August 25, 2025 • 39 mins
Bradley Jay Fills in on NightSide
What is a harbor pilot? A harbor pilot is a mariner responsible for the navigation and maneuvering of vessels, particularly in congested or challenging waters such as harbors, rivers, and canals. When a big container ship, cruise ship, or tanker comes into Boston Harbor, the law says that a licensed Boston Harbor pilot must guide the ship through the harbor. Somebody must get that pilot to the ship so they can bring it in or go pick the pilot up after they have gotten the ship out of the harbor. That's where the Boston Pilot boat captains come in. They deliver and retrieve the pilots. Captain Shawn Kelly of Boston Pilots joined Bradley to share the details of their high-risk life on the harbor.
What is a harbor pilot? A harbor pilot is a mariner responsible for the navigation and maneuvering of vessels, particularly in congested or challenging waters such as harbors, rivers, and canals. When a big container ship, cruise ship, or tanker comes into Boston Harbor, the law says that a licensed Boston Harbor pilot must guide the ship through the harbor. Somebody must get that pilot to the ship so they can bring it in or go pick the pilot up after they have gotten the ship out of the harbor. That's where the Boston Pilot boat captains come in. They deliver and retrieve the pilots. Captain Shawn Kelly of Boston Pilots joined Bradley to share the details of their high-risk life on the harbor.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on WBC Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Thanks for being with me, Bradley Jay and for Dan tonight,
and thanks to Bill Chanowitz for spending two hours talking
about the wonderful Boston Banned the Cars and his wonderful
book called The Cars.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Let the Stories be told. Now, this is it's sort
of a.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Magazine style segment, if you will, and it's about a
real Boston seafaring kind of job that one can do.
And I'll tell you a little story. A long time ago,
I was on the air overnight and I got a
call from some folks on a boat and they explained
(00:40):
that they were Boston Harbor pilots, and that was very
interesting to me, and I came to know them and
actually go out with them and watch them do their
job more than once.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
They're cool, and I.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Thought I need to share both this interesting job, this
interesting occupation, and these cool guys interesting personality. And so
that's what we're doing tonight. And is I understand it there?
Maybe you can even hear. I believe they're out on
the harbor right now, Is that you sean?
Speaker 4 (01:12):
We're here, We're getting ready to board a container ship.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Okay, so let me paint the picture briefly and then
we'll get into it. When a big ship comes into
the harbor, they need to have a licensed pilot pilot
it into the harbor so it doesn't crash into anything.
And then these licensed pilots have to get out to
the ship outside the harbor. And Sean, one of the
(01:37):
people I'm talking to now, is one of the people
who drive these special boats and take these uh.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
These pilots out to the big, big ship.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
And it through a very dangerous and difficult maneuver that
they they meet up with the ship while it's moving,
and while the ship is moving, while both both vehicles,
both boats chip and boat vessels are moving, the pilot
has to climb up a swinging rope ladder sometimes in
the night like now and like I don't know, twenty
(02:07):
feet and both the ship and the boat of moving
and the weather the wind could be blown super dangerous
and it's a very interesting lifestyle. And you can hear
they're on the water right now doing it. So Sean,
tell me what you're about to do right now.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
Uh, Well, Joe is driving right now, so he can't
talk on the phone.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Okay, Joe is.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Your partner, Captain Joe. This is Captain Sean and Captain Joe.
So Joe's driving when you're talking. So what's Joe gonna
do now?
Speaker 4 (02:36):
He's already talked to the ship and told him what
side to put the ladder on, and that's determined by
the wind and the waves. And just to get out
there is the issue. Once we're alongside the ship, it
calms down a little bit enough so we can come alongside,
bang into the side of it, hold it there. The
(02:58):
pilot walks outside and goes up the ladder. We pull away,
and we give the ship its final course and speed
until the pilot gets up to the bridge and then
takes over from there.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
That's kind of the simple version.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Now let me ask you a little bit about the
ships that the pilots bring in.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
What kind of ships are they? How big are they?
What are they carrying?
Speaker 4 (03:22):
This container ship is carrying anything from your new TV
that you're getting, this Christmas furniture, paint, liquor. It's the
various things you have in your house.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Right, So you also do car ships and cruise ships, and.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Did you do fuel ships as well?
Speaker 4 (03:51):
We do tankers. Most of our fuel comes from Canada
a company called Irving up in Canada. They're big into
the shipping and r street, but it's mostly fuel that
we get. The fuel for Logan Airport, all the jets, yeah,
comes from the Yarving ships up in Canada. We also
do LNG tankers that tie up in every you're pro
(04:15):
liquid propane gas tankers.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
About how long before Captain Joe is going to be
putting that pilot up on.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
The ship, Probably in about the next five minutes?
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Okay? Good, So so when we.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
Get one of the one of the pilots are gearing
up now.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Okay, and when you start to actually do the maneuver,
why don't you do the play by play just like
it was a baseball game or a football game, and
say exactly what's going on, like how fast Joe is going,
how fast the big ship is going, the tricks to
doing it right, and then let me know when the
the the harbor pilot's climbing up the rope, how high
(04:55):
is the ladder that he has to climb up while.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
The ships are moving?
Speaker 4 (05:02):
What would you say your climb is this? This climb
is about twenty feet twenty.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Feet on a rope ladder swinging in the breeze.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
What's the weather now? How are the seas?
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Uh, we're still getting the remnants from erin Uh. The
way the tide is more so when the tide's going out,
the swells get bigger and because they're fighting, uh, the
oncoming swells, and they stand up kind of straight up
and down. Okay. The wind right now is just light
and variable. It's a typical summer night.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Okay, what's your what's your twenty? Right now? Where exactly
are you?
Speaker 4 (05:42):
We're about three miles east of Deer Island, off Gray's
Light and the Hunt. We're right in between the two.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
And what kind of ship is it that the pilot's
going to go up?
Speaker 4 (05:52):
And the name of the ship is the ever Ford
and it's a container ship going into South Boston.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Okay, and yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
We just had the Harbor dredged a couple of years ago.
And they're basically small aircraft carriers the size of small
aircraft carriers that are coming in now. And they're a
lot deeper, which means they're carrying more cargo.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
So after that, the pilot goes up, climbs up the ladder.
What does he actually do? He says, I'm here, let
me take over. And what does he do?
Speaker 4 (06:25):
He tells the helse He greets the captain, finds out
if there's any issues with the ship, he'll tell the helmsman,
come to this course, come to this speed, and he'll
take it to the first buoy called the BG buoy,
and from there navigate all the way into the Inner Harbor.
(06:46):
Once he gets past Deer Island light, the tugboats swarm
in on him and another guy climbs up the ladder
and he controls the tugboats. He's the docking pilot. He
tells him when the push, when the pull, and they
have to spin it around in the middle of the harbor,
back it up into South Boston.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Okay, when you're.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Putting the pilot on the ship, about how fast are
both vessels going.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
They're both moving.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
We're doing about ten knots, which is in miles per hour,
about twelve miles per hour.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Explain why they have to be moving.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
In order for us to maintain contact with the ship.
We need water passing by our rudders.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Otherwise you couldn't control. Neither vessel could control.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
It's the weather permitting. We could put a pilot aboard
a ship that's drifting, We'd rather do it when it's moving.
How big is it's?
Speaker 3 (07:48):
How big is your boat? Are you run?
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Ours are fifty three feet thirteen feet about fifty three
feet long thirteen feet wide, and they're made down in Somerset, Massachusetts,
at a company called Gladding Herne. And if you own
a if you own a glading boat, there's no one
popper on the line than a glading boat.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
You're gonna let me know when the pilot's going to
go up, because you're going to do that play by play.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
But Joe's making his attack run right now. He's speeding
up to the ladder. We have lights on the boat
that make the side of the ship look like it's daytime,
and then he'll slow down. If it's rough out, we
tell the pilots don't go out that door yet. And
(08:37):
because they want to get off this boat and get
on the bigger one as fast as they can, right they.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Want to spend a minimum time out on the deck
of the fifty.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
Especially when you know the weather is here. As of
right now, the pilot ladder is about three feet short,
so Dirk is waiting for any type of a lift
from the boat to be able to climb up, So
you need to.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Get He can't even get in the ladder until you
get a swell, which is a very temporary thing.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
He's on. He had to put his knee on the
bottom rung because it's the ladder's short, and so he's
already up. We get away from the ship far enough
where if he falls, he falls in the water and
not on the deck of the boat. But we maintain
(09:31):
a position where we can see him go into the
ship or on deck of the ship, and then we
pull away the rest of the way.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Have you once in a while something must go, You know,
does does a pilot ever fall in the water?
Speaker 3 (09:44):
They must have.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
We haven't had one yet. We have lost the pilot
in the saltok at Chelsea, but we think that was
a medical thing. But we haven't lost the pilot yet
in other harbors. In New York about six seven years ago,
lost a couple of pilots like six months apart that
(10:11):
ended up in the water.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Okay, so you have another pilot on board there right
that I can we can talk to about the requirements
of what it takes to become a hiberd pilot and
the testing and staff.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
We we will he was late. He was late getting
away from the dock, and he's on a yacht that's
coming out right now. We will see him in about
twenty minutes.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
All right.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I don't know if we will have that kind of time,
but you can give me. After that, we're going to
take a break. But you can talk a little bit
about the training, probably at least why what they have
to learn. You may not know the exact testing procedure,
but you can tell us a lot and we'll learn
more about the lifestyle that you have.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
It's a weird lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
It's so weird that it's hard to get people to
do the job that these folks do. They've gone through
many people who have tried out and they just didn't
work out for one reason or another. It's a hard job,
both skill wise but also stamina wise. The schedule these
guys keep it's pretty incredible. And they're also involved with
(11:15):
the tall Ships, which is coming up, and we'll tell
you a little about a little bit about that coming
up on WBZ.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ Boston's News Radio.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Coming up late, coming up later.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
I'm gonna go through a lot of Uh, there are
a lot of weird Massachusetts and other state laws that
I'm gonna share with you. But also I have made
up some fake weird laws and I'm gonna read them
all to you and see if you can decide which
ones are real and which ones are fake.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
And you can also do the same back to me,
make one.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Up or read a real one and see if I
can determine which you're real and which you're fake. But
I don't want to hold up any long because we're
live out on Boston Harbor over there, I guess right
now we're speaking with Sean Kelly, Captain Sean Kelly of
the Boston Pilots.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
If you just joined us.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
What they do is take license Boston Pilot, Boston Harbor
Pilots out two ships and then they go and pick
it up, pick them up after they've successfully navigated out
of the harbor. It's a very exciting and dangerous job.
And they've just dropped off a pilot and I wanted
to go back to After you drop off the pilot,
(12:18):
you have to pull away in a special way.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
You don't want to bang the back of your boat
on the ship, so you can't.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
You can't turn too sharply, right, You need to kind
of back off slowly, and you want to keep the
pilot in sight in casey.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
Falls or anything, and Billy safely on the deck or
inside the ship. And there's there's just the captain up.
There's another person sleeping down below, and there's an alarm
that wake him up, and you know, in case something
does happen, okay, and it's not. It's not only with
(12:51):
the ship, but we're out here a lot, and we're
if something happens out here, we're here already. So it's
we do assist the boat in public quite often.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Right, And we'll get to one instant of that as well.
So it's pretty interesting. In order to be really good
at your job, you want to keep the banging around
to a minimum because your partner, you're a co captain
generally or a lot of times, is trying to sleep
down below, and if you're banging into the boat, you
wake that captain up, and that captain is irritated.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Yeah, when we came on, we still had the remnants
of aaron and uh, there was there was one trip
where I was a human bobblehead down trying to sleep
and you know, you just have to endure. You miss
out on that, you don't you don't get to, like
sleep an extra couple hours. You've got to watch that
(13:45):
you gotta do. And the other person wants to go
to bed. And the weather is what the weather is,
and right, so.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Speaking of speaking of weather, all right, speaking of weather,
trying to described to me in detail what it's like
on a heavy season night, how how high up and
down is your boat going up and down the side
of that ship. It's fifteen to twenty feet.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
There are times where we'll get to the ladder and
we're going up and down twelve feet, but we're there.
So the more the ship turns, the less we're going
up and down. The pilot is ready to go, because
that window is sometimes less than a minute before the
(14:32):
ship starts rolling to its left and to its right
and we'll come down on top of us. So he's
got to be Johnny on the spot and we'll yell
over the PA system.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Now and he's got to go right then, wow.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Yeah, or you know, you got to turn around and
start the process all over again. And they don't want
to do it. They don't want to be standing out
in the weather and they're ready to go, And so.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
What are the dangers.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
What are the various dangers to the pilot, And then
what are the various dangers to you and your boat
and how it can happen.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
But the ship rolling on top of us, hitting the
top of the cabin itself. Sometimes after northeaster we'll get
a west wind, but it's still have an easterly sea.
And if the pilot doesn't get up that ladder, if
we're going up and down four feet, I mean, you
(15:31):
got to move, you gotta get going. And we've had
a pilot get picked up by his butt and moved
up six rungs on the ladder and then he was
already on it. We just came up and picked him
up again, and he got on deck and called on
the radio and said, well that was different.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
So now danger to the boat is I understand it.
If you get in the wrong spot when the big
ship is turning, the big ship makes a trough in
the water.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
It's actually a hill.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
And if the ship is turning and you're in the
wrong place at the wrong time, your boat goes whipping
down the hill and slams into the boat.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I mean the ship if the pilot.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Will give the captain instructions before he leaves the bridge.
I want you to turn so many degrees. Now when
I'm down on deck, turn so many degrees, and then
when I'm on the ladder, turn so many degrees. And
that way. When they turn sideways quick, they dig a
hole in the water, and we fall into that hole
(16:37):
on a normal night, on normal cruise, and you can
feel the weight of this boat just walking around. When
you fall into that hole, it feels like you're in
mid air and there's not a thing you can do
about it but hit sideways and hope the tires take
the abuse right and it happens fast.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Tell me about the boats especially constructed. For one thing,
they have separate hot water systems on the railing and
as far as cooling, so if one of them breaks,
the other one doesn't break.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Two right, there's one engine controls the handrail heats so
they don't freeze. The other engine controls the deck heat.
So if there's separate water systems, so if we break
a handrail on the side of a ship, or we
puncture a hole through a handrail on the ship, sometimes
(17:31):
we'll go up higher than the deck and come down.
If we punch a hole in that system, we won't
lose the water for the engine to run. So it's
two separate water systems for each engine, once for cooling
and once for heating of the deck and the handrails,
and so.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
The handrails are hollow. Basically, they're pipes with hot water
running through them.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Correct when they're on, it's no problem to grab them.
When the gloves it's very tough to grab them with
your bare hands. And we have them set on the
minimum temperature that we need. But in the beginning of winter,
you have to warn the pilot I have the hand
(18:15):
rail heat on, because they'll grab it and they'll mouth
the word out and then they'll look at you. They
look at their hands. You'll have to over the rise
or if we have a guess and we'll say they
tell them the hand rail heats on, so they're not surprised,
and yeah, it's it gets warm.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
If you just joined us, folks, you can hear that
our Boston pilots are out on the Boston Harbor doing
what they do is delivering and picking up Boston Harbord
pilots that have either have either navigated out or are
about to navigate in.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
It's really tough to find people who do what you do.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
You've gone through like forty applicants and burned through them
and nobody.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
They can't do it or they don't want to do it.
Tell me about what's so difficult about the job.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Yeah, right now we're taking a pilot off a yacht
that's headed the main I think to go watch leaves. Yeah,
when people leave to move on, it's either you know,
they can't take the weather anymore, their body won't take
it for whatever reason, and they move on. It's people
(19:27):
think it's it's summertime out here all the time and
it's not. And every inkling in your body tells you
to run away from something as big as a container
ship or a loaded tanker. No, we got to go
get it.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Plus, if you're a family person, it's difficult because your
schedule is so crazy.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
You're out there big long hours and weird hours and
overnight and sometimes work out with the family.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
We work five days on and five days off. We
stand watches every eight hours, so yeah, it's it can
be tough. One of our captains is a full time
lobster in a Gloucester Another one runs a charter Hampshire.
Joe and I really don't have secondary jobs. But yeah,
(20:17):
we've got guys who really wanted the job and came
out and performed and everything else, went home and said,
this is it, this is going to work out. Great. No,
you're not going away from home for five days, so
you better call him and tell him you won't be
able to do it.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
The wife or the spouse, whatever might say. A family,
we priorities.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
Yeah, okay, five days. There's a long time, all right.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
So there are some good aspects to your job.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
And I want to do three things when we do
a final segment with you, and maybe talk to the
pilot you just picked up, to find out about the
licensing and what it's like to be the pilot, the
guy that actually drives the big ship, pilots the biggest
ship into the into the.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Harbor, and I want right next to me. Well, let's
do it now, because you never know.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah, So who do we have? Who am I speaking?
Speaker 4 (21:09):
I will give him, I will give him the phone.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
So again, we're live on Boston Harvard, not far from
Deer Island. Hello, Hello, Boston Pilot, are you there?
Speaker 5 (21:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Good, evening, Bradley, how are you?
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Who's this?
Speaker 4 (21:23):
My name is Richard?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Okay, So first of all, tell me say you're up
there piloting the uh, the big ship through the harbor.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
What are you looking out for? What are the risks?
What do you not want to run into?
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Well, there's a lot of small boats around Boston. When
it comes to running into something, that's one risk. But
we will always want to keep the ship afloat, of course,
and stay off to keep the keep the ship in
the channel.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
What about the geography underneath?
Speaker 5 (21:53):
But we we with the bigger ships, we sometimes just
have five feet underneath us. You couldn't stand underneath the
ship and have your feet on the bottom of that
closed to the bottom on the way in.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
What are some of the main features.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
We won't know what they are, but they probably have
cool names like watch out for the Devil's.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Or whatever.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
Sure, yeah, and Devil's back and yeah, there's there's a
few of them around three and a half fathom.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
What kind of training do you'll throw back names?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
What kind of training do you need and what's the
test like to become a Boston Harbor ship?
Speaker 5 (22:34):
Well, the training mostly us from experience. I went to
See for nineteen years before I became a pilot, and
I've been here now for twenty seven years and sixty
two more days ago, though, Bradley, and you know, five
thousand ships, probably I'm guessing in my career here filing
in and out, so a lot of it's experienced, but
(22:58):
the training came from going to See and then then
working as an apprentice for a year and then a
limited pilot for a year after that.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Did you ever have a piot?
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Did you ever ever have a close called climbing up
that ladder or climbing down?
Speaker 5 (23:14):
I'm not sure. I don't think so, not that I
can recall. But the funny thing is, yes, I'm getting
near the end of my career doing about five thousand ships.
I bet off the top of my head, I can
only think of like twenty five to fifty. If I
was to tell stories, you know, less than one percent
of the ships I'm on that I can even remember,
(23:37):
because you know, I may remember some of the unique
ones or or or or or something that happened around
the ship for some reason that might jog my memory.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
But most of these jobs are just.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
You bring a ship in and and and together. Probably
just like an airline pilot doesn't remember most of the flights,
you know.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
But two more good questions, two more good questions. When
it's winter, does the ladder all iced over and make
it dangerous?
Speaker 5 (24:02):
Yeah, winter's a tough. Winter's a tough. The latters can
get icy, the seas are definitely rougher. And yeah, the
winters are tough here the summers. It's such a pleasure
working here. And this was a beautiful night tonight. I
had a nice, big private yacht out today and tonight,
and I'll have a big passenger ship in around five
(24:24):
o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I guess what a life out there on the harbor.
That actually was my last question for you because I
have to break now. But thank you so.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Much, and we'll turn on my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
We'll do another segment with Sean to find out the
pros and cause of the job, and how about their
involvement with the upcoming tall ships I believe in twenty
twenty six coming up on WBZ.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Thanks You're on Night Side with Dan Ray ONWBSY, Boston's
news radio.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
This is particularly exciting because our guests are live now
out on the Boston Harbor doing their job, a dangerous
and exciting job, their Boston heart pilots delivering harbor pilots,
which are mandatory to get in and out of the
harbor on a big ship, the big tankers, et cetera.
And it's a crazy life, and it's a very Boston
(25:13):
kind of life. So where with Sean, Captain Sean h
one half of the Captain Joan and Captain Sean duo.
And I'm curious about the good parts of the job.
We talked about the dangers.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
You love it.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
You guys are out there and you continue to do it,
and I don't really think you do anything else.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
What are the upsides of this job?
Speaker 4 (25:36):
No, two days are the same. We can move two
ships one day and the next day we're moving thirteen.
You know, it's not eight of five. We're twenty four
hours a day, holidays, everything we're moving. We don't work
(25:57):
under fluorescent sun, the sunrises and sunsets, the sea life
that we see out here that people just don't get
the sea because we're out so often. And then, I mean,
there is a certain sort of maritimes I guess you
(26:22):
could call beauty even in a storm when you beat
your brains out for an hour and a half to
try and get out to a ship. You finally get
the pilot aboard. Your blood flow is back to your knuckles,
and you look at the short line of Winthrop and
you look at the short line a hall and people
are eating dinner watching TV have no idea what just
(26:44):
went on right out their back window.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
It's an adventure.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
There's one angle we didn't really cover as far as
the physical punishment, and that is whether I don't know
whether it's the style of your boat or the shape
of the waves, but a lot of times, and you
mentioned this.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
When I when I did a ride along with you,
a lot.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Of the waves have no back to them, so you
don't you roll up, and you don't roll down though
you're the boat just drops like like they get through
an elevator shaft and slams down onto the sea on
the back side of the wave right.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Well, and you approach. You don't want to launch the
boat the wave, but you don't want it to push
you around. So there's a happy medium, and everyone will
grab When you see white water at night and you're
looking up, that's the top of the wave. So you
(27:38):
can't let it push you around. But then again, you
don't want to launch the boat any further than you
have to, and there's a sudden weightlessness to the boat again,
and when it comes down, everybody that isn't literally nothing
bolted down, is going forward. And if you're standing and
(27:59):
you do hours of this, it's not the next day,
but the day after your legs are sore, your shoulders
are sore. There's nothing soft on these boats except the seats,
so you're banging around and it. You know, sometimes you
don't sleep even when you're off watch. You're laying on
the back bench because it's too rough to sleep, and
(28:21):
you're out here for hours. Sometimes in between jobs, you
got to be hide in the town and the hunt
a lot or an island high until the next ship arises,
because it's not worth us going all the way back
to East Boston to turn around and go punish ourselves
again for an hour and a half.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
So you are out there so much.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Do you have opportunities to help many boaters and people
in distress. There's a particular story where there was a
capsized vessel. These people were in the water and you
were the closest ones and you raced to them and
they might have another couple of minutes, but if you
hadn't been there, they probably would not be here.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
So can you share that, Widdy.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
It was the tugboat Emily Ann. It was coming down
from the Salem area and I was going home that morning.
Joe was going to be on for another couple of days,
but my appointment wasn't until ten o'clock. So he told him,
I said, don't kill yourself getting back to the dog.
I'm not leaving right away. And he was in the anchorage,
just inside of Winterrop, making a cup of coffee when
(29:27):
the may day came in and all of a sudden
we were on our way. I'm down below sleeping and
the boat is running wide open, and he called on
the intercom phone and said, the Emily ants taking on
water at the top of the North Channel. And I said,
why do I know that name? And he says, oh,
it's it's Dougy's boat. He was a friend of ours,
(29:49):
and we were there. It was the sun wasn't up,
but it was light, and he told us before he
went in the water, you know, come at me from
the hunt because of all the debris in the water.
And we still had a six to eight foot swell
running from a northeaster and it was him and two kids.
(30:10):
They were like eighteen and nineteen years old. Yeah, the
water temperature was thirty nine, the air temperature was about
ten and Dougie and one of the crew were just
floating in their float coats. Another kid made it to
a life raft and doug said, get them first. He
(30:31):
was the captain right up until the end. And when
we finally got doug he didn't have the grip to
grab the rungs on the side of the on the
back of the boat to pull himself up, and he
was and the kids were eyes as big as saucers
and everything. And one of the kids he looked at
(30:52):
him and said, tell me you got me my You
grabbed my favorite coffee cup and the it's snapped right
out of it. He goes, No, I didn't, he goes,
I asked you to do one thing before we went
in the water, was to grab my cup. And the
kid was back. Doug was the captain all the way
back in.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
That's a great story. And finally you know there's more.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
Okay, go ahead, Yeah, it's if we weren't where we
were with that temperature and everything, and we were there
within minutes. We were there within minutes, and well we'll
leave it at that. Other people were coming out to help,
but we were already back in the inner harbor when
(31:40):
that happened.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
It's one thing your involvement with the UH tall ships.
Tell me about that. What do you do with when
the tall ships coming? When are they coming.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
June Bridge? When are the tall ships? It's sometimes like
in the middle of June, and next year they'll anchor
out here like a week before. And one of our pilots,
it's like the parade marshall and we'll he tells us
(32:16):
which ones the pot board first, and it takes over
an hour for the pollshit to come in parade around
tie up, and then we got to get those pilots.
We only have nine pilots, so we got to get
them back out as fast as we can. But there's
thousands of votes in the harbor. We can't go cruising through,
(32:40):
so we have to meet like a smaller like police
boat that doesn't leave a wake when it's running wide open.
You know, we'll we'll we'll do damage if we try
and get back in the harbor as fast as we can.
And so it's we're out here for a while, and
then on our way in we'll pay up other pilots
(33:00):
and bring them back to where Doc and Uh. We
resumed shipping later that day. That evening we'll go back
to moving kid taking their ships and tankards and things
like that. But for the morning the harbor shut down.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
I really appreciate you taking your time while you're doing
a job live out on the harbor to share what
you do your adventure with us. And I have to
tell you personally and Joe personally, you are great friends.
And the pilots that I've come to know such nice,
cool people in the management, your whole organization is just
the best.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
And I'm happy and proud to know you guys.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
You always got a seat on the boat. Bradley, thank
you very much. Thank Joe, say hey, take care of Joe.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
And take care, take care to you. Sean, Thank you
so so much.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Bye bye, good night man, good night.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Hey. It worked. It was so cool.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
And that's a real job. Can you imagine it? They
love it. You know that brings us to jobs. What
I'm gonna do, and I tell you what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
It's important that you know me because I don't know
we It's a better relationship between you who's out there
and me if you know a little bit more about me.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
You don't know anything. You don't know if I'm a
city slicker or a country boy, you don't know.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
You don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
If I was a spoiled breath. You have no idea.
So I'm going to go a little bit into it.
Since we talked about jobs, when we continue here, before
the top of the hour, I'm going to give you
tell you a little bit about my early days, so
you get to know me. You know Dan a lot.
You know all about Dan. You don't really know me,
and we just talked about jobs. I know once I
(34:48):
got on the radio, of course, be working on the radio.
It's a great job. But man, I have had some
nasty jobs that I will share with you, and I
think you go you're going to relate to them. I'm
not gonna go ahead, and I mean, you can certainly
share your awful job. But when we get to ten
eleven o'clock, I'm going to have a new topic, and
(35:09):
let me tell you what that is. There are a
lot of weird laws still on the books in Massachusetts.
And other states. I'm going to read through some of those,
and I'm also going to insert some fake ones. I'm
going to read them all and insert the fake ones,
and I want you to call and try to guess
which ones are fake. Take a stab at it, and
(35:30):
you can use Google again too. Also, why don't you
make a couple up and when you call in, you
tell me the law and you can give me a
real one or you can give me a made up
one and see if you can stump the host, see
if I can figure out which is that, if it's
real or made up, and we'll mess around with that
(35:53):
for a while and have some fun. But that's a
good way for me to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Tonight. We had an intensive interview with Bill Janowitz about Jenevitz,
about the cards, cars, and we talked to some of you.
In the last interview, there was no real room for
callers because it was hard and fast and it was
a difficult situation. But now I'm going to be relaxing
and inviting you folks to be part of the show again.
(36:17):
And by the way, haven't heard from Glenn. I'm surprised,
Glenn from Brighton. I hope you're Okay, Glenn, don't make
me worry. It's WBZ News Radio ten thirty.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Bradley for Dan.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
On Night's Side, we had a great talk with Bill Janovitz,
author of The Car's Book. And if you like musical topics,
maybe before the end of the week we might have
Divo on or Mark maybe Mark.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
From Devo and Divo is a really important Ben.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
And the reason that's kind of relevant now is there's
a brand new, really good documentary on Devo. They weren't
just a goofy band. There's a lot more about mind
it than that. It may not work out. It may
work out as a matter of scheduling. If it works out, cool,
if it doesn't, cool either way. But that might be
interesting as well.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
So I want you to know me a little bit.
I know you.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
I want you to know me. But look, we have
look maybe we'll get to that later. Is Florence in Groveland, Hey,
Florence in the Machine?
Speaker 3 (37:23):
How are you?
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Are you?
Speaker 6 (37:25):
Very good? In you Bradley, great Bradley. I have to
tell you, first of all, I don't know you. I
had never heard of you until I heard you were
going to fill in for them, and I wanted to
because I am a lover of ships, and especially the
(37:49):
tall ships, the mass ships, and I wanted to thank
you and commend you for this segment that you just did.
I listened hanging hanging right in there, listening to every
word that they were talking about. I found it very interesting.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Well, thank you. You know.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I have a video that I did, very very extensive
video that I did showing what they do. If anybody,
I'm not going to post it and I'm not going
to give the link, but if anybody can figure out
how to get in touch with me, I will send
it to them personally. By the way to contact me,
it's BRADLEYJ dot org. BRADLEYJ dot org. That gets me
(38:34):
to all that gives you to all my social media.
Speaker 6 (38:37):
Yes, I wanted to tell you I've had a lot
of ships for number of years, many years, and I
didn't know where the fair and ahment came from. And
then I found out a few years ago.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
Hey, good about ten seconds? Can you tell me really quickly?
Speaker 6 (38:59):
Yeah, my great great grandfather that wits, she kept him
from noviceh.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
See that's cool, Florence. Sorry about the short call, but
I really appreciate what you said about the ships.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
I really do, and thank you for being part of
the program. And see that Florence had a good time call.
And I can tell she called, she took a chance
and she feels good about the call.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
And I'd like to hear from you as well. Six one, seven, two,
five four, ten thirty on WBZ, Oh yeah, it's news
radio ten thirty
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on WBC Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Thanks for being with me, Bradley Jay and for Dan tonight,
and thanks to Bill Chanowitz for spending two hours talking
about the wonderful Boston Banned the Cars and his wonderful
book called The Cars.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Let the Stories be told. Now, this is it's sort
of a.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Magazine style segment, if you will, and it's about a
real Boston seafaring kind of job that one can do.
And I'll tell you a little story. A long time ago,
I was on the air overnight and I got a
call from some folks on a boat and they explained
(00:40):
that they were Boston Harbor pilots, and that was very
interesting to me, and I came to know them and
actually go out with them and watch them do their
job more than once.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
They're cool, and I.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Thought I need to share both this interesting job, this
interesting occupation, and these cool guys interesting personality. And so
that's what we're doing tonight. And is I understand it there?
Maybe you can even hear. I believe they're out on
the harbor right now, Is that you sean?
Speaker 4 (01:12):
We're here, We're getting ready to board a container ship.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
Okay, so let me paint the picture briefly and then
we'll get into it. When a big ship comes into
the harbor, they need to have a licensed pilot pilot
it into the harbor so it doesn't crash into anything.
And then these licensed pilots have to get out to
the ship outside the harbor. And Sean, one of the
(01:37):
people I'm talking to now, is one of the people
who drive these special boats and take these uh.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
These pilots out to the big, big ship.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
And it through a very dangerous and difficult maneuver that
they they meet up with the ship while it's moving,
and while the ship is moving, while both both vehicles,
both boats chip and boat vessels are moving, the pilot
has to climb up a swinging rope ladder sometimes in
the night like now and like I don't know, twenty
(02:07):
feet and both the ship and the boat of moving
and the weather the wind could be blown super dangerous
and it's a very interesting lifestyle. And you can hear
they're on the water right now doing it. So Sean,
tell me what you're about to do right now.
Speaker 4 (02:22):
Uh, Well, Joe is driving right now, so he can't
talk on the phone.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Okay, Joe is.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Your partner, Captain Joe. This is Captain Sean and Captain Joe.
So Joe's driving when you're talking. So what's Joe gonna
do now?
Speaker 4 (02:36):
He's already talked to the ship and told him what
side to put the ladder on, and that's determined by
the wind and the waves. And just to get out
there is the issue. Once we're alongside the ship, it
calms down a little bit enough so we can come alongside,
bang into the side of it, hold it there. The
(02:58):
pilot walks outside and goes up the ladder. We pull away,
and we give the ship its final course and speed
until the pilot gets up to the bridge and then
takes over from there.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
That's kind of the simple version.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Now let me ask you a little bit about the
ships that the pilots bring in.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
What kind of ships are they? How big are they?
What are they carrying?
Speaker 4 (03:22):
This container ship is carrying anything from your new TV
that you're getting, this Christmas furniture, paint, liquor. It's the
various things you have in your house.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Right, So you also do car ships and cruise ships, and.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Did you do fuel ships as well?
Speaker 4 (03:51):
We do tankers. Most of our fuel comes from Canada
a company called Irving up in Canada. They're big into
the shipping and r street, but it's mostly fuel that
we get. The fuel for Logan Airport, all the jets, yeah,
comes from the Yarving ships up in Canada. We also
do LNG tankers that tie up in every you're pro
(04:15):
liquid propane gas tankers.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
About how long before Captain Joe is going to be
putting that pilot up on.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
The ship, Probably in about the next five minutes?
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Okay? Good, So so when we.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
Get one of the one of the pilots are gearing
up now.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Okay, and when you start to actually do the maneuver,
why don't you do the play by play just like
it was a baseball game or a football game, and
say exactly what's going on, like how fast Joe is going,
how fast the big ship is going, the tricks to
doing it right, and then let me know when the
the the harbor pilot's climbing up the rope, how high
(04:55):
is the ladder that he has to climb up while.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
The ships are moving?
Speaker 4 (05:02):
What would you say your climb is this? This climb
is about twenty feet twenty.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
Feet on a rope ladder swinging in the breeze.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Right.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
What's the weather now? How are the seas?
Speaker 4 (05:15):
Uh, we're still getting the remnants from erin Uh. The
way the tide is more so when the tide's going out,
the swells get bigger and because they're fighting, uh, the
oncoming swells, and they stand up kind of straight up
and down. Okay. The wind right now is just light
and variable. It's a typical summer night.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Okay, what's your what's your twenty? Right now? Where exactly
are you?
Speaker 4 (05:42):
We're about three miles east of Deer Island, off Gray's
Light and the Hunt. We're right in between the two.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
And what kind of ship is it that the pilot's
going to go up?
Speaker 4 (05:52):
And the name of the ship is the ever Ford
and it's a container ship going into South Boston.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Okay, and yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
We just had the Harbor dredged a couple of years ago.
And they're basically small aircraft carriers the size of small
aircraft carriers that are coming in now. And they're a
lot deeper, which means they're carrying more cargo.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
So after that, the pilot goes up, climbs up the ladder.
What does he actually do? He says, I'm here, let
me take over. And what does he do?
Speaker 4 (06:25):
He tells the helse He greets the captain, finds out
if there's any issues with the ship, he'll tell the helmsman,
come to this course, come to this speed, and he'll
take it to the first buoy called the BG buoy,
and from there navigate all the way into the Inner Harbor.
(06:46):
Once he gets past Deer Island light, the tugboats swarm
in on him and another guy climbs up the ladder
and he controls the tugboats. He's the docking pilot. He
tells him when the push, when the pull, and they
have to spin it around in the middle of the harbor,
back it up into South Boston.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
Okay, when you're.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Putting the pilot on the ship, about how fast are
both vessels going.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
They're both moving.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
We're doing about ten knots, which is in miles per hour,
about twelve miles per hour.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Explain why they have to be moving.
Speaker 4 (07:28):
In order for us to maintain contact with the ship.
We need water passing by our rudders.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Otherwise you couldn't control. Neither vessel could control.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
It's the weather permitting. We could put a pilot aboard
a ship that's drifting, We'd rather do it when it's moving.
How big is it's?
Speaker 3 (07:48):
How big is your boat? Are you run?
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Ours are fifty three feet thirteen feet about fifty three
feet long thirteen feet wide, and they're made down in Somerset, Massachusetts,
at a company called Gladding Herne. And if you own
a if you own a glading boat, there's no one
popper on the line than a glading boat.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
You're gonna let me know when the pilot's going to
go up, because you're going to do that play by play.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
But Joe's making his attack run right now. He's speeding
up to the ladder. We have lights on the boat
that make the side of the ship look like it's daytime,
and then he'll slow down. If it's rough out, we
tell the pilots don't go out that door yet. And
(08:37):
because they want to get off this boat and get
on the bigger one as fast as they can, right they.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Want to spend a minimum time out on the deck
of the fifty.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
Especially when you know the weather is here. As of
right now, the pilot ladder is about three feet short,
so Dirk is waiting for any type of a lift
from the boat to be able to climb up, So
you need to.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Get He can't even get in the ladder until you
get a swell, which is a very temporary thing.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
He's on. He had to put his knee on the
bottom rung because it's the ladder's short, and so he's
already up. We get away from the ship far enough
where if he falls, he falls in the water and
not on the deck of the boat. But we maintain
(09:31):
a position where we can see him go into the
ship or on deck of the ship, and then we
pull away the rest of the way.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Have you once in a while something must go, You know,
does does a pilot ever fall in the water?
Speaker 3 (09:44):
They must have.
Speaker 4 (09:46):
We haven't had one yet. We have lost the pilot
in the saltok at Chelsea, but we think that was
a medical thing. But we haven't lost the pilot yet
in other harbors. In New York about six seven years ago,
lost a couple of pilots like six months apart that
(10:11):
ended up in the water.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Okay, so you have another pilot on board there right
that I can we can talk to about the requirements
of what it takes to become a hiberd pilot and
the testing and staff.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
We we will he was late. He was late getting
away from the dock, and he's on a yacht that's
coming out right now. We will see him in about
twenty minutes.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
All right.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I don't know if we will have that kind of time,
but you can give me. After that, we're going to
take a break. But you can talk a little bit
about the training, probably at least why what they have
to learn. You may not know the exact testing procedure,
but you can tell us a lot and we'll learn
more about the lifestyle that you have.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
It's a weird lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
It's so weird that it's hard to get people to
do the job that these folks do. They've gone through
many people who have tried out and they just didn't
work out for one reason or another. It's a hard job,
both skill wise but also stamina wise. The schedule these
guys keep it's pretty incredible. And they're also involved with
(11:15):
the tall Ships, which is coming up, and we'll tell
you a little about a little bit about that coming
up on WBZ.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ Boston's News Radio.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
Coming up late, coming up later.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
I'm gonna go through a lot of Uh, there are
a lot of weird Massachusetts and other state laws that
I'm gonna share with you. But also I have made
up some fake weird laws and I'm gonna read them
all to you and see if you can decide which
ones are real and which ones are fake.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
And you can also do the same back to me,
make one.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Up or read a real one and see if I
can determine which you're real and which you're fake. But
I don't want to hold up any long because we're
live out on Boston Harbor over there, I guess right
now we're speaking with Sean Kelly, Captain Sean Kelly of
the Boston Pilots.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
If you just joined us.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
What they do is take license Boston Pilot, Boston Harbor
Pilots out two ships and then they go and pick
it up, pick them up after they've successfully navigated out
of the harbor. It's a very exciting and dangerous job.
And they've just dropped off a pilot and I wanted
to go back to After you drop off the pilot,
(12:18):
you have to pull away in a special way.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
You don't want to bang the back of your boat
on the ship, so you can't.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
You can't turn too sharply, right, You need to kind
of back off slowly, and you want to keep the
pilot in sight in casey.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
Falls or anything, and Billy safely on the deck or
inside the ship. And there's there's just the captain up.
There's another person sleeping down below, and there's an alarm
that wake him up, and you know, in case something
does happen, okay, and it's not. It's not only with
(12:51):
the ship, but we're out here a lot, and we're
if something happens out here, we're here already. So it's
we do assist the boat in public quite often.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Right, And we'll get to one instant of that as well.
So it's pretty interesting. In order to be really good
at your job, you want to keep the banging around
to a minimum because your partner, you're a co captain
generally or a lot of times, is trying to sleep
down below, and if you're banging into the boat, you
wake that captain up, and that captain is irritated.
Speaker 4 (13:24):
Yeah, when we came on, we still had the remnants
of aaron and uh, there was there was one trip
where I was a human bobblehead down trying to sleep
and you know, you just have to endure. You miss
out on that, you don't you don't get to, like
sleep an extra couple hours. You've got to watch that
(13:45):
you gotta do. And the other person wants to go
to bed. And the weather is what the weather is,
and right, so.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Speaking of speaking of weather, all right, speaking of weather,
trying to described to me in detail what it's like
on a heavy season night, how how high up and
down is your boat going up and down the side
of that ship. It's fifteen to twenty feet.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
There are times where we'll get to the ladder and
we're going up and down twelve feet, but we're there.
So the more the ship turns, the less we're going
up and down. The pilot is ready to go, because
that window is sometimes less than a minute before the
(14:32):
ship starts rolling to its left and to its right
and we'll come down on top of us. So he's
got to be Johnny on the spot and we'll yell
over the PA system.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Now and he's got to go right then, wow.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Yeah, or you know, you got to turn around and
start the process all over again. And they don't want
to do it. They don't want to be standing out
in the weather and they're ready to go, And so.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
What are the dangers.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
What are the various dangers to the pilot, And then
what are the various dangers to you and your boat
and how it can happen.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
But the ship rolling on top of us, hitting the
top of the cabin itself. Sometimes after northeaster we'll get
a west wind, but it's still have an easterly sea.
And if the pilot doesn't get up that ladder, if
we're going up and down four feet, I mean, you
(15:31):
got to move, you gotta get going. And we've had
a pilot get picked up by his butt and moved
up six rungs on the ladder and then he was
already on it. We just came up and picked him
up again, and he got on deck and called on
the radio and said, well that was different.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
So now danger to the boat is I understand it.
If you get in the wrong spot when the big
ship is turning, the big ship makes a trough in
the water.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
It's actually a hill.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
And if the ship is turning and you're in the
wrong place at the wrong time, your boat goes whipping
down the hill and slams into the boat.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
I mean the ship if the pilot.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Will give the captain instructions before he leaves the bridge.
I want you to turn so many degrees. Now when
I'm down on deck, turn so many degrees, and then
when I'm on the ladder, turn so many degrees. And
that way. When they turn sideways quick, they dig a
hole in the water, and we fall into that hole
(16:37):
on a normal night, on normal cruise, and you can
feel the weight of this boat just walking around. When
you fall into that hole, it feels like you're in
mid air and there's not a thing you can do
about it but hit sideways and hope the tires take
the abuse right and it happens fast.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Tell me about the boats especially constructed. For one thing,
they have separate hot water systems on the railing and
as far as cooling, so if one of them breaks,
the other one doesn't break.
Speaker 4 (17:10):
Two right, there's one engine controls the handrail heats so
they don't freeze. The other engine controls the deck heat.
So if there's separate water systems, so if we break
a handrail on the side of a ship, or we
puncture a hole through a handrail on the ship, sometimes
(17:31):
we'll go up higher than the deck and come down.
If we punch a hole in that system, we won't
lose the water for the engine to run. So it's
two separate water systems for each engine, once for cooling
and once for heating of the deck and the handrails,
and so.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
The handrails are hollow. Basically, they're pipes with hot water
running through them.
Speaker 4 (17:55):
Correct when they're on, it's no problem to grab them.
When the gloves it's very tough to grab them with
your bare hands. And we have them set on the
minimum temperature that we need. But in the beginning of winter,
you have to warn the pilot I have the hand
(18:15):
rail heat on, because they'll grab it and they'll mouth
the word out and then they'll look at you. They
look at their hands. You'll have to over the rise
or if we have a guess and we'll say they
tell them the hand rail heats on, so they're not surprised,
and yeah, it's it gets warm.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
If you just joined us, folks, you can hear that
our Boston pilots are out on the Boston Harbor doing
what they do is delivering and picking up Boston Harbord
pilots that have either have either navigated out or are
about to navigate in.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
It's really tough to find people who do what you do.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
You've gone through like forty applicants and burned through them
and nobody.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
They can't do it or they don't want to do it.
Tell me about what's so difficult about the job.
Speaker 4 (19:05):
Yeah, right now we're taking a pilot off a yacht
that's headed the main I think to go watch leaves. Yeah,
when people leave to move on, it's either you know,
they can't take the weather anymore, their body won't take
it for whatever reason, and they move on. It's people
(19:27):
think it's it's summertime out here all the time and
it's not. And every inkling in your body tells you
to run away from something as big as a container
ship or a loaded tanker. No, we got to go
get it.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Plus, if you're a family person, it's difficult because your
schedule is so crazy.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
You're out there big long hours and weird hours and
overnight and sometimes work out with the family.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
We work five days on and five days off. We
stand watches every eight hours, so yeah, it's it can
be tough. One of our captains is a full time
lobster in a Gloucester Another one runs a charter Hampshire.
Joe and I really don't have secondary jobs. But yeah,
(20:17):
we've got guys who really wanted the job and came
out and performed and everything else, went home and said,
this is it, this is going to work out. Great. No,
you're not going away from home for five days, so
you better call him and tell him you won't be
able to do it.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
The wife or the spouse, whatever might say. A family,
we priorities.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
Yeah, okay, five days. There's a long time, all right.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
So there are some good aspects to your job.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
And I want to do three things when we do
a final segment with you, and maybe talk to the
pilot you just picked up, to find out about the
licensing and what it's like to be the pilot, the
guy that actually drives the big ship, pilots the biggest
ship into the into the.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Harbor, and I want right next to me. Well, let's
do it now, because you never know.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Yeah, So who do we have? Who am I speaking?
Speaker 4 (21:09):
I will give him, I will give him the phone.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
So again, we're live on Boston Harvard, not far from
Deer Island. Hello, Hello, Boston Pilot, are you there?
Speaker 5 (21:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Good, evening, Bradley, how are you?
Speaker 3 (21:22):
Who's this?
Speaker 4 (21:23):
My name is Richard?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Okay, So first of all, tell me say you're up
there piloting the uh, the big ship through the harbor.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
What are you looking out for? What are the risks?
What do you not want to run into?
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Well, there's a lot of small boats around Boston. When
it comes to running into something, that's one risk. But
we will always want to keep the ship afloat, of course,
and stay off to keep the keep the ship in
the channel.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
What about the geography underneath?
Speaker 5 (21:53):
But we we with the bigger ships, we sometimes just
have five feet underneath us. You couldn't stand underneath the
ship and have your feet on the bottom of that
closed to the bottom on the way in.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
What are some of the main features.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
We won't know what they are, but they probably have
cool names like watch out for the Devil's.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
Or whatever.
Speaker 5 (22:18):
Sure, yeah, and Devil's back and yeah, there's there's a
few of them around three and a half fathom.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
What kind of training do you'll throw back names?
Speaker 3 (22:29):
What kind of training do you need and what's the
test like to become a Boston Harbor ship?
Speaker 5 (22:34):
Well, the training mostly us from experience. I went to
See for nineteen years before I became a pilot, and
I've been here now for twenty seven years and sixty
two more days ago, though, Bradley, and you know, five
thousand ships, probably I'm guessing in my career here filing
in and out, so a lot of it's experienced, but
(22:58):
the training came from going to See and then then
working as an apprentice for a year and then a
limited pilot for a year after that.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Did you ever have a piot?
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Did you ever ever have a close called climbing up
that ladder or climbing down?
Speaker 5 (23:14):
I'm not sure. I don't think so, not that I
can recall. But the funny thing is, yes, I'm getting
near the end of my career doing about five thousand ships.
I bet off the top of my head, I can
only think of like twenty five to fifty. If I
was to tell stories, you know, less than one percent
of the ships I'm on that I can even remember,
(23:37):
because you know, I may remember some of the unique
ones or or or or or something that happened around
the ship for some reason that might jog my memory.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
But most of these jobs are just.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
You bring a ship in and and and together. Probably
just like an airline pilot doesn't remember most of the flights,
you know.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
But two more good questions, two more good questions. When
it's winter, does the ladder all iced over and make
it dangerous?
Speaker 5 (24:02):
Yeah, winter's a tough. Winter's a tough. The latters can
get icy, the seas are definitely rougher. And yeah, the
winters are tough here the summers. It's such a pleasure
working here. And this was a beautiful night tonight. I
had a nice, big private yacht out today and tonight,
and I'll have a big passenger ship in around five
(24:24):
o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
I guess what a life out there on the harbor.
That actually was my last question for you because I
have to break now. But thank you so.
Speaker 3 (24:30):
Much, and we'll turn on my pleasure.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
We'll do another segment with Sean to find out the
pros and cause of the job, and how about their
involvement with the upcoming tall ships I believe in twenty
twenty six coming up on WBZ.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
Thanks You're on Night Side with Dan Ray ONWBSY, Boston's
news radio.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
This is particularly exciting because our guests are live now
out on the Boston Harbor doing their job, a dangerous
and exciting job, their Boston heart pilots delivering harbor pilots,
which are mandatory to get in and out of the
harbor on a big ship, the big tankers, et cetera.
And it's a crazy life, and it's a very Boston
(25:13):
kind of life. So where with Sean, Captain Sean h
one half of the Captain Joan and Captain Sean duo.
And I'm curious about the good parts of the job.
We talked about the dangers.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
You love it.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
You guys are out there and you continue to do it,
and I don't really think you do anything else.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
What are the upsides of this job?
Speaker 4 (25:36):
No, two days are the same. We can move two
ships one day and the next day we're moving thirteen.
You know, it's not eight of five. We're twenty four
hours a day, holidays, everything we're moving. We don't work
(25:57):
under fluorescent sun, the sunrises and sunsets, the sea life
that we see out here that people just don't get
the sea because we're out so often. And then, I mean,
there is a certain sort of maritimes I guess you
(26:22):
could call beauty even in a storm when you beat
your brains out for an hour and a half to
try and get out to a ship. You finally get
the pilot aboard. Your blood flow is back to your knuckles,
and you look at the short line of Winthrop and
you look at the short line a hall and people
are eating dinner watching TV have no idea what just
(26:44):
went on right out their back window.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
It's an adventure.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
There's one angle we didn't really cover as far as
the physical punishment, and that is whether I don't know
whether it's the style of your boat or the shape
of the waves, but a lot of times, and you
mentioned this.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
When I when I did a ride along with you,
a lot.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Of the waves have no back to them, so you
don't you roll up, and you don't roll down though
you're the boat just drops like like they get through
an elevator shaft and slams down onto the sea on
the back side of the wave right.
Speaker 4 (27:17):
Well, and you approach. You don't want to launch the
boat the wave, but you don't want it to push
you around. So there's a happy medium, and everyone will
grab When you see white water at night and you're
looking up, that's the top of the wave. So you
(27:38):
can't let it push you around. But then again, you
don't want to launch the boat any further than you
have to, and there's a sudden weightlessness to the boat again,
and when it comes down, everybody that isn't literally nothing
bolted down, is going forward. And if you're standing and
(27:59):
you do hours of this, it's not the next day,
but the day after your legs are sore, your shoulders
are sore. There's nothing soft on these boats except the seats,
so you're banging around and it. You know, sometimes you
don't sleep even when you're off watch. You're laying on
the back bench because it's too rough to sleep, and
(28:21):
you're out here for hours. Sometimes in between jobs, you
got to be hide in the town and the hunt
a lot or an island high until the next ship arises,
because it's not worth us going all the way back
to East Boston to turn around and go punish ourselves
again for an hour and a half.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
So you are out there so much.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Do you have opportunities to help many boaters and people
in distress. There's a particular story where there was a
capsized vessel. These people were in the water and you
were the closest ones and you raced to them and
they might have another couple of minutes, but if you
hadn't been there, they probably would not be here.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
So can you share that, Widdy.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
It was the tugboat Emily Ann. It was coming down
from the Salem area and I was going home that morning.
Joe was going to be on for another couple of days,
but my appointment wasn't until ten o'clock. So he told him,
I said, don't kill yourself getting back to the dog.
I'm not leaving right away. And he was in the anchorage,
just inside of Winterrop, making a cup of coffee when
(29:27):
the may day came in and all of a sudden
we were on our way. I'm down below sleeping and
the boat is running wide open, and he called on
the intercom phone and said, the Emily ants taking on
water at the top of the North Channel. And I said,
why do I know that name? And he says, oh,
it's it's Dougy's boat. He was a friend of ours,
(29:49):
and we were there. It was the sun wasn't up,
but it was light, and he told us before he
went in the water, you know, come at me from
the hunt because of all the debris in the water.
And we still had a six to eight foot swell
running from a northeaster and it was him and two kids.
(30:10):
They were like eighteen and nineteen years old. Yeah, the
water temperature was thirty nine, the air temperature was about
ten and Dougie and one of the crew were just
floating in their float coats. Another kid made it to
a life raft and doug said, get them first. He
(30:31):
was the captain right up until the end. And when
we finally got doug he didn't have the grip to
grab the rungs on the side of the on the
back of the boat to pull himself up, and he
was and the kids were eyes as big as saucers
and everything. And one of the kids he looked at
(30:52):
him and said, tell me you got me my You
grabbed my favorite coffee cup and the it's snapped right
out of it. He goes, No, I didn't, he goes,
I asked you to do one thing before we went
in the water, was to grab my cup. And the
kid was back. Doug was the captain all the way
back in.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
That's a great story. And finally you know there's more.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
Okay, go ahead, Yeah, it's if we weren't where we
were with that temperature and everything, and we were there
within minutes. We were there within minutes, and well we'll
leave it at that. Other people were coming out to help,
but we were already back in the inner harbor when
(31:40):
that happened.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
It's one thing your involvement with the UH tall ships.
Tell me about that. What do you do with when
the tall ships coming? When are they coming.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
June Bridge? When are the tall ships? It's sometimes like
in the middle of June, and next year they'll anchor
out here like a week before. And one of our pilots,
it's like the parade marshall and we'll he tells us
(32:16):
which ones the pot board first, and it takes over
an hour for the pollshit to come in parade around
tie up, and then we got to get those pilots.
We only have nine pilots, so we got to get
them back out as fast as we can. But there's
thousands of votes in the harbor. We can't go cruising through,
(32:40):
so we have to meet like a smaller like police
boat that doesn't leave a wake when it's running wide open.
You know, we'll we'll we'll do damage if we try
and get back in the harbor as fast as we can.
And so it's we're out here for a while, and
then on our way in we'll pay up other pilots
(33:00):
and bring them back to where Doc and Uh. We
resumed shipping later that day. That evening we'll go back
to moving kid taking their ships and tankards and things
like that. But for the morning the harbor shut down.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
That's great.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
I really appreciate you taking your time while you're doing
a job live out on the harbor to share what
you do your adventure with us. And I have to
tell you personally and Joe personally, you are great friends.
And the pilots that I've come to know such nice,
cool people in the management, your whole organization is just
the best.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
And I'm happy and proud to know you guys.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
You always got a seat on the boat. Bradley, thank
you very much. Thank Joe, say hey, take care of Joe.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
And take care, take care to you. Sean, Thank you
so so much.
Speaker 4 (33:47):
Bye bye, good night man, good night.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Hey. It worked. It was so cool.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
And that's a real job. Can you imagine it? They
love it. You know that brings us to jobs. What
I'm gonna do, and I tell you what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
It's important that you know me because I don't know
we It's a better relationship between you who's out there
and me if you know a little bit more about me.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
You don't know anything. You don't know if I'm a
city slicker or a country boy, you don't know.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
You don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
If I was a spoiled breath. You have no idea.
So I'm going to go a little bit into it.
Since we talked about jobs, when we continue here, before
the top of the hour, I'm going to give you
tell you a little bit about my early days, so
you get to know me. You know Dan a lot.
You know all about Dan. You don't really know me,
and we just talked about jobs. I know once I
(34:48):
got on the radio, of course, be working on the radio.
It's a great job. But man, I have had some
nasty jobs that I will share with you, and I
think you go you're going to relate to them. I'm
not gonna go ahead, and I mean, you can certainly
share your awful job. But when we get to ten
eleven o'clock, I'm going to have a new topic, and
(35:09):
let me tell you what that is. There are a
lot of weird laws still on the books in Massachusetts.
And other states. I'm going to read through some of those,
and I'm also going to insert some fake ones. I'm
going to read them all and insert the fake ones,
and I want you to call and try to guess
which ones are fake. Take a stab at it, and
(35:30):
you can use Google again too. Also, why don't you
make a couple up and when you call in, you
tell me the law and you can give me a
real one or you can give me a made up
one and see if you can stump the host, see
if I can figure out which is that, if it's
real or made up, and we'll mess around with that
(35:53):
for a while and have some fun. But that's a
good way for me to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Tonight. We had an intensive interview with Bill Janowitz about Jenevitz,
about the cards, cars, and we talked to some of you.
In the last interview, there was no real room for
callers because it was hard and fast and it was
a difficult situation. But now I'm going to be relaxing
and inviting you folks to be part of the show again.
(36:17):
And by the way, haven't heard from Glenn. I'm surprised,
Glenn from Brighton. I hope you're Okay, Glenn, don't make
me worry. It's WBZ News Radio ten thirty.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Bradley for Dan.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
On Night's Side, we had a great talk with Bill Janovitz,
author of The Car's Book. And if you like musical topics,
maybe before the end of the week we might have
Divo on or Mark maybe Mark.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
From Devo and Divo is a really important Ben.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
And the reason that's kind of relevant now is there's
a brand new, really good documentary on Devo. They weren't
just a goofy band. There's a lot more about mind
it than that. It may not work out. It may
work out as a matter of scheduling. If it works out, cool,
if it doesn't, cool either way. But that might be
interesting as well.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
So I want you to know me a little bit.
I know you.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
I want you to know me. But look, we have
look maybe we'll get to that later. Is Florence in Groveland, Hey,
Florence in the Machine?
Speaker 3 (37:23):
How are you?
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Are you?
Speaker 6 (37:25):
Very good? In you Bradley, great Bradley. I have to
tell you, first of all, I don't know you. I
had never heard of you until I heard you were
going to fill in for them, and I wanted to
because I am a lover of ships, and especially the
(37:49):
tall ships, the mass ships, and I wanted to thank
you and commend you for this segment that you just did.
I listened hanging hanging right in there, listening to every
word that they were talking about. I found it very interesting.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Well, thank you. You know.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
I have a video that I did, very very extensive
video that I did showing what they do. If anybody,
I'm not going to post it and I'm not going
to give the link, but if anybody can figure out
how to get in touch with me, I will send
it to them personally. By the way to contact me,
it's BRADLEYJ dot org. BRADLEYJ dot org. That gets me
(38:34):
to all that gives you to all my social media.
Speaker 6 (38:37):
Yes, I wanted to tell you I've had a lot
of ships for number of years, many years, and I
didn't know where the fair and ahment came from. And
then I found out a few years ago.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
Hey, good about ten seconds? Can you tell me really quickly?
Speaker 6 (38:59):
Yeah, my great great grandfather that wits, she kept him
from noviceh.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
See that's cool, Florence. Sorry about the short call, but
I really appreciate what you said about the ships.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
I really do, and thank you for being part of
the program. And see that Florence had a good time call.
And I can tell she called, she took a chance
and she feels good about the call.
Speaker 3 (39:19):
And I'd like to hear from you as well. Six one, seven, two,
five four, ten thirty on WBZ, Oh yeah, it's news
radio ten thirty
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