Hudson River Sloops
Hudson River Sloop Restoration, Inc., 1970

Chapter 1

A BRIEF HISTORY

Sloops played a major role in the development of the Hudson River Valley. They were the basic means of transporting passengers and goods, and they formed a link between centers of commerce and the developing interior. Even after the introduction of steam-driven vessels, the sloops remained the prime freight carriers for another fifty years.

The Dutch were stimulated by Henry Hudson's report of a river navigable far upstream and a valley populated by friendly Indians who knew how to trap valuable fur-bearing animals. They soon sent out further expeditions. In 1614 Dutch fur traders sailed their sloops upriver and, south of present-day Albany, set up Fort Nassau. The New Netherlands Company quickly secured a monopoly on Hudson River trade.

In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was chartered. It obtained control of trade and exercised political jurisdiction over the Hudson region. Anxious to increase the number of settlers in the colony, the Company sent out thirty Walloon families. About half of the families established the first permanent settlement, at Fort Orange (Albany), in 1624. They were the first farmers in the province of New Netherlands. Soon after, the Company founded New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island at the River’s mouth to serve as an export center for the fur trade. A third community, Esopus (the village of Wiltwyck, and now Kingston), was settled on the banks of a lovely stream midway between Fort Orange and New Amsterdam.

The sloop was often the only form of transportation between River settlements. In addition to being a passenger carrier and merchant trader, it was drafted into naval defense maneuvers. A resolution passed by a New Amsterdam court decreed that only two sloops at a time could leave port, one for Esopus on the North River and one for the South River.

The Indians were no longer friendly, and even the merchants who stood to lose money were obliged to recognize the need to protect the inhabitants of the city.

Nevertheless, the Dutch colony prospered and the number of vessels on the River grew accordingly. From the beginning of colonization trade was of major importance to the Dutch. The strong little sloops sailed far beyond the Hudson in those early days. They carried flour, bread, and livestock as far south as the Caribbean, and returned laden with cargoes of molasses and West Indian rum. They even braved the North Atlantic storms, carrying whale oil, beaver pelts, and tobacco to England, and bringing back manufactured goods for the settlers.

The Dutch settlers were hardy people with a deep attachment to the Valley. One settler, Peter Van Loon, is believed by his descendants to have been the earliest immigrant to the Hudson region, entering via the St. Lawrence. He is reported to have fished the northern tributaries of the Hudson eleven years before Henry Hudson arrived.

Centuries later, members of the Van Loan (formerly Van Loon) family still “followed the river.” Young Isaac Van Loan began cutting cord wood at age twelve so that he could buy a sloop. By the time he was twenty-three, in 1791, he had accomplished his objective, and he became a merchant on his own account. “He never would allow anything to interfere with his business in the slooping season,” his grandson later wrote. Van Loan’s sloop Delaware often carried furs to New York where they were sold to John Jacob Astor, who had come to New York a penniless immigrant and was on his way to becoming a millionaire in the fur trade.

Dutchmen and French Huguenots who were refugees from religious persecution in Europe, formed the majority of the Hudson River settlers in the seventeenth century, but a sprinkling of Germans, Swedes, Africans, and Portuguese Jews also came to New Amsterdam and Fort Orange. Despite the often bitter commercial rivalry between England and Holland, a few English settlers also found their way to the Hudson Valley. Even before 1650 the Valley was home to a polyglot population, and Manhattan, according to the Jesuit missionary Isaac Jogues, had already acquired the “arrogance of Babel.”

Open warfare broke out in 1652, caused by the commercial rivalry between England and Holland. Although the subsequent defeat of the Dutch did not seriously threaten Dutch commercial interests, it encouraged Charles II of England to attempt the capture of New Netherlands. He awarded to his brother James, the Duke of York and Albany, title to all the land held by the Dutch in America.

The settlers in the province, particularly the Englishmen, were unhappy under the autocratic Dutch rule. Unlike its neighboring British colonies, New Netherlands had not developed a form of self-government. Peg-legged Peter Stuyvesant was a despotic governor who proclaimed: “We derive our authority from God and the West India Company, not from a few ignorant subjects.”

In 1664 four British warships sailed boldly into the bay at New Amsterdam. Weakened by neglect and misrule, the town was given up without a fight. The British flag was hoisted, and New Amsterdam became New York. The English granted their new subjects the privileges and rights usually accorded to English subjects, and permitted them, as well, to retain their traditional Dutch social and cultural customs.

The Dutch left a lasting impression on the Hudson River Valley, despite the fact that their formal occupancy lasted only fifty years. Our nautical terminology is full of words of Dutch origin. Sclippers were of course “skippers,” the captains of vessels. The ships they sailed were sloeps. The word dec meant “roof,” and this became the roof of the ship, or “deck” in English. “Taffrail,” the name of the rail around the stern of the ship, came from tafereel, a word referring to the ornate carvings which often decorated the sterns of seventeenth-century ships. Yacht, yawl, scow, luff, buoy, cruise, marline, pea jacket are all nautical terms borrowed from the Dutch language.

The Dutch also left numerous place names. Kill, a familiar suffix in the names of several Hudson River communities, means “little stream.” The village of Peekskill, for example, was named for a tavern keeper and fur trader, Jan Peeck, who, in the 1650’s, established a trading post on the banks of a nearby stream.

Washington Irving, one of America’s early men of letters, recorded some of the many legends the Dutch left behind. Irving sailed the River as a sloop passenger when he was a young man, and he probably heard firsthand the stories of the Dunderberg spirits which haunted Peekskill Bay in the rain and fog. According to legends, they were the ghosts of Henry Hudson’s sailors.

Local legend also said that gossamer in the rigging acted as a spell-breaking charm against adverse tides. Cobwebs, the River sailors believed, would bring a spanking breeze to help them make headway against the tide.

Agricultural production in the Valley increased as more settlers arrived and the flour barrel gradually replaced the beaver skin as the most important commercial product of the region. Flour remained the dominant commodity for almost one hundred years. Legislation was passed in 1678 requiring the bolting (sifting) of flour for export. Inspection guaranteed the quality of the product and did much to encourage prospective buyers in this period. Such regulations helped to establish New York as a commercial center of greater importance than Boston or Baltimore.

Governor Thomas Dongan reported to the Committee on Trade on the Province of New York in February, 1687 that, in addition to other vessels, there were about twenty sloops belonging to the government; all of them traded with England, Holland, and the West Indies, except for six or seven employed in the river trade to Albany.

Small-scale manufacturing gradually developed in the Valley. One such industry was started in 1710 when a group of Palatine Germans was brought upriver in sloops and settled at what are now the sites of Germantown and Newburgh. The English encouraged them to produce turpentine, tar, and other ships’ stores for the Royal Navy, since their own supply of timber for such purposes was limited. The venture was a failure, however, and the settlers soon turned to farming, or migrated elsewhere.

The manor houses of the Van Rensselaers, Van Cortlandts, Schuylers, and other aristocratic families were distinctive landmarks along the River. In the northern colonies, only New York had a large number of slaves, and many them worked these huge estates. Other Negroes became skilled sailors and it was not unusual to see a sloop manned almost entirely by blacks.

Sloops continued to be the vital link between the River communities; most of the goods and produce of the burgeoning colony was transported on the Hudson highway. The lively River trade caught the attention of one observer of the period, Peter Kalm, the Swedish naturalist. In 1748 he wrote: “The Hudson River is very convenient for the commerce of this city [New York], as it is navigable for nearly a hundred and fifty English miles into the country, and flows into the bay, a little west of the town. During eight months of the year this river is full of greater and lesser vessels, either going to New York or returning from there, laden either with native or foreign goods.”

Kalm noted a considerable trade with the Indians of Albany in creatures that “bear some resemblance to the human ear”—the clams that spawned in great numbers in the clear waters of Arthur Kill and Long Island Sound. He also remarked that “skins of animals . . . great quantities of boards . . . wheat, flour, barley, oats and other kinds of grain” were exported from the colony, and he commented that the iron found plentifully in the Valley was “of a considerable value.”

The American Revolution brought River commerce to a standstill, but its end freed the colonial merchants from English trading restrictions. They began to seek new trade routes and to open new markets.

One of the most daring attempts to open a new market was the China voyage of the eighty-ton sloop Experiment. She was a fine Hudson River product, built at Albany, of the best timber available: her backers, a group of Albany citizens, knew the risks of the long voyage to Canton.

The Experiment sailed from New York in December of 1785, her hold filled with goods to tempt the Chinese: squirrel, mink, fox, marten, bear, raccoon, and other furs, tobacco, snuff, barrels of tar, turpentine, Jamaica spirits, and ginseng, an herb which grew along the banks of the Hudson; the aromatic root of ginseng was valued as a medicine by the Chinese.

The little vessel returned two years later with a shipment of tea, silks, porcelain, and nankeen, a cotton fabric. Her return voyage took only four months, twelve days, and she was hailed with great excitement.

Although Experiment provided her owners with a good profit, she was returned to the River where she became one of the most sought-after passenger vessels: Hector St. John Crêvecoeur, the American gentleman-farmer born of a well-to-do Normandy family, who defined the American character so eloquently, chose Experiment for a trip to Albany. His reasons: “the beauty of its construction, the unusual size of its cabin, and above all the expectation that the conversation of Captain Dean . . . would be interesting.”

Captain Stewart Dean was not the only famous skipper on the River. There was Captain Woolsey, beloved for his habit of singing in a deep, rich baritone while at the helm. And there was Captain John Decker, who commanded the Neptune on the day a Highlands squall set her on her beam ends, shifted her cargo, and sank her. No owner would trust Captain Decker aboard a sloop after that episode, and the unlucky man was forced to become a New York cartman to earn his living.

There was good reason for such distrust. Captains were given great responsibility and they had to be rugged, dependable men, able to cope with every circumstance of River navigation. Captain William Verplanck, one of the sloop skippers known to have published memoirs, described the duties of these men:

They not only had to know how to sail and manage their sloops in all kinds of weather, but also to know the depth of water all along the Hudson, as in those days most of these sloops were keel boats and drew from ten to twelve feet of water. Their captains also had to know good harbors and anchorages, and where the wind from different quarters would be dangerous to navigation of these small vessels Captains, also, had to be good business men, for the captain of a packet sloop took charge of all the farmers’ produce, sold the cargo, collected the money, and made the cash return to the farmer when he got home each trip.

Knowing how to sail a sloop in all kinds of weather was no small part of a captain’s job. He had to be alert for the sudden shifts of wind and the more subtle shifts of current which could endanger his vessel. The River is a tidal estuary as far north as Troy and actually does “flow two ways,” as the Indians knew. The Horse Race—the stretch of River between Dunderberg and Anthony’s Nose—could be especially treacherous when the wind failed because of the narrowness of the River at that point. The current could put a boat on the rocks unless quick work with her sweeps (oars) saved her.

The most dangerous maneuver required of sloops was the Hudson River jibe, undertaken when the wind was from astern. In a jibe, the heading of the vessel is changed while the boom swings as much as 150' from one side of the boat to the other. The force of the wind in the sloop’s huge mainsail is enough to do considerable damage unless the sail is carefully controlled.

From earliest colonial times sloop captains acted as informal letter and package carriers. Occasionally they brought news from a relative in New York or in Europe, or a case of books from a New York dealer. During the eighteenth century they were sometimes elected to escort delicate female passengers to their destinations on the River. Washington Irving mentions that captains had been known to send ashore for fresh milk for the ladies’ tea in order to please them. Great was the pride of an upriver landowner when he could provide a sloop for his family’s travels. One landowner had a sloop specially painted and fitted out to convey his daughter south for her introduction to New York society.

Before 1800 sloops ran sporadically from village to village, collecting passengers wherever they could find them. Sometimes they established a market day on which they would call to pick up produce which the oxcarts brought to the wharf from the upland farms. At other times they would respond to a farmer’s signal flag run up near a convenient landing. Sloops were known as market or freight vessels in this capacity.

Around the beginning of the nineteenth century sloops began sailing as packets, that is, regular traders between two points. This was an important commercial development designed primarily to attract passengers, but it also proved useful to the freight service. The procedure was simple. An advertisement was placed in local newspapers by the master or the owners to solicit freight consignments and to list the regular sailing dates. Often assurance of the captain’s reliability was also included.

Sloop lines sprang up at numerous points along the River. James Reynolds and Aaron Innis of Poughkeepsie, for example, established a line between their home town and New York City. Their two vessels, the Mary and the Driver, provided weekly service to the big city. The trade was good and, by 1825, the two partners operated a sloop line to and from Albany as well.

The number of travelers on the Hudson, sightseers as well as businessmen, continued to grow. The early turnpikes usually terminated at River ports. Travelers from Boston often used an overland route to Poughkeepsie, then journeyed downriver by sloop. Sometimes a voyage was undertaken as a holiday outing, with Pine Orchard in the Catskills, or some similar spot, the final destination.

Robert Fulton’s steamboat, Clermont, first spewed her smoke into the sky over the Hudson in 1807, but for about a half century more the sloops competed successfully. Their rates were cheaper and, often, the early steamers being what they were, the sloops reached Albany faster.

With favorable wind and tide, Albany was no more than twenty-four hours away from New York, and a round trip could be completed in four days. On one notable occasion, the trip to Albany was made in the remarkable sailing time of sixteen hours and sixteen minutes.

However, steam engines were unproved, fares were lowered, and steamer schedules became reliable because the vessels were not dependent upon the whim of the wind. Passengers flocked to the steamboats or the railroads which flanked the River. The sloops hauled only freight, and their day of doom was not far off.

The Hudson Valley was dotted with industry that required freight service. Iron was discovered in the colonies as early as 1643, and parts of the east bank of the Hudson lay within the Salisbury district which contained the richest deposits. Tunnels and pits where early miners searched for the best veins can still be found in the Highlands. Smelting furnaces were located at Cold Spring, Peekskill, and Poughkeepsie, and West Point was renowned for its foundry. Ulster County on the west bank also had an iron mill. The graceful sloops carried not only the ore, but limestone for the reducing process. At night the boatmen could take their bearings from the glow of the furnaces in the hills along the shore.

The quarries of Ulster and Greene counties produced bluestone, used for New York City sidewalks, as well as limestone, and many sloops were engaged in what was called the stone trade. They hauled bricks from yards at Glasco and Dutchess Junction, and plaster from the mills at Newburgh and Poughkeepsie.

The upland forests were another useful resource which supplied a number of industries and crafts. The tanneries nestled deep in the pine forests of the Catskills stripped the region of oak and hemlock trees in the search for bark used in the process of curing hides. Firewood was in continuing demand in New York City and, while much of it came from Long Island and New Jersey, many a Highland homesteader added to his income by splitting hickory, oak, or chestnut logs and transporting them to the nearest River wharf or anchorage. The sloops hauled their loads south to New York where they were sold to the cartmen who peddled the logs through the city streets. The sloops themselves were heated by wood stoves, and early accounts often refer to a stop for “wooding up.”

Sawmills had been set up on virtually every stream. There were lumber yards at Newburgh, Wilbur, Albany, Poughkeepsie, and other communities. These supplied the great South Street shipyards on New York’s East River. Much of this lumber went into the construction of transatlantic packets, but some of it was also used in the construction of sloops for the River trade. According to local writers of the period, there were two New York naval contractors who specialized in sloops, William Dickey and Caleb Welsie. For the most part, however, sloop construction was a local effort. Keels were often stretched by one or two men with an eye to transporting their own produce to market. Isaac Depew of Peekskill, for example, built his sloop in nearby Annsville Creek.

The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 added the western trade to sloop traffic on the Hudson. Three years later the Delaware and Hudson Canal, following the Delaware and Lackawaxen rivers and Rondout Creek to the Hudson, connected the Pennsylvania anthracite fields to the sea. Rondout became a port of call for sloops taking coal to upriver residences such as those of the DePeyster, Livingston, and Clarkson families. Captain Moses Collyer remembered coal as a part of the regular summer trade when he began as a cabin boy aboard the sloop Benjamin Franklin in 1865.

Captain George Woolsey recalled his father’s stories of carrying passengers and farm produce from Newburgh to New York when he was captain of the sloop Illinois in 1825. The Illinois was “loaded decks to the water,” especially in the fall when her hold was “full of all kinds of grain.” Often there was a “sheep-pen around where we used to steer, full of sheep, which made it nice and warm for the man at the helm in cold weather.” Livestock was frequently lashed to a pole running fore and aft from the mast to the quarter deck.

In this manner the sloops made their final appearances on the River. Many owners sought to postpone the inevitable by converting their sloops to schooners. The schooner, a vessel with two masts, required fewer deck hands to man the lines. But the development of the steam tow, with its long string of barges, marked the downfall of the sloops. By 1860, sloop freight had begun to drop considerably and, although there were still two hundred sloops on the River in that year, few survived to the turn of the century. Some became lighters in New York harbor; others were sunk to make breakwaters or were simply run aground and left to rot.

Today none of the original hulls remains intact. The last identifiable sloop hull disappeared from the River more than forty years ago. But a new Hudson River sloop has been built and she will sail the River, putting in at ports large and small as her predecessors did. The Clearwater will bring back the spirit of the days when the “water that flows two ways” was the best highway in the Valley, and great white sails linked its people with the rest of the world.

NOTES TO TEXT

1. Benjamin Van Loan. Discovery of the Hudson and Narrative Giving a New Historic Fact (pamphlet on the Van Loan [or Van Loon] family) Catskill, New York: Walton Van Loan, [1908?].

2. Peter Kalm. Peter Kalm’s Travels in North America, The English Version of 1770. Revised and edited. by Adolph B. Benson. Vol. I. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1966.

3. Hector St. John de Crhvecoeur. An Eighteenth Century Journey through Orange County. Introduction by Dwight L. Akers. Middletown, New York: Times Herald Press, 1937.

4. William E. Verplanck and Moses W. Collyer. The Sloops of the Hudson, New York: G. Putnam's Sons, 1908

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