Sloops of The Hudson
by: William E. Verplanck and Moses W. Collyer
G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York & London, 1908

PART II
The Sail in Competition with Steam

Captain Moses W. Collyer

This part is a compilation of my experiences and recollections of what I have seen and heard as cabin-boy, master, and owner of Hudson River sloops, schooners, and steam vessels, embracing a period of nearly half a century; beginning in the sixties (1860's), first as cabin-boy, then cook, after that, cook and hand before the mast, then as mate, and finally as captain, master, and owner. It is also a record of old North River sloops and schooners, their names, some of their captains, owners, and builders; the trade they were in, and their home ports.

These vessels have all passed away, as well as most of their masters and owners and builders. There is no work for this class of vessel today on the Hudson, where in my younger days there were hundreds owned and employed.

I was born on the banks of the Hudson River in the town of Red Hook. My father, John L. Collyer, was known in the thirties as a North River sloop boatman, having run from upper Red Hook Landing, now called Tivoli, to New York, as captain and owner of a North River packet sloop, which was engaged in carrying farmers’ produce and passengers to New York, and general merchandise on his return trip. He was one of a family of eight brothers, who had been brought up in their younger days around the docks at Sing Sing, now called Ossining. My father was the oldest, and his brothers were, William, Stephen, Ferris, Thomas, George, Samuel, and Charles S., all of whom, at this time, were connected with the building and running of Hudson River sloops and steamboats.

Thomas Collyer

The first steamboat he built was the Trojan at West Troy, and from there he went up to Lake Champlain and built steamers. This was in 1844. Then he went to New York and opened a yard with his brother William, at the foot of 12th Street, East River, New York City.

Here he built the steamers Santa Claus, Kingston, and Niagara. This partnership was dissolved in 1847, and Thomas Collyer started a yard of his own at the foot of 21St Street, East River, New York City. Here he built the steamers Armenia, George Law, and Reindeer to run between New York and Albany. He also built the Daniel Drew and the steamer Henry Clay which was built in 1850, and was burned at Riverdale on July 28, 1852, in which seventy passengers perished. He also built the steamer Thomas Collyer, which was the last boat he built before his death. This steamer was later furbished up and sold to John H. Starin, and is now called the Sam Sloan, running in the harbor of New York. His records show that he built three sloops, twenty-six barges, four propellers, twelve schooners, three barques, two sailing ships, five steamships, thirty-seven steamboats, and two yachts.

John L. Collyer, North River Sloop Boatman

The regular sailing time of these sloops was a trip every two weeks from Red Hook to New York and return. These North River sloop boatmen, as they were called in those days, were prominent men, and were the business men of the Hudson valley. 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. (The lights and buoys now numerous, were formerly few and far between.—W. E. V.) 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.

And I might here say, a North River sloop would only carry from fifty to two hundred tons. Their 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. This was the business of a North River sloop captain, where today there is not one to be found on the Hudson in this trade. The principal traffic of the Hudson valley is now being done by steamers towing large scows, barges, and carrying from four hundred to one thousand tons, and by steamboats and railroads carrying the passengers, produce, and general merchandise of the Hudson River towns.

After the Hudson River railroad came through Red Hook, and about 1850 my father sold his storehouse and landing to that company, as the line went directly through his property and took away the dock facilities for the freighting business. Then be engaged in running a small market sloop named the Rival, going to Albany and buying his cargo of flour, feed, grain, and different things that would sell in their season to the brickyards and merchants along, the Hudson. This was carried on for a number of years with the little sloop Rival that could carry but fifty tons, but at this time it was a good business.

As the different lines of steamers progressed on the Hudson, and the market for grain got farther west, this business gave out for sloops and schooners, and the Rival was sold in 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War.

In the spring of 1865 he again started the sloop business by going to Poughkeepsie and buying the old sloop Benjamin Franklin, which was built at Huntington, L. I., in the year 1836. She was owned in Poughkeepsie by a Captain John Van Keuren, and ran from Poughkeepsie to Rondout, carrying coal from Rondout. This sloop could carry eighty-five tons, so you see what a sloop of that size could do today in supplying the city of Poughkeepsie with coal. This was my first experience in joining a North River sloop. I went to Poughkeepsie on board the sloop Benjamin Franklin as a cabin boy in the spring of 1865. Our first job that went with this sloop was to carry crockery and earthenware goods from Foster’s dock at Poughkeepsie for the firm of Reidinger & Caire, who manufactured these goods at this time at 146 Main Street, Poughkeepsie, from what was called potters’ clay. I might here say that this clay was all freighted by sloops from Woodbridge and Cheese Creek, New Jersey, to Poughkeepsie, and then made into this kind of ware, which was distributed along the Hudson. For many years we made these trips both spring and fall, and between these times we ran principally to Albany and river and Sound ports in the lumber trade.

In those days it was not the custom to have your cargo engaged before going to Albany, but to go up with your sloop and have the lumber merchant come and look you up to take a load of lumber for him. I have seen these small vessels lay three and four abreast at the docks in the lumber district at Albany waiting their turn to get to the dock so as to be able to load, and the rate of freight was from $2.00 to $3.50 per thousand, to different Sound ports, where now there is no trade of this kind for any vessel.

Another industry for our sloop was to carry coal from Rondout to the different residences located along the Hudson, such as the Livingstons, DePeysters, and Clarksons who lived above Tivoli. They always got their coal in by the cargo for themselves and their help whom they employed. This kept us busy for several months each summer. Another industry for the North River sloop was to carry wood to the brickyards. And brick, flagstone, lime, cement, and pig-iron were the principal cargoes coming down the Hudson to keep these vessels employed. Gathering ice is also a great industry of the Hudson but it has always been carried in barges.

Thus with my brothers, Frank and Robert, we sailed the sloop Benjamin Franklin until 1877, when I left her to join the schooner Iron Age and later to be captain of the schooner Henry B. Fidderman in the spring of 1878. My father sailed the sloop Benjamin Franklin until the time of his death in 1889, when the sloop was sold to do service as a lighter in New York Harbor.

My father’s old sloop the First Effort already mentioned, met with a singular disaster after he parted with her. While lying at anchor on a dark night near Marlborough, the big steamboat James W. Baldwin, mistaking the sloop’s lights for those on the wharf where the steamer was to land, came alongside and struck the sloop with such a violent impact that she sank in fifty feet of water. All on board were saved, but the sloop was never raised. The James W. Baldwin bore a bad reputation for collisions with sailing craft. She is still on the river but under another name.

I found this statement and account of the first steamboat on the Hudson River among the manuscript papers of Colonel Nathan Beckwith of Red Hook in Dutchess County. He died on the 4th of March, 1865, in the eighty-seventh year of his age.

The first trip of the steamer Clermont started from the East River and went to Jersey City. She was constructed under the personal supervision of Robert Fulton in 1807. She was one hundred feet long, twelve feet wide, and seven feet deep. This steamboat made two or three trips to Albany, and was hauled out at Red Hook, near where Herman Hoffman’s store stood, which was destroyed by the British in the Revolutionary War. The property is now owned by Mr. DeKoven.

In the winter of 1807 said boat was lengthened to one hundred and fifty feet and widened to eighteen feet, the name was changed to North River. The hull was built by David Brown of New York, and the engine by Watt and Bolton of England. The following advertisement appeared in the Albany Gazette, September 1, 1807:

“The steamboat North River will leave Paulus Hook, Jersey City, on Friday, September 4th, at nine o’clock A.M. and arrive at Albany on Saturday at nine o clock P.M. Good berths and accommodations are provided. The charge to each passenger is as follows :—To Newburgh, $3.00, time fourteen hours; to Poughkeepsie, $4.00, time seventeen hours; to Esopus $5.00, time twenty hours; to Hudson $5.50, time thirty hours; to Albany $7.00, time, thirty-six hours.”

Reminscences of Accidents to Sloops

On November 20, 1869, there was a terrific gale, east and southeast. Five or six vessels sank at the wharves at Newburgh. The sloop Quackenbush, belonging to Capt. E. Kearny of Ulster County, was sunk. She lay at Bigelow’s dock, loaded with flagstones. The tug John Fuller pumped her out, and she was raised.

On March 26th and 27th, 1870, there was a severe east northeast gale. In Haverstraw bay the effect of the storm was very destructive. Brickyard docks and vessels suffered, there being such a high tide. Ten sloops and schooners were sunk between Haverstraw and Grassy Point. The schooner Brook, Captain George Hawkins, loaded with lumber from Newburgh, went ashore above Grassy Point and sank in the same storm.

April 25, 1870, the schooner Cabinet of Newport, having loaded coal at Newburgh, while on her way down the river ran on the flats just below Constitution Island. The captain started to run an anchor, not considering the extreme depth of the water in the channel, it being from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet deep. They took their large anchor and chain in the small boat, and the anchor, chain, boat and men all went to the bottom.

In the year 1877, the new terminal of the Newburgh and Fishkill ferry to the N. Y. Central Depot was completed, and in October the ferry commenced to run at this landing.

On June 8, 1878, the sloop Milan of Rondout, was beating down, loaded with flagging-stones. The wind was blowing heavily from the south and east, and when off Pollipel’s Island, in Newburgh bay, the captain had gone about on the west shore and was standing to the eastward, when there came a heavy puff down from the mountains, striking her dead full, and following the vessel around; the cargo shifted and the vessel filled and sank. She was afterwards raised and rigged into a schooner and called the George Hurst.

On July 2, 1878, the sloop Illinois, then having been altered into a schooner for two years, owned and commanded by Captain James Wilson of Newburgh, while lying at anchor in Long Island Sound in a fog off Captain’s Island, was run into by the Stonington Line steamer Massachusetts, and sunk. The Illinois had left Saybrook the day before the accident, and by the morning of the second, before daylight, got up as far as Captain’s Island, wind all died out, ebb-tide made, so they anchored. At three or four o’clock in the morning it set in foggy. At a little after four o’clock, the steamer Massachusetts came along and struck the schooner on the starboard quarter a glancing blow, taking the whole side of the vessel out, and she sank. The wreckers went to work and in about thirty hours the vessel was on the ways at City Island. The Illinois was originally a packet sloop, running from Newburgh, and was built there at the foot of South Street in 1818. She could carry about one hundred and fifty tons.

On July 8, 1879, the schooner Isaac Sherwood, then belonging to Captain William Bacon of Haverstraw, loaded with brick, had just come off the flats with a nice breeze from the north, and when a little below Grassy Point, met the propeller John L. Hasbrouck, of the Poughkeepsie Transportation Company with the Newburgh barge Charles Spear alongside in tow. The night was not dark, and the moon was shining. They took a course for each other, the steamer not sheering, nor did the schooner alter her course. The steamer stopped and backed, but too late, for as soon as she commenced to back she struck the schooner just forward of the forerigging, cutting in for four feet. The schooner filled immediately and went down in about thirty feet of water. The crew of five men just had time to get into the yawl. The mast and rigging, as she heeled over when she went down, did considerable damage to the propeller’s rail.

On August 22, 1879, the sloop Mary Warner, belonging to Captain Hiram Meeks, of Fort Montgomery, and carrying brick from Benjamin Walsh’s yard at New Windsor, was beating down with a nice breeze and standing to the eastward, when the steam yacht Nooya, bound up under a full head of steam, ran into the sloop, striking her on the starboard side, forward of the mast. The yacht being sharp and built of steel, cut half way through the sloop, and she sank immediately. The crew were saved by their yawl. The yacht was very badly damaged and had just time to run ashore at Verplanck’s Point, where she filled and settled to the bottom.

From Captain John Pinckney of Low Point, now Chelsea, formerly captain of the schooner Iron Age, running from the Manhattan Iron Works at New York for a number of years, I get the following information:

The first centerboard used on the Hudson River was introduced by Cornelius Carman, who was a builder of sail and steam vessels at Low Point, and was put by him in the sloop Freedom.

The first jib-traveller for sloops was invented by David Hunt of Low Point, who was a sloop-boatman from that place and at one time sailed on the packet sloop Matteawan, running from there.

The red and green side-lights for sail and steam vessels were first used on the river in 1862, and were introduced by General Benjamin Butler who was interested in a factory that made these lights. They were sold for $25.00 a set.

The first railway for hauling out sloops on the Hudson was put down at Nyack in 1845. Before that time, vessels would go to Cow Bay, Long Island, and other beaches to caulk and paint their bottoms, at the end of the season.