One Way to Beat the Traffic Around Manhattan : Three-hour cruises offer spectacular views of New York sights.

“Welcome to the one, the only, the greatest cruise around Manhattan Island!”

The guide booms his greeting as my husband and I settle in our seats aboard our Circle Cruise Line tour boat. Wisely, we’ve arrived early for the three-hour, 35-mile trip and have choice rail-side seats on the upper deck in the stern. (The upper-deck seats are very close together, and many times you can’t move around freely after passengers are loaded.) On this spring day, the ship fills quickly with eager tourists.

The guide’s welcoming jest is true: Circle Line has the only sightseeing yachts that circumnavigate Manhattan Island. For the past 47 years, its fleet of eight red, black and white boats has carried 40 million camera-snapping tourists up, down and around the Big Apple, almost daily from March to December.

As we head south on the Hudson River, New Jersey is to our right, Manhattan to our left. The first eye-catcher is the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Mammoth, sheathed in tinted glass and boldly geometric, the building covers five city blocks. It looms on the riverbank like a space-age fortress.

Moments later, a dismal row of piers comes into view. It was from here that elegant oceangoing luxury liners once set sail amid whirlwinds of streamers and popping champagne corks. Today, most of the piers stand abandoned, their spongy pilings blackened with rot, like stumps of decayed teeth. Where the stately ships of the Grace Line used to berth, city buses are now garaged. We sail past in silence.

But then comes one of the trip’s most spectacular sights--the twin towers of the World Trade Center, which rise out of the Financial District at the lower end of Manhattan. Awed whispers sweep through the boat.

Over the loudspeaker, which has an excellent sound system, our guide describes the towers . . . a quarter of a mile high . . . observation deck on the 107th floor . . . world’s highest outdoor observation platform on the 110th floor.

Many times in the past, I’ve tilted dizzily backward while walking the Financial District and sighted straight up the sides of the towers. Now, viewing them from the river, I see them anew. Dwarfing the skyscrapers around them, they’re spine-tingling--dark, otherworldly monoliths.

Moments later, the scene changes dramatically as we approach the tip of the island and historic Pier A, the oldest in the city, slides into view. The pier looks as quaint as a Swiss postcard, with its charming blue-and-white fireboat house topped by a clock tower. The contrast of Old World pier and the space-age monoliths behind it sets cameras clicking all over the ship.

The breeze freshens as we head out into Upper New York Bay. We sense the incredible size of this harbor--large enough to hold the harbors of Hamburg, Liverpool, London, Amsterdam and Antwerp put together.

Looming up ahead is the world’s tallest metal statue--the Statue of Liberty (151 feet). Tears blur my eyes as our guide softly speaks Liberty’s sonnet of hope, the words of poet Emma Lazarus: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” For long moments the ship is profoundly silent as we glide past the lady of the lamp. (Our guide’s diction and sense of timing are impeccable and we later learn that many guides are also actors.)

The neighboring island, Ellis Island, is dominated by the old immigration station--a massive, turreted brick building, now a museum memorializing the 16 million immigrants who came ashore here between 1892 and 1954. My skin prickles as I try to put myself in the shoes of my German grandmother--frightened, bewildered, herded into the cavernous immigration station for “processing.”

But now, from about a mile and a half out, we’re heading briskly back toward Manhattan, watching the world-famous skyline of New York--dramatic blocks of sunlight and shadow--get larger. Within minutes we’ve rounded the tip of the island and are sailing north on the East River, past the South Street Seaport Museum, an 11-block “living museum” that preserves New York’s seafaring heritage. The skyscrapers of the Financial District form a starkly modern backdrop for a nest of old-time sailing ships--the three-masted bark Wavertree, the four-masted Peking, the schooners Lattie G. Howard and Pioneer, and the sturdy, bright red Ambrose Lightship, which guarded the entrance to the port of New York for more than 20 years.

On their round-the-island cruise, Circle Line boats sail under 20 bridges that connect Manhattan with New Jersey, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. The big granddaddy of them all is the breathtaking Brooklyn Bridge, whose lean, clean mid-span--1,595 feet long--is flanked by two cathedral-like towers inset with soaring Gothic arches. The bridge’s suspension wires, in a crosshatch pattern, look like giant fishing nets slung over the cables to dry in the sun.

Sailing under the bridge, our senses are assaulted by the overhead traffic--six lanes of it, whizzing back and forth at the rate of 100,000 vehicles a day--and the cacophony of sound from riverboat engines, whistles, helicopters, flapping flags and shrilly crying sea gulls.

A small motorboat zooms past, followed by a rowing shell and a string of low-lying barges. On the busy roads of the waterfront, trucks, cars, carts and taxis jockey for room. A jet glints in the sunlight. We feel as if we’re a page in a child’s picture book--”Learning About Transportation.”

Beyond the bridge, we compete to identify the panorama of buildings that are famed for their distinct architecture: the slim taper of the Empire State Building, which pokes up from 34th Street; the United Nations’ flat-sided, blue-glassed Secretariat building rising like a gigantic solar panel from First Avenue between 42nd and 48th; the grand old Chrysler Building, topped by an Art Deco tower as ornate as a showgirl’s tiara--and the ultra-modern Citicorp building with its knife-sharp, angled roof.

As we pass stringbean-shaped Roosevelt Island, with Queens on the far side, a bright red aerial tram hums above us--shades of the Swiss Alps. But instead of skiers, it’s packed with nonchalant New Yorkers, buried in their newspapers during the five-minute commute from residential Roosevelt Island to Manhattan.

The upper reaches of the river, fronted both by million-dollar town houses and dreary tenements, are highlighted by two totally dissimilar buildings--colossal New York Hospital and elegant Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York’s mayor.

The hospital--inspired by the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, France--with its tiered, white stone towers and graceful Gothic lines, shines in the sun at 70th Street like a royal wedding cake of spun sugar.

Just beyond, Gracie Mansion, with its Chippendale-style porch railing, nestles snugly among the trees of an emerald green park--a gracious touch of the Old South in the Big Apple.

Approaching the northern part of the island, the river narrows to slither between Manhattan and the Bronx and we sail slowly to prevent our wake from endangering many river-side construction crews.

Here the Manhattan shoreline is ugly and rubble-strewn. There are blocks of apartments, warehouses, vacant lots, mounds of rock salt and slag. But the river is very narrow here, and we also see and sense the everyday life of the island. A man paints a rowboat in a quiet inlet, idlers tilt back on rusted dinette chairs and chat in the sun in a junk-cluttered lot. Kids skip stones across the water. It’s a New York that most tourists don’t see.

Suddenly, we’re confronted by the world’s biggest graffiti--the letter “C,” emblazoned in white paint on a sheer stone cliff at least 125 feet high. “C” for Columbia University, painted over 10 years by students hanging over the edge from ropes--playing a cat-and-mouse game with police. We grin, snap pictures and debate if this is vandalism or art.

At the northernmost tip of the island, the Spuyten Duyvil railroad bridge, whose blackened steel crossbeams look like a giant erector set, swings open at our signal of three short horn toots, allowing us to pass and turn south again on the Hudson.

The George Washington Bridge comes up, and a murmur of surprise sweeps through the ship, for under the bridge is a lighthouse. It’s squat, plump and as bright red as a child’s toy. For years it faithfully guided river traffic, but was scheduled for demolition when navigational lights were added to the bridge. However, in 1942, a dramatic rescue was made by Hildegarde Swift’s children’s book, “The Little Red Lighthouse at the Great Gray Bridge.” An outpouring of letters from young readers resulted in the lighthouse being turned into a children’s playground.

As we continue south, the shoreline becomes green and hilly, massed with trees. We glide past hills dotted with the famous landmarks of the Upper West Side--the domino-like towers of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center; the rotund, columned tower of Grant’s Tomb; majestic Riverside Church, its 24-story French Gothic spire commanding the heights, and, peeking through the foliage, the slim white columns and ornate crown of The Soldiers and Sailors Monument. It’s like sailing past a landscape mural in a European palace.

Soon we sight the handsome old brownstones of the West Side, overlooking Riverside Park with its joggers and dog-walkers and the 79th Street Yacht Basin. Spit-and-polish boats rock gently at anchor.

At the vast, ultra-modern passenger ship terminal between 54th and 46th streets where cruise ships now dock, I scowl at the enclosed climate-controlled facility and recall with fond regret the old wooden piers cluttered with battered luggage and mysterious cargo that I had seen in my youth. Those were piers where you could smell the river air; those were piers where you might find Humphrey Bogart kissing Lauren Bacall bon voyage at the gangplank.

Manhattan 1. Jacob K. Javits Convention Center 2. World Trade Center 3. Pier A 4. Statue of Liberty 5. Ellis Island 6. South Street Seaport Museum 7. Brooklyn Bridge 8. Empire State Building 9. United Nations 10. Chrysler Building 11. Citicorp Building 12. Roosevelt Island 13. Gracie Mansion 14. Spuyten Duyvil 15. George Washington Bridge 16. Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center 17. Grant’s Tomb 18. Riverside Church 19. Soldiers and Sailors Monument 20. 79th St. Yacht Basin

GUIDEBOOK

Cruising Manhattan Island

Location: Pier 83 at west end of 42nd Street at 12th Avenue. (Parking--$9 per day--is available on pier deck.) By bus, take 42nd Street westbound Crosstown bus M-42 to West 42nd Street and 12th Avenue.

Setting sail: March 21-May 1: 10 and 11 a.m., 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. Additional sailings Saturdays and Sundays at noon and 3:30 p.m. May 2-June 19: 9:30, 10:30 and 11:30 a.m., 1:30, 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. Additional sailings Saturdays and Sundays at 12:30 and 4:30 p.m. June 20-Sept. 7: 9:30, 10:15, 11 and 11:45 a.m., 12:30, 1:15, 2, 2:45, 3:30 and 4:30 p.m. (Special prices and schedules for July 3, 4, 5. Call for information.) Sept. 8-27: 9:30, 10:30 and 11:30 a.m., 1:30, 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. Additional sailings at 12:30 and 4:30 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. No sailings Mondays or Thanksgiving Day and Christmas.

Shipboard facilities: Well-stocked snack and beverage bar, including beer. Also, camera film and excellent cruise guidebook; well-maintained restrooms.

Cost: Adults, $16. Children under 12, $8. For private charter or group rates, call (212) 563-3204 or fax (212) 563-3347.

Harbor Lights cruises: Two-hour cruises (harbor only) sail at 7 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, March 21-May 1 and Sept. 8-Oct. 25; daily at 7 p.m., May 2-Sept. 7. Light snacks and cocktails are available as the sun goes down and city lights come up.