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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 frantic attempt to cling to any sense of security.
The Henry Hudson was halfway to Hoboken when they watched the South Tower collapse. The screaming and crying aboard the vessel suddenly gave way to an unnerving silence.
“They just were impacted by the same feeling, the same sense that the building is still filled with people. There’s all those people still on the ground. All those lives just winked out in the blink of an eye,” said Thornton.
The Henry Hudson made 20 trips that day, evacuating countless survivors out of the apocalyptic scape — at times navigating through a smog so thick they relied on radar rather than sight.
Thornton even carried Secret Service agents to safety — which is how he first heard that the Pentagon was also targeted and that President George W. Bush was secure.
It wouldn’t be until 7 p.m. that the evacuations had slowed and Thornton was pulled off the water.
The crew happily obliged when told to throw out their now-toxic uniforms, but the captain ripped down the American flag that had flown on the deck throughout the heroic rescue mission.
“This was a historic moment. I know how important flags are — those mean a lot. They’re a part of history,” said Thornton, who was in the Navy reserves at the time of the terror attack.
The ash-covered flag lived in Thornton’s home for the past two decades until he decided this summer that it was time to share the piece of history with the world.
The flag — which waved over thousands of lives that Thornton and his crew saved that day — is now on view at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum alongside other artifacts, like victims’ shoes and charred FDNY trucks.
Thornton is now celebrating his 36th year as a Waterway ferry captain, working alongside dozens of other heroes who led evacuations — and he oftentimes pilots the Henry Hudson.
“It’s the highest honor to know that you did something positive that day. Maybe you saved a life, maybe you saved a thousand lives,” Thornton said.
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