NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- For decades, countless motorists and boaters have passed North Cove, a small recess along the Manhattan side of the Harlem River, unaware that a piece of presidential history may well have been embedded in the muddy bottom.

That historical remnant may have finally come to light. Late last month, watched by a group of onlookers who were among the few to know of the boat’s presence, a crane began pulling up pieces of what is believed to be the PT-59, a Navy vessel commanded by John F. Kennedy in his mid-20s during World War II.

“This is history,” said one of the spectators, Bob Walters, 73, who spent much of his childhood on the river.

The PT-59 was part of a naval record that helped propel Kennedy toward the White House.

Kennedy’s service on the PT-59 was overshadowed by his adventures on the PT-109, which sunk in 1943 after being rammed by a Japanese destroyer in shark-infested waters in the Pacific.

His rescue of his surviving crew, told in a New Yorker article by novelist John Hersey, solidified him as a war hero and became part of the Kennedy legend.

As for the PT-59, “it was an unknown additional chapter” in Kennedy’s World War II story, said William Doyle, author of the Kennedy biography “PT 109.”

“And how it wound up in the mud in New York City is a pretty great story, too,” Doyle said.

That tale is now being dredged up, along with the remnants of the vessel, by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is building a $610 million sea wall along the west side of the river to prevent flooding in its abutting 207th Street train yard. The yard was flooded by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

The spectators watched the crane bring up remains of hardwood planks that may be remnants of the boat’s mahogany hull. When an oblong piece was lifted out, one of the onlookers remarked that it might have been part of the PT — patrol torpedo — boat’s engine.

Another onlooker corrected him.

“There weren’t any engines in it when it sunk,” Redmond Burke said.

Burke, 80, a retired schoolteacher, was in the best position to know. He was the boat’s last owner before it disappeared into the muck, its service to the country by then a distant memory.

After the PT-109 was destroyed, Kennedy continued his wartime service as commander of the PT-59. He attacked Japanese barges and shore batteries, and rescued 10 stranded Marines in the northern Solomon Islands, one of whom died in Kennedy’s bunk.

The boat was sold off as surplus after the war and operated during the 1950s as a charter boat for weekend anglers, first under the name Sun Tan and later the Sea Queen V.

It was painted white, its machine guns replaced by fishing rod holders and railings for anglers to lean upon. Its powerful engines were replaced by more economical twin diesels.

In 1970, Burke, an English teacher at Bronx Community College, bought it for $1,000 to use as a houseboat. By then it had been partially burned in a fire and its diesels had been stripped out. Burke had the boat towed from City Island in the Bronx to a spot in the Harlem River and docked it at an abandoned pier at 208th Street.

He installed a pump to keep the leaky vessel from sinking and lived on it for several years, rent free and off the grid, in North Cove, a small recess along the western shoreline of the river.

“It was an adventure for me,” Burke said. “It was me, the rats and the few corpses that came floating by.”

Curious about the boat’s history, he recorded the hull number — 274398 — carved into the boat’s main beam and took it to a U.S. Coast Guard office in New York and was told it was the PT-59.

But he was still unaware that the PT-59 had been commanded by Kennedy until one of his students researched the PT-109 and told him, “Hey, you’re living on a famous boat,” Burke recalled.

“But when I would tell people it was Kennedy’s boat, they’d laugh and say something like, ‘Yeah, and I’m the king of England,’” Burke said.

He said he was unable to interest Kennedy historical groups in taking the vessel and finally reached out to Aubrey Mayhew, a collector of Kennedy memorabilia, who offered to pay $5,000 for the vessel but then backed out.

Finally, in the mid-1970s, Burke abandoned the boat and let it sink to the river’s bottom.

“I had hoped it might have a more dignified end,” he said, “but it was not to be.”

Doyle, the Kennedy biographer, said the PT-59’s fate had remained largely unknown because it remained fairly hidden below the water in a “Godforsaken” part of the Harlem River.

But the story was known to a core group of “Harlem River rats,” said Walters, who recalled slipping onto the boat as a teen while exploring the river with his friends. He later met Burke and learned the full story of the boat.

An MTA spokeswoman, Meredith Daniels, said that divers helping to clear the area for the sea wall construction came upon the wreck last month. After researching the site and consulting with archaeological historians, MTA officials concluded that the sunken boat was likely the remains of the PT-59, Daniels said, adding that state officials do not consider the boat a historic site.

“Nevertheless, given the presence of a former PT boat once commanded by Lt. John F. Kennedy in the river at this site,” she said, the agency would “continue to work with the experts to ensure appropriate preservation where possible.”

James Cataldi, 62, a wildlife rehabilitator known as “the Birdman of Inwood,” who has helped transform the North Cove from a garbage-strewn area into an urban sanctuary, said he was hoping to obtain some of the boat remnants himself. He said he would display them in a way that would honor the PT-59 and bring attention to the cove.

Daniels said it was undecided who would receive the remnants. Possible destinations include the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston and the Battleship Cove maritime museum in Fall River, Massachusetts, she said.

Although the boat is believed to be the PT-59, there has been no confirmation beyond Burke’s account that the Coast Guard once told him that it was. Neither the Coast Guard nor the Navy has any records today of the PT-59’s fate.

Doyle believes “very strongly” that it is the PT-59. In 2017, he rented a small motorboat to reach the sunken boat and take a sample of its wood. A lab analysis indicated that it matched a type of wood used to construct the PT-59, he said.

But he and the vessel’s small fan club are hoping that a piece will be found with naval markings that would make its identify official.

“This boat solidifies JFK as a war hero,” Walters said. “And to have it wind up sitting all these years in the Harlem River, it just falls under the category of you can’t make this stuff up.”

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