Staten Island artist's monument to giant octopus attack spawns a seductive legend
Update, Oct. 10, 2019: It takes a lot to raise eyebrows in New York City, but a new sculpture in Battery Park — featuring an unfortunate tourist being set upon by wolves — is doing just that.
Happily, the event depicted did not occur.
Joseph Reginella made the sculpture. He spoke to As It Happens in 2016 when he unveiled a similarly fantastical piece. Original story runs below.
November 22, 1963 is usually remembered as the day U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. But on that same day, a Staten Island ferry packed with passengers was pulled into the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean by a giant octopus.
If you stumble across Joseph Reginella's powerful monument to the latter event — or a pamphlet directing you to the Staten Island Ferry Disaster Memorial Museum — you may find yourself questioning your memory. Surely you would remember a giant octopus attack that killed 400 souls.
Don't worry. You would. But the attack never happened.
"The plaque is dedicated in loving memory to the lives lost on the Cornelius Kloff," Reginella told As It Happens host Carol Off. "November 22, 1963 — in one of the most tragic and mysterious maritime disasters in American history."
Reginella delves into the details of the monument's backstory.
"Approximately 4 am on that morning, a ferry boat from Staten Island going to New York mysteriously sank. And it happened within a matter of moments. The couple of eyewitnesses that have seen it claim large tentacles of the boat pulled the boat underwater," he says. "The pieces of the wreckage that did show up had large suction-cup holes on the hull. The boat was never found because there's really deep caverns down there."
That's the story, anyway — one that many a visitor to the monument has swallowed hook, line and sinker, according to Reginella.
The whole premise of this was just to see how gullible people are. I noticed a couple of people yesterday [say] 'Oh my God, I saw this in the news!'- Joseph Reginella
"They look at this monument, they read the plaque," he says. "And you can see they get this strange look on their face. Some of them put their hand to their mouth. And they stare out into the water and kinda just walk away, confused."
Reginella regularly visits the monument at Battery Park that looks out over the harbour and the Statue of Liberty. He stands nearby and pretends to fish, so he can gauge people's reactions to the piece. He says he chose Nov. 22, 1963 as the date of the attack for an added level of plausibility — the idea being that coverage of the catastrophe would have been eclipsed by news of Kennedy's assassination.
"The whole premise of this was just to see how gullible people are. I noticed a couple of people yesterday [say], 'Oh my God, I saw this in the news!' It's funny and it's frightening, is what it is."