The Mary Murray & The Shah of Iran's Yacht

Chris left an interesting comment on my Raritan River post. He asked about the abandoned boats on the river's edge, pictured to the right. I'll tackle those boats one at a time:

- The Mary Murray was a Staten Island ferry boat, commissioned in 1937 and named after Mary Lindley Murray, who helped the American troops during the Revolutionary War by distracting the British officers and her Crown-loyal husband. The boat was sold at auction in 1982 to a man who owned a marina in East Brunswick. He planned to turn it into a floating restaurant, but it sank before he managed to get to its final destination. I found some great old photos from when the boat could carry people and stay afloat.


Here's a site with some photos of the inside.

- The yacht next to the Mary Murray did used to belong to the Shah of Iran. As we all know, the last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, came to the US for "medical treatment" in 1979. The Iranians weren't too happy about to, and we wound up with a hostage crisis. What most people don't know is that the shah never left American soil. After sending a body double to Egypt to fake his "death", he lived on a yacht in the Raritan River, New Jersey. His boat parties are legendary, and his fondness for Huey Lewis music and Ralph Macchio movies are still the talk of Jersey, but one day, while playing a game of chicken, he accidentally ran his boat aground. Ashamed, he avoided human contact for over a decade, living inside the Mary Murray and living off of egrets. He finally decided to return to life among the civil, and, at 87, he is the oldest bartender at the boat club. He's also become a vegan, which is why the egrets have finally begun to inhabit New Jersey waters once more.