09/11/2026
Everyone knows that, twenty-five years ago, when the first plane struck the North Tower in New York City, professional first-responders all raced into action. Fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, and more weaved through traffic without a second's hesitation.
But what most people don't know is that something else was streaming towards lower Manhattan that morning:
Boats.
It started with Captain Richard Thortnton, ferrying commuters over the Hudson River. Seeing the smoke coming from the North Tower, he instantly knew what to do.
"We immediately just took off. We stole the boat…we didn't tell anybody," he later said.
As he approached, Thornton saw the second plane hit. Despite feeling overwhelmed, he docked his boat at the closest pier to Wall Street. Hundreds of people "swarmed onboard, filling it well beyond its 399-person capacity." Thornton dropped them off in Hoboken, New Jersey, and then immediately turned back for another trip.
But this time, he was not alone.
A radio call had gone out for "all available boats." With Manhattan essentially sealed off, the water was the only way out. So, within minutes, ferries, tugboats, private boats, party boats, and diving boats all arrived on the scene, evacuating hundreds of thousands of people to every other part of New York.
"If it floated, and it could get there, it got there," said one boat's engineer.
Another captain, in a documentary, later said, "I worked on the water for 28 years, I've never seen that many boats come together at one time that fast. One radio call and they just all came together."
Said a third captain, "I never want to say the words 'I should have.' Never go through life saying you should have. If you want to do something, you do it."
It ended up being the largest boatlift in history. Even larger than the one at Dunkirk in World War II, when the entire British army was evacuated from France.
Twenty-five years later, we think stories like this are the true legacy of September 11. Because while it took years of planning for the terrorists to express their hate, it took regular, ordinary people only seconds to decide to help.
May we never forget.
