Fire Island ferries have crisscrossed the bay and the years

By Rhoda Amon | Staff Writer

FOR MORE than a century, ferry boats have been transporting pleasure-seekers to the South Shore barrier beaches. Few places on earth have the lure of the longest of these islands, the 32-mile sandbar known as Fire Island. More than a half-million passengers are now ferried each summer to Fire Island's sun-drenched communities, where the absence of cars is part of the sweet-life appeal.

The wooden ferry boat Bellmore is pictured above on a Fire Island run in August, 1938, but its history may be longer than that. Jim Shelland of Bellmore and his sister, Doris Braynard of Sea Cliff, remember the Bellmore as the boat that carried them as children to a joyful day at High Hill Beach, a resort on the east end of what has become Jones Beach. High Hill Beach closed with the opening of Jones Beach State Park in 1929.

But the Fire Island water commute shows no signs of abating. Aluminum-hulled 85-foot vessels like the Fire Island Ferries' Voyager, at right, carry 394 passengers at a time.