For Seamen

Along the east waterfront of Manhattan one day in 1844, sailors and loungers beheld a startling sight. It was as if Trinity Church had skimmed down Wall Street and now was riding the waves of the harbor on a barge. Actually a seagoing House of God complete with steeple and flag, heated and lighted by stove and oil lamps, the floating phenomenon was the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour (see cut). Built by the Young Men's Church Missionary Society, it was meant to attract mariners who would never worship ashore at landlubbers' churches. The church existed 22 years, was succeeded by the Church of the Holy Comforter, "Free for Seamen & Boatmen." In 1870 a second Church of Our Saviour was launched. It lasted until 1910 when it was towed out to Staten Island and moored in Kill Van Kull where an Episcopal congregation still worships in it. The Young Men's Church Missionary Society, world's second oldest religious group devoted to mariners,* found New York harbor one of the worst. Changing their name to the Seamen's Church Institute of New York, they labored to make it one of the best. Last week brought the Institute's 90th birthday. From his uptown Cathedral Bishop William Thomas Manning journeyed down to the waterfront. There in a chapel in the tall, block-long building which now houses the Institute, he pronounced his benison on its work. One shadow clouded the celebration. Last February died the "Seamen's Saint," Dr. Archibald Romaine Mansfield who for 38 years was connected with the Institute. A stalwart man of God, Dr. Mansfield spent his early years battling the waterfront saloons and "crimp" boarding houses in which sailors were drugged and shanghaied. One young man who helped fight the crimps in court was Lawyer Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1913 Dr. Mansfield put up the Institute's big building, in 1917 the bigger annex costing $3,000,000. Now the largest sailors' home in the world, with 8,000 to 12,000 men visiting it every day, the Institute last year provided 304,548 lodgings, 831,490 meals. Its post office handles 500,000 pieces of mail a year. The Institute provides recreation, medical care, education, information, banking service, care of luggage and many another service free or at small cost.

* Oldest: American Seamen's Friend Society, founded in 1828, amalgamated with two other groups in 1931 to form Seamen's House Y. M. C. A.

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