SS El Estero was a ship filled with ammunition that caught fire at dockside in New York Harbor in 1943, but was successfully moved away and sunk by the heroic efforts of tugboat and fireboat crews, averting a major disaster.

Acquired by the US Maritime Commission on June 10, 1941, as part of an effort to increase US-Flag merchant marine shipping capacity, El Estero was purchased from Southern Pacific and placed operation with United States Lines under a Panamanian registry.

The fireboats arrived at 6:30 p.m. and immediately ran hoses up to Coast Guardsmen on the burning ship, then took positions directly alongside El Estero, as a trio of commercial tugboats made up a towline to her bow and began pulling her off the Caven Point Pier towards open waters on through The Narrows.

[5] With a shroud of secrecy soon in place over the events surrounding the sinking of El Estero due in large part to the then-classified mission of the Caven Point Army Depot, public knowledge of the near disaster remained low until 1944 when the first of several awards for heroism were distributed to the first responders.

Her untimely end and its legacy are still very much visible today in the modern-day Sandy Hook Bay, where in August 1943 the US Navy began construction of a new ammunition depot in New Jersey, now known as Naval Weapons Station Earle which features a 2.9-mile pier designed to move the hazardous activity of loading and unloading munitions away from densely populated areas.