American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial - New York City, NY
N 40° 42.241 W 074° 01.057
18T E 582988 N 4506365
This American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial is located in Battery Park in New York City, New York, USA.
Waymark Code: WM658D
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 04/05/2009
Views: 28
From
The Battery Conservancy website:
American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial
Dedicated October 8, 1991
Description: Depicts merchant mariners in a sinking lifeboat; dedicated to merchant mariners lost at sea. Plaque on base.
Donor/Source: American Merchant Marine Memorial, Inc. c/o Joan Samsen Assoc.
Fabricator/Sculptor: Marisol Escobar
From the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation website:
Commissioned by the American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial, Inc., this memorial was conceived in 1976. In 1988, after an extensive competition, the artist Marisol Escobar (b. 1930), known as Marisol, was chosen to develop her design. Situated off-shore from the north end of Battery Park and just south of Pier A, the monument stands on a rebuilt stone breakwater in the harbor. The bronze figural group and boat are based on an actual historical event; during World War II, a Nazi U-boat attacked a merchant marine vessel, and while the marines clung to their sinking vessel, the Germans photographed their victims. Marisol developed a series of studio sketches from this photograph, then fashioned a clay maquette as her winning design proposal for the monument. The work was dedicated on October 8, 1991.
The American Merchant Mariners’ Memorial Inc., chaired by the president of the AFL-CIO, Lane Kirkland, sought to commemorate the thousands of merchant ships and crews pressed into military service since the Revolutionary War. In World War II alone it is estimated that 700 American merchant ships were lost, and 6,600 mariners gave their lives in this global conflict.
Marisol has captured an unsettling realism, drawn from the faded photograph, but also dependent on the ebb and flow of the harbor’s tides. One figure, struggling beside the boat, is submerged each tidal cycle, a technical motif that compounds the work’s emotional dynamic. Though specific in its imagery, the monument honors the thousands of merchant mariners who have died at sea in the course of our nation’s history.