Sandy Hook Pilots

The Sandy Hook Pilots are licensed maritime pilots for the entire Port of New York and New Jersey, the Hudson River, and Long Island Sound who go aboard oceangoing vessels, passenger liners, freighters, and tankers,to guide them in and out of the harbor. The peninsulas of Sandy Hook and Rockaway in Lower New York Bay define the southern entrance to the port at the Atlantic Ocean.

The Sandy Hook Pilots have been piloting ships in the New York Harbor for over 300 years.

Lying below the surface of the bay and extending from the tip of Sandy Hook to the south shore of Long Island is a series of shoals that separate the sheltered estuary of New York Harbor from the deeper waters of the Atlantic; known as the Bar of Sandy Hook. For over three centuries the mariners tasked with guiding the ships across this bar have been known as Sandy Hook Pilots.

As the port of New York-New Jersey grew and the ships evolved so did the role of the pilot and the craft with which he used to ply his trade. The earliest pilots on our coast were in the oceanic service employed as explorers, tasked with sounding and surveying the harbors for their respective European governments. Henry Hudson used his pijl lood for three days from the deck of the Halve Maen sounding and charting the Lower Bay. The channel he found lay close to the spit of land called Sant Hoek; known today as Sandy Hook. The English term pilot comes from the two Dutch words pijl (pole) and lood (lead).

The sailor on the great seal of the City of New York holds in his hand the traditional tool of the pilot; the lead. This is a testament to the importance of the craft to early New Yorkers. Over the seventeenth century as populations increased, pilotage became a more local profession. The need for local knowledge of tides, currents, shoals, and navigational hazards prompted this change. On March 9, 1694 legislation passed by the Colony of New York appointed the first local mariners as Sandy Hook Pilots.

...
Wikipedia