NEW YORK — In this city, among the skyscrapers and taxis and endless concrete and speedwalking New Yorkers, you can forget you’re on an island. It’s a concrete jungle where dreams are made of — and where you can get lost for hours among streetlights and stone facades, while the East and Hudson Rivers remain out of sight. The way the city can envelop you while you’re in it may be the same reason why one of the most powerful ways to see Manhattan is by boat. And the longevity and popularity of water-based city tours is a testament to the view. In 1945, a group of tour operators, including Frank Barry, Gerald O'Driscoll, Helen Mitchell, William Moran, and Frank Clair, merged their competing companies into one: the Circle Line Company. The new company's fleet was anything but uniform, with a variety of small cruise boats and sailboats, but the enterprising group put together all kinds of tours around Manhattan. In 1950, the company purchased cutters from the Coast Guard, left over from World War II, that were large enough to make the full 35-mile trip around the island of Manhattan, but not so large they couldn’t fit through the Harlem River. Over the years, there have been plenty of changes — with acquisitions of other companies, like the Hudson River Day Line, as well as changes in ownership and mergers and splits — but the history remains. John Barry, the nephew of founding member Frank Barry, embodies that history. “In 1955, I came from Ireland. I got a job working on the boats in the shipyard, which was okay at the time. Anything to put food on the table,” John Barry told Mashable. But he crossed the Atlantic to learn a trade, and soon he was an assistant to the engineer on one of Circle Line's World War II-era cutters. He started going to school at night, working during the day. In the 1960s, Barry says the tours were so popular there was sometimes no set schedule — it was simply a matter of running as many trips as possible. “It was so busy, you know. There'd be lines of people out here,” said Barry. “You would have to come in and unload, and sweep up the best you can, and get the next group on.” Today, Barry still works for Circle Line. Over so many years in New York, he has circumnavigated the island probably more often than any other resident, raised a family, driven a taxi (so he knows the city’s streets backwards and forwards, too), and has watched Manhattan’s skyline change more than he can count. More than 60 million passengers have taken a Circle Line cruise since 1945. Among them, there have been celebrities, politicians, and visitors from all over the world. Advertisements for the Circle Line from the 1970s tout the views of Manhattan, "most fantastic island in the world." New York City’s mayors have been some of the tours’ biggest fans. In fact, several of them have dedicated days to the the company. The first was Mayor Ed Koch, who in 1985 declared April 23 “Circle Line Day.” That information must not have been passed down to his successors, because in 1995 Mayor Rudolph Giuliani declared June 15 “Circle Line Day,” and in 2008, Mayor Michael Bloomberg added another, naming Sept. 17 “Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises Day.” But there is little doubt that Koch loved the ferries the most. When he resided in Gracie Mansion, he would yell and wave at tourists passing by on the boats. Looking through Circle Line’s archive, perhaps nothing is more striking than the way in which the skyline changes — often while the boats remain the same. Skyscrapers rise above the city — and they fall. On Sept. 11, 2001, Circle Line's boats became part of the emergency response to the attacks on the Twin Towers. With much of the city's infrastructure affected by the tragedy, the ferries went to work getting more than 30,000 people, including visitors and residents, to New Jersey. The sightseeing boats have come to the rescue at other times, too. On Jan. 15, 2009, when US Airways Flight 1549 collided with a flock of birds and landed in the Hudson River, a Circle Line ferry was among the first responders. The pilot, Captain Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger, told the local CBS station that he chose a water landing near operating boats so as to maximize the chances of a quick rescue. Despite the frigid temperatures, the quick thinking of the pilots and the quick response of crews on nearby boats prevented any loss of life. Seventy years on, Circle Line is looking toward the future. Plans are in the works for more tours, more boats, and more views for the millions of tourists who visit each year. But the company is also emphasizing its past, and the Circle Line X, a former WWII warship that has been operated in the Circle Line fleet for more than 50 years, will become a dockside museum and passenger terminal. On Tuesday, June 9, New York City’s nautical sightseeing company Circle Line celebrates 70 years of giving tourists — some locals, but many more tourists — a view of the city that never sleeps.