The Barberi,Then and Now

Half the new seats are red and they clash with the other new yellow seats. A woman behind me exclaimed, "Ooh, they changed the seats. Yuk!" Her companion said, "Stupid, this is the Barberi." We were on the 8:45 a.m. ferry yesterday on the first day of the Andrew J. Barberi's return to regular rotation between Staten Island and Manhattan. On October 15, this ferry crashed into a concrete pier, killing 11 passengers and injuring scores of others. I walked around the bottom level of the repaired vessel hoping to overhear fragments of interesting comments about the ferryboat's return to service. But the conversations were mostly mundane and personal. As the newly repaired ferry traveled smoothly across the New York Bay, I tried to imagine what it must have been like on that afternoon last year when horror interrupted the trip home from Manhattan for the victims. I had interviewed a young man who was on the third level of the ferry as the concrete pier sliced through the Barberi and tore through his fellow riders. He still has nightmares recalling seeing a man cut in half by flying steel debris then watching another passenger decapitated. This young man held a dying man in his arms and yelled for help from crew members he says were nowhere to be seen. One finally showed up, ashen faced, with a useless first aid kit. That perhaps, is the biggest question on many minds. Where was the crew? They should have been in the front of the boat as it neared the St. George slips. Where were they? Last month, I received an e-mail from a former Staten Islander who was puzzled by the lack of action since the "accident." He wrote: "Since that wreck, I for the life of me cannot figure out why more has not been made of it. Simple questions: I know that people congregate at the front of the boat in order to be the first off. I know there are deck hands out front to keep people back and to open the gates when the boat docks. I know that the pilot roost is fairly close, like well within shouting distance from the second deck to the pilothouse. You can see the person whose [sic] steering. the boat. So the simple question is when the ferry was obviously NOT slowing down, when it was obvious to the deck hands (who I assume are not that stupid) could see that the ferry was going way yonder off course, why didn't anyone give a little 'Yoo-Hoo? Hello!!? Captain, where are you going?' Why did the deckhands NOT try to get people back in the boat? Has the Captain yet to utter a peep to authorities? Why didn't the passengers at least yell? I am puzzled." This reader who had left S.I. in 1988 may not have ridden on the newer boats like the Barberi, which has a shorter outer deck and the pilot roost is not visible to anyone who may have been standing outside, but he is correct about one thing: If the deck hands had been in front, they would have known that something was amiss. Changes in procedure have been enacted since that fateful day last October, but as I stood outside on the lowest level watching the Manhattan skyline get closer and closer, I didn't see a crewman there. I went up to an upper level and there were two ferry crewmen preparing the boat for disembarking. An announcement had been made earlier alerting the crew to man their stations. Perhaps the new rules do not require crew to man the lower level till the end. They should because if I wanted to take a flying leap off the boat, I could have. Actor and writer Spalding Gray was last seen on the Staten Island ferry and he apparently committed suicide in a fatal leap from the boat. His body was discovered in the East River in March. What has developed over the past months is a sense of mystery surrounding the inertia and lack of disciplinary action regarding the accident. Was this indeed an accident or was it a deliberate criminal act gone sickening awry? Assistant Captain Richard Smith claims he fell asleep at the helm, but tugboat captain Robert Seckers who was a witness to the crash testified he saw Mr. Smith sitting erect and peering through the wheelhouse window at the damage. Mr. Smith reportedly jumped from the boat, ran home and tried to commit suicide. He also was at the helm of the Barberi more than eight years ago, when it slammed into a pier in St. George. The cause of that one was mechanical. Human error caused death that day last October. It's up to the district attorney to make sure justice is served.