LIVE CAMERA NETWORK
Staten Island Ferry — Live Ferry Tracker
24 terminal & harbour cameras across 1 dock walls, and the fleet live on AIS — matched by the boats' own broadcast names. Positions, not timetables. Free, no signup.
The Staten Island Ferry makes the most famous short crossing in America: St. George to Whitehall, across the mouth of the Hudson, past the Statue of Liberty, free to ride and running around the clock. Its boats are named for New York — the Barberi, the Molinari, the Marchi, the Dorothy Day — and they announce those names on AIS like every vessel in the harbour. The live panel above lists the ones reporting now.
One gap is stated plainly, because it shapes the page: the catalogue holds no camera inside either terminal — not at St. George, not at Whitehall. What it holds is the harbour itself: the waterfront cameras of both shores within 6 km of the crossing’s midpoint, which is where this ferry is best watched anyway — a big orange boat crossing the busiest harbour in America, in frame with everything else that floats there.
The Staten Island Ferry fleet, live
Every vessel of this system that is transmitting on AIS right now — its broadcast name, speed and destination as reported. Reports up to about ten minutes old are admitted; older reports are dropped, never carried forward as if live.
Staten Island Ferry — on the water now
Live AIS · refreshes every 30 sListening for Staten Island Ferry vessels…
Positions are the vessels’ own AIS broadcasts, matched by fleet name inside the service area. Reports can be up to about 10 minutes old — the feed drops anything older — so treat this as where the boats were moments ago, and never as a sailing schedule: for departure times, use the operator’s own status.
Best time to watch
The crossing takes about twenty-five minutes, and the harbour wall earns its keep at the turnarounds: a boat easing into St. George, the next one already mid-harbour. Rush hours are the spectacle — the ferry threading commuter traffic, tugs, barges and the Governors Island boats — and after dark the lit boat crossing a black harbour under the Manhattan skyline is the classic frame.
Terminals & routes
Terminals served: St. George (Staten Island) · Whitehall (Manhattan).
Routes, named as the terminal pairs they connect: St. George – Whitehall. No sailing times are listed — no dataset behind this site carries them, so the live panel and the operator’s own status are the guide.
New York Harbor — both shores of the crossing — 24 cameras
Every catalogue camera within 6 km of the harbour’s middle: the Lower Manhattan waterfront the ferry leaves, the Staten Island shore it makes for, and the harbour traffic between them.
Loading live cameras…Fetching the live index for New York Harbor.
Every card is the camera's real live feed: snapshot cards refresh about every 15 seconds, stream cards play live in the grid (a few at a time, the same budget the map tiles use) and in full when you open a camera. Feeds are provided by their operators and public sources; a camera whose stream has gone off air shows as unavailable rather than playing a recording.
Terminals with no camera — stated, not padded
The catalogue holds no camera at St. George Terminal, Whitehall Terminal — checked directly at each dock. Rather than borrow a distant highway shot and call it a terminal wall, this page names the gap. The live panel above still tracks the fleet serving those terminals; if a public feed is published at one of these docks, it will join the walls automatically.
How to use the Staten Island Ferry tracker
- 1Start with the live panel: it tells you which boats are actually on the water right now, under their own names.
- 2Read the dock before the boat: open the terminal wall for the dock you care about and look at the holding lanes — a filling dock is a sailing being prepared.
- 3Cross-check with the weather panel: fog, wind and tide change what a crossing looks like long before they change whether it runs.
- 4For departure times, use the operator's own sailing status — this page tracks positions and pictures, and prints no timetable it cannot source.
- 5Open any vessel on the globe to follow it across the water; the full maritime layer (VIP) carries every other ship sharing the route.
Staten Island Ferry ferry tracker — FAQ
Why is there no camera at the St. George or Whitehall terminal?+
Is the Staten Island Ferry really free?+
How does the panel tell the ferry from other harbour traffic?+
How many cameras are in the Staten Island Ferry walls, and how is the count worked out?+
Is it free to watch?+
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