Ever wonder what it’s like to pilot an enormous 1,200-foot container ship into New York Harbor? Brothers Bob and Bill Blake have done it thousands of times in all kinds of weather. Join us as these maritime experts reveal the challenges of steering everything from oceangoing vessels, passenger liners, freighters and tankers in and out of the harbor in one of the busiest ports in the world.
Bob and Bill were raised in Westchester County and are second generation Harbor Pilots in New York Harbor. Bob began an apprenticeship as a Harbor Pilot in 1979 and came up through the hawse pipe — a ship’s officer who started as a Seaman and didn’t go to a maritime college — before being fully licensed in 1986. He has been a member of the Port of New York’s harbor piloting association, the Sandy Hook Pilots Association, for over 46 years and has piloted thousands of ships in and out of the ports of New York and New Jersey. Notably, he piloted the aircraft carrier, USS John F. Kennedy, into the harbor on her final call into New York and was the senior pilot on the USS Cole during “Fleet Week” in 2023 (remember that the USS Cole had been attacked by terrorists in the Persian Gulf in 2000 at a cost of 17 U.S. sailors lives and $250 million in repairs).
They will also share their thoughts about what happened on the bridge the night that the 984-foot cargo ship, Dali, crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore Harbor in March 2024 and the 297-foot Mexican Navy training ship, Cuauhtemoc, that crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge in May 2025.
Bob has served on the Executive and Finance Committees of the Sandy Hook Pilots Association and Bill has also served on various committees of it in addition to being a Trustee of the Association. Bill graduated from Emory College in 1987 with a B.B.A. in Finance although he always envisioned a career being a Harbor Pilot. He has been a member of the Sandy Hook Pilots Association for 35 years, and like his brother, has piloted thousands of large ships safely into and out of New York Harbor. He also worked at BriarTek, Inc. which outfits the U.S. Navy and various other foreign navies with man overboard systems.