After sailing through The Narrows, the first terminal one comes to is the Red Hook Container Terminal, located on the Brooklyn waterfront just across the water from Governors Island and the Statue of Liberty. Cocoa Beans, Locomotives, And the Statue of Liberty Red Hook also is home to the New York Cross Harbor Railroad, last of the rail carfloat operations in the New York City area. A typical crossing between Red Hook and Jersey City, N.J., takes just 40 minutes, versus several days to carry freight across the Hudson via Selkirk, N.Y., near Albany. The operation has essentially remained the same as it was at the turn of the 19th century, when thousands of floatbarges dotted New York City's waterways on any given day. The Port Authority developed the terminal in the 1950s and today uses five of the terminal's piers for warehousing and three for bulk cargo-handling and storage and for the berthing of transient ships.
Battery Park comes into view as one crosses the East River and rounds the lower tip of Manhattan.
Here is where passengers board the famed Staten Island Ferry as well as other ferries going to the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the New Jersey terminals of Weehawken and Port Liberte. The several ferries collectively transport about 40 million passengers a year in the port. After passing the Battery and the World Trade Center, one sees a number of cruise ships tied up along the shores of lower Manhattan. Most of the bigger cruise ships are headed for the Caribbean or other overseas destinations, but some cruises are strictly local. A cruise circumnavigating Manhattan takes about three hours.