History Blog
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Editor’s Note: The replica ship Half Moon was completed in Albany in 1989 and served as a cultural ambassador celebrating the role of the Dutch in naval architecture, exploration, international trade, and colonization. An earlier replica was built in Amsterdam and presented to the United States during the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in 1909. This first replica was not maintained after the celebration and did not survive long as a static exhibit at Bear Mountain and later at Cohoes. The 1989 replica performed well once her characteristics were understood and was exhibited in a number of ports along the Atlantic seaboard. Later, she served as valuable and successful educational platform on the Hudson River through her “Voyages of Discovery” program for school children. The ship is currently in the Netherlands after spending several years as an exhibit in Hoorn. To read more about the technology and terminology of sailing in the seventeenth century and later, John Harland’s Seamanship in the Age of Sail, 1984 (republished by the Naval Institute Press in 1987) is recommended. For an account of Henry Hudson’s four voyages of exploration, including his trip up the Hudson River in 1609, Donald Johnson’s Charting the Sea of Darkness, International Marine, 1993 is recommended. This latter book is dedicated to the shipwright who designed and built the replica, Nick Benton. Follow Muddy Paddle, Able Seaman aboard the replica ship Half Moon here. Film Star The Half Moon came to New York several years later in time to participate in a tall ships festival. Her berth was at Liberty State Park in New Jersey and she was open for visitors during some of her stay there. A few of her original volunteer builders were invited to crew during Operation Sail. Thousands of visitors boarded the ship at Jersey City and at Tarrytown during a celebratory cruise up the river. I proved to be a competent seaman but a lousy docent. I was finally taught the important lesson that it is better to introduce a single, memorable story than to try to download a sea of factoids about Hudson, his crew, the ship, seamanship in the seventeenth century and the Dutch influence on the development of America. A year or so later, I was invited to sail with the Half Moon to Highlands, New Jersey to exhibit the ship and then to board a film crew planning to use the ship in a film involving Hudson’s 1609 sail. Over the course of a weekend, several thousand visitors boarded and I was able to hone my newly acquired interpretive insights to everyone’s relief. On Monday morning, we took showers at a nearby office and the captain bought bags of Burger King for breakfast. The film crew came aboard with re-enactor outfits and we cast off lines at 8:30 AM. As we sailed southeast toward open water, our bearded captain was dressed up as Henry Hudson while the rest of us were given loose fitting linen outfits to wear as we climbed aloft, unfurled the sails and got the ship sailing with a 15-knot west wind. The film crew shot footage of all of us going about the work of bracing the yards, trimming the sails and steering the ship inside the helmsman’s hutch while Hudson looked imperiously on. The sea became blue as we sailed farther offshore and well beyond sight of land. It was exhilarating as the ship’s sails bellied out and the bow breasted growing waves. As we mounted each new wave, sparkling foam was thrown ahead and rainbows would momentarily appear. After a few hours, the film crew was confident that it had captured the footage it needed. The conditions could never have been so ideal. The captain took off his Hudson costume, directed us to launch the “dink,” our small inflatable raft, and took one of the members of the film team out to witness the ship sailing from the rolling sea. After the cameraman got sick, they returned. With the small outboard motor still idling, the captain directed me to get my camera and to take a little trip with him in the “dink.” The captain knew that I was keeping a journal of our sail and believed that I would appreciate this experience more than most. I passed my camera down to the raft on a short line and then climbed down the port main chains before expertly timing my jump into the raft. We motored away from the ship. When we were 500 feet or more out, the captain killed the motor and I took several stunning views of the ship sailing away from us. It was surreal to witness the wooden sailing ship plowing through the ocean from a small boat on the waves. It was easy to imagine a comparable scene in 1609. The ship was quickly putting distance between us when the captain pulled the cord on the outboard. It did not start. He pulled again, and once again there was no response. The ship was getting smaller and the Atlantic was getting a lot bigger. I recall looking around our raft to see what we had on board. My anxiety rose when I realized we had no radio, no water and no extra fuel. The captain’s worried look suggested that he too had taken the same mental inventory. To make matters worse, the remaining crewmembers were not experienced in the complicated tasks needed to return the ship to our location under sail, or even to furl the sails, turn the engine on, and motor the ship back. I don’t even know if anyone was really aware that there was a problem. Within minutes, we weren’t even going to be visible. The captain had reached the same conclusions. He yanked away at the cord until sweat trickled into his eyes. We took the cover off and tried to troubleshoot the problem as the ship became small on the horizon. After replacing the cover, he made one last heroic pull, and the motor came to life. Immediately, we shifted into gear and began bouncing off the waves in a desperate effort to catch up to the ship. We both wondered if we had enough gas to make it. No one noticed our return and no one was at the side of the rolling ship to take our line. We tied up to the chains, uttered some obscenities and got some help with our cameras before climbing back aboard. The captain immediately sent crew to stations. We braced the yards and turned the ship north, but we made too much leeway to make any progress toward Raritan Bay. Giving up, we triced or gathered up the sails, turned the engine on and proceeded northwest under power. A few of us went aloft to furl and gasket the sails, a tricky piece of work without footropes which were unknown in 1609. The motion of the ship as she slows to climb waves and then accelerates as she runs toward each trough is magnified aloft and the yards lurch forward and backward with each phase of the cycle. That was the first and last time I volunteered to furl a sail. Join us again next Friday for the Part 4 of the "Half Moon" adventure! AuthorMuddy Paddle grew up near the Hudson River and always loved ships and boats. A job change in 1988 brought him to an office near the site where the Half Moon was being built and he became involved as a volunteer. Muddy learned the ways of seventeenth century sailing and accompanied the replica ship on a series of adventures and misadventures on the river, in New York Harbor and even offshore. He maintained a journal, which served as a reference for on-board terminology and operations as well as a place to record a few highlights of his trips. The accounts presented here, and several of the illustrations, were based on this journal and his recollection of these trips. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
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The hamlet of New Baltimore is an unincorporated community of less than 200 homes situated on the west bank of the Hudson River approximately 15 miles south of Albany. From the river, New Baltimore is identified by several early nineteenth century houses with verandahs, the steeple of the Dutch Reformed Church and the squared bell tower of a former Methodist church. Driving through the hamlet, one might notice the well-preserved nineteenth century houses, carriage barns and church buildings, as well as the lawns and mature trees which contribute to its attractiveness. The core of the hamlet was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. At its height of its prosperity and physical development, New Baltimore was a substantial community with hotels, stores, hundreds of houses, docks and industries. Of the latter, shipbuilding and ice harvesting were dominant. Today’s New Baltimore reflects little of the urban density and industrial character typical of much of its waterfront during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The hamlet was first settled by several Dutch families and New Englanders at the end of the eighteenth century. By 1800, the place had accumulated two dozen houses and the name New Baltimore, often abbreviated as simply “Baltimore.” New Baltimore was strategically located just below an area of the river choked with islands and bars that often impeded ship navigation to Albany. One of these obstructions, the infamous “overslaugh” bottled up shipping during periods of low water. New Baltimore had the advantage of being below these obstructions and still close to Albany. A promotional map from 1809 encouraging investment in real estate describes the place as “commanding a spacious harbor and intersected by extensive turnpike roads opening a fair prospect for the mercantile and seafaring adventurer.” Shipbuilding was clearly underway in New Baltimore by 1793 when the sloop Sea Flower was built by Nathan Dunbar. This was followed by more than a dozen new sloops, schooners and a brig built for the river trade and even trade with the West Indies. These sailing vessels tended to average 60 to 70 feet in length on deck and carried freight and passengers up and down the river while maintaining communications between Hudson River towns, New York City and southern New England. At least one New Baltimore sloop remained in service locally into the 1870s. The town’s yards also thrived repairing and rebuilding sailing vessels. By 1830, a community of shipbuilders, masters, owners and merchants had emerged building docks, warehouses, several shipyards and a series of mostly frame houses on small lots along what are now Main and Washington streets. A drydock was added to New Baltimore’s yard facilities in 1835. Sloops continued to be built and repaired here into the 1850s, when steamboats and barges began to be produced. In 1858, Jedediah R. and Henry S. Baldwin purchased the Goldsmith and Ten Eyck shipyard and began a business that continued almost uninterrupted until 1919. The Baldwins built at least 100 steamboats, canal barges, hay barges, tugboats and a large steam dredge over their 61-year history and repaired many more. A marine railway was built at the company’s Mill Street yard in 1884 which facilitated the launching of new boats and the repair of passenger steamboats of all but the largest sizes. Among the more notable boats built here were the 182-foot sidewheeler Andrew Harder in 1863, 253-foot propeller steamboat Nuhpa in 1865, the sidewheel towboat Jacob Leonard in 1872, the 127-foot sidewheel steamboat G.V.S. Quackenbush in 1878 and the 139-foot hay and excursion barge Andrew M. Church in 1892. Between 1905 and 1906, 13 boats were launched at the Baldwin yard. Photographs of the yard taken in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries show the marine railway in use, new boats being built on the shoulders of the railway slip, an office and loft building, several storage buildings, a steam mill for sawing and planning lumber, a basin adjacent to the river to keep logs from drying and checking, several steam boxes with brick furnaces and teams of workers with caulking mallets in hand. Launches of the larger boats were often celebratory events for the community and recorded in photographs. Small boats were also produced and serviced in New Baltimore. In the 1880s, Herrick & Powell produced yachts and launches with steam and early internal combustion engines. In 1898, William H. Couser moved his boat shop to Mill Street where he produced and repaired small craft for some years. The Baldwin firm built or repaired at least one small auxiliary schooner at its Mill Street yard and briefly operated a small yard nearby at Matthews Point for building smaller tugs. New Baltimore’s mid and later nineteenth century prosperity was expressed in its fine homes and churches. Stylish homes with verandahs overlooking the river and sometimes distinctive cupolas were built by the town’s leading industrialists and merchants in the latest styles of the day. Steamboats connected New Baltimore to Albany, Hudson and ports in between and a five-story hotel was built on the town square. Large warehouses flanked the public dock and coal pockets were built near the steamboat dock and a short distance south on Mill Street. By the 1890s, the waterfront was flanked by enormous icehouses at its north and south ends and across the river on Hotaling Island. New Baltimore’s decline was gradual. The West Shore Railroad by-passed the hamlet by more than a mile when service began in 1883, limiting the possibilities that direct rail service might have provided. Major fires in 1897, 1905, 1912 and 1929 largely destroyed the business center of the community. The natural ice industry declined during this same period due to public concerns over bacterial contamination from polluted river water and the simultaneous rise of clean manufactured ice. The Baldwin shipyard was purchased by William Wade in 1919 and incorporated as the New Baltimore Shipbuilding and Repair Corporation. It may have built one or more wooden tugs. The last launch in town was the 90-foot wooden steamship Kittaning built in 1922 for the Manhattan State Hospital on Ward’s Island. Thereafter, the yard became a dock for Wade’s adapted sand and dredging company. While ideal for building wooden sloops, barges, tugs, ferries, and small to mid-sized steamboats, New Baltimore did not have enough available flat land along the river or the access to rail shipments necessary to create an efficient yard for building with steel. Steel shipbuilding succeeded elsewhere on the Hudson River where adequate land and infrastructure were available, notably at Kingston, Newburgh, and Cohoes. With its prime industries lost, New Baltimore lost status, population, and a number of ancillary businesses that once thrived on its booming economy. Images taken by Office of War Information photographer John Collier, Jr. in October 1941 show a town with little apparent activity, dilapidated fences, unpainted porches and a waterfront with rotting barges. Buildings continued to be lost to fire and neglect and trees reclaimed industrial sites and yards. Areas of dense-packed housing were gradually thinned and by the 1970s, the town had lost as much as one-fourth of its historic building stock. The hamlet’s stabilization and recovery, beginning in the 1970s, paralleled a broadened appreciation for the Hudson River and the gradual clean-up of its waters. Today, the hamlet is an attractive bedroom community for families and individuals with employment in adjacent communities and nearby cities. Its maritime heritage is echoed in the houses of the shipbuilders, captains, shipwrights and rivermen, the remains of the earth-filled docks and slips, a lone derrick, several subbing posts along the shoreline and the stone foundations of some of its lost buildings and industrial sites. Sources: Bush, Clesson S. Episodes from a Hudson River Town, New Baltimore, New York. SUNY Albany, 2011. Gambino, Anthony J. By the Shores of New Baltimore: Its Shipyards and Nautical History. Self-published C.D., 2009. Historic photos courtesy of Town of New Baltimore Historian's Office and Greene County Historical Society. AuthorMark Peckham is a trustee of the Hudson River Maritime Museum and a retiree from the New York State Division for Historic Preservation. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
Released in on September 25, 2012 on Appleseed Records, A More Perfect Union was one of Pete Seeger's last albums (Pete Remembers Woody was released simultaneously). A collaboration with longtime friend and fellow songwriter Lorre Wyatt, the album features other musicians including Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, and Dar Williams, among others. Pete was 93 when the album was recorded and passed away on January 27, 2014 at the age of 94.
"Bountiful River" is the last song on the album.
"Bountiful River" Lyrics
by Pete Seeger and Lorre Wyatt Deep love like a bountiful river Fills the soul renews the heart My love is always and ever We will never part Sailing sailing together Fills the soul renews the heart Flowing flowing forever We will never part Chorus Oh, bountiful river3x We will never part Reviving this river Fills the soul renews the heart Embarked on an endless endeavor We will never part Blending one voice with another Fills the soul renews the heart Weaving our lives with these waters We will never part Each swimmer that crosses the river Fills the soul renews the heart Singing we're in this together We will never part Shadfish surging up river Fills the soul renews the heart Singing we're in this together We will never part An eagle circling in heaven Fills the soul renews the heart An eagle and river repeating We will never part Thanks to HRMM volunteer Mark Heller for sharing his knowledge of Hudson River music history for this series.
If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
Welcome to Week 8 of the #HudsonRiverscapes Photo Contest! We asked members of the public to submit their best photos (no people) of the Hudson River and tributaries, and just look at all the beautiful shots they delivered. We are delighted to share with you these wonderful images of our beloved Hudson River. If you would like to submit your own photos to this contest, you can find out more about the rules - and prizes! - here. This is a contest, but all voting takes place on Facebook. To vote, simply log into your account, click the button below, and like and/or comment on your favorite. At the end of each week, the photo with the most likes and comments wins a Household Membership to the Hudson River Maritime Museum. If you don't get to vote this week, keep liking and commenting anyway - all photos are entered into the Grand Prize at the end of the contest - a free private charter aboard Solaris for 2021! Thank you for everyone who participated this week! If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
Editor’s Note: The replica ship Half Moon was completed in Albany in 1989 and served as a cultural ambassador celebrating the role of the Dutch in naval architecture, exploration, international trade, and colonization. An earlier replica was built in Amsterdam and presented to the United States during the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in 1909. This first replica was not maintained after the celebration and did not survive long as a static exhibit at Bear Mountain and later at Cohoes. The 1989 replica performed well once her characteristics were understood and was exhibited in a number of ports along the Atlantic seaboard. Later, she served as valuable and successful educational platform on the Hudson River through her “Voyages of Discovery” program for school children. The ship is currently in the Netherlands after spending several years as an exhibit in Hoorn. To read more about the technology and terminology of sailing in the seventeenth century and later, John Harland’s Seamanship in the Age of Sail, 1984 (republished by the Naval Institute Press in 1987) is recommended. For an account of Henry Hudson’s four voyages of exploration, including his trip up the Hudson River in 1609, Donald Johnson’s Charting the Sea of Darkness, International Marine, 1993 is recommended. This latter book is dedicated to the shipwright who designed and built the replica, Nick Benton. Follow Muddy Paddle, Able Seaman aboard the replica ship Half Moon here. The Maiden Voyage It was mentioned earlier that the 1609 Half Moon carried a standard six-sail rig of the period. This means that she carried a foremast and a mainmast, each spreading two square sails to drive the ship as well as a bowsprit and a mizzen spreading smaller sails that helped supplement the rudder to steer the ship, or more accurately position the ship’s angle relative to the wind direction. The foremast and mainmasts are comprised of three connected spars each; a heavy mast rising 30 to 40 feet above the deck; a lighter topmast 20 to 25 feet in length rising up above the circular tops colloquially called “crows’nests” and topgallant poles rising a little less than 20 feet above crosstrees at the top of each topgallant mast. The combined height of the mainmast assembly was approximately 78 feet above the waterline. The mizzenmast at the stern of the ship was shorter and lighter carrying only one sail and comprised of only one large spar and one short pole above that. The bowsprit overhanging the bow of the ship was shaped from a single spar. The replica Half Moon was fitted with an engine to facilitate movement when wind and tide were not favorable. Adding an engine was also intended to add a margin of safety and reliability to the replica’s operations. The unofficial but actual maiden voyage of the replica Half Moon took place just before sunset early in October, 1989. The ship was docked on her port side where she was held off of the bulkhead by a steel camel or pontoon. The work on this side was complete and it was time to turn the ship around so that the starboard side would be more accessible. After the volunteers arrived, lines were cast off. A paid member of the construction crew took command and the ship proceeded south under her own power. At the Port of Albany, our provisional captain ordered the helmsman to make a hard port turn. The helm was slow to answer, owing to the placement of the propeller on the port side of the ship and the relatively small surface area of our rudder. It took most of the width of the river to turn the ship around and to head back north to our dock. After straightening up, our captain gave the engine more throttle and we found that steering improved. We were sailing with the incoming tide and making rapid progress. A west wind picked up and even with sails furled, our ship heeled gently over. By now, a few boaters had begun to follow us and snap off photographs of the scene against an atmospheric sunset. We approached our dock and the highway bridge just north of it very quickly. The captain planned to proceed to the bridge, turn, and then dock with the starboard side to the wall. Once again, the ship was very slow to make a port turn. The ship’s momentum and the tide were quickly carrying us to the bridge which had a vertical clearance of less than 70 feet. Our captain shifted to reverse, and revved up the engine, but reverse failed to engage. As our foremast approached the bridge, all of the crew on deck tried to find cover. Some dove into the forecastle or down the main hatch. One dove into the river. The foretopgallant mast struck the bridge, broke off and went into the river. The taller main topmast was next in line to strike the bridge and would have resulted in a lot of falling spars and blocks and cordage. Fortunately, reverse engaged at the last second and the mast was spared. Our captain sheepishly landed at our dock. As a token of humiliation, the broken fore topgallant mast was hooked by one of the boaters and towed to us for presentation while we secured lines. Within hours, a replacement was hastily planed down from a long fir timber and raised into position before the owner of the ship arrived the next day for an inspection. Sea Trials Several days later, plans were made to send the Half Moon down to New York on a shakedown cruise. An experienced pilot was hired. The crew returned with sea bags in hand for a trip down the river. Once the owner came aboard, we cast off lines, started the engine and moved away from the dock. Cannon fire from the Rensselaer shoreline saluted the ship as she moved into the main channel. The trouble began almost immediately. Smoke billowed out of the engine compartment and up and out of the main hatch. While a few folks went below for fire extinguishers, our new pilot quickly reviewed the options and decided to run for the docks at the Port of Rensselear and get everyone off the ship. Several of us gathered up lines to secure the ship as soon as we touched. The pilot killed the engine and we hit the dock with a thud, breaking the rampant lion figurehead. After the smoke cleared we learned that the shaft bearings had overheated. The engine and the shaft were misaligned. The trip was cancelled. We all took our gear and departed. A week or so later, a tugboat named Spuyten Duyvil came up the river, attached a towline to the Half Moon’s forward bitts and unceremoniously towed the ship to New York and then to Bridgeport for drydocking. From there, she was taken to North Carolina. Thus ended the first chapter of Half Moon’s Albany story and her association with most of her original volunteers and would-be sailors. Join us again next Friday for the Part 3 of the "Half Moon" adventure! AuthorMuddy Paddle grew up near the Hudson River and always loved ships and boats. A job change in 1988 brought him to an office near the site where the Half Moon was being built and he became involved as a volunteer. Muddy learned the ways of seventeenth century sailing and accompanied the replica ship on a series of adventures and misadventures on the river, in New York Harbor and even offshore. He maintained a journal, which served as a reference for on-board terminology and operations as well as a place to record a few highlights of his trips. The accounts presented here, and several of the illustrations, were based on this journal and his recollection of these trips.
If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today! If ever a man loved a river, Robert Hamilton Boyle Jr. loved the Hudson — and he was not afraid to shout his love from the rooftops. In his classic text, The Hudson River: a Natural and Unnatural History (1969), Boyle makes his feelings abundantly clear with the book’s very first line. “To those who know it,” wrote Boyle, “the Hudson River is the most beautiful, messed up, productive, ignored and surprising piece of water on the face of the earth. There is no other river quite like it, and for some persons, myself included, no other river will do. The Hudson is the river.” Gratifyingly, Boyle’s love for the Hudson was not merely a historic/scientific scholarly interest. Yes, Boyle studied the Hudson obsessively, but he did more than passively analyze his favorite waterway. He actively fought to save the river in its darkest hour, when pollution had reduced the Hudson to a shell of its former self. In his decades-long conservationist crusade, Boyle wrote watershed exposes, discovered crucial legal strategies, and founded a seminal environmental organization. Not bad for blue-collar “Brooklyn-born sportswriter and angler.” By the end of his life, Boyle — the down-to-earth fisherman — had become “the unofficial guardian of the Hudson River.” All that being said, a question remains. How did Boyle come to be so fascinated by the Hudson River? Why did he want to save it so badly? By all accounts, Bob Boyle grew to love the Hudson during his 1940s boyhood boarding school years, when he spent his days off fishing by the (then relatively clean) riverside. When he moved to Croton-on-Hudson in 1960, Boyle was treated to a rude awakening. Instead of the semi-healthy river of his youth, Boyle found a waterway this close to clinically dead. Pollution, of both chemical and human waste varieties, had progressed to intolerable levels. In addition to being a health hazard to humans, the river’s once abundant flora and fauna were mysteriously dying out. Boyle, ever the fisherman, would not stand for that sort of thing. He decided to take up arms and go to war for the Hudson. His weapon of choice? A pen. To reiterate an old cliché, a picture is worth a thousand words. Bob Boyle clearly took that message to heart. In his historic 1965 Sports Illustrated article, “A Stink of Dead Stripers,” Boyle began with a simple command: “Take a good look at the picture below.” The picture in question revealed a thousand-strong pile of striped bass “left to rot” at a dump. Even without context, a discarded fish-kill of that size looked, well, fishy. Bob Boyle thought so too — and he knew just who to blame. The culprit, in Boyle’s (ultimately correct) opinion, was the Consolidated Edison Company. The exact circumstances of the kill were not exactly clear — “but the fish apparently were attracted by warm water discharged from the plant and then were trapped beneath a dock.” Concerned citizens took pictures of these massive fish kills and submitted them to the New York State Conservation Department — which later “denied that such pictures existed” when questioned by Boyle. Of course, Boyle did eventually manage to get ahold of those pictures. Their publication, in conjunction with the scathing Sports Illustrated article, was the opening salvo in Boyle’s war against Consolidated Edison. From the start, one fact was crystal clear: Boyle wasn’t going to pull any punches. In 1962, Consolidated Edison announced plans for a new hydroelectric power station, plans which had local fisherman and conservationists up in arms. The company hoped to carve a facility out of Storm King Mountain, a site renowned for its scenic beauty. Locals were, understandably, a little horrified by this scheme. The proposed power plant would obviously mar the landscape — and it probably wouldn’t do the river’s fish population much good either. Bob Boyle suspected that Con Ed’s “water-intake equipment would kill small fish,” decimating the population of his beloved striped bass. In 1965, Boyle joined a number of conservation groups (including Scenic Hudson, one of New York’s most enduring non-for-profit organizations) in a “lawsuit against a proposed Consolidated Edison power plant.” It was not an easy fight, but, after many years of legal battle, the conservationists’ efforts bore fruit. The lawsuit, entitled Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, resulted in “the first federal court ruling affirming the right of citizens to mount challenges on the basis of potential harm to aesthetic, recreational or conservational values as well as tangible economic injury.” It was, in every respect, a game changer and the true beginning of the modern environmental movement. And what was the crucial keystone of Scenic Hudson’s case? Scientific studies on the Hudson’s striped bass population, which would have, as Boyle predicted, been decimated by Con Ed’s plant. After the Battle of Storm King had been won, Boyle did not choose to sit back and bask in his victory. No, he knew that work still had to be done. The river remained a polluted mess. By preventing the creation of Con Ed’s power plant, Boyle had only fulfilled the physician’s doctrine: “First, do no harm.” The Hudson still needed a thorough cleaning and a dedicated protector, a watchdog to scare the polluters away. To that end, Boyle began to conceive of a plan. He imagined a sort of ‘river keeper,’ a naturalist/conservationist “out on the river the length of the year.” This riverkeeper would keep watch on the river, sniffing out polluters and bringing them to task. What’s more, the riverkeeper would not act alone. They would have an entire organization behind them — an organization with real teeth. Boyle already had already founded just such an organization, the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association, in 1966. In 1983, the Fishermen’s Association evolved into ‘Riverkeeper,’ a non-for-profit environmental organization dedicated to the protection of the Hudson. But what about the organization’s aforementioned teeth? Well, Boyle had discovered, years earlier, a pair of 19th century laws (the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 and the New York Harbor Act of 1888) which banned the “release of pollutants in the nation’s (and the state’s) waterways.” Furthermore, the two Acts allowed “citizens to sue polluters and collect a bounty.” Luckily, the laws still held in the modern era. Bob Boyle and the Fishermen’s Association tested out their legal strategy against the Penn Central Railroad, and were able to stop a “pipe spewing oil from the Croton Rail Yard” and collect “$2,000 in fines, the first bounty awarded under the 19th-century law.” The bounty money was then repurposed to underwrite suits against other polluters. Riverkeeper wisely kept this legal strategy. All in all, it was an admirably self-sustaining system. Eventually, Riverkeeper evolved past the Hudson River. It became a model for others around the world, a part of the “Waterkeeper alliance.” Today, the Waterkeeper organization “unites more than 300 Waterkeeper Organizations and Affiliates that are on the front lines of the global water crisis, patrolling and protecting more than 2.5 million square miles of rivers, lakes and coastal waterways on six continents.”14 The individual waterkeepers work with local communities, enforce environmental laws, track down polluters and educate children about the environment. They are watchful protectors, just as Bob Boyle intended. Although his main contribution to the environmental movement was undoubtedly Riverkeeper, Boyle never gave up and grew tired of his favorite river. He certainly never gave up fishing for his beloved striped bass. After all, Boyle is the man who once wrote: “There may be more stripers in the Hudson than there are people in New York State. I often find this a cheering thought.” Boyle was, in life and in print, down-to-earth, passionate, and adventurous — with a wryly sardonic sense of humor. He lived a life rich in meaning, a life he could be proud of. Case in point: Boyle once predicted that the Hudson would become “either ‘clean and wholesome’ or ‘bereft of the larger forms of life.’” Before he died on May 19th, 2017, Robert H. Boyle could be sure of two things: 1) the river had “gone the better way” and 2) he had played a small but crucial part in its salvation. It just goes to show. Everyone is capable of making a difference, if they only have the courage to try AuthorLucia O’Corozine is a student at Hampshire College. She was an Education and Research Intern with the Hudson River Maritime Museum over the summer of 2018 and contributed research to HRMM’s new exhibit, “Rescuing the River: 50 Years of Environmental Activism on the Hudson.” This article was originally published in the 2019 issue of the Pilot Log. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
Released on the 2002 album, Relax Your Mind, "That River's Taking Care of Me" is one of Molly Mason's favorite songs. Written by R.S. Adams & J. Greer, Molly learned from Connie Boswell's 1933 recording which has a different introduction. When performing it in the Hudson Valley, Molly will often change the lyrics to indicate that her river is the Hudson River.
Jay Ungar and Molly Mason played this song as part of their awards speech for receiving the Roger Mabie Award from the Hudson River Maritime Museum at the 2014 Pilot Gala. Jay Ungar and Molly Mason are founders of the Ashokan Center, which teaches environmental education as well as music and dance. Jay Ungar wrote the song "Ashokan Farewell," named after the camp, which was famously featured in Ken Burns' documentary "The Civil War." The Ashokan Center has recently been publishing a series of virtual music programs on their YouTube channel.
That River's Taking Care of Me Lyrics
By R. S. Adams / J. Greer, Interpreted by Molly Mason I love that river, That friendly river, He gives me everything free! So I love that river, That river's takin' care of me! I catch my breakfast, I catch my supper, He gives me everything free! So I love that river, He's takin' care of me! He never stops to ask the reason I'm here, Just fills my empty bowl. All he has he's willin' to share, I guess that river has a soul! When I've got troubles, He takes my trouble And he carries them out to sea! So I love the river, The river's takin' care of me! I get that river, That friendly river, He gives me everything free, oh-oh! I love that river, The river's takin' care of me! Well he never stops to ask me the reason I'm here, Just fills my empty bowl. All he has he's willin' to share, I guess that river has a soul! When I've got troubles, He takes my troubles And carries them out to sea! I love the river, That river's takin' care of me! Care of me! Yes I love that river, That river's takin' care of me!
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