Many thanks to Steve Munoz for these photos.  These were all taken on July 14, 1964, the first OpSail held in conjunction with the NY World’s Fair.  The “rendezvous of  11 ships from 9 nations” appeared on the front page of the NYTimes the next day.

What I attempt in this post is to match up the skyline in these vintage photos with today’s skyline.  With my limited resource of time, I found it not an easy undertaking.

Esmeralda, a 4-masted barkentine launched in 1954, sails north here, roughly between the Statue and the SW corner of the Battery.  Notice Pier A just below its bowsprit.  Excuse any misuse of sailing vessel rig terminology.   Prominent on the skyline to the left is the Woolworth Building, 792′, and slight to its right is the still standing Singer Building, 674′ and demolished in 1968.

Christian Radich, a Norwegian-built full-rigged ship launched in 1937 is in roughly the same location.  Woolworth appears just to the right of her foremast, and 40 Wall and 70 Pine are prominent near the right side of the photo.  Directly below 70 Pine are the Standard Oil Building (topped with black “oil pot”) and the green-roofed Hamilton Custom House.  Below and slightly to the left of 40 Wall is the Whitehall Building. I don’t know the prominent building near the left edge of the photo.

Below, the arrow to the left points to the Woolworth this week, and the one to the right point to 40 Wall and 70 Pine.

Ditto, with an additional arrow here pointing to the Custom House.

A few miles farther north, this is 3-masted barque Gorch Fock II sailing past the Empire State Building.  The barque was launched in 1958.   Correct me if I’m wrong here, but all those car floats just forward of the ship makes me think we’re looking at the West 27th Street Freight Yard (Pier 67).

This is roughly the same area today, as here we see from Pier 57 up to Hudson Yards, all south of what would be Pier 74.

A bit farther north, Indonesian barquentine Dewarutji, which also called here in Opsail 2012.

Except for the Empire State Building and the very tip of Chrysler, not much looks now as it did.

For these vintage photos, many thanks to Steve Munoz, who writes:  “all these photos were taken as slides by my father.”

Many more to come. All others in this post by Will Van Dorp, who has currently again gone on the road after having scheduled the next few posts.

Here’s more on the Opsail 1964/Worlds Fair event.

Unrelated but interesting from NYMedia boat . . . a vessel in the sixth boro whose specialty is retrieving and recycling obsolete undersea cables.