and support and comradery to enjoy the job on the water as much as I do and make it safer to boot. I thank Caitlin, Kent and Petra and family. As well as my employers, without whom most of these photographs could not have been taken. I specifically wish to thank all of my fellow captains; the women and men, who have taught me the ropes, borne my conversation, and often picked up the VHF to agree to let our little vessels pass. I also thank Ryan, Bill, Chris, Miss Ellie, Anita, Tim, Joyce, Two Brothers, Angela’s and Canton Eatery. Be well, Alex, and Felix, I hope that you are proud of Daddy. Finally, I thank every passenger I had the privilege to transport safely and I hope merrily, whether they were locals, commuters, colleagues, or visitors from faraway lands with harbors of their own.

FOREWORD 

Boston Harbor has an extraordinary story to tell. Its very size brought the colonists to its shores. Its location inspired the building of a city. Its limitations resulted in a 75% expansion of the city claiming some of that harbor. A lack of care and attention to its water quality dramatically affected the city; however subsequent care and attention brought a modern renaissance to its waterfront. Today Boston’s harbor front is barely recognizable from even 20 years ago.

In the mid 20th century Boston Harbor was one of the dirtiest harbors in the country. You needed a tetanus shot just to work there. 50 years of trash dumped on Spectacle Island burned for ten years. Floating sewage washed ashore on the harbor beaches. No one wanted anything to do with the