A monument to the American merchant seamen standing right in the water off the coast of battery Park: the pedestal is in the form of a sinking lifeboat, full of despair shape.

The memorial was conceived in the seventies of last century, the American veterans of the merchant Navy who wanted to perpetuate the memory of fallen comrades. During the Second world war killed about 700 U.S. merchant ships carrying essential allies of the goods (including the Soviet Union). Of these dangerous flights did not return home 6600 sailors.

The competition for the right to carve the monument was won by Marisol Escobar, a Venezuelan, who received his artistic education in Paris and new York. In sculpture, however, she was rather talented self-taught. The idea of the monument was told it is an old photograph taken in unusual circumstances and which served as the starting point for incredible stories.

In March of 1942, German submarines Admiral Doenitz held sway in the ocean between Florida and new York. March 22 Nazi submarine U-123 found the tanker "Muskogee" and struck at him with a torpedo. Of the 34 members of the crew only ten people managed to leave the sinking ship in life rafts. The Germans left the Americans a little water, food and cigarettes and continued the RAID. Aboard the submarine the photographer took two pictures of the seven people on one of the rafts.

All the survivors after the attack, the Americans later killed in the open sea. RAID of U-123 wrote the Nazi press, one of the Berlin Newspapers published a picture of sailors on a raft. At this time in German captivity were American chamber of sailor George Duffy, and newspaper hit him in the hands. He tore the page with the photograph and managed to keep her for more than a thousand days of captivity, even in a Japanese pow camp. After the war he spent a long time trying to figure out what sailors of the vessel depicted in the picture. It managed to be made only in the eighties, forty years after the death of the tanker, the FBI was able to read the name "Muskogee" on the life vest one of the sailors.

The monument, which was based on the history of the tanker "Muskogee", was opened in 1991. Marisol Escobar accurately reproduced the pose of one of the sailors in the photo: he's calling for help, cupping his hands around his mouth. The second is on his knees, he no longer hoped for salvation. The third extends to the water where drowning is the fourth sailor. The tide then bares his figure, almost completely hides it, and then above the water is only visible hand in a last-ditch effort.