Battery Park is a 25-acre public park located at the southern tip of Manhattan Island in New York City. The Battery is named for the artillery battery that was stationed there, first by the Dutch and then by the British, in order to protect colonial settlements to the north. Along the waterfront, ferries depart from the reconstructed Castle Clinton for the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Castle Clinton was a circular sandstone fort built on a small artificial off-shore island prior to the War of 1812, although it never saw action in that or in any other [...]

With a steel hull as long as a football field, and masts as tall as an 18-story building, Peking is one of the largest sailing vessels ever built. The four-masted barque Peking represents the final stage in the development of merchant vessels powered only by wind. Launched in Hamburg, Germany in 1911, she carried manufactured goods to the South American Pacific Coast and returned via Cape Horn with nitrate. In 1932, she was retired and served in England for over 40 years as a boys’ school. In 1975, Peking was acquired by the South Street Seaport Museum in lower Manhattan. Visitors can go below deck to tour restored living quarters and view an exhibition of vintage photos of the ship taken during her active [...]

The Ambrose lightship was built in 1908 to guide ships safely into the broad mouth of lower New York Bay through an area filled with sand bars and shoals invisible to approaching vessels. A lighthouse is normally used for this purpose, but the water here was too deep, and the bottom too soft, so this floating alternative was used. The Ambrose was given to the South Street Seaport Museum in lower Manhattan by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1968. There, visitors can board the Ambrose to view an exhibition of photographs, charts, and artifacts on navigation and the general role of [...]