New York Navy Yard, colloquially known as the Brooklyn Navy Yard, is located on Wallabout Basin, Brooklyn, less than two miles north of the Battery. It is accessed by the East River, which separates Manhattan and Brooklyn. The channel is 40 feet deep to the south and 35 feet to the north. Access from the south requires passing under the Brooklyn Bridge, which has a vertical clearance of 127 feet, and the Manhattan Bridge.
   Following the British occupation of New York during the American Revolution, Wallabout Bay was the mooring site for prison hulks, aboard which thousands of American prisoners were incarcerated and died. In 1801, the US Government established a navy yard, which continued in operation for 160 years. Important vessels built here ranged from Robert Fulton's steam frigate Fulton (1815) to World War II-era battleships North Carolina, Iowa and Missouri and aircraft carriers Bennington, Bon Homme Richard and Kearsarge, Oriskany and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
   With so much other activity, the yard built only two destroyers, Farragut-class Hull and Dale but was a key base where many others fitted out and from which they took their final departure for deployment, e.g., through the Panama Canal to the Pacific.
   After closing in 1966, the yard was converted to private manufacturing and commercial activity. Today, the site has over 200 tenants, including a major motion picture and television studio complex completed in 2004, and is managed by the Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation.