Old Steamboat Days on The Hudson River
By: David Lear Buckman, The Grafton Press, 1907

CHAPTER 10

Floating Towns

The tows, which are made up at the basin above Albany where the Erie Canal enters the Hudson, look very much like floating towns, presenting the regularity of blocks of buildings, with lanes of open water between, not unlike streets in appearance.

These clusters of “canalers,” hay barges and ice boats, though of a motley appearance, are always interesting. Home life in its every phase can be noted, for the “canaler’s” boat is largely his world. His family is domiciled on the craft from the opening to the close of navigation, and the boat is often maintained as the home when in winter quarters.

On one the captain’s wife may be seen washing clothes just outside her cabin door and on another the entire wash hanging up to dry; red flannel shirts of the men flutter in the breeze, and on the same lines is the finest of snowy under-linen of both male and female variety. Little shirts and “petties” also indicate the presence of children, and if you watch for them you will find them on some of the boats, playing with children from the other craft in the tow or running over the decks with their dogs at such a rate, one wonders they do not fall overboard. Some of the cabin roofs are fitted up with gay canvas awnings, hammocks and swings. Bright hued geraniums and other flowers in boxes in front of the cabin windows add to the picture. Sometimes a group of men and women will be seen on one of the boats, spending a pleasant hour eating and listening to the lively music of a concertina or guitar, for it is while the boats are being slowly towed down or up the river, that the “canalers” have a rest and the opportunity to relieve the rather dull monotony of their lives, by these social amenities.

Because these people of the canal boats live lives apart and different from others, do not imagine for a moment there is not to be found among them men and women who are quite the equal of the average men and women met with elsewhere. Especially was this the fact in the years that followed shortly after the opening of the Erie Canal.

Many young men on the farms and in the mid-state towns through the Mohawk Valley, married and single, saw in the new waterway opportunities to make a fortune and to travel to the great cities. They invested in canal boats and became both owners and captains. They carried grain and products of all kinds to New York and went back loaded with manufactured goods for the up-state farmers. Some men ran passenger packets on the canal, and the Red Bird and other lines carried many between Albany and Buffalo.

Many of the boats, those carrying wheat especially—for it was before the day of railroads with their huge grain elevators at the terminals—were kept particularly clean and were provided with roomy cabins in the stern, wonderfully contrived for convenience, in which the captain, his wife and sometimes the children lived comfortably. The mules that towed the boats on the canal were quartered in a stable built in the bow of the boat.

The owners of this great inland marine, that sprang into existence on the opening of the Erie Canal, had as many different ideas as to the naming of their boats as come to the minds of parents naming their first born. Some were fancy, some just homely family names after the owner’s wife or daughter; others were those of heroes and even mythological gods and goddesses were not forgotten. It is on this account if you ever get near enough to closely inspect these river tows, you are apt to find the Gladiator of Spencerport bound more firmly with two-inch hawsers to Elizabeth Jones of Fort Ann, than the marital ties of many couples bind them to-day. General George Washington is apt to be found keeping company with Polly, all the way down the river and if two late stragglers join the tow and are hitched on behind all the rest, it is like as not to prove to be Minerva and Jim enjoying, as it were, for a few hours, only too brief, a tete-d-téte by themselves.

This towing of canal boats on the Hudson constitutes a large and profitable business in its own class. It is in the hands of regularly organized companies and the rates are now so thoroughly established that “cut-throating” is a thing of the past. It was not always so, for competition in the towing business was quite as fierce as it was in the freight and passenger business. The time was, when a canal boat owner could get a tow all the way from Albany to New York for five dollars, but the average fee when competition was not cutting all profit from the business was more likely to be fifteen.

Some of the old-time companies engaged in the business was the Schuyler Towing Co. of Albany, the Austin Towing Co., the Ronan Co. and the Swift Sure Towing Co. of New York. Most of the canal boats rendezvoused in New York at the basin at Coenties Slip, on the East River, and it is at this point that the Up-river tows are still made up.

The steamers that pulled these immense tows up and down the river were for the most part old passenger boats, rebuilt and adapted for the purpose by the removal of most of their upper works, saloons and staterooms. The Vanderbilt, Niagara, Norwich, Alida, Cayuga, Syracuse, Connecticut and many others have become tow boats, and if you have ever seen an old cattle boat, the John Stevens, knocking about the river, loaded with livestock for the abattoirs, you will have recognized in many of her lines those of the fine passenger boat she was in the fifties.

It required nearly a week for one of these tows to make the trip down the river, the progress was so slow. Generally sixty to eighty boats made up a good sized tow, but Capt. Harvey Temple went up the river one time, with a broom on the flagstaff of the old Connecticut, and pulling one hundred and eight canal boats behind her, which made a new record in the size of towing fleets, and so far as the author is informed, still is the largest.

These flotillas of canal boats, not so large now as in the former days, are all witnesses of the great importance of the vast system of inland waterways which helped to make undisputed New York’s title to being the Empire State. It has nearly one thousand miles of canals within its borders, the construction and maintenance of which has cost upward of a hundred million dollars.

Of these the Erie Canal, three hundred and sixty-one miles in length, is by far the most important, connecting the Great Lakes with the tidewater of the Hudson. Next in importance is the Champlain Canal and Glens Falls Feeder which connects the Hudson with Lake Champlain. These and the other canals have in the past played a great part in the development of the State. The cities on the line of the Erie Canal—Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Rome, Little Falls, Syracuse and Rochester—owe much to the waterway that brought commerce to their doors and placed them in ready communication with the rest of the country.

Call to mind if you can the many towns in the center of the State, far from the waters of the lakes, rivers or ocean, which have an aqueous termination or suggestiveness in their names and you will realize in a small degree the importance of what the great canal system meant to places that would have been to-day little more than straggling hamlets on dusty country cross roads. With the ocean and the Great Lakes many miles distant you will find in inland New York, Lockport, Gasport, Middleport, Shelby Basin, Eagle Harbor, Brockport, Adams Basin, Spencerport, Fairport, Waynesport, Port Gilson, Weedsport, Port Byron and other “ports,” all witnesses to the developing power of the canal system of the State.

The work of building the Erie Canal was begun under an act of the Legislature, July 4, 1817, at Rome, in the presence of Gov. De Witt Clinton, through whose earnest endeavors, exerted at all times and in the face of much opposition, the great improvement was urged to a successful completion. The Governor’s opponents always referred to the vast undertaking in those days as “Clinton’s Big Ditch.” The plans provided for a canal forty feet wide at the top, eighteen feet at the bottom, with a depth of at least four feet of water, which was calculated to accommodate boats of one hundred tons burden. The work had progressed so far that on October 22, 1819, the first boat was able to make the trip from Rome to Utica with Governor Clinton, Chancellor Livingston and other distinguished men aboard.

It was not until October 26, 1825, however, after eight years of prodigious labor, that the Erie and Champlain Canals were opened and the Hudson was the scene of such a maritime pageant that the people of that period had never dreamed of.

On the date named a flotilla of canal boats, all new and gaily decorated, started from Buffalo, on Lake Erie, for New York City. The news of the departure was communicated to the latter city by the booming of cannon located along the line and the signal thus traveled across the entire State and down the Hudson in one hour and twenty minutes. When the boats reached Albany they were received by a great throng of people, Governor Clinton, the Canal Commissioners and all the State officials. There never was such a ringing of bells and booming of cannon in the place before. The people who had made the trip from Buffalo were escorted to the capitol in a triumphal procession and welcomed by Mayor Hone, of New York City, on behalf of the people of the metropolis.

On November fifth, at five o’clock in the morning, the canal boat packets, convoyed by the Chancellor Livingston, with Governor Clinton and distinguished guests on board the Young Lion of the West and the Seneca Chief, reached New York and were welcomed by the New York Common Council, which met the fleet on board the steamboat Washington. Every vessel in the harbor was gaily decorated with flags, the church bells rang and cannon saluted as the naval procession rounded the Battery and sailed up the East River as far as the Brooklyn Navy Yard. There other vessels joined the fleet, which turned and sailed to Sandy Hook where the schooner Dolphin had been anchored.

Here took place the most unique feature of the celebration. As the boats circled round the schooner Governor Clinton poured a keg of the fresh water of Lake Erie into the salt water of the Atlantic and the marriage of the Great Lakes and the ocean was announced as having been duly solemnized. As another token of what the great improvement meant to the civilized world Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell poured into the ocean, waters collected by him from the Thames, Seine, Rhine, Danube, Amazon, La Plata, Orinoco, Ganges, Indus, Gambia, Nile, Mississippi and Columbia Rivers.

On returning to the city the distinguished State officials were met at the Battery with a procession nearly four miles long, which marched through the principal streets. At night there was a great display of fireworks, the city was brilliantly illuminated and altogether it was the greatest celebration old New York had ever had up to that time.

The Erie Canal having demonstrated its great usefulness to the State was enlarged in 1854 to seventy feet at the surface, fifty-six at the bottom, with a depth of seven feet.

At the present time a third enlargement and improvement is being made by straightening the course so as to afford a larger capacity to float barges of one thousand tons burden. The people carried the proposition to spend one hundred and one million dollars on the last enlargement, by a large majority at a general election, though many of the best informed maintain the usefulness of canals is at an end and the more modern method of railroad transportation has rendered them obsolete. The people, however, have generally favored maintaining the canals, as the most effectual check they could impose on railroad monopolies.

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