Hero NYC ferry captain recalls horror show as he evacuated thousands from 9/11

Captain Rick Thornton was four hours into his Waterway shift on Sept.11 when he spotted a plume of white smoke trailing from the World Trade Center.The terrifying news then came over the Henry Hudson ferry’s radio waves that a plane had struck the North Tower.

Thornton and his crew assumed it was an accident — until they witnessed a massive fireball just 16 minutes later.“We knew this was some kind of crazy coordinated attack,” Thornton, 60, recalled of the horrifying sight from his captain’s pilothouse as his boat floated between New Jersey and Midtown.“I just immediately told my crew, ‘We’re going down there.We’re gonna start evacuating.

Let’s go.”Thornton was captaining the Henry Hudson, one of the NY Waterway’s 30-vessel fleet that rescued as many as 160,000 people from Manhattan on Sept.11.The Navy veteran abandoned his route and jetted toward the madness without consulting his superiors for permission.

Thornton had also been part of the ferry’s massive response for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.He and his crew intended to sail directly to Wall Street, but were redirected to Battery Park after witnessing dozens of people jumping into the Hudson River in a desperate attempt to escape the “horror show.”“People saw a ferry come in and they just started climbing over the railing along the seawall and swarming onto the boat.My crew, they’re looking up at me, and I say ‘Just start loading!'” Thornton recalled.“When we couldn’t fit any more people, I got on the loudspeaker and I told them, ‘Don’t worry folks, we’re coming back.

We’ve got more boats coming.’ “And as we’re backing away from the seawall, people were still climbing over the rail and jumping across the open water to the boat.It was like that scene in ‘Titanic’ where they were trying to get on that last lifeboat.”More than 500 crying and screaming people packed onto the 399-capacity vessel, with most grabbing onto life jackets in a fra...