The song reminds me of the opening page on Fred Mustard Stewart's novel Ellis Island. I was staying at a friends house one weekend after driving up from New York City, where I was working at Ellis. I found this on the bedside table and thought "ah ha! Maybe in his research he found some more stories," and started reading it, only to put it down after the first page. He had described Ellis Island as that jagged chunk of stone out in the harbor, like it was Alcatraz or something. I put the book down. He hadn't even bothered to go or to look at the place or to pick up an article about it or he'd know that Ellis sits on a mudflat in the harbor, enlarged and raised by landfill enough so it wouldn't disappear at high tide.

There are no piers at the island, as the song suggests, and there never were. The piers were in Jersey City behind it, and they stretched out so far that those who could swim often times escaped by swimming the 300 feet to the docks and were usually aided by the longshoremen working over there. Immigrants came to the island on a flat-bottomed ferry, entering the ferry slip, and leaving that same way if they were headed to New York City and environs. Those catching trains to destinations throughout the U.S. left from the back side of the island where a dock was situated closest to the Jersey City train station, now restored and a part of Liberty State Park. You go there now to visit Ellis Island from the Jersey side, and it's a much easier trip.

I spoke with Oscar Brand one time about finding songs to do with immigration and he said there should be many available. It has been a long time since that conversation, and at the time no one in the Park Service seemed inclined to follow up on my idea to include songs as part of a multi-media presentation. (I worked there before the restoration, when they weren't inclined to do much of anything but shore up the tour route we took visitors through and try to keep toilets flushing and potable water available).

SRS