The Channel Masters of New York Harbor

ABOARD THE PILOT BOAT NEW JERSEY — A speed of 7 knots at sea is equal to about 8 miles per hour on land, which doesn’t sound very fast.

That is not how it feels 15 miles or so southeast of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, where the Queen Mary 2 is heading out into the Atlantic.

Capt. Thomas J. Keating Jr. emerges from a door in the belly of the vessel, an ocean liner that is about the length of the Empire State Building if it were turned on its side.

The wind is whipping on this Tuesday in August, but Captain Keating’s purple tie is securely fastened under his vest as he climbs down onto the bow of a 53-foot aluminum boat riding beside the larger ship, like a minnow next to a whale.

Captain Keating belongs to the Sandy Hook Pilots Association. For more than three centuries, its members have been making their way out to sea, rowing and motoring to climb aboard schooners and steamships to help captains navigate the confines of New York Harbor.

And still, for what they do, “the safest way to get on and off the ship is by a rope ladder,” Captain Keating joked. (Pilots in other ports sometimes use helicopters.)

Just as boarding a ship in open water by ladder seems like something from another era, having a person guide a ship in the GPS age might also feel anachronistic. But the Sandy Hook pilots are more than valets.

Edward J. Kelly, executive director of the Maritime Association of the Port of New York and New Jersey, a trade group representing the commercial shipping industry, said harbor pilots were essential in every port around the world. The reason? “Two words,” Mr. Kelly said, “Exxon Valdez.”

If an oil tanker similar to the Valdez, which coated the Alaskan coastline with millions of gallons of heavy, black crude in March 1989, ran aground in the waters around New York — the busiest port on the East Coast — “you’re talking about billions of dollars of catastrophic impact on the U.S. economy,” he said.

Such a calamity would shut down a key link in the global supply chain and halt the movement of basic commodities like salt, food and fuel, he said. And it would take decades to rehabilitate marine life as well as beaches as far south as Norfolk, Va., which are critical to local economies.

When people look at the harbor, they may think there is a “lot of deep water” for these container ships to swim in, Mr. Kelly said. But its natural depth runs just 17 to 26 feet.

If the water in the harbor were to evaporate, you would see a series of trenches snaking from the Atlantic into the Hudson and around Staten Island into Newark Bay. For more than a decade, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Army Corps of Engineers have been digging a 50-foot-deep channel to accommodate a new generation of supersize ships traveling to New York from an expanded Panama Canal. As part of the project, the Bayonne Bridge is being raised, and once all of the work is completed, ships more than four football fields long, carrying as many as 9,000 40-foot containers, will be able to reach marine terminals in New Jersey.

But unlike roads, the harbor has no stop signs or painted lanes.

In the summer, zigzagging sailboats, motorboats and kayaks must heed the path of the megaships. Some recreational boaters, Captain Keating said, would “rather catch that fish than keep their life.”

A harbor pilot’s skill is in knowing where ferries are going to turn, where sandbars may have shifted and where tidal currents are strongest, as well as the names of emergency services workers and dock personnel if something goes awry.

Radar, Captain Keating said, “does give us some comfort, like on a foggy day where you literally can’t see the bow of the ship.”

Last year, the Sandy Hook pilots made over 10,000 trips aboard tankers with oil, orange juice and other goods; long, flat bulk ships carrying salt or sand; yachts; cargo and cruise ships. The pilots’ job was to guide these vessels between the harbor and the Ambrose Channel, which runs between Sandy Hook, N.J., and the Rockaway Peninsula. (Docking pilots take over to maneuver larger ships into their berths.)

Ships longer than 100 feet that are flying a foreign flag or carrying foreign cargo must hire a harbor pilot. Smaller vessels that fly the American flag are not required to, though many do. Fees are set by New York and New Jersey based on a formula connected to a vessel’s size.

The Cunard Line, which operates the Queen Mary 2, declined to comment on how much it paid for a harbor pilot, but Mr. Kelly said it could run into the thousands of dollars for a similar sized vessel.

Some call the Sandy Hook pilots the Lords of the Harbor for their natty suits and the exclusivity of their organization.

Until a few decades ago, “you had to know somebody,” to become a pilot, said Jack Olthuis, the association’s executive director. But he said that had changed.

Still, only a small number of applicants, most of them maritime college graduates, are selected for the association’s five-year apprenticeship, which culminates in a four-day state exam that requires trainees to draw from memory every rock, reef, shoal, pipeline and cable in certain parts of the harbor.

The association’s 75 active pilots, including four women, pool their fees to cover the costs of the operation: fuel, dispatchers, repair and maintenance of the fleet’s seven vessels as well as training for rising pilots.

Captain Keating, who has been an association member since 1988, is a “full-branch pilot,” which means that he is licensed to handle ships of all sizes. Though it takes an additional seven years beyond the apprenticeship to attain that status, the reward is a healthy six-figure salary.

After climbing down from the Queen Mary 2 in the aluminum boat, Captain Keating was driven to the pilot station New Jersey, a 145-foot ship marked “Pilot No. 2” in large yellow letters, which functions as a kind of floating hotel. (In winter, the 182-foot Pilot Boat New York takes its place.)

Inside, men between jobs reclined on couches, watching television in a faux wood-paneled living room.

In the galley, Captain Keating set down his briefcase and sat at a table across from Dan Foley. The two have worked together for almost two decades. One of the ship’s dozen crew members took his order: cream of broccoli soup and chicken with sweet chili sauce and rice.

Cruise ships are usually punctual, the captain said. Cargo ships, on the other hand, are often delayed because of weather, or logistical or planning errors, like loading a container in the wrong place.

“It’s hard to make dentist appointments,” he said of his schedule. And he said, “It’s not easy on a marriage.”

“Lousy weather can happen anytime,” he added.

Captain Keating said he had been on a boat when 40-foot swells dumped water into the smokestack. “It was that crazy winter storm of 1992,” he said. (He remembers getting seasick only once, in 1988.)

On this particular August evening, the wind was “a gentle summer southerly,” said Captain Keating, which, he predicted, “will start to die with the sun.”

As he tucked into his dinner, he stared out at a pink sky that stretched for miles. “We wish it was like this all the time,” he said.