Customer Reviews

On the Irish Waterfront: The Crusader, the Movie, and the Soul of the Port of New York (Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in Twentieth-Century America)

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One wouldn't think that a history of New York/New Jersey's waterfront could be even remotely interesting. In fact, I'm not sure why I started reading it. Well, I did and I couldn't be more glad. "On the Irish Waterfront" is riveting, almost unputdownable. More than anything else, it's a history of the Catholic Irish in New York. What a cast of fascinating characters they were! Rascals, rogues, and pirates, every single one of them. And all (well, almost all) blessed with an abundance of Gaelic charm.

The references to the movie, "On the Waterfront", are inescapable. For the most part, they make for interesting reading and are well mixed into the overall story. And why not? After all, James Fisher is clearly a gifted and skilled writer, as well as historian. One mistake that I know will strike most people as picayune, but I can't resist: On page 64, Fisher writes "discretely" when he of course means "discreetly".

Wonderful read; strongly recommended.

"On the Irish Waterfront" is really the story of violent compulsion of tribalism - religious, geographic, cultural, and labor-industrial. All the various strains that can make up one's "identity", and all the various forces that coerce obedient behavior, are outlined skillfully and poetically in this book. Fisher reveals the story here in all its mythic entirety, written in the sweat and blood of the men who created the waterfront of the largest port the world had ever seen. When one man, Pete Corridan, who is not of that tribe, devotes his entire being to help free the working men from the brutal oppression of the dockbosses - the men he is attempting to free reject him!

Ultimately, it seems, preserving one's identity as a member of the tribe is more important, more vital, more necessary, than ostensible freedom offered by an "outsider". How many of us still chose the identity that comes with being in a tribe, no matter how violent, over the anxiety that freedom can bring?

Fisher has written the best kind of history here - one that reveals the narrative previously unrecognized in a huge mass of facts and research. He brings it to us, his readers, in compelling and literate prose. Through his historical explication , we learn things about the men, the businesses, the city, the institutions that make up our nation's physical and psychic past. We come to understand ourselves, the metaphoric children of these men and their institutions.

And we also come to understand the true value of Narrative itself. It was not politics, or unions, or the intercession of priests, politicians or labor leaders that finally broke the back of oppressive power on the docks of New York harbor. It was the narrative ability of the reporters, essayists, and screenwriters - the modern bards - to break the silences and reveal the truths that finally freed the waterfront, and the men who worked on it.


These truths about the intertwining of violence, power and oppression were first revealed on the Irish Waterfront when a dockworker was brave enough to say, "Cockeye Dunn shot me." Every institution that controlled the docks had conspired to smother that sort of testimony. But Fisher reveals that it is only in this act of testifying, only in the very act of breaking the conspiracy of silence, that there could be any chance of ending the reign of violent terror that had left hundredss of corpses floating in the East River.

Dr Fisher's most powerful argument is that all of us must break the silences compelled by "sacred" institutions, if we are ever to end the barbarism that destroys lives every day.

On the Irish Waterfront tells a 20th century epic tale, complete with heroes-- in particular, Fr. John "Pete" Corridan, the Jesuit from the West Side of Manhattan who championed the plight of the longshoremen by standing up to "Mr. Big"--- and humanity. It also tells the story of the making of one great movie, On the Waterfront. The setting is the port of New York and New Jersey: Where now are parks and condos, was once a gritty, dangerous territory, under the control of mobsters and the Church alike. In Fisher's narrative, the Irish Waterfront is a metaphor not only for the port, but also for the insular Irish-Catholic community that grew up and out from there.

On the Irish Waterfront is an epic in itself, full of detail about the whole catalogue of mobsters, politicos, dockworkers, and many more on both sides of the Hudson. As a review in the Sept. 2009 Wall Street Journal said, On the Irish Waterfront is "a fascinating work of history," told with "admirable care." Another review (in the Dec. 2009 New Jersey Star-Ledger) notes that the book is a "riveting account" of what's "very much a New Jersey tale" and a well-researched, ardently told, read.

This book "covers" (pun intended) the waterfront of the West Side of New York City, and also the one on the opposite New Jersey shore, during the period 1917-1955, although there are a few opening pages that literally begin in 1524 when Florentine explorer Verrazano sails into the harbor and takes the reader up to WWI in a few pages, and also a short epilogue that briefly summarizes the later lives of the main characters.

The story is focused on the Irish American dockworkers who lived on the West Side, how they organized themselves, formally and informally, in relation to work on the docks. Within that "tribe" if you will, the focus is on Father John "Pete" Corridan, S.J., a/k/a the "Waterfront Priest" who served as the model for the Karl Malden character in the film "On the Waterfront" and is depicted as the prime mover behind all reform efforts in the period. The book seems to report so much detail about his actions during this period that it could arguably be described as a biography of him.

The author is a professor of Theology and American Studies at Fordham, a Jesuit - founded and run college in New York and perhaps that explains the focus on the priest. And I assume it explains his use of so much correspondence from Father Corridan and other priests in the narrative.

There is much to like about the book. It is quite comprehensive and thorough. I felt I learned all there was to learn about the subject from reading it. You learn about the working conditions on the docks, of course, but also a lot about the Port Authority, some New York politics, some history about Roman Catholic church politics and ideological perspectives, some sociological observations on the Irish American community on the West Side, the battle to get the film made, including some succinctly told and amusing Hollywood stories, and the life of Budd Schulberg who wrote the screenplay for the film. So a lot of chunks of interesting material.

At the same time, I found the detailed thoroughness of the book, especially the detail in which the meetings and other work of Father Corridan are recounted, made reading a bit labored from time to time. There is another recent book, "Dark Harbor" on this subject that I read first and I have reviewed on this web site. It is a little shorter and written in a more journalistic vein, i.e., more emphasis on vivid events and less on being sure you learn everything that happened. To illustrate the difference between the two books: there was a murder of a dockworker who turned informant named Pete Panto during this period, not unlike what happens at the opening of "On the Waterfront". In this book, it only shows up in one paragraph, in the context of discussing how much the film script prepared by Budd Schulberg resembles a different project authored by Arthur Miller (a tangential topic that illustrates my point about "thoroughness"). In contrast, in "Dark Harbor", a detailed account of how the murder went down and what it meant fills the first chapter of the book. So there is a meaningful stylistic difference between the two, that the prospective reader may benefit from understanding before purchasing. That said, this book is a thorough research effort that will undoubtedly serve as the primary reference on the subject, and is interesting in many places to boot.

'ON THE IRISH WATERFRONT' was a great read. My Father was a longshoreman on the Chelsea piers in the 40's and 50's. The names of a lot of people are familiar to me, some good guys and some bad guys. If you ever saw "On The Waterfront" it was written about that era. I keep picking it up and reading again because the author covered more then I ever heard or read before. It tells how hard life was for them and what caused the rampant crime.

This book failed my expectations. My research project is German sabotage in 1914-17 before the US entered WWI. I thought any history of the Irish on the waterfront should have coverd German attempts to buy into the Irish hate of Britain but there was no mention of the rebuff that the Germans received. The only points of value were descriptions of how the Irish took over the Hudson side of the NY port, the numbers involved and their influence. There was far too much waffling about Marlon Brando and "On the Waterfront", even though I should have expected this from the title. I noted, while in NYC, that the WSJ gave a similar luke-warm review.

John Stackhouse