University of Virginia Library

HELL GATE.

About six miles from the renowned city ot
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, it 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, wo to any unlucky vessel that
ventures within its clutches.

This termagant humour 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
Mannahata 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 holyday 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 neighbourhood 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[1] whom I have
furnished with particulars thereof. Neither will
I say any thing 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 Frogs 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 any thing like an air of authenticity.