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At 2:15 p.m. yesterday, Jeff McAllister gave the widely anticipated order.
"First line," McAllister, a senior docking pilot, said into a walkie-talkie, and deckhands threw a heavy rope from the USS Intrepid to the dock, where it was secured.
About 10 minutes later, with more lines hauled ashore, McAllister ordered the four tugboats to idle their engines. Then he kissed his wife and relaxed, with the historic aircraft carrier safely secured to Pier 86 in Manhattan, back home for the first time after a 22-month absence and a $120-million project for restoration of the vessel and construction of a new pier.
"The core of the [Big] Apple was missing and now she's back," said an elated Bill White, president of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.
Just after 11 a.m., the Intrepid began a leisurely eight-mile voyage from the Staten Island Homeport, where it had been restored, across New York Harbor and up the Hudson to the new pier.
Yesterday, 230 veterans who served on the ship, some when it was commissioned in 1943, lined the rails for the tow north. When it paused off Ground Zero...