At the Brooklyn Historical Society, I stumbled upon a rich wartime correspondence between Alfred Kolkin and Lucille Gewirtz Kolkin, who met while working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In 2008 I had the opportunity to accompany ninety-year-old Alfred Kolkin back to the Yard along with his daughters, Judy Kaplan and Marjorie Kolkin.
At the Brooklyn Navy Yard, I was embraced and encouraged by Andrew Kimball, Eliot Matz, Aileen Chumard, and the extraordinary Daniella Romano, a guardian angel of this project. We collaborated with the Brooklyn Historical Society on an oral history of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Under the expert tutelage of oral historian Sady Sullivan, I was able to assist in interviewing a number of our subjects: Ellen Bulzone, Don Condrill, Lucille Ford, Mary and Anne Hannigan, Pearl Hill, Sylvia Honigman, Alfred Kolkin, Helen Kuhner, Sidonia Levine, Audrey Lyon, Antoinette Mauro, Giovanna Mercogliano, Robert Morgenthau, Ida Pollack, Charles Rockoff, and Rubena Ross. I’ve incorporated details from some of their stories into Manhattan Beach. I also benefited from Andrew Gustafson’s Navy Yard tours (and subsequent help) through BLDG 92, the exhibition and visitor center of the Navy Yard, whose advisory board I had the honor to serve on. Bonnie Sauer at the National Archives gave me physical access to the collection “Photographs of the Construction and Repair of Buildings, Facilities and Vessels at the New York Navy Yard (1903–1945).”
My awareness of the link between ship repair and deep-sea diving began with an article by Robert Alan Hay, a civilian World War II diver at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Two more guardian angels, MSG MDV Stephen J. Heimbach and James P. Leville (Frenchy), Sergeant Major, retired, dressed me in a two-hundred-pound Mark V diving dress at a reunion of the United States Army Diver’s Association, where I was fortunate to be their guest in 2009. I’m obliged to World War II Army divers James D. Kennedy and Bill Watts for sharing their stories; some details of Mr. Kennedy’s remarkable history appear in this book. My several talks with the first female U.S. Army deep-sea diver, 1SG Andrea Motley Crabtree, U.S. Army retired, were essential to my understanding of the challenges of being a female diver. Gina Bardi, Diane Cooper, and Kirsten Kvam at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park gave me access to rare technical diving books and a trove of historical diving artifacts. Staten Island diver Edward Fanuzzi shared a few of his harbor secrets.
The wartime experiences of merchant mariners caught my attention via two narratives, Herman Rosen’s Gallant Ship, Brave Men and Harold J. McCormick (USNR)’s Two Years Behind the Mast: An American Landlubber at Sea in World War II, both of which inform Manhattan Beach directly. Repeated visits (and one short voyage) on the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, an operational Liberty ship and museum in San Francisco, introduced me to a group of World War II veteran mariners whose memories and knowledge were crucial to this effort: Radio Operator Angelo Demattei, Deck Officer James Rich, Engineering Officer Norm Schoenstein, and Naval Armed Guard S1c John Stokes. In New York, I relied heavily upon Joshua Smith, interim director of the American Merchant Marine Museum at Kings Point, for reading lists and fact-checking.
For additional waterfront knowledge, I’m indebted to Joseph Meany’s excellent monograph on New York Harbor during World War II. Richard Cox, director of the Harbor Defense Museum at Fort Hamilton, provided a tour. The McAllister family of McAllister Towing & Transportation, whose tugboats have plied New York’s waters since 1864, was immensely generous—Brian McAllister with his World War II–era memories, and Buckley McAllister with present-day knowledge and harbor excursions.
For small-boat expertise and fact-checking, as well as numerous reading leads, I’m beholden to John Lipscomb. For naval fact-checking, I am grateful to Vice Admiral Dick Gallagher, USN retired. Economic historians Charles Geisst and Richard Sylla did their utmost to help me understand banking in New York during wartime. David Favaloro of the Tenement Museum provided an excellent tour and much knowledge. Alex Busansky shared legal advice.
I’m lucky to have been writing about a period that exists in living memory, and I vastly appreciate the longtime New Yorkers who shared their personal histories with me. The painter Alfred Leslie, with his crystalline recall, granted me several meetings. Also illuminating were Roger Angell, Don and Jane Cecil, Shirley Feuerstein, Joseph Salvatore Perri, and Judith Schlosser. Marianne Brown at the Condé Nast Archive provided access to a wealth of periodicals from the war years.
A bibliography would be tranquilizing, but a few books were critical. Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster, by T. J. English, and On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York, by James T. Fisher, were both pivotal to my portrayal of Eddie Kerrigan’s waterfront. John R. Stillgoe’s Lifeboat is a deeply original meditation on small-boat survival. The Center for Fiction provided a reading list of early-twentieth-century fiction set in New York City.
A series of smart and resourceful people helped me with my research. Sara Martinovich worked with me while a student at DePauw University. Peter Carey at the Hunter College MFA program bestowed three Hertog Fellows upon me, beginning in 2005: Jeffrey Rotter, Jesse Barron, and Sean Hammer, all fiction writers in their own rights. Meredith Wisner, professional researcher extraordinaire, provided exhaustive period knowledge.
The Corporation of Yaddo granted me a vital last-minute residency.
I would be nowhere without my readers: Monica Adler, Ruth Danon, Genevieve Field, Lisa Fugard, David Herskovits, Don Lee, Melissa Maxwell, David Rosenstock, and Elizabeth Tippens. Their insights and queries made the book immeasurably better.
My agent, Amanda Urban, is a true partner. She and her team at ICM and at Curtis Brown—Daisy Meyrick, Amelia Atlas, Ron Bernstein, Felicity Blunt, and many others—are the best of the best. My editor, Nan Graham, put enormous passion and hard work into this manuscript.
Thanks to my mother and stepfather, Kay and Sandy Walker, for their love.
Thanks to my husband, David Herskovits (again and always), and to our sons, Manu and Raoul, for making my real life so much fun.
Finally, I’m grateful to my brother, Graham Kimpton, 1969–2016, who taught me the necessity of “gunpowder” in any work of art, and whose wisdom and love reverberate through me every day.