Hell Gate

[6] Because explorers found navigation hazardous in this New World place of rocks and converging tide-driven currents (from the Long Island Sound, Harlem River strait, Upper Bay of New York Harbor, and lesser channels, some of which have been filled), the Anglicization stuck.

[7] The strait was also known as Hurl Gate (or Hurlgate), and so labeled on 18th and 19th century maps and annals,[8][4] this name probably consisting of Dutch warrel 'whirl' and gat 'hole, gap, mouth', in effect denoting 'whirlpool'.

[12] In 1849, a French engineer whose specialty was underwater blasting, Benjamin Maillefert, had cleared some of the rocks which, along with the mix of tides, made the Hell Gate stretch of the river so dangerous to navigate.

Ebenezer Meriam had organized a subscription to pay Maillefert $6,000 to, for instance, reduce "Pot Rock" to provide 24 feet (7.3 m) of depth at low-mean water.

[15] The U.S. Congress, realizing that the problem needed to be addressed, appropriated $20,000 for the Army Corps of Engineers to continue Maillefert's work, but the money was soon spent without appreciable change in the hazards of navigating the strait.

[16] In 1868 Newton decided, with the support of both New York's mercantile class and local real estate interests, to focus on the 3-acre (1.2 ha) Hallert's Point Reef off of Queens.

Newton's daughter once more set off the blast, the biggest ever to that date and subsequently reported as the largest man-made explosion until the advent of the atomic bomb[17][18][19] although the detonation at the Battle of Messines in 1917 was several times larger.

[22] In James Fenimore Cooper's historical fiction novel The Water-Witch, or, The Skimmer of the Seas (first published in New York in 1830[24]), Hell Gate serves as the scene for an exciting pursuit of the brigantine Water Witch by HMS Coquette.