Families and friends are mourning the deaths of Robert Chacon and John Isello, two friends who died when their motorboat capsized in the Ambrose Channel Saturday night. Chacon, Isello and two other friends were on a 24-foot fishing boat when their vessel hit a tugboat's towline. All four fell into the water. Jackson and Chacon were in an air pocket, but Chacon suffered a heart attack. Jackson, who held onto Chacon's body so it would......

A motorboat crashed into a tugboat pulling a barge last night and two motorboat passengers died after the vessel overturned. The incident occurred in the Ambrose Channel, near the Verrazano Bridge. According to the Daily News, a 24-foot motorboat hit the tow line between the tugboat and barge. Apparently the tugboat's captain had warned the motorboat a number of times, but the motorboat continued on. The barge ended up hitting the motorboat and three people......

Yesterday morning, two Bangladeshi brothers jumped off a freighter ship that was leaving the Port of Newark, "somewhere between the Kill van Kull and Verrazano-Narrows Bridge." One brother was found, while the other is still missing. Authorities say that 27-year-old Mohammed Nayem Uddin was found by fishermen on Hoffman Island, "shivering and covered in garbage bags." The Staten Island Advance reports he was taken to the hospital for hypothermia-like conditions. Uddin did not cooperate with......

A Brooklyn resident who went swimming in the buff off Long Beach was lost overnight until the Coast Guard found him yesterday morning. Newsday reports that Neal Mello went for a swim around 9:30PM on Saturday night. He "left his clothes, phone and wallet beside a friend, who then fell asleep on the sand near Edwards Avenue." According to authorities, when the friend awoke around 10PM, she became worried that he was still gone, so......

Yesterday, the odd news about the NYPD's arrest of three men involved with an egg-shaped submarine near the Queen Mary 2, off the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, revealed that a Brooklyn artist was behind the whole benign operation. Police Commissioner called artist Duke Riley's stunt "marine mischief," adding that the "creative craft of three adventuresome individuals" did "not pose any terrorist threat." The NY Times describes Riley's intentions:Mr. Riley’s plan was also military, in a......

Totally weird: Authorities have found a "make-shift" submarine with three men in it near the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. WABC 7 reports that the men may have been trying to "set sail off Brooklyn." Right now, police do not believe there was anything terror-related, as a search did not reveal any suspicious materials. There were oxygen tanks, though. No charges have been filed yet. It seems like one issue is that the sub may have......

The fuel tanker, the White Sea, that ran aground near the Ambrose Channel off Coney Island and Sandy Hook, NJ, yesterday morning, is still stuck in the waters. An attempt to dislodge the 800-foot ship carrying over half a million barrels of "low-sulfur fuel oil" failed last night, so the Coast Guard began plans to "lighten" (remove) 110,000 barrels of fuel after the ship couldn't be moved. Coast Guard officials are hopeful that it......

WCBS 880 reports that an oil tanker, the White Sea, has run aground in the Ambrose Channel, which is a shipping channel south of Lower New York Bay, off Staten Island, Coney Island, Breezy Point and NJ's Sandy Hook. The Coast Guard says that there are no reports of injuries. The 800-foot tanker is carrying 455,000 gallons of "low sulfur fuel oil", none of which has spilled. The Coast Guard says "the ship's crew deployed......

A helicopter on an aerial tour of New York City crashed into the Hudson River yesterday afternoon. Luckily none of the eight people - seven passenger and a pilot - were injured. The Liberty Travel helicopter had only been in the air for a couple minutes, after leaving West 30th Street, before experiencing engine problems. According to the Post, chopper was "able to make a controlled landing then stay afloat using emergency inflatable pontoons."......

If you were following the Gothamist Newsmap yesterday, you would have noticed there were alerts about part of a barge at Pier 97 sinking and that some oil or fuel seemed to be leaking from it. The NY Times reports:The barge, which had been cut into two sections, had been salvaged by a private company and towed to Pier 97 near West 57th Street, which is leased by the city’s Department of Sanitation for garbage......

With last week's news that the Carnival Cruise company had signed a deal to park (or is it dock?) their ships at a new cruise terminal in Red Hook just settling in, Gothamist was struck by news about a NYC bound cruise ship that was forced to dock in South Carolina because a 70 foot wave hit it. The ship had done the Orlando-Miami-Bahamas trip, but bad weather damaged its hull on the way......

Gothamist doesn't know what the local papers would be covering without the Republican National Convention coming to town, because as the days go by, the stories pile on. The hot button issue is, as ever, security. Mayor Bloomberg had a press conference with Police Commissioner Kelly to hype the pros of having the convention here ("This will be a unique opportunity for NYC to advertise itself"), although it came after they spoke to private security......

The Coast Guard considers the Staten Island Ferry a prime target for terrorist attacks. Why? The Staten Island Ferry confines "several thousand people in one space far from land and have little or no passenger screening." Coast Guard risk engineer Joe Myers says, "It was a bit of an eye-opener." Only a "ship carrying hazardous cargo near an urban area" was ranked similarly in terms of threat, according to the Coast Guard's risk assessment of......