title: Jazz standard

text: The swing era lasted until the mid-1940s, and produced popular tunes such as Duke Ellington's "Cotton Tail" (1940) and Billy Strayhorn's "Take the 'A' Train" (1941). With the big bands struggling to keep going during World War II, a shift was happening in jazz in favor of smaller groups. Some swing era musicians, such as Louis Jordan, later found popularity in a new kind of music, called "rhythm and blues", that would evolve into rock and roll in the 1950s.


title: Jazz standard

text: Bebop emerged in the early 1940s, with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk leading the way. It appealed to a more specialized audiences than earlier forms of jazz, with sophisticated harmonies, fast tempos and often virtuoso musicianship. Bebop musicians often used 1930s standards, especially those from Broadway musicals, as part of their repertoire. Among standards written by bebop musicians are Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts" (1941) and "A Night in Tunisia" (1942), Parker's "Anthropology" (1946), "Yardbird Suite" (1946) and "Scrapple from the Apple" (1947), and Monk's "'Round Midnight" (1944), which is currently one of the most recorded jazz standard composed by a jazz musician.


title: Jazz standard

text: Modal jazz recordings, such as Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue", became popular in the late 1950s. Popular modal standards include Davis's "All Blues" and "So What" (both 1959), John Coltrane's "Impressions" (1963) and Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage" (1965). Later, Davis's "second great quintet", which included saxophonist Wayne Shorter and pianist Herbie Hancock, recorded a series of highly acclaimed albums in the mid-to-late 1960s. Standards from these sessions include Shorter's "Footprints" (1966) and "Freedom Jazz Dance" by Eddie Harris (1966).


title: Jazz standard

text: In Brazil, a new style of music called bossa nova evolved in the late 1950s. Based on the Brazilian samba as well as jazz, bossa nova was championed by João Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá. Gilberto and Stan Getz started a bossa nova craze in the United States with their 1963 album "Getz/Gilberto". Among the genre's songs that are now considered standards are Bonfá's "Manhã de Carnaval" (1959), Marcos Valle's "Summer Samba" (1966), and numerous Jobim's songs, including "Desafinado" (1959), "The Girl from Ipanema" (1962) and "Corcovado" (1962). Later, composers such as Edu Lobo and Egberto Gismonti contributed a great deal to the Brazilian jazz repertoire, with tunes that include "Casa Forte", "Frevo Rasgado" and "Loro".


title: Jazz standard

text: The jazz fusion movement fused jazz with other musical styles, most famously funk and rock. Its golden age was from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. Top fusion artists, such as Weather Report, Chick Corea and Return to Forever, Herbie Hancock and The Headhunters, The Manhattan Transfer, and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, achieved cross-over popularity, although public interest in the genre faded at the turn of the 1980s. Fusion's biggest hits, Corea's "Spain" (1971), Hancock's "Chameleon" (1973) and Joe Zawinul's "Birdland" (1977), have been covered numerous times thereafter and are considered modern jazz standards.


title: Jazz standard

text: A number of songs written by pop and rock artists have become standards, such as "Somewhere Out There" by Linda Ronstadt & James Ingram, "Yesterday" by The Beatles, "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys, and "Moondance" by Van Morrison.


title: Face (professional wrestling)

text: In professional wrestling, a face (babyface) is a heroic, "good guy" or "fan favorite" wrestler, booked (scripted) by the promotion with the aim of being cheered by fans, and acts as a protagonist to the heels, who are the villainous antagonist or "bad guy" characters. Traditionally, they wrestle within the rules and avoid cheating (in contrast to the villains who use illegal moves and call in additional wrestlers to do their work for them) while behaving positively towards the referee and the audience. Such characters are also referred to as blue-eyes in British wrestling and técnicos in "lucha libre". The face character is portrayed as a hero relative to the heel wrestlers, who are analogous to villains. Not everything a face wrestler does must be heroic: faces need only to be clapped or cheered by the audience to be effective characters. When the magazine "Pro Wrestling Illustrated" went into circulation in the late 1970s, the magazine referred to face wrestlers as "fan favorites" or "scientific wrestlers", while heels were referred to as simply "rulebreakers".


title: Face (professional wrestling)

text: The vast majority of wrestling storylines involve pitting faces against heels, although more elaborate set-ups (such as two faces being manipulated by a nefarious outside party into fighting) often happen as well. In the world of "lucha libre" wrestling, most "técnicos" are generally known for using moves requiring technical skill, particularly aerial maneuvers and wearing outfits using bright colors with positive associations (such as solid white). This is contrasted with most villainous "rudos" who are generally known for being brawlers, using physical moves that emphasize brute strength or size while often having outfits akin to demons or other nasty characters.


title: Face (professional wrestling)

text: Traditional faces are classic "good guy" characters who rarely break the rules, follow instructions of those in authority such as the referee, are polite and well-mannered towards the fans and often overcome the rule-breaking actions of their heel opponents to cleanly win matches. While many modern faces still fit this model, other versions of the face character are now also common. A good example would be Stone Cold Steve Austin, who despite playing a heel early on in his career would start to be seen more of an antihero because of his popularity with the fans. While clearly not championing rule following, nor submission to authority, Austin was still regarded as the face in many of his duels such as his rivalry with World Wrestling Federation (WWF, later WWE) owner Mr. McMahon.


title: Face (professional wrestling)

text: The portrayal of face wrestlers changed in the 1990s with the birth of Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), the start of World Championship Wrestling's (WCW) New World Order (nWo) storyline, and the Attitude Era of the WWF. During this time, wrestlers like Stone Cold Steve Austin and Sting used tactics traditionally associated with heels, but remained popular with the fans. Professional wrestling had just come off a huge steroid scandal and was facing poor ratings compared to the 1980s, and as a result, professional wrestling transformed into an edgier, more mature product. In this new era of professional wrestling, the standard face was more profane, violent, and uncontrollable.


title: Face (professional wrestling)

text: In contrast to the emerging new breed of faces, Kurt Angle was introduced to the then-WWF with an American hero gimmick based on his gold medal win at the 1996 Summer Olympics. Angle presented himself as a role model and stressed the need to work hard to realize one's dreams. Although such a personality appears appropriate for a face wrestler, Angle's character was arrogant and constantly reminded people of his Olympic glory, behaving as if he thought he was better than the fans. Angle's character served as a meta-reference to how wrestling had changed. Although his character was intended to be a heel and behaved accordingly, some commentators speculated that if Angle attempted to get over as a face using a more heroic version of the same character, he would have failed. Unusually, Angle did not use any of these heroic mannerisms when playing a face character, instead acting as somewhat of an antihero with a few elements of the "lovable loser" character archetype.


title: Face (professional wrestling)

text: The majority of the time, faces who are low-carders, or lesser known, are used as jobbers. These wrestlers usually lose matches against established wrestlers, often heels that then lose to the top faces.


title: Face (professional wrestling)

text: Fans sometimes dislike face wrestlers despite the way they are promoted. Some reasons for this include repetitive in-ring antics, a limited moveset, a lengthy title reign, lack of selling their opponents' moves, or an uninteresting character. This often results in wrestlers who are supposed to be cheered receiving a negative or no reaction from the fans. When this happens, it can prompt a change in character for the wrestler in question. For example, Batista's run as a face upon his return to the WWE in 2014 was met with overwhelmingly negative reactions from the fans. Because of this unexpected reaction, Batista turned heel within just a few months of his return.


title: Face (professional wrestling)

text: The reaction of the fans can also influence a wrestler's booking and position on the card. Faces that get more support than expected sometimes move closer towards the main event scene, while those getting less of a reaction than hoped might move down on the card. While Batista was getting bad reactions in 2014, another face Daniel Bryan, was getting incredibly positive support. Loud "Yes!" chants that had become synonymous with Bryan were present at any show he was on, and eventually the main event of WrestleMania XXX would be changed from Batista vs Randy Orton for the WWE World Heavyweight Championship, to a triple threat match with Daniel Bryan which he would go on to win.


title: Face (professional wrestling)

text: Some face wrestlers often give high fives or give out merchandise to fans while entering the ring before their match, such as T-shirts, sunglasses, hats and masks. Bret Hart was one of the first superstars to make this popular, as he would drape his signature sunglasses on a child in the audience. Rey Mysterio, who has been a face in WWE since his debut, would go to any fan (frequently a child) wearing a replica of his mask and touch their head with his head for good luck before wrestling. Other examples include John Cena throwing his shirts and caps in the crowd before entering a match and Big Show giving his hat to a fan when he was a face. The face mannerism also extends outside the wrestling scene, for instance, as a renowned face, John Cena apologized to China immediately after referring to Taiwan as a country, which is considered offensive to Chinese audiences.


title: Face (professional wrestling)

text: Some faces, such as Bret Hart and Ricky Steamboat, promoted an image as a "family man" and supported their persona by appearing with their family members before and after matches. Steamboat famously carried his 8-month-old son Richard Jr. into the ring with him at WrestleMania IV before his match with Greg "The Hammer" Valentine, then handing him to his wife Bonnie before the match started, and was accompanied to the ring by his family during his rivalry with Ric Flair in Jim Crockett Promotions to contrast with Flair's party animal "Nature Boy" persona. These actions often relate to wrestlers promoting charity work or other actions outside the ring, blurring the lines between scripted wrestling and their personal lives.


title: Face (professional wrestling)

text: In the ring, traditional faces are expected to abide by the rules and win matches by their own skill rather than by cheating, outside interference etc. Because heel wrestlers take little issues with using such tactics, the face enters many matches already at a disadvantage to the heel. By putting the face in a difficult situation, it can help to draw out sympathy and support from the audience. Traditional faces similar to Hulk Hogan tend to draw on support from the crowd when it's time for them to make their big comeback.


title: Face (professional wrestling)

text: In addition to wrestlers, commentators also portray face and heel dynamics. It is the job of the face commentator to criticize the tactics and behavior of the heel wrestler and gather support for the face wrestler. The face commentator gathers support for the face wrestler by mentioning how much of a disadvantage he is at, or by praising the hero's morality and valor.


title: Tata 1mg

text: Tata 1mg, previously 1mg, is a healthcare platform based in Gurugram, India. It provides services, including e-pharmacy, diagnostics, e-consultation and health content. It was founded in April 2015 by Prashant Tandon, Gaurav Agarwal and Vikas Chauhan.


title: Tata 1mg

text: In 2012, BLPL (Bright Lifecare Private Limited) started a digital health platform called HealthkartPlus. In 2015, Healthkart Plus separated from BLPL to form 1MG Technologies Private Limited. Healthkart continued as a platform for fitness and health products, 1mg was a generic drug search business. The primary goal of 1mg is to make healthcare accessible and economical. The Gurugram based digital health startup maintains an online medicine database with information on side effects; generic substitutes, and provides home delivery services for pharmacy, FMCG and lab tests. In June 2021, Tata Digital Ltd, acquired 55% stake in 1mg to form Tata 1mg.


title: Greater Finland

text: Greater Finland (; ; ), an irredentist and nationalist idea, emphasized territorial expansion of Finland. The most common concept of Greater Finland saw the country as defined by natural borders encompassing the territories inhabited by Finns and Karelians, ranging from the White Sea to Lake Onega and along the Svir River and Neva River—or, more modestly, the Sestra River—to the Gulf of Finland. Some proponents also included the Torne Valley (in Sweden), Ingria, and Estonia.


title: Greater Finland

text: The idea of a Greater Finland rapidly gained popularity after Finland became independent in December 1917. The idea has lost support after World War II (1939–1945).


title: Greater Finland

text: The idea of the so-called three-isthmus border—defined by the White Isthmus, the Olonets Isthmus, and the Karelian Isthmus—is hundreds of years old, dating back to the period when Finland was part of Sweden. There was a disagreement between Sweden and Russia as to where the border between the two countries should be. The Swedish government considered a three-isthmus border to be the easiest to defend.


title: Greater Finland

text: Although the term "Greater Finland" was not used in the early 19th century, the idea of Finland's natural geographical boundaries dates back to then. In 1837, the botanist Johan Ernst Adhemar Wirzén defined Finland's wild plant distribution area as the eastern border lines of the White Sea, Lake Onega, and the River Svir. The geologist Wilhelm Ramsay defined the bedrock concept of Fenno-Scandinavia at the beginning of the 19th century.


title: Greater Finland

text: Karelianism was a national romantic hobby for artists, writers, and composers in which Karelian and Karelian-Finnish culture was used as a source of inspiration. Karelianism was most popular in the 1890s. For example, the author Ilmari Kianto, known as the "White friend", wrote about his travels to White Karelia in the 1918 book "Finland at Its Largest: For the Liberation of White Karelia".


title: Greater Finland

text: The Kvens, a minority in Northern Norway, helped Finnish settlements spread, especially in the 1860s. The Academic Karelia Society and the Finnish Heritage Association worked actively with the Kvens from 1927–1934, and the Finnish media spread pan-Fennicist propaganda through various channels. Activity slowed down from 1931–1934.


title: Greater Finland

text: In the early days of its independence, Finland wanted Finnish-speaking areas in Norrbotten, Sweden, to join Finland. This was a reaction to the effort by Finland's own Åland to join Sweden. The Finnish government set up a committee to expand Finnish national movements. Sweden, for its part, pushed for instruction in the Swedish language in its northern Finnish regions. Until the 1950s, many schoolchildren in Norrbotten were banned from using the Finnish language during breaks at school.


title: Greater Finland

text: The Greater Finland ideology gained strength from 1918–1920, during the Heimosodat, with the goal of combining all Finnic peoples into a single state. Similar ideas also spread in western East Karelia. Two Russian municipalities, Repola and Porajärvi, wanted to become part of Finland but could not under the strict conditions of the Treaty of Tartu. They declared themselves independent in 1919, but the border change was never officially confirmed, mainly because of the treaty, which was negotiated the following year. In the Treaty of Tartu negotiations in 1920, Finland demanded more of Eastern Karelia. Russia agreed to this but kept Repola and Porajärvi for itself, offering Finland Petsamo instead. President Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg of Finland agreed to the exchange.


title: Greater Finland

text: Karelians in Uhtua (now Kalevala, Russia) wanted their own state, so they created the Republic of Uhtua. Ingrian Finns also created their own state, North Ingria, but with the intention of being incorporated into Finland. Both states ceased to exist in 1920.


title: Greater Finland

text: The Greater Finland ideology inspired the Academic Karelia Society, the Lapua movement, and that movement's successor, the Patriotic People's Movement. The Mannerheim Sword Scabbard Declarations in 1918 and 1941 increased enthusiasm for the idea.


title: Greater Finland

text: Under the Treaty of Tartu, Soviet Russia agreed to give Eastern Karelia (known simply as Karelia in the later Soviet Union) political autonomy as a concession to Finnish sentiment. This was in line with the Bolshevik leadership's policy at the time of offering political autonomy to each of the national minorities within the new Soviet state. At the same time, the League of Nations solved the Åland crisis in Finland's favor.


title: Greater Finland

text: After the Finnish Civil War in 1918, the Red Guards fled to Russia and rose to a leading position in Eastern Karelia. Led by Edvard Gylling, they helped establish the Karelian Workers' Commune. The Reds were also assigned to act as a bridgehead in the Finnish revolution. Finnish politicians in Karelia strengthened their base in 1923 with the establishment of the Karelian ASSR. Finnish nationalists helped some Karelians who were unhappy with the failure of the Karelian independence movement to organize an uprising, but it was unsuccessful, and a small number of Karelians fled to Finland.


title: Greater Finland

text: After the civil war, a large number of left-wing Finnish refugees fled for the Karelian ASSR. These Finns—an urbanized, educated, and Bolshevik elite—tended to monopolize leadership positions within the new republic. The "Finnishness" of the area was enhanced by some migration of Ingrian Finns, and by the Great Depression. Gylling encouraged Finns in North America to flee to the Karelian ASSR, which was held up as a beacon of enlightened Soviet national policy and economic development.


title: Greater Finland

text: Even by 1926, 96.6% of the population of the Karelian ASSR spoke Karelian as their mother tongue. No unified Karelian literary language existed, and the prospect of creating one was considered problematic because of the language's many dialects. The local Finnish leadership had a dim view of the potential of Karelian as a literary language and did not try to develop it. Gylling and the Red Finns may have considered Karelian to be a mere dialect of Finnish. They may also have hoped that, through the adoption of Finnish, they could unify Karelians and Finns into one Finnic people. All education of Karelians was conducted in Finnish, and all publications became Finnish (with the exception of some in Russian).


title: Greater Finland

text: By contrast, the Karelians of Tver Oblast, who had gained a measure of political autonomy independent of Finnish influence, were able by 1931 to develop a literary Karelian based on the Latin alphabet. These Tver Karelians became hostile to what they saw as Finnish dominance of Karelia, as did some of the small, local Karelian intelligentsia. Reactions to the use of Finnish among the Karelians themselves were diverse. Some had difficulty understanding written Finnish. There was outright resistance to the language from residents of Olonets Karelia, while White Karelians had a more positive attitude toward it.


title: Greater Finland

text: In the summer of 1930, "Finnification politics" became politically sensitive. The Leningrad party apparatus (the powerful southern neighbor of the Karelian Red Finns) began to protest Finnish chauvinism toward the Karelians in concert with the Tver Karelians. This coincided with increasing centralization under Joseph Stalin and the concurrent decline in power of many local minority elites. Gylling and Kustaa Rovio tried to expand the usage of Karelian in certain spheres, but this process was hardly begun before they were deposed. The academic Dmitri Bubrikh then developed a literary Karelian based on the Cyrillic alphabet, borrowing heavily from Russian.


title: Greater Finland

text: The Central Committee of the Council of Nationalities and the Soviet Academy of Sciences protested the forced Finnification of Soviet Karelia. Bubrikh's Karelian language was adopted from 1937–39, and Finnish was repressed. But the new language, based on an unfamiliar alphabet and with extensive usage of Russian vocabulary and grammar, was difficult for many Karelians to comprehend. By 1939, Bubrikh himself had been repressed, and all forms of Karelian were dropped in both the Karelian ASSR and Tver Oblast (where the Karelian National District was dissolved entirely).


title: Greater Finland

text: In Stalin's Great Purge in 1937, the remaining Red Finns in Soviet Karelia were accused of Trotskyist-bourgeois nationalism and purged entirely from the leadership of the Karelian ASSR. Most Finns in the area were executed or forcefully transferred to other parts of the Soviet Union. During this period, no official usage of Karelian was pursued, and the use of the Finnish language was repressed, relegating it to an extremely marginal role, making Russian the "de facto" official language of the republic. By this time, the economic development of the area had also attracted a growing number of internal migrants from other areas of the Soviet Union, who steadily diluted the "national" character of the Karelian ASSR.


title: Greater Finland

text: The Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic (KFSSR) was founded by the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Winter War, and was led by the Terijoki government and Otto Wille Kuusinen. This new entity was created with an eye to absorbing a defeated Finland into one greater Finnic (and Soviet) state, and so the official language returned to Finnish. However, the Soviet military was unable to completely defeat Finland, and this idea came to nothing. Despite this, the KFSSR was maintained as a full union republic (on a par with Ukraine or Kazakhstan, for example) until the end of the Stalinist period, and Finnish was at least nominally an official language until 1956. The territory Finland was forced to cede under the Moscow Peace Treaty was incorporated partly into the KFSSR, but also into Leningrad Oblast to the south and Murmansk Oblast to the north.


title: Greater Finland

text: During the Continuation War from 1941–1944, about 62,000 Ingrian Finns escaped to Finland from German-occupied areas, of whom 55,000 were returned to the Soviet Union and expelled to Siberia. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, they were permitted to settle within the KFSSR, although not in Ingria itself.


title: Greater Finland

text: During the civil war in 1918, when the military leader Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim was in Antrea, he issued one of his famous Sword Scabbard Declarations, in which he said that he would not "sheath my sword before law and order reigns in the land, before all fortresses are in our hands, before the last soldier of Lenin is driven not only away from Finland, but from White Karelia as well". During the Continuation War, Mannerheim gave the second Sword Scabbard Declaration. In it, he mentioned "the Great Finland", which brought negative attention in political circles.


title: Greater Finland

text: During the Continuation War, Finland occupied the most comprehensive area in its history. Many people elsewhere, as well as Finland's right-wing politicians, wanted to annex East Karelia to Finland. The grounds were not only ideological and political, but also military, as the so-called three-isthmus line was considered easier to defend.


title: Greater Finland

text: Russians and Karelians were treated differently in Finland, and the ethnic background of the country's Russian-speaking minority was studied to determine which of them were Karelian (i.e., "the national minority") and which were mostly Russian (i.e., "the un-national minority"). The Russian minority were taken to concentration camps so that they would be easier to move away.


title: Greater Finland

text: In 1941, the government published a German edition of "Finnlands Lebensraum", a book supporting the idea of Greater Finland, with the intention of annexing Eastern Karelia and Ingria.


title: Greater Finland

text: During the Continuation War's attack phase in 1941, when the Finns hoped for a German victory over the Soviet Union, Finland began to consider what areas it could get in a possible peace treaty with the Soviets. The German objective was to take over the Arkhangelsk–Astrakhan line, which would have allowed Finland to expand to the east. A 1941 book by professor Jalmari Jaakkola, titled "Die Ostfrage Finnlands", sought to justify the occupation of East Karelia. The book was translated into English, Finnish, and French, and received heavy criticism from Sweden and the United States.


title: Greater Finland

text: The Finnish Ministry of Education established the Scientific Committee of East Karelia on 11 December 1941 to guide research in East Karelia. The first chairman of the commission was the rector of the University of Helsinki, Kaarlo Linkola, and the second chairman was Väinö Auer. Jurists worked to prepare international legal arguments for why Finland should get East Karelia.


title: Greater Finland

text: The motives of the Greater Finland idea are a subject of disagreement. Some supported the idea out of a desire for wider cultural cooperation. Later, however, the ideology gained clearer imperialist characteristics. The main supporter of the idea, the Academic Karelia Society, was born as a cultural organization, but in its second year, it released a program that dealt with broader strategic, geographical, historical, and political arguments for Greater Finland.


title: Greater Finland

text: Today, the Greater Finland ideology is practiced by few people. It seeks primarily to promote recovery work and the survival of Uralic peoples, without changes in national borders. Such ideas are promoted by the Juminkeko Foundation, the Matthias Castrén Society, and the Finland-Russia Society.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Dionysius Exiguus (Latin for "Dionysius the Humble", Greek: Διονύσιος; – ) was a 6th-century Eastern Roman monk born in Scythia Minor. He was a member of a community of Scythian monks concentrated in Tomis (present day Constanța, Romania), the major city of Scythia Minor. Dionysius is best known as the inventor of Anno Domini (AD) dating, which is used to number the years of both the Gregorian calendar and the (Christianised) Julian calendar. Almost all churches adopted his "computus" for the dates of Easter.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: From around the year 500 until his death, Dionysius lived in Rome. He translated 401 Church canons from Greek into Latin, including the Apostolic Canons and the decrees of the First Council of Nicaea, First Council of Constantinople, Council of Chalcedon, and Council of Sardica, and a collection of the decretals of the popes from Siricius to Anastasius II. These "Collectiones canonum Dionysianae" had great authority in the West, and they continue to guide church administrations. Dionysius also wrote a treatise on elementary mathematics.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: The author of a continuation of Dionysius's "Computus", writing in 616, described Dionysius as a "most learned abbot of the city of Rome", and the Venerable Bede accorded him the honorific "abbas" (which could be applied to any monk, especially a senior and respected monk, and does not necessarily imply that Dionysius ever headed a monastery; indeed, Dionysius's friend Cassiodorus stated in "Institutiones" that he was still a monk late in life).


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: According to his friend and fellow-student, Cassiodorus, Dionysius, although by birth a "Scythian", was in character a true Roman, most learned in both tongues (by which he meant Greek and Latin). He was also a thorough catholic Christian and an accomplished Scripturist. The use of such an ambiguous, dated term as "Scythian" raises the suspicion that his contemporaries had difficulties classifying him, either from lack of knowledge about him personally or about his native land, Scythia Minor. By the 6th century, the term "Scythian" could mean an inhabitant of Scythia Minor, or simply someone from the north-east of the Greco-Roman world, centred on the Mediterranean. The term had a widely encompassing meaning, devoid of clear ethnic attributes. Even for the "Scythian monk" Joannes Maxentius, friend and companion of Dionysius, the two monks are "Scythian" by virtue of their geographical origin relative to Rome, just like Faustus of Riez is a "Gaul".


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: The dubious assertion, based on a single Syriac source, that the Eastern-Roman rebel general Vitalian, to whom Dionysius seems to have been related, was of Gothic extraction was the basis for labelling, without any further evidence, all of the Scythian monks, Dionysius included, as "Goths". In Greek and Latin sources, Vitalian is sometimes labelled with the same ambiguous term "Scytha"; he is presented as commanding "Hunnic", "Gothic", "Scythian", "Bessian" soldiers, but this information says more about the general's military endeavours, and bears little relevance to clarifying his origins. Furthermore, since none of the Scythian monks expressed any kinship, by blood or spiritual, with the Arian Goths who at that time ruled Italy, a Gothic origin for Dionysius is questionable. Vitalian seems to have been of local Latinised Thracian stock, born in Scythia Minor or in Moesia; his father bore a Latin name, Patriciolus, while two of his sons had Thracian names and one a Gothic name. By the time of the flourishing of the Scythian monks, the provinces from the Lower Danube, long since Latinised, were already a centre for the production of Latin-speaking theologians. Most likely Dionysius was also of local Thraco-Roman origin (latinized Geto-Dacian), like Vitalian's family to whom he was related, and the rest of the Scythian monks and other Thraco-Roman personalities of the era (Justin I, Justinian, Flavius Aetius, etc.).


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Dionysius translated standard works from Greek into Latin, principally the "Life of St. Pachomius", the "Instruction of St. Proclus of Constantinople" for the Armenians, the "De opificio hominis" of St. Gregory of Nyssa, and the history of the discovery of the head of St. John the Baptist. The translation of St. Cyril of Alexandria's synodical letter against Nestorius, and some other works long attributed to Dionysius are now acknowledged to be earlier and are assigned to Marius Mercator.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Of great importance were the contributions of Dionysius to the tradition of canon law. His several collections embrace:


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Dionysius is best known as the inventor of Anno Domini dating, which is used to number the years of both the Gregorian calendar and the Julian calendar. He used it to identify the several Easters in his Easter table, but did not use it to date any historical event. When he devised his table, Julian calendar years were identified by naming the consuls who held office that year; he himself stated that the "present year" was "the consulship of Probus Junior", which he also stated was 525 years "since the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ". How he arrived at that number is unknown, but there is evidence of the system he applied. He invented a new system of numbering years to replace the Diocletian years that had been used in an old Easter table because he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians. It has been suggested that he arranged the numbers so that leap years would be exactly divisible by four, and that his new table would begin one "Victorian cycle" (see below), i.e. 532 years, after his new epoch. The Anno Domini era became dominant in western Europe only after it was used by the Venerable Bede to date the events in his "Ecclesiastical History of the English People", completed in 731.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Evidence exists that Dionysius' desire to replace Diocletian years with a calendar based on the incarnation of Christ was to prevent people from believing the imminent end of the world. At the time, some believed that the Second Coming and end of the world would occur 500 years after the birth of Jesus. The current Anno Mundi calendar commenced with the creation of the world based on information in the Greek Septuagint. It was believed that, based on the Anno Mundi calendar, Jesus was born in the year 5500 (or 5500 years after the world was created) with the year 6000 of the Anno Mundi calendar marking the end of the world. Anno Mundi 6000 (c. 500) was thus equated with the second coming of Christ and the end of the world.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: In 525, Dionysius prepared a table of 95 future dates of Easter (532–626) and a set of rules ("argumenta") explaining their calculation (computus). This followed a request by Pope John I, possibly influenced by the fact that the then current Victorian table gave an Easter date for 526 (19 April) which was the 22nd day of the moon. In a previous embarrassment, this table had given Saturday, 24 April as the date of the Greek Easter in 482. Note well that only the first nine arguments are by Dionysius – arguments 10 to 16 as well as the second paragraphs of 3 and 4 and the third paragraph of 9 are later interpolations. Arguments 11 and 12 imply that these were interpolated in the year 675, shortly before Bede. Dionysius also introduced his table and arguments via a letter to a bishop Petronius (also written in 525) and added another explanatory letter (written in 526). These works in volume 67 of the 217-volume "Patrologia Latina" also include a letter from Bishop Proterius of Alexandria to Pope Leo (written before 457). Though not named by Dionysius, this collection was recently called his "Liber de Paschate" ("Book on Easter") by Audette.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Dionysius ignored the existing table used by the Patriarchate of Rome, which was prepared in 457 by Victorius of Aquitaine, complaining that it did not obey Alexandrian principles, without actually acknowledging their existence. To be sure that his own table was correct, he simply extended a table prepared in Alexandria that had circulated in the west in Latin, but was never used in the west to determine the date of Easter (however, a variant of it was used in the Byzantine Empire, in Greek). The Latin table was prepared by a subordinate of Bishop Cyril of Alexandria shortly before Cyril's death in 444. It covered a period of 95 years or five decennovenal (19-year) cycles with years dated in the Diocletian Era, whose first year was 285 (the modern historical year in progress at Easter). Diocletian years were advantageous because their division by 19 yielded a remainder equal to the year of the decennovenal cycle


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Ultimately, Dionysius Exiguus' Easter table, meanwhile extended from the years 532–626 to the years 532–721, must have been adopted at Rome and also have arrived in Britain and Ireland, where, however in both cases certainly not before the second quarter of the seventh century, Victorius of Aquitaine’s lunar limits 16–22 were gradually replaced with Dionysius’ lunar limits 15–21; only then the discord between the churches of Rome and Alexandria regarding the correct date for the celebration of Easter came to an end, and only from then both these authoritative churches used identical tables and hence observed Easter on the same day.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: The Greek tables had begun with the new moon which fell (on 29 August) the day before the starting date of their chronology, which was 30 August 284. The epact thus calculated was carried over unchanged by Dionysius into his tables together with a number from one to seven, calculated annually, called by the Greeks the "day of the [planetary] gods" and in the west the "concurrent". This number the Greeks used for calculating the day of the week for any date in the Alexandrian civil calendar (a late form of the Egyptian solar calendar which included a final leap day every four years), which involved no more than simple arithmetic because the twelve months ran consecutively and all had thirty days. These two variables were understood neither by Dionysius nor by the other western computists, who were used to working with the age of the moon on 1 January and the Sunday letters to determine the Sundays. This is why the tables took so long to gain acceptance, but the values were eventually assimilated into the theory, the concurrent as the weekday of 24 March and the epact as the age of the moon on 22 March.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Dionysius Exiguus’ Paschal table owes its strong structure to his distant predecessor Anatolius, who invented the Metonic 19-year lunar cycle, which is an application of the Metonic cycle in the Julian calendar. Its lunar cycle is the nearby variant of Theophilus' 19-year lunar cycle proposed by Annianus and adopted by bishop Cyril of Alexandria in the first half of the fifth century. The Metonic structure of this so-called classical Alexandrian 19-year lunar cycle contained in Dionysius Exiguus’ Paschal table is reflected by the structure of its 19-year periodic sequence of epacts.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: The epact, since it originally marked the new moon, was zero in all first decennovenal years. The Latin word "nulla" meaning "no/none" was used because no Roman numeral for zero existed. To determine the decennovenal year, the Dionysian year plus one was divided by 19. If the result was zero (to be replaced by 19), it was represented by the Latin word "nvlla", also meaning "nothing". Both "zeros" continued to be used by (among others) Bede, by whose extension of Dionysius Exiguus’ Easter table to a great Easter cycle all future Julian calendar dates of Easter Sunday were fixed unambiguously at last. However, in medieval Europe one had to wait as late as the second millennium to see the number zero itself come into use, although it had come into being around the year 600 in India.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Dionysius copied the last decennovenal cycle of the Cyrillian table ending with Diocletian 247, and then added a new 95-year table with numbered "Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi" ("Years of our Lord Jesus Christ") because, as he explained to Petronius, he did not wish to continue the memory of a tyrant who persecuted Christians. The only reason he gave for beginning his new 95-year table with the year 532 was that six years were still left in the Cyrillian table after the year during which he wrote. For the current year he only stated that it was 525 years after the Incarnation of Christ, without stating when this event occurred in any other calendar. He did "not" realise that the dates of the Alexandrian Easter repeated after 532 years, despite his apparent knowledge of the Victorian 532-year 'cycle', indicating only that Easter did not repeat after 95 years. He knew that Victorian Easters did not agree with Alexandrian Easters, thus he no doubt assumed that they had no bearing on any Alexandrian cycle. Furthermore, he obviously did not realise that simply multiplying 19 by 4 by 7 (decennovenal cycle × cycle of leap years × days in a week) fixed the Alexandrian cycle at 532 years.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Most of the British Church accepted the Dionysian tables after the Synod of Whitby in 664, which agreed that the old British method (the "insular latercus") should be dropped in favour of the Roman one. Quite a few individual churches and monasteries refused to accept them, the last holdout finally accepting them during the early 10th century. After the first Frankish adaptation of Bede's "The Reckoning of Time" was published (by 771), the Church of the Franks (France) accepted them during the late 8th century under the tutelage of Alcuin, after he arrived from Britain.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Ever since the 2nd century, some bishoprics in the eastern Roman Empire had counted years from the birth of Christ, but there was no agreement on the correct epoch – Clement of Alexandria () and Eusebius of Caesarea () wrote about these attempts. Because Dionysius did not place the Incarnation in an explicit year, competent scholars have deduced both AD 1 and 1 BC. The reason for his omission may be simply that the starting date was computationally convenient, or that he did not believe that the date of the Nativity could be pinpointed exactly. Ambiguities arise from the fact that eras may be either elapsed or current years, there are discrepancies in the lists of consuls, and there is disagreement as to whether the Incarnation should be reckoned from the Annunciation or the Nativity. Most scholars have selected 1 BC (historians do not use a year zero), arguing that because the anniversary of the Incarnation was 25 March, which was near Easter, a year that was 525 years "since the Incarnation" implied that 525 whole years were completed near that Easter. Consequently, one year since the Incarnation would have meant 25 March AD 1, meaning that Dionysius placed the Incarnation on 25 March 1 BC. Because the birth of Jesus was nine calendar months later, Dionysius implied, but never stated, that Jesus was born 25 December 1 BC. Only one scholar, Georges Declerq (Declerq, 2002), thinks that Dionysius placed the Incarnation and Nativity in AD 1, basing his conclusion on the structure of Dionysius's Easter tables. In either case, Dionysius ignored his predecessors, who usually placed the Nativity in the year we now label 2 BC. In his 1605 thesis, the Polish historian Laurentius Suslyga was the first to suggest that Christ was actually born around 4 BC, deriving this from the chronology of Herod the Great, his son Philip the Tetrarch, and the daughter of Augustus, Julia. Having read Suslyga's work, Kepler noted that Christ was born during the reign of King Herod the Great (–), whose death he placed in 4 BC. Kepler chose this year because Josephus stated that a lunar eclipse occurred shortly before Herod's death. John Pratt of the International Planetarium Society proposed the 29 December 1 BC eclipse as another eclipse. According to Josephus, Herod died in the year 4 or 3 BC.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Although Dionysius stated that the First Council of Nicaea in 325 sanctioned his method of dating Easter, that is only generally true. There was no formal canon – the Council was working with Canon 1 of the first Council of Arles (314) which had decreed that the Christian Passover be celebrated "uno die et uno tempore per omnem orbem" (on one day and at one time through all the world) and had charged the bishop of Rome with fixing the date. A circular letter, from the Emperor Constantine to bishops who had not attended the first Council of Arles records:


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: It was judged good and proper, all questions and contradictions being left aside, that the eastern brothers follow the example of the Romans and Alexandrians and all the others so that everyone should let their prayers rise to heaven on one single day of holy Pascha.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: All our eastern brothers who up till now have not been in agreement with the Romans or you or with all those who from the beginning have done as you do, will henceforth celebrate Pascha at the same time as you.


title: Dionysius Exiguus

text: Dionysius' method had actually been used by the Church of Alexandria (but not by the Church of Rome) at least as early as 311, and probably began during the first decade of the 4th century, its dates naturally being given in the Alexandrian calendar. Thus Dionysius did not develop a new method of dating Easter. The most that he may have done was convert its arguments from the Alexandrian calendar into the Julian calendar. The resulting Julian date for Easter was the Sunday following the first Luna XIV (the 14th day of the moon) that occurred on or after the "XII Kalendas Aprilis" (21 March) (12 days before the first of April, inclusive). The 14th day of the moon, Nisan 14, was the date that paschal lambs were slain (in late afternoon) until the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 prevented their continuing sacrifice, as well as the day when all leavened bread crumbs had to be collected and burned, hence Nisan 14 was the day of preparation for Passover (). Alexandria may have chosen it because it was the day that Christ was crucified according to the Gospel of John (18:28, 19:14), in direct contradiction to the Synoptic Gospels (, Mark 14:12, and Luke 22:7), who state that he was crucified after he ate the Seder, his Last Supper. Then and now, the Seder was eaten after sundown at the beginning of Nisan 15. Because Dionysius's method of computing Easter used dates in the Julian calendar, it is also called the Julian Easter. This Easter is still used by all Orthodox churches, even those which have regularized the rest of their calendars with the West. The Gregorian Easter still uses the same definition, but relative to its own solar and lunar dates.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The Staten Island Ferry is a passenger ferry route operated by the New York City Department of Transportation. The ferry's single route runs through New York Harbor between the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island, with ferry boats making the trip in about 25 minutes. The ferry operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with boats leaving every 15 to 20 minutes during peak hours and every 30 minutes at other times. It is the only direct mass-transit connection between the two boroughs. Historically, the Staten Island Ferry has charged a relatively low fare compared to other modes of transit in the area; and since 1997, the route has been fare-free. The Staten Island Ferry is one of several ferry systems in the New York City area and is operated separately from systems such as NYC Ferry and NY Waterway.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The Staten Island Ferry route terminates at Whitehall Terminal, on Whitehall Street in Lower Manhattan, and at St. George Terminal, in St. George, Staten Island. At Whitehall, connections are available to the New York City Subway and several local New York City Bus routes. At St. George, there are transfers to the Staten Island Railway and to the St. George Bus Terminal's many bus routes. Using MetroCard fare cards, passengers from Manhattan can exit a subway or bus on Whitehall Street, take the ferry for free, and have a free second transfer to a train or bus at St. George. Conversely, passengers from Staten Island can freely transfer to a subway or bus in Manhattan after riding the ferry.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The Staten Island Ferry originated in 1817, when the Richmond Turnpike Company started a steamboat service from Manhattan to Staten Island. Cornelius Vanderbilt bought the Richmond Turnpike Company in 1838, and it was merged with two competitors in 1853. The combined company was in turn sold to the Staten Island Railroad Company in 1864. The Staten Island Ferry was then sold to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1884, and the City of New York assumed control of the ferry in 1905.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: In the early 20th century, the city and private companies also operated ferry routes from Staten Island to Brooklyn. Owing to the growth of vehicular travel, all of the routes from Staten Island to Brooklyn were decommissioned by the mid-1960s; but popular demand preserved the route to Manhattan. By 1967, the Staten Island-to-Manhattan ferry was the only commuter ferry within the entire city. A fast ferry route from Staten Island to Midtown Manhattan ran briefly from 1997 to 1998; proposals to revive the route resurfaced in the 2010s.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: With riders in , the Staten Island Ferry is the busiest ferry route in the United States and the world's busiest passenger-only ferry system, thanks largely to the lack of other transit connections between Staten Island and the other boroughs. The ferry is also popular among tourists and visitors due to the free-of-charge views of the New York Harbor a trip provides. The ferry has been featured in several films.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: Before the New York City area was colonized by Europeans, the indigenous Lenape Native Americans used boats to traverse waterways—including present-day Arthur Kill, Kill Van Kull, and Raritan Bay—of the area then known as Lenapehoking, which included present-day Staten Island, Manhattan, and New Jersey. The area would first be colonized as part of Dutch New Netherland in 1624. New Netherland became the British Province of New York in 1664, and the British province finally became part of the United States in 1776. During the 18th century, the City of New York occupied only the southern tip of Manhattan, and Staten Island was not incorporated within the greater city. At the time, ferry service along New York Harbor between Staten Island and Manhattan was conducted by private individuals in "periaugers". These shallow-draft, two-masted sailboats, used for local traffic in New York Harbor, were also used for other transport in the area.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: Cornelius Vanderbilt, an entrepreneur from Stapleton, Staten Island, who would become one of the world's richest people, started a ferry service from Staten Island to Manhattan in 1810. Just 16 years old, he had sailed extensively enough in his father's periauger that he could easily navigate the New York Harbor Estuary on his own. He was given $100 for his birthday in May 1810, which he used to purchase a periauger called "Swiftsure". Vanderbilt used his boat to transport passengers from Staten Island to the Battery at Manhattan's tip. He competed against other boatmen providing service in the harbor, who called him "Commodore" because of his youthful eagerness; although the nickname was intended to be jocular, it applied to him for the rest of his life. The War of 1812 meant restricted access to New York Harbor from elsewhere along the East Coast. During the war, Vanderbilt profited from carrying cargo along the Hudson River, and he bought extra boats with these profits. After the war, he transported cargo in the harbor, earning even more money and buying more boats.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: Around the same time, U.S. Vice President Daniel D. Tompkins secured a charter for the Richmond Turnpike Company as part of his efforts to develop the village of Tompkinsville, which would become Staten Island's first European settlement. The company was incorporated in 1815, and the land comprising Tompkinsville was purchased around this time. The company built a highway across Staten Island; it also received the right to run a ferry to New York. The Richmond Turnpike Company began to operate the first motorized ferry between New York and Staten Island in 1817, "Nautilus", which was commanded by Captain John DeForest, the brother-in-law of Cornelius Vanderbilt. This new ferry broke the short monopoly on steamboat operations that had been held by the Fulton Ferry, which had connected Manhattan and Brooklyn since it began operation in 1814. Since the steamboats provided much faster means of transportation across the harbor, Vanderbilt sold all his ships to his father in 1818. He subsequently started working for Thomas Gibbons, a small-steamboat operator, operating steamboat lines for Gibbons in New Jersey before later operating his own lines in New York.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: When Tompkins died in 1825, the company's stocks were placed in a trust at the Fulton Bank in lower Manhattan. Under an act passed in 1824, the bank was to be incorporated under two conditions: it had to acquire the Richmond Turnpike Company's stock, and it would cease operations in 1844. Vanderbilt, who had grown wealthy in the steamboat business in New York waters, bought control of the Richmond Turnpike Company in 1838. After the company's original charter expired in 1844, Vanderbilt transferred the former company's leases and titles to himself and the company's other chief officer, Oroondates Mauran. This was done in their capacity as private citizens rather than as chief officers. When Mauran died in 1848, his share of the company was purchased by Vanderbilt.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: By the mid-18th century, there were three separate ferry companies offering services between lower Manhattan and the eastern shore of Staten Island. The Tompkins and Staples Ferry, operated by Vice President Tompkins's son Minthorne, ran from a pier at the Tompkinsville end of the highway to Whitehall Street in lower Manhattan. The New York and Staten Island Steam Ferry Company, or "People's Ferry", was operated by George Law and ran from Stapleton, Staten Island, to Liberty Street, Manhattan. The third ferry was the Richmond Turnpike Ferry, also the "Staten Island Ferry"; it originated at Vanderbilt's Landing at Clifton, Staten Island, and terminated in Manhattan. All of these companies merged in 1853, after Vanderbilt, who was focused on business ventures elsewhere, convinced Law and Tompkins to buy out his ferry company for $600,000. Vanderbilt remained a dominant figure in the ferry business until the Civil War in the early 1860s.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The combined company, the Staten Island and New York Ferry Company, ran services from Whitehall Street to Tompkinsville, Stapleton, and Clifton. It originally ran single-ended boats but eventually expanded its fleet to include double-ended boats. The Staten Island and New York Ferry's vessel "Hunchback" was built in 1852, becoming the first double-decked boat to operate in the harbor. To accommodate growing ridership, three double-ended boats—"Southfield I", "Westfield I", and "Clifton I"—were purchased for the ferry between 1857 and 1861. "Westfield" and "Clifton" were purchased by the Union Army in September 1861, almost immediately after they had been delivered. The army also purchased "Hunchback" and "Southfield" in December of that year. The Union used the ships to man the blockade against the Confederate Army during the Civil War. Of the four boats, only "Hunchback" survived; after the war, it was redocumented and bought by someone in Boston; it was abandoned by 1880. Due to the loss of these boats, another three boats—"Westfield II", "Northfield", and "Middletown"—were obtained in 1862–1863. A fourth boat, "Clifton II", was also built, but it was purchased by the U.S. shortly after completion; the vessel was then redocumented, and by 1868 it had been destroyed.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The Staten Island Railway (SIR) opened in stages in 1860. It was necessary to have a direct connection between the new railroad trains and the infrequent ferries to and from Manhattan, but this turned out to be difficult during the beginning of operation. The ferries serving Vanderbilt's Landing were owned by George Law, who operated a competing ferry service called the New York and Staten Island Steam Ferry. Afterwards, Vanderbilt tried to operate a ferry service between Manhattan and Staten Island that would rival Law's ferry service. Vanderbilt started construction on his plan for a central dock on the island, but he abandoned the scheme after a storm destroyed the timber work. Only the large stone foundation remained; this was still visible in 1900 at low tide.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: A long franchise battle ensued; and as a result, Vanderbilt sold his ferry service to Law in 1862. Vanderbilt subsequently lost interest in Staten Island's transit operations, and he handed the operations of the ferry and railroad over to his brother, Jacob Vanderbilt, who was the president of the company until 1883. In March 1864, Vanderbilt bought Law's ferries, bringing both the railroad and the ferries under the same company. The railway assumed the Staten Island and New York Ferry Company's operations in 1865.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: On July 30, 1871, "Westfield II" was damaged when its boiler exploded while sitting in its slip at South Ferry in Manhattan. Within days of the disaster, between 45 and 91 had died, and from 78 to 208 listed as injured, although figures varied widely between the "Times", "Herald", "Tribune", and "World". Among those injured was Antonio Meucci, an Italian immigrant who was developing the first telephone at the time; he was so poor that his wife sold his lab and telephone prototype to buy $6 worth of medications. Jacob Vanderbilt was arrested for murder, though he escaped conviction. This had an adverse effect on the railroad's finances; and on March 28, 1872, the railway and the ferry went into receivership. On September 17, 1872, the property of the company was sold to George Law in foreclosure, with the exception of the ferryboat "Westfield II", which was purchased by Horace Theall.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: Erastus Wiman, a Canadian entrepreneur, planned to develop Staten Island by adding transit. Wiman had become one of Staten Island's most notable figures since moving to New York in 1867, and he had built an amusement area on the island to help develop it. He incorporated the Staten Island Rapid Transit Railroad Company on March 25, 1880; and the incorporation of the company was formalized on April 14, 1880. Two years later, Wiman applied to build a ferry dock in Manhattan in order to serve his new ferry routes. Wiman also proposed combining the six to eight separate ferry operations so as to use just one Staten Island terminal. This became the St. George ferry landing, which opened in March 1886.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: On April 3, 1883, the Staten Island Rapid Transit Railroad Company gained control of the SIR and its boats. A new boat, "Southfield II", was delivered that year. The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) obtained control of the Staten Island Railway Ferry Company's operations the next year. A controlling interest in the Railway Ferry Company was obtained by the B&O in 1885, through purchases of stock. On November 21, 1885, Robert Garrett, president of the B&O, leased the Railway Ferry Company to the B&O for 99 years. The B&O could now provide service to a ferry terminal that was closer to Manhattan public transit. Formerly, passengers had to transfer to the Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ)'s ferries, which went from the Jersey City Terminal to the Liberty Street Ferry Terminal in Manhattan; and the latter was not close to any elevated rail stations in the area. With this acquisition, the B&O could start operating ferries to the Whitehall Street terminal, where there was a direct transfer to an elevated station. Two steel-hulled ferryboats were built during this time and delivered in 1888. These boats were "Erastus Wiman" (renamed "Castleton" in 1894) and "Robert Garrett". They were the first boats of the Staten Island Railway Ferry fleet to be powered by multi-cylinder inclined steam engines, which pumped steam more efficiently than the single-cylinder vertical engines on previous boats.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: Garrett resigned from his position at the B&O in 1887, and his successors did not show as much interest in Staten Island transit operations. Wiman lost significant amounts of money in the Panic of 1893; and two years later, much of his property was auctioned to pay off debts.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: In 1893, the B&O commenced plans to divert some CNJ ferries from Jersey City to Whitehall Street, with the latter ordering "Easton" and "Mauch Chunk" ferries for the Whitehall Street service. The boats started running in 1897. As part of a general improvement, the B&O also started building a new ferry terminal at St. George in 1895.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: In 1899, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) and the New York Central Railroad (NYCRR) formed a partnership in which they were to buy smaller freight railroad companies. PRR president Alexander Cassatt had devised the plan because he thought that two large freight-shipping companies, Standard Oil and Carnegie Steel, were artificially depressing freight-shipping rates by cajoling smaller companies for rebates. Among the PRR's acquisitions was the B&O, which in turn owned the Staten Island Railway and Ferry. Cassatt started buying B&O stock in 1899 and owned much of the B&O stock two years later.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: By the 1900s, Staten Islanders were becoming dissatisfied with the railway-operated ferry service to Manhattan, which they felt was unsafe. The turning point came on June 14, 1901, when the CNJ ferry "Mauch Chunk" struck the B&O ferryboat "Northfield II" as the latter was leaving the ferry port at Whitehall, tearing a hole through the middle of "Northfield". Damaged beyond repair, "Northfield II" sank within ten minutes, ending up near the modern South Street Seaport. Out of 995 passengers aboard, only four or five were killed. The dead were not recovered for several days, and one man's body drifted around the southern tip of Manhattan and across the Hudson River. An investigation into the crash found that "Northfield II" had sunk because of the extent of the damage rather than because of its 38-year age. Despite this, neither captain was criminally charged, although "Mauch Chunk" captain was "censured" for speeding as well as for not helping the passengers aboard "Northfield". In the meantime, the B&O borrowed the paddle-wheeler "John Englis" from the Williamsburg Ferry Company.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: On February 21, 1902, two hundred people held discussions with MacDougal Hawkes, the head of the New York City Department of Docks, to demand that the Whitehall-to-St. George ferry service be improved. In summer 1902, as the B&O fought to retain its ownership of the ferry, Henry Huttleston Rogers demonstrated that his steam-powered yacht was faster than the SIR's vessels, and argued that he should thus be allowed to operate the ferry route. Throughout the rest of the year, Rogers's Standard Oil-affiliated transit venture, which also operated streetcar routes on Staten Island, competed with the B&O for the rights to the ferry. The locations of the Staten Island terminal were also debated; and West Brighton, Tompkinsville, Stapleton, and Port Richmond were suggested as possible locations. The B&O wanted to offer service to St. George and at least one other terminal, while Rogers wanted to use only the Tompkinsville and West Brighton terminals. The two groups submitted their proposals in November 1902; and by February 1903, the Sinking Fund Commission announced their decision to give B&O the operating license. This decision proved controversial: Hawkes made a recommendation to Mayor Seth Low on February 21, and dissatisfied Staten Islanders showed up to the commission's meeting on February 25. These residents, voicing their dissent, helped cause the commissioners to reject Hawkes's proposal.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: Shortly after, the government of New York City announced its intent to acquire ownership of the ferry. Instead of offering the franchise to either the B&O or Rogers, the Sinking Fund Commission decided, in March 1903, that the city could run two ferry routes from Staten Island. One route would travel to Manhattan, terminating at any North River port between 23rd Street and Battery Park, while the other route would go from Staten Island to 39th Street, near Bush Terminal, in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The bill authorizing the city to acquire ferry operations was passed by the 126th New York State Legislature, and it was signed into law by Governor Benjamin B. Odell in May 1903. The city would pay $3.2 million to take over operations of the ferry, including $2 million for five new screw-propelled ships, one named for each of the five boroughs. The city began soliciting tenders for ferryboats, ultimately deciding to pay $1.7 million for four of the five boats from the Maryland Steel Company. The contract was signed on June 20, 1904. The fifth boat, "Richmond", was built on Staten Island by the Burlee Dry Dock Company.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: From 1902 to 1903, there were debates on where to put the new Whitehall terminal; and Whitehall Street was decided on as the best location. In 1904, after the Staten Island Railway Company refused the city's offer of $500,000 for the two terminals, the city started a process to condemn the land around the terminals. Although the B&O had been set to give up the Staten Island Ferry franchise in early 1904, the new borough-class ferryboats were not ready by that time. So, the B&O was granted a two-year contract extension, on the condition that the contract could be canceled with 30 days' notice. In return, the city could purchase the B&O's ownership share in the terminals and the five existing ships from B&O, namely "Westfield II", "Middletown", "Southfield II", "Robert Garrett", and "Castleton", for a set price. A new St. George Terminal was built by the city for $2,318,720, replacing the existing terminal.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: All of the ships except for "Richmond" were finished by April 1905 and delivered during the late summer and early fall of that year. "Richmond" was ready by May 20; and as it had been built in Port Richmond, there was no need to transport the boat. On October 25, 1905, the Department of Docks and Ferries assumed ownership of the ferry and terminals; and the borough ferryboats started their maiden voyages. The next year, the city took ownership of the five B&O ships.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The ferry service from St. George to 39th Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, became city-operated on November 1, 1906, as provided for by the 1903 law transferring ownership of that route to the city. Its Brooklyn terminus was located near the Brooklyn, Bath and West End Railroad's former 39th Street terminal, but as that railroad had been converted into the West End subway line, the Brooklyn ferry now primarily served industrial interests in Sunset Park. Mayor George McClellan, elected as Low's successor in 1903, and Docks Commissioner Maurice Featherson were initially skeptical of the acquisition; but despite their objections, the Sinking Funds Commission approved the private line's acquisition in 1905. The route started with three ferryboats from the Union Ferry Company of Brooklyn. Three new boats were then commissioned for the 39th Street route. Named "Gowanus", "Bay Ridge", and "Nassau", they were smaller than the borough-class boats. "Bay Ridge" was the first to arrive, in July 1907, followed by "Gowanus" in August, and "Bay Ridge" in September. A second route from St. George to Brooklyn started operating on July 4, 1912. The privately operated Brooklyn & Richmond Ferry Company operated the service to 69th Street in Bay Ridge.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: New York City started operating a line from Battery Park to Stapleton in May 1909. This service ran every 90 minutes between 4 a.m. and 8 p.m. daily. It was discontinued at the end of 1913, due to low ridership. Staten Islanders protested against the city's discontinuance of the Stapleton ferry, to no avail.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: Mayor McClellan's successor, William Jay Gaynor, was opposed to what he saw as a hasty purchase of the 39th Street line. Upon becoming mayor in 1910, Gaynor communicated to his administration's docks commissioner, Calvin Tompkins, that the operating costs of that route needed to be reduced; in response, Tompkins replaced the superintendent of ferries. Neither of the city's Staten Island ferries showed a profit until 1915, under John Purroy Mitchel's mayoral administration. The city's purchase of the two Staten Island ferry routes was intended to be temporary, until private operators could be found, but it never happened. These were the only two routes the city operated at the time, but the city continued to award privately operated ferry franchises elsewhere.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The ferryboat "Mayor Gaynor" was delivered in 1914, during Mitchel's administration, to boost service on the Whitehall route, although it had originally been intended for the Sunset Park route. It was not as efficient as the borough-class boats (see ), so it was relegated to supplementary service. Another vessel in the fleet, "Castleton", was sold to a private owner in 1915; its classmate, "Robert Garrett" (renamed "Stapleton" in 1906) would remain in city ownership until 1922.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: Mayor Mitchel's successor, John Francis Hylan, was elected in 1917; and he immediately commissioned a series of new boats. The result was "President Roosevelt" (also known as "T.R."), delivered in 1921, and "American Legion", delivered five years later. The names of both boats triggered some controversy—"President Roosevelt" due to resentment of Theodore Roosevelt, and "American Legion" due to the fact that it was named after the American Legion, which was only one of the various veterans' organizations in existence. At the same time, Hylan also ordered three more boats for the 39th Street route, and he ordered 11 boats for other city-operated routes. This brought the number of boats ordered by Hylan's administration to 16. After Hylan's electoral defeat by Jimmy Walker in 1925, "George W. Loft" and "William Randolph Hearst" were respectively renamed to "West Brighton" and "Whitehall II". In April 1926, the white paint scheme of the boats was replaced by a maroon scheme, which was better at hiding the accumulations of grime on the boats' exteriors.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: In March 1924, New York City Plant and Structures Commissioner Grover A. Whalen suggested that the infrequent 69th Street service be placed under city administration, a request that ultimately went unfulfilled, as the Brooklyn & Richmond Ferry would continue to operate the route until 1939. However, in June 1924, the route to 39th Street was taken over by New York Bay Ferry. By the end of that summer, the three ferry routes were advertised as the most convenient way to get to Staten Island until a tunnel between Staten Island and Brooklyn could be completed, although the tunnel never was finished because its construction was halted a year later. In the 1930s, the ferry routes to Whitehall Street and 39th Street each received one class of three new boats. The boats in the "Dongan Hills" class were delivered from 1929 to 1931 for the 39th Street route, and the boats in the "Mary Murray" class were delivered from 1937 to 1938 for the Whitehall Street route. The classes' engines and dimensions were similar, but each class's exterior appearance was very different from the other.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The Brooklyn & Richmond Ferry Company found it increasingly difficult to maintain its aging fleet, especially with the competition from the 39th Street ferry's new, problem-free ferryboats. This resulted in infrequent service on the Bay Ridge ferry to 69th Street, which lead to a decline in patronage and fare revenues. In February 1939, the United States Department of Commerce ordered the Brooklyn & Richmond Ferry Company to cease all operations after finding that one of its 40-year-old boats was in a severely deteriorated condition. The Bay Ridge operation was subsequently taken over by the Electric Ferries company on March 1, 1939. Electric Ferries, which also operated other routes in the area, bought three secondhand ferryboats from other companies to supplement seven new boats. In 1940, the Brooklyn & Richmond Ferry Company asked the city to stop its municipal operation to 39th Street, so the 69th Street ferry could carry all Staten Island-to-Brooklyn traffic, thus enabling them to lower rates. However, the city refused.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: After the end of World War II in 1945, the city wanted to reconstruct St. George Terminal, which would in turn improve ferry service to Whitehall Street. On June 25, 1946, a fire occurred at St. George, killing three people and destroying the slips for the Whitehall ferry route. The only ferry slips that had not been damaged in the fire were those used by the 39th Street ferry. Because the Whitehall route had more ridership, the 39th Street ferry service was suspended so that Whitehall ferries could stop at St. George. The suspension of ferry service was supposed to be temporary; but when service was still suspended after a year had elapsed, merchants at Brooklyn's Bush Terminal, near 39th Street, began petitioning the city to resume service. However, this service was apparently never resumed. The new terminal was completed in June 1951.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: From 1950 to 1951, the city ordered the construction of three new "Merrell"-class boats for the Whitehall Street route. These boats differed significantly from their predecessors in that they used 6-cylinder "Unaflow" engines, which allowed for a more efficient steam-powered ferryboat compared to the two 2-cylinder compound steam engines of earlier models. With the lowest bid for the three boats coming in at $6.44 million, the "Merrell" class was more expensive than the "Mary Murray" class before it, which had cost only $1 million a boat. The "Merrell" class would quickly become outdated with the introduction of a subsequent class whose diesel engines were even more powerful.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: Around this time, ferry services in the area were being discontinued and replaced by bridges and tunnels, leading to the eventual demise of the 69th Street ferry. The exception was the direct ferry from Manhattan to Staten Island, which was not expected to see a significant decrease in ridership because it provided the only direct link between the two boroughs. Electric Ferries' franchise for the Bay Ridge ferry expired on March 31, 1954; and the city contracted the 69th Street ferry's operation to Henry Shanks in order to keep that ferry running. The 69th Street ferry ceased operation in 1964, due to the opening of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge a short distance south of its route. At the time of the 69th Street ferry's discontinuation, it was being used by 7,000 passengers daily, who paid five cents each, and 8,000 vehicles daily, which were charged 75 cents apiece. Each boat could fit between 500 and 750 passengers but only 42 vehicles, which meant for traffic jams at both of the ferry's slips, due to the boats' low capacity. However, the route between St. George and Whitehall was kept open, since the bridge's opening was expected to spur an influx of residents to Staten Island, with a potential increase in commute ridership on the ferry to Manhattan.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: By 1967, all other ferries in New York City had closed due to competition from automobile traffic, and the St. George-to-Whitehall route was the only ferry in the city. It remained as such until the 1980s, when other ferry routes were restarted. Off-peak service was reduced in 1967, but two months later that service was restored. However, due to the mid-1970s New York City fiscal crisis, night service ended on July 1, 1975, with alternate service being provided by the Fourth Avenue subway. Night service was restored in the 1980s after two boats, comprising the current "Austen" class, were ordered specifically for off-peak and night voyages. These boats entered service in 1986.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: By the late 1980s, ferries had again become a popular mode of transport in the area. In 1991, seventy companies expressed interest in bidding for the rights to operate new ferries across the city. This list of potential bidders was reduced to three companies by 1993. One of these ferries was to be a ferry from Staten Island to midtown Manhattan; this new ferry would travel at top speeds of , as opposed to the existing Whitehall-to-St. George ferry's . New York Fast Ferry was ultimately selected to run a ferry from St. George to East 34th Street in Midtown Manhattan; it opened in January 1997 and saw about 1,650 commuters a day.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The Midtown ferry proved successful until the city essentially eliminated the competing Whitehall Street route's fare in July 1997, as part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)'s "one-city, one-fare" transfer scheme: Staten Island transit riders could pay a single $1.50 fare with a MetroCard on a Staten Island bus or train and get a free transfer to a Manhattan bus or subway by taking the St. George–Whitehall ferry at no additional cost, with return trips handled similarly. As a result, daily ridership on the $5-per-ticket Midtown ferry decreased to 400 passengers, and New York Fast Ferry was unable to make a profit on the route. New York Fast Ferry went out of business at the end of 1997, at which point NY Waterway took over the route. NY Waterway also failed to break even on the Midtown route, and it was eliminated on July 31, 1998.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: Immediately after the September 11, 2001, attacks, Staten Island ferryboats were used to evacuate attack victims from the World Trade Center. The line was then temporarily closed for a week, with ferry service restored by September 18. When it reopened, some ferries were diverted to Bay Ridge due to the closures of subways and roads across the East River. This continued into 2002, by which time some 2,200 passengers per day were using the ferry, and continued to do so even after the subways and highways were reopened. As a result of the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002, all vehicular traffic on the ferry was banned in 2003, and passengers were no longer allowed to board from the lower level of either terminal. Passengers had to board and depart from different sections of the ferry; each terminal's lower level was used by departing passengers, which required boarding passengers to use the upper level. This made boarding the ferry inconvenient for park-and-ride users at the St. George Terminal.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: In 2002, the city again proposed eliminating night service, with plans to outsource nighttime operations to other ferry companies in the area. However, night and weekend service was increased in 2004 due to growing ridership. Before the 2004 increase in night service, boats only ran once an hour between midnight and 7 a.m. The ferry had not added more trips during nights and weekends, even though Staten Island's population had increased since 1990. Ridership continued to increase; and in November 2006, additional ferries, running every 30 minutes, were provided during the weekend morning hours. In 2015, weekend-morning and late-night frequencies were increased to every thirty minutes.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The lower levels of each terminal were reopened in 2017 to reduce crowding on the ships' upper levels. The St. George Terminal's lower level was opened during the morning rush, and the Whitehall Terminal's lower level was opened during middays and the evening rush. During March 2020, service frequencies were temporarily decreased to once-hourly service due to an 86% decrease in ridership levels following the spread of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic to New York City. A longer-term nighttime service cut was announced the next month; the service reduction would remain in effect through at least June 2021, saving $6 million. Full-time service was restored in August 2021.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: Efforts to revive the Staten Island-to-Midtown ferry persisted; and in 2013, city councilman James Oddo advocated for a revival of fast ferry service to Staten Island as part of his campaign to become that borough's president. After Oddo's election as borough president, he pushed New York City mayor Bill de Blasio to consider a Staten Island fast ferry as part of de Blasio's proposed Citywide Ferry Service (later renamed NYC Ferry). At the time, the new system's only proposed ferry stop on Staten Island was at Stapleton, which was already adequately served by the Whitehall–St. George route. Citywide Ferry Service was not planning to serve transit-deprived South Shore. Later, the citywide ferry's Stapleton route was relegated to an unfunded plan, leaving Staten Island with no stops on the new system.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: With the opening of NYC Ferry in 2017, politicians and Staten Island residents again advocated bringing more ferry service to Staten Island, including adding one ferry each to Manhattan and Brooklyn, a stop on the South Shore, and extra stops on the Whitehall–St. George ferry. In April 2017, Oddo announced a tentative agreement with NY Waterway to possibly implement a fast route from St. George to Midtown Manhattan in 2018. The ferry would go to West Midtown Ferry Terminal, as opposed to East 34th Street. Unlike NYC Ferry, the Staten Island-to-Midtown route would not receive any per-passenger subsidies from the city. By September 2017, private developers on the South Shore were also negotiating with SeaStreak to run a separate fast ferry route from the South Shore to Lower Manhattan. In January 2019, NYC Ferry announced that it would start operating the new route from the west side, running via the Battery Park City Ferry Terminal. The route began running on August 23, 2021 as a paid alternative.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The Staten Island Ferry operates 24/7. A new ferry trip begins every 30 minutes most hours of the day and night, with more frequent service during peak times, and takes 25 minutes to complete the route. The ferry carried 23.9 million passengers in fiscal year 2016. The Staten Island Ferry is administered separately from NYC Ferry.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: <mapframe text="A map showing the route of the ferry through Upper New York Bay" width=250 height=250 zoom=12 latitude=40.6715 longitude=-74.0425>


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The ferry to Staten Island departs Manhattan from the Staten Island Ferry Whitehall Terminal at South Ferry, at the southernmost tip of Manhattan near the Battery, and follows a single route. On Staten Island, ferryboats to Manhattan depart from the St. George Ferry Terminal on Richmond Terrace, near Richmond County's Borough Hall and Supreme Court.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The ferry ride affords views of the Downtown Jersey City skyline, the Lower Manhattan skyline, Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island, Ellis Island, Governors Island and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. As such it is a popular destination on Saturday nights, and beer and food items are served at the snack bar. The backdrop of the Staten Island Ferry's route also makes it a popular place for film shoots, and the ferry has been featured in various films, such as "Working Girl" (1988), "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" (2003), and "" (2017). Many other films and TV episodes use the Staten Island Ferry in establishing shots.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: In the past, ferries were equipped for vehicle transport, and operators charged $3 per automobile. A vehicle ban was approved in 1992, after the Whitehall Terminal was destroyed and subsequently rebuilt without vehicle loading areas. Although the temporary terminals included car loading areas, car boarding was discontinued after the September 11 attacks. A plan to reinstate car boarding, because of rising tolls on the Verrazzano Bridge, was seen as infeasible due to the effort needed to screen every car.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: While the ferries no longer transport motor vehicles, they do transport bicycles. There is a bicycle entrance to the ferry at either terminal. The bike entrance is always on the ground level, so bicyclists can enter the ferry without needing to enter the building. The ground entrance was reserved exclusively for bike riders until September 2017, when lower-level boarding and disembarking was restored for all passengers. Cyclists are subject to screening upon arrival at the ferry terminals and must dismount and walk their bicycles to the waiting area and onto the boat. Bicycles must be stored in the designated bicycle storage area on each boat. Bicycles may be taken on the lowest deck of the ferry without charge.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: During rush hours, ferries usually depart every 15 to 20 minutes, with frequency decreasing to every 30 minutes during the mid-days and evenings. Ferries run at 30-minute intervals for a few hours during the early morning—usually 12 a.m. to 6 a.m.—and on weekends.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: There have been at least two terminals on the site of the current Whitehall Terminal. When the original terminal opened in 1903, its Beaux-Arts design was identical to the Battery Maritime Building, which still exists. In 1919, a fire at the South Ferry elevated station damaged the building. A $3 million renovation of the terminal was announced in 1953, and it opened on July 24, 1956. The old terminal burned down in a fire on September 8, 1991. A new design was announced the next year, and a temporary terminal was opened at the site to accommodate passengers in the meantime.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: On February 7, 2005, a completely renovated and modernized terminal, designed by architect Frederic Schwartz, was dedicated, along with the new two-acre Peter Minuit Plaza in the Battery. The terminal contains connections to the New York City Subway's South Ferry/Whitehall Street station complex, as well as to buses and taxis. A "gateway to the city", set against the backdrop of Manhattan's greatest buildings on one side and the river on the other, the design was created to imbue the terminal "with a strong sense of civic presence". In his remarks at the terminal's dedication, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stated that "You can walk into this spectacular terminal day or night and feel like you're part of the city ... [the terminal] is a continuation of what you feel on the ferry ... in a sense you are suspended over the water." Described as "an elegant addition to [the] city's architecture", the transit hub was described by a Newsday editor as so beautiful that it had become a tourist attraction in its own right.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: A new ferry and rail terminal at St. George's Landing and an extension of the Staten Island Railway north from Vanderbilt's Landing had been proposed in the 1870s by the owners of the railroad (George Law, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Erastus Wiman) to replace the various ferry sites on the north and east shores of Staten Island. St. George was selected due to its being the point where Staten Island is closest to Manhattan, approximately away. The terminal and local neighborhood were renamed "St. George" in honor of Law, allegedly as a concession by Wiman in order to build the terminal and connecting tunnel on land owned by Law. The ferry terminal was opened in early 1886.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: On June 25, 1946, a large fire destroyed both the wooden ferry and rail terminals, killing three people, and injuring more than 200. Full service was restored in July of that year. A new $21-million facility was built by the city, and opened on June 8, 1951. Plans for a renovation of the terminal were announced in March 1997, and the terminal was renovated in the 2000s, as part of a $300 million renovation of several ferry terminals in the area, including the Whitehall Terminal. , St. George's direct rail-sea connection is one of a few left in the United States.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: There is no charge to take the ferry. However, riders who want to make a round trip must disembark at each terminal and reenter through the terminal building to comply with Coast Guard regulations regarding vessel capacity. The turnstiles were dismantled when fares were discontinued in 1997; the passenger counts can be approximated if the crew of each boat estimates the number of passengers aboard the vessel. The state's per-passenger subsidy in 2012 was $4.86, paid for through taxes. This subsidy rose to $5.87 in 2016, before dropping to $5.16 in 2017. By comparison, the city's per-passenger subsidy for NYC Ferry, in 2017, was $6.50, after accounting for the $2.75 per-passenger fare.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: For most of the 20th century, the ferry was famed as the biggest bargain in New York City, as it charged the same one-nickel, or five-cent, fare as the New York City Subway. In 1882, riders protested against a proposed fare increase to 10 cents per ride, but were unsuccessful in obtaining a fare reduction. The fare-reduction movement resurfaced in 1894, with multiple petitions being submitted to the New-York Sinking Fund Commissioners. However, these petitions were all denied. By 1898, the fare had been reduced back to a nickel.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The fare for the ferry remained a nickel when the subway fare was increased to 10 cents in 1948. Despite the ferry's growing operational shortfalls in the 1950s, the five-cent fare remained, regardless of inflation. By 1968, the Citizens Budget Commission was proposing to hike fares to close the subsidy deficit, with Staten Island commuters to pay 20 cents, and others 50 cents, for a one-way trip. In May 1970, then-Mayor John V. Lindsay proposed that the fare be raised to 25 cents, pointing out that the cost for each ride was 50 cents, or ten times what the fare was bringing in. As part of a city budget passed in June of that year, the nickel fare was kept. Due to the city's financial crisis in the mid-1970s, Mayor Abraham Beame submitted a proposal to increase the fare in July 1975. On August 4, 1975, the fare was increased to 25 cents for a round trip, collected in one direction only. The fare increase was intended to earn the ferry service an extra $1.35 million in annual revenue.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: In 1990, the charge for a round trip was increased to 50 cents, provoking a backlash among Staten Islanders, and sparking calls for its complete abolition. In 1993, grievances over the fare partly contributed to Staten Island's passing a non-binding referendum to secede from New York City. Rudy Giuliani's three-percent margin of victory in the concurrent mayoral elections was in considerable part due to the support of 80% of Staten Island voters, whose concerns he had pledged to address. The passenger fare was subsequently eliminated altogether, in July 1997, as part of the implementation of the MTA's "one-city, one-fare" system, which allowed for more free transfers between different modes of transit in New York City. The $3 car fares were not affected, as they were separate. The new MetroCard was configured to allow one free transfer between buses and subways; if the rider had paid a fare less than two hours prior, a ferry trip would be regarded as part of that transfer. Eliminating the ferry fare was seen as an action to standardize Staten Islanders' MetroCard fares with those of commuters in other boroughs. Despite the fact that the ferry fare had netted $6 million in annual revenue for the city, its abolition only cost the city about $1 million. The other $5 million represented the money saved not having to maintain the now-removed turnstiles, as well as the revenue from MetroCard fares. Some riders disliked the fares' discontinuance, as they felt that free service might mean lower-quality service.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: In 2014, the city's Independent Budget Office conducted a study investigating the viability of collecting fares from everyone except Staten Island residents. The study found that, after accounting for the expenses of implementing the fare system, a $4 fare would generate net revenue of $35.5 million over fifteen years, while a $2 fare would generate net revenue of only $804,000 during the same time. About 4 million passengers would be subject to the fare annually, based on the previous year's ridership figure of 21.9 million.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: Detailed ridership figures for many fiscal years are not widely available because, in many cases, they not have been publicly released. A 1958 "New York Times" article cited a figure of 24 million annual riders. Ridership on the ferry peaked in 1964, with 27.5 million passengers, but the figure dropped to 22 million in 1965, after the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opened. In the early 2000s, ridership mostly fluctuated between 18 and 19 million, rising to 21.8 million in 2006 before dropping to 18.5 million the next year. Afterward, ridership started rising again, reaching over 21 million in fiscal year 2011.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: In fiscal 2012, the ferry carried 22.18 million passengers, the highest figure in several decades. The figure in fiscal 2013 declined slightly to 21.4 million. Ridership for fiscal 2014 declined again to 21.25 million, while ridership on private ferry services increased. Public ridership then began rising in subsequent years, especially after the 2015 increase in trip frequency, when ridership reached 21.9 million. In fiscal 2016, ridership on the ferry increased to 23.1 million passengers; and in fiscal 2017, ridership increased further, to 23.9 million passengers, breaking the previous year's record. Ridership in fiscal year 2018 rose again to 24.5 million passengers, and in fiscal year 2019, increased to 25.2 million passengers.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: , the Staten Island Ferry is the single busiest ferry route, and one of the busiest ferry systems, in the United States, as well as the world's busiest passenger-only ferry. Despite having only a single route, it carried 23.9 million passengers in fiscal 2017 (the multiple-route Washington State Ferries, the largest U.S. ferry operator with the largest fleet, carried 24.2 million passengers in 2016).


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: There are nine ferry boats in service, from four classes—"Barberi", "Austen", "Molinari", and "Ollis".


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The ""Barberi" class" consists of MV "Andrew J. Barberi" and MV "Samuel I. Newhouse", which were built in 1981 and 1982, respectively. Each boat has a crew of 15, can carry 6,000 passengers but no cars, is long and wide, with a draft of , of 3,335 gross tons, with a service speed of , and engines capable of 8,000 horsepower (6.0 MW). These ships were built at the Equitable Shipyard in New Orleans, at a cost of $16.5 million each. At the time of construction, the ships' capacity was the largest of any licensed ferry in the world.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: "Andrew J. Barberi" was named after the man who coached Curtis High School's football team from the 1950s through the 1970s, while "Samuel I. Newhouse" was named after the "Staten Island Advance"s publisher from 1922 to 1979.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The ""Austen" class" consists of MV "Alice Austen" and MV "John A. Noble", which were built in 1986 and are commonly referred to as "the Little Boats" or "Mini Barberis". Each boat has a crew of nine, carries 1,280 passengers but not cars, is long and wide, with a draft of , of 499 gross tons, with a service speed of , and engines capable of 3,200 horsepower (2.4 MW). Their namesakes are Alice Austen (1866–1952), a Staten Island photographer, and John A. Noble (1913–83), a Staten Island marine artist.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: "Austen"-class vessels usually operate late at night and into the early morning, when ridership is lower. Plans call for either the "Alice Austen" or the "John A. Noble" to be converted from using low-sulfur diesel as fuel to liquefied natural gas (LNG), in an effort to halve fuel consumption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The ""Molinari" class" consists of MV "Guy V. Molinari", MV "Sen. John J. Marchi", and MV "Spirit of America". Each boat has a crew of 16, carries a maximum of 4,427 passengers and up to 30 vehicles, is long by wide, with a draft of , of 2,794 gross tons, with a service speed of , and engines capable of 9,000 horsepower (6.7 MW). Built by the Marinette Marine Group in Marinette, Wisconsin, they are designed to have a look and ambiance reminiscent of the classic New York ferryboats.


title: Staten Island Ferry

text: The lead boat is named after Guy V. Molinari, a former U.S. Representative for several Staten Island districts, who later became a borough president of Staten Island. It was delivered in September 2004. The second ferry was named for State Senator John Marchi, who represented Staten Island for fifty years and delivered January 5, 2005. The third ferry, "Spirit of America", was delivered September 16, 2005 and scheduled to be put into service on October 25, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the municipal takeover of the Staten Island Ferry from the B&O railroad. Mechanical problems on the "Molinari"-class ferries and legal proceedings kept "Spirit of America" sidelined at the Staten Island Ferry's St. George maintenance facility until its maiden voyage on April 4, 2006. Since delivery, the ferries have been beset by frequent breakdowns, with 58 such incidents from 2008 to 2014; almost half of these breakdowns have been on "Guy V. Molinari".