SYNOPSIS
The Untold Tale of America’s Largest Water Evacuation of Manhattan on 9/11
Captain JAN (late 40s) and her daughter, BRITT (mid 20s), are working aboard their tugboat in New York Harbor when the unthinkable happens: two airliners slam into the Twin Towers, transforming the Manhattan skyline into a hellscape of fire and smoke.
After learning it’s a terrorist attack, they speed to Battery Park, knowing survivors will be stranded at the seawall. The tugboat isn’t built for passengers, and it takes all of Jan and Britt’s skill to keep from capsizing as they load up a boatload of survivors to transport across the Hudson River. The scene becomes more desperate when the towers fall, shrouding the waterfront in plumes of toxic ash. In the chaos, Britt jumps into the river to save a passenger and is swept away. Frantic with worry about her daughter — who suffers from a kidney condition — Jan searches fruitlessly in the murky water, ignoring the pleas of passengers to take them out of the debris cloud to safety. But a kind word from one survivor, ERIC (20s), reminds Jan that Britt would want her to carry on helping whomever she can.
In the end, Jan delivers the survivors across the river and is reunited with Britt. They are determined to go back for more when a call crackles over the shortwave: “All available boats” are needed to rescue people from Battery Park. Joined by a flotilla of more than 100 other vessels and countless other daring civilians, Jan and Britt work all day, ultimately helping transport 500,000 people to safety in what will become the largest maritime evacuation in history.
