During the 1930s and 40s, the Seamen’s Church Institute had several cat mascots at their headquarters at 25 South Street. The men called them “The Cat of the Moment,” and they included cats named Queen Hannah, King Mickey, Stormy Weather, and Bosun. Bosun’s mother, Seaweed, drifted in on a Liberty ship in 1946 and made her home under the desk of game room hostess Christine Albert Hartmann. According to The Lookout, Seaweed gave birth to four kittens shortly after she arrived at the Institute, on February 9, 1946. The news of the birth was called “a blessed event on the waterfront.” The men originally named the kittens Ditto, Quote, Unquote, and Comma because of the white markings on their noses. The mariners hoped to groom the new cats as ship mascots for four new cargo vessels of the United States Lines: Onward, Rapid, Defender, and Whistler.

Mrs. Hartmann set up a basket for the cat family in the sailors’ game room. The basket had a curtain and a sign that said Caternity Hospital. Twice a day, she’d pull back the curtain to let the sailors play with the kittens. The mariners would advise Mrs. Hartmann on the cats’ diets and would offer to bring them to sea on their ships. Shortly after the kittens’ birth, a contest was held to find better seafaring names for them. James F. Sweeney, a fireman and water tender, came up with the winning names: Fogbound, Skipper, Hatches, and Sea Wolf, who was later renamed Bosun. (Bosun is the ship’s officer in charge of the crew.) Of the four kittens, Bosun was the only one who enjoyed stretching out lazily in his bed made by sailors and lapping up egg on toast for breakfast every day. The other cats were lured to the sea: Fogbound went to Greece, Skipper headed to Italy, and Hatches went to the Pacific.

In October 1946, Bosun appeared at the Brooklyn-Long Island Cat Club show at the Hotel Granada (268 Ashland Place) in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described the cat as a bum who not only didn’t know who his father was, but who was leading the Life of Reilly amid all the other pampered and more exotic felines at the show. “An unimportant white color, Bosun is not a cat’s cat. He’s for men and rough talk,” the reporter wrote. His cage was described as being gaudy with pin-up pictures of lady cats in “provocative poses.” None of the other 150 cats in attendance had decorated cages. Bosun did not compete for any prizes; not only was he not qualified, but his mom, Mrs. Hartmann, was one of the judges.

Boson retired from the Seamen’s Church Institute in 1948 and went to live with the Hartmanns on their farm in Long Island. He made one more public appearance at the Seaman’s Booth on the 4th floor of Grand Central Palace Motor Boat Show in 1949. Notice the cards and feline pin-up posters around him.

Although some of the Institute’s cats were described as being “not very religious,” one unnamed female cat was especially fond of the chapel. In June 1939, Mrs. Janet Ruper, house mother and head of the missing seamen’s bureau, told The Lookout about a cat who spent most of her time in the chapel. She especially enjoyed climbing into the organ chamber and meowing loudly during Sunday services. One day, the cat gave birth to two kittens in the church organ. “And do you know what?” Mrs. Roper exclaimed. “Those kittens were coal black except for a pure white cross on each of their backs!”

The Seamen's Church Institute started In 1834, when a small group of Episcopal men founded what was then called the Young Men’s Church Missionary Society on the Lower East Side waterfront. Their first Chaplain, Reverend Benjamin C.C. Parker, presided over church services for seafarers in the Floating Church of Our Savior. This unique Gothic church was built atop a barge in 1844 and docked, like a large boat, at the foot of Pike Street on the East River. This floating chapel provided not only a place of worship but also a place where seafarers from around the world could feel at home.

In 1846, the Society built its second floating church, the Floating Church of the Holy Comforter. This church was built at the foot of Dey Street on the Hudson River (right about where One World Trade Center is today) to accommodate seafarers and local residents on the west side of the island. The Holy Comforter provided services until 1868.

The original Floating Church of Our Savior burned down in 1866 and was replaced with this new floating church in 1870.

The Floating Church of Our Savior on the East River. 1870-1910.

The second East River church was in use until 1910, after which it was towed to the Kill Van Kull at Mariners’ Harbor in Staten Island and renamed All Saints’ Episcopal Church. Here is the former floating church after it was moved from the waterfront to Richmond Terrace opposite Van Name Avenue in 1914.

In 1906, the Society formally changed its name to the Seamen’s Church Institute of New York. Ironically, the Seamen’s Church Institute laid the cornerstone of its new “million-dollar home for seamen” on April 15, 1912. This was the morning of the sinking of RMS Titanic. When the RMS Carpathia arrived in New York with the survivors, the Institute delivered clothing and kits to the surviving Titanic crew members. The new twelve-story building at 25 South Street accommodated up to 580 seafarers in dormitory-style rooms. The headquarters also housed an employment bureau, savings bank, medical clinic, reading room (stocked with foreign newspapers and magazines), writing room, chapel, and basement storage area for the men to store baggage while at sea. A sign in the lobby read, “This Institute is willing to help men who help themselves.”

One of the memorable features of the building was its main door, which was guarded by “Sir Galahad” beside a bell that had been salvaged from the passenger steamer Atlantic, which had wrecked in 1846 on Long Island Sound. The bell rang out the hour and half hour.

In 1917, a memorial to the Titanic was placed on the roof of the building along with a light and a raised ball. The ball was lowered at noon to help ships anchored in the harbor set their clocks.

The building at 25 South Street was razed in the 1960s, but the Titanic memorial still exists at the comer of Water and Fulton Streets.

In 1968, the Seamen’s Church Institute moved into a new building at 15 State Street in Battery Park. The old cornerstone, ship’s bell, and several bronze memorial plaques were installed at the new headquarters. The next home for the Seamen’s Church Institute was located at 241 Water Street in the Historic Buildings section of the South Street Seaport Museum. Ten years later, the Seamen’s Church Institute of New York sold its headquarters building on Water Street and donated its archival collections to CUNY Queens College. The Institute is currently headquartered on the 26th floor at 50 Broadway. Sadly, I doubt that any modern-day wayward cats ever drift into this new building…