What Lies Below New York’s East River, and the Diver Who Braved its Depths
The depths of the East River have long been a treasure trove of unexpected finds. In this episode of New York: A Portrait in Sound, you’ll hear from some of the divers who braved its murky waters in the 1960s.
From the 1950s to the 1970s, Barney Sweeney was an independent professional diver, hired to recover items lost in New York Harbor and its adjoining rivers. He surfaced many items, both strange and mundane, and collected some good stories along the way. Barney was one of the divers interviewed for this episode on East River Divers.
Submerged in the waters of the river, visibility is low, as sediment clouds the water, and divers would have to go very much by feel. Barney Sweeney would float above the riverbed and probe the mud with a long pole to avoid raising clouds of unsettled muck around him.
In his day, Sweeney made newspaper headlines with some of his finds, which included cars, washing machines, and a murder weapon he found stuck in the branches of a submerged Christmas tree—a pistol that shone there “like an ornament.” (New York Magazine did an article more recently about strange things found in the river.)
Below you can hear Barney tell the intriguing tale of recovering a diamond worth $25,000.
Sweeney also frequented the pages of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Tugboats beware!
Below you can hear Sweeney discuss the dead bodies he’s resurfaced, and the death of his father, who was also a professional diver. You can read an article here about an 8-year-old boy Sweeney found in 1957 who had drowned in the Hudson River. He also briefly discusses his diving gear, which you can learn more about here.
Sweeney graces the Brooklyn Daily Eagle again in 1957, looking for a sunken freight car.
Towards the end of his career, work for independent divers was beginning to thin. Companies that required it would have their own diving crews on call, rather than turning to freelancers like Sweeney. He tells the interviewer that there are only 3 or 4 other New York independent divers that he knows of at the time in the 1960s. But divers still explore the river today. The NYPD has their own scuba division and ecologists probe the river for life and pollution levels.
