Shelter Island Reporter Photo Quiz: What is that, Oct. 25, 2024

If you know, let us know. Send your responses to [email protected] or phone 631-275-1859.

No one got in touch with us to identify last week’s mystery photo (see below).

The huge iron buoy, attached to a massive anchor, has rested in the grassy field next to the Center Firehouse off Thomas Street since March 2023.

A donation from the Reiter family to the Town, it is a permanent symbol of the family’s deep roots on Shelter Island, and the maritime heritage of their hometown.

Islanders remember the anchor and buoy in its place for decades outside “Bob’s,” the family’s restaurant and fish market on North Ferry Road.

Anthony Reiter said when the market was sold, part of the agreement was the family would keep the anchor. A former Shelter Island fire chief and currently a Fire District commissioner, Anthony told us the resting place is fitting, since the Reiter family has a long history serving as firefighters, a tradition going back to Bob Sr. and his wife Kolina’s family. 

Bob Sr. salvaged the anchor decades ago from the Greenport waterfront. According to Victoria Berger, executive director of the Suffolk County Historical Society, the anchor is known as a “wood stock,” used on almost all large American and British ships throughout the 1700s to the late 1890s.

The family told the story of how Bob Sr. somehow got the anchor and buoy into the back of his Dodge pickup and drove it down Greenport’s Main Street with part of it occasionally dragging along the pavement.

The Reiters speculated about the expressions on the faces of the men working on the North Ferry boat when a pickup truck dragging a two-ton anchor and buoy showed up in line.