00:00The people were jumping into the water. They were swimming out of Manhattan, if you can imagine that.
00:04We immediately started just taking people out as fast as we could.
00:08Americans have all heard the heroic accounts of firefighters and first responders at Ground Zero on 9-11,
00:14but an overwhelming rescue mission was also taking place on the water.
00:19Captain Rick Thornton told The Post that he was four hours into his shift on the Hudson Ferry on September
00:2411th
00:25when he spotted a plume of white smoke trailing from the World Trade Center.
00:28The Navy veteran abandoned his route and jetted towards the madness without consulting his superiors for permission.
00:35We're doing the same route, crossing the Hudson River. We could see the Twin Towers downtown.
00:42First plane struck and it was just a bunch of smoke and we thought it was a terrible accident.
00:47As soon as the second plane struck the second tower, we knew it was some sort of coordinated attack.
00:52We didn't know who or what was going to happen next, but the entire New York Waterway fleet was mobilized.
00:57My boat had just left New York. We immediately turned south, headed downtown.
01:02All available boats, this is the United States Coast Guard.
01:05Anyone who wanted to help with the evacuation of lower Manhattan, report to Governor's Island.
01:09Thornton and his crew intended to sail directly to Wall Street, but were redirected to Battery Park
01:14after witnessing dozens of people frantically plunging into the river in a scene that he recalls as something straight out
01:20of the movie Titanic.
01:21We started to pick up people from every pier, every dock, even places where there was no dock or a
01:29facility for a boat to dock.
01:31The people were jumping into the water. They were swimming out of Manhattan, if you can imagine that.
01:36We immediately started just taking people out as fast as we could, load up the boat, go over to the
01:41New Jersey side, and we just did that all day long.
01:44Thornton even carried Secret Service agents to safety, which is how he first heard about the Pentagon also being targeted,
01:51and that President George W. Bush was secure.
01:53It wouldn't be until 7 p.m. that the evacuations had slowed and Thornton was pulled off the water.
01:59My boat did about 20 trips, and the boat holds 400 people, so if you do the math, that's 8
02:06,000 people that my boat alone evacuated on 9-11.
02:10Every boat pitched in that day. First, it was just New York waterway ferries. Stand-on ferry jumped in.
02:16Then it was tugboats, circline boats, fishing boats, and private boats, sailboats.
02:22150 boats participated in this boat lift, is what it's known as, the 9-11 boat lift.
02:28The 9-11 boat lift is recognized as the largest and fastest seaborne evacuation in history.
02:34In less than nine hours, over 500,000 people were rescued by boat from Manhattan.
02:39A lot of horrible things you saw, but you saw a lot of teamwork, a lot of cooperation, a lot
02:45of superhuman efforts by people working basically around the clock,
02:49doing things that were thought impossible with a boat, doing the best they could to alleviate people who needed to
02:55get evacuated from Lower Manhattan or not.
02:589-11, and I'm very proud to be a part of that, and play a small role in the boat
03:04lift with 9-11.
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