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On Sept. 11, 2001, a call crackled over marine radios across New York Harbor: “All available boats, this is the United States Coast Guard… Anyone willing to help with the evacuation of Lower Manhattan, report to Governors Island.”
Capt. James Schneider, of James Joseph Fishing on Long Island, didn’t hesitate.
“We answered immediately,” he said.
As the chaos unfolded at the World Trade Center, thousands ran to the water’s edge seeking any possible escape. Schneider and his crew raced toward the smoke-filled skyline. En route, they saw the Twin Towers collapse.
“They just told us to put on whatever you think was safe,” he recalled. “Some of them were asking, ‘Can you call my wife? Can you tell her I’m alive?’”
Over the next 17 hours, Schneider’s vessel, the James Joseph II, helped rescue thousands of people from Lower Manhattan, part of what would become the largest maritime evacuation in history, moving nearly half a million people to safety.
But amid the mission, Capt. Schneider was looking for someone close to his heart - Jake Jagota - a deckhand who had worked with him since he was just 11 years old. Jagota was among those who perished in the North Tower that day.
Years later, a woman walked up to Schneider’s dock in Huntington not to fish, but to thank him.
“I said, ‘Wow, you’re a little overdressed for fishing.’ She said, ‘We didn’t really come here to go fishing. We came to say thank you,’” Schneider said through tears. “There she was, right in front of me… probably the most rewarding thing that ever happened to me in my life.”
Capt. Schneider has since battled three different 9/11-related cancers. Last year, he lost his brother, an NYPD detective, to a 9/11-related illness as well.
