A memorial to a 1977 tragedy at New York Harbor, the one that never happened

NEW YORK — Eduardo Vargas was walking in Battery Park recently when he noticed a small memorial overlooking New York Harbor.

Vargas, in town from San Diego, squinted at a figure of a tugboat crewman depicted in weathered bronze on a stately pedestal situated at the southern tip of Manhattan. A plaque on the statue claimed it was erected in 1982 by Mayor Ed Koch and the longshoreman's Local 333, to memorialize a little-known harbor tragedy from 1977.

All six crew members from a tugboat, the Maria 120, had 'mysteriously vanished while investigating what appeared to be a private aircraft crash in New York Harbor,' the plaque reads.

'Wait, I've never heard of that before,' said Vargas, 38, while looking at the statue. His skepticism increased as the statue's patina of officialdom gave way to weirdness.

An alien figure is depicted lying at the feet of the seaman, whose raised hand seems intended to block a bright light overhead. Then there is the logo atop the plaque — is that a spaceship hovering over the Statue of Liberty?

'Is this a joke?' said another passer-by, Suzanne Mason, 40, a tourist from France.

Her half-incredulous reaction brought a smile to Joe Reginella, 47, who was standing nearby.

Reginella, a commercial artist from Staten Island, recently created the statue as a hoax.

'I made it as a social experiment, to enjoy that moment when people actually believe it — and it just blows my mind that most people do,' Reginella said.

The 300-pound monument looks and feels like a permanent installation. But its base is made of plywood painted convincingly to simulate granite; the whole thing comes apart to fit neatly on a hand truck.

Since September, Reginella has risen early on weekend mornings and carted it over on the Staten Island Ferry to a fixed location near the Statue of Liberty ferry dock. The area bustles with tourists waiting for boats, taking in the harbor and stopping at the military monuments.

Reginella, clad in a nondescript bomber jacket, hovers nearby to observe and photograph reactions, which range from dismissive snorts to puzzled internet searches on cellphones. Many people just snap a photo and move on, confident they have captured another tourist site.

When he is not making public-art pranks, Reginella is a sculptor who creates props and statues for movie and television shoots as well as for department stores and amusement parks.

He has previously completed two similar spoof monuments.

A statue in 2016 paid tribute to a Staten Island Ferry that was dragged down by a giant octopus. Last year, he displayed a monument in Brooklyn Bridge Park that memorialized a Brooklyn Bridge elephant stampede.

Reginella enjoys eavesdropping on viewers' conversations, often while pretending to fish nearby. He frequently poses with tourists, imitating the sailor's stance. At times, he offers offhand remarks that support the absurd narrative.

He might point out the nearby racks that display tourist pamphlets. There, passers-by can find glossy fake brochures advertising a $25 'Harbor Mystery Cruise' to visit the site of the vanished tugboat.

He might remark that the tugboat incident was overshadowed by the blackout of 1977, and even suggest an internet search, hoping viewers will come upon his UFO tugboat abduction website — 'Learn the Truth about New York's UFO Cover Up.'

'People keep finding more layers and they're like, 'Whoa, this could be real,'' said Reginella, who sets his fictional incidents on days when they believably might have been overshadowed by bigger news.

The ferry incident, for example, occurred on Nov. 22, 1963, the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The elephants stampeded on Oct. 29, 1929, during the Wall Street stock market crash.

According to his UFO tugboat site, the vessel was just off the Battery when the crew saw a mysterious streak in the sky and put out a call for help for an aircraft that had crashed in the harbor. When the Coast Guard arrived, according to the site, they found no crashed aircraft, and the tug crew had vanished.

The site describes a fake museum and shows the trailer to a documentary about the abduction. And of course, the site offers souvenirs, including 'NYC UFO Encounter' T-shirts for $25 apiece.

Reginella said he has sold roughly 1,500 T-shirts of the three hoaxes, of which the ferry disaster is the top seller.

On a recent Sunday, he watched three women from Toronto react skeptically after reading the statue's plaque.

'How is this even here?' asked one of them, Caitlin Rudnick, who laughed when Reginella revealed the details.

'What is he? The Banksy of monuments?' she said, conjuring the anonymous English street artist.

Reginella said several friends have helped him create these projects. A buddy who is a tugboat crewman took video footage for the documentary and a singer, David Johansen, narrated a walking-tour map for the elephant stampede hoax website.

For the ferry hoax, he advertised a (fake) memorial museum near the (real) Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island, where visitors might view ferry relics bearing 'strange suction-cup-shaped marks,' an octopus petting zoo, historical exhibits and a 'Ferry Disastore' gift shop.

Enough people went searching for the museum, he said, that Snug Harbor officials called him to complain.

'I'll get people who see me with the tugboat piece and say, 'Hey, you're the octopus guy, right?'' he said. 'And I'll say, 'Shh, keep it down.''

A tour guide, Alex Haskel, 27, recently led a group of Spanish-speaking tourists past the statue.

'It's a social experiment,' said Haskel, who has discussed the monument with Reginella. 'A realistic sculpture of an incredible event that's crazy but almost believable.'

Reginella said he mostly sets the statue up on weekend days when the weather is nice. He brings it home at night to protect it — and its mystique.

He said he has never sought a permit because he is not damaging property, selling merchandise from that location or impeding traffic. He said no park employees or enforcement officers have objected since he began displaying the monument — although several have taken selfies with it.

He did get nervous, however, when a U.S. Park Police officer recently pulled up in his cruiser and got out.

'OK, I guess the jig is up,' Reginella said as the man approached. But the uniformed officer only pulled out his phone, took a photo of the statue and left.

Still, Reginella decided to pack up, which took less than five minutes.

'See?' he said, wheeling the UFO Tugboat monument back to the Staten Island Ferry. 'It's like it never existed.'