Most boatmen are notoriously sentimental. A fine example of their feelings for an old veteran of the river was the last trip of the Cornell tugboat “Osceola."

The "Osceola" finished her travels and work on the Hudson River on a Sunday afternoon during the latter part of October 1929. At the time I happened to be down along the shore at Sleightsburgh.

On that Sunday afternoon of mid-autumn, the "Osceola" came down river with a large tow, the tugboat "George W. Pratt” helping her. When opposite the Rondout Lighthouse, the big tug "Edwin H. Mead” of the Cornell Steamboat Company came up river, running light, and took over the tow from the “Osceola." As soon as the towing cables were shifted to the "Mead, the “Mead” blew three very long whistles of farewell. The “Osceola" then turned and headed for Rondout Creek, answering the "Mead’s" salute with her own whistle.

Answering Whistles
The steamboat "Poughkeepsie" of the old Central Hudson Line at the time was coming out of the Rondout Creek on her run to New York. The "Poughkeepsie" also blew three long whistles which the "Oscy” answered.

Finally, the "Osceola’s” old running mate and helper for many years, the "George W. Pratt," blew three very long blasts on her whistle saying good-bye, knowing the “Osceola" was to sail the river no more.

As the “Osceola"’ was going between the dikes on either side of the creek, she answered the “Pratt’s" last salute. I can still see in my mind’s eye the white steam from her whistle as it trailed around her big black smokestack in the clear autumn air. It was the last time that old familiar whistle was to echo along the banks of the Hudson.

The "Osceola” tied up at the Cornell shops at Rondout and the fires in her boiler were let die. The "Oscy’s" hull was worn out, but her engine and boiler were still considered to be in good shape. The Cornell Steamboat Company had acquired a sound hull from another company and it was Cornell’s original intention to take the "Osceola’s'’ engine, boiler and deck houses from her original hull and install them in the newer one. During 1930, the work progressed to a point where the transfer of engine, boiler and upper works was almost completed. Then the Great Depression set in and the project was never finished.

Stranded on Beach
The "Osceola’s” original hull, as soon as the engine, boiler and topside gear were removed, was towed to Port Ewen where it was stranded in 1930 on the beach outside of where the Hidden Harbor Yacht Club is now located. The uncompleted newer hull, after work was stopped in the fall of 1930 or early 1931, was shifted to Sleightsburgh where it weathered away for almost 20 years. Finally, in the late 1940’s it, too, was towed to Port Ewen and sunk off the shore, almost right next to the "Oscy’s” first hull.

The "Osceola" was a big tug and very similar to the Cornell tugboat "Pocahontas." Both had been built during the same year, 1884, at the same shipyard at Newburgh.

Both were used in the same type of service and after World War I the two tugboats pretty much handled Cornell's business on the upper river. One would leave Albany one night, and the other the following night with Cornell’s daily tows for down river. The tows would meet the daily up tows from New York in the vicinity of Poughkeepsie where the meeting tugboats would exchange tows. As a result, the "Osceola" and "Pochahontas” [sic] in their latter years were to be seen almost always on the northern half of the Hudson — and their whistles heard on the foggy nights of spring and autumn. In the "Osceola’s” last trip to her home port of Rondout, Howard Palmatier was captain, Dan McDonald her pilot and Victor Matt chief engineer. 

Night Boat …. Night Boat …. Night Boat …. That once familiar cry of dozens of youngsters who would rush to the banks of the Hudson at the first blasts of the Night Boat's whistle as she blew to the drawbridge at Albany, and a cry so familiar to many of us who have spent most of our lives along its banks has drifted away into oblivion, but the memory lingers on. For that one proud fleet of night line steamers, some of them quite appropriately called "floating palaces" is likewise but a memory. Yet it was but a few short years ago that hundreds of folk, both old and young would stroll down to the docks, sit on the benches in Riverside Park or line the rail of the bridge waiting for the boats to leave, and would watch as the brilliantly lighted steam boats would gracefully glide through the open span, play their powerful searchlights along the shore as many a young maiden, with her beau, would pretend to shy at the strong rays, and would continue to watch as the river queen faded away in the distance "round the bend."
​
Yes, all of the nightline steamers have answered the last bell, and, with the passing of the last, the "Berkshire", all hope for a renewal of nightly passenger steamer travel to the metropolis has vanished. Thus a "finis" is written to a huge chapter in Memories Garden which to many of us river folk, who love the sound of the splashing paddle wheels, the purring of the engines, the escaping steam in the piston cylinder and the golden throat of the steam whistle, seems like the passing of old friends. Indeed, the only comforting thought is the Day Line's resumption each spring, something which is looked forward to by many of us quite as the robin the tree top or the crocus pushing its way upward to the sunlight.

Many of my readers will remember the double-ended ferries "W.M. Whitney", "R.C. Reynolds", W.H. Frear", and "C.V.S. Quackenbush" of the Albany-Troy Steamboat Co., which made half hourly trips to Troy, stopping at Midway Beach on their way back and forth. Thousands of area folk took advantage of the cooling breezes of the Hudson during the hot summer evenings on a trip to Troy for a dime.

Then too, they must remember the little passenger steamers "C.H. Evans" and "General" that made regular trips to Castleton for a quarter, the afternoon sailings of the "Alice May" and "Ursula", one of which left Albany every week day at three and stopped at all towns and villages on her way to Catskill. And the "Jacob Tremper" and "Milton Martin" with the spare boat, "James T. Brett", as one of them left from Albany every morning except Sunday loaded mostly with beer for landings all the way to Newburgh.

And surely those same readers cannot forget the engineless barges named "Empress", "Geraldine", "Baldwin", "Merchant", and "Harvest Queen" that used to carry thousands of excursionists down the river about fifteen miles to Bareana Park at Coeymans. There is scarcely a church within twenty miles of the Capitol Building at Albany, that has not at one time sponsored a Sunday School or Church picnic on these hay barges towed by one or more little steam tugs, such as the "Arnold", "Skinner", "Chubb", "Guide Star", or "Paul Le Roux".

And who that has ever seen can forget that grand old steamer, the "Mary Powell", affectionately called "The Queen of the Hudson," a steamer known all over the world, and who's name in steamboat lore has become quite as famous as the river itself, and rivaled only by the "Tashmoo" of the Great Lakes. Built in 1861, she ran on the Hudson for 56 years without a major accident, and without the loss of a single life. She holds the record of being the fastest sidewheeler ever to sail the Hudson.

Even though she was dismantled in 1920, she still lives, for at Indian Point, her bell rings out a welcome as the steamers of the Day Line land there. [Editor's Note: The "Mary Powell" bell is now in the Hudson River Maritime Museum yard.] The name from across her pilot house adorns the front of a cottage at Connelly, N.Y., and her deep-throated golden whistle echoes and re-echoes among the hills and mountains along the river as the "Robert Fulton" blows for a landing.

Finally, from out of the past, we can see the hundreds of tugs, old side-wheelers, steam canalers, ice and hay barges as they lay at the docks from the lumber district in North Albany to the slips at the south end of the city. We can see the "Norwich", built in 1836, as she proudly took her place in the Hudson-Fulton parade in 1907, the "Oswego," at the "Rensselaer" dock in 1918 on her last trip up river, the large tugs "Pocahontas", "Osceola", "Washburn", and "Cornell" together with many smaller tugs as they docked awaiting orders. And we can see several of them even to this day, tied up in Rondout Creek, at Sleightsburg, awaiting the call to the boneyard.

The Hudson River was used as a road for hundreds of years for transport of people and goods before there were paved roads or railroads. The major form of transport on the river from the early 1600s to the early 19th century was the Hudson River sloop, an adaptation of a Dutch single-masted boat which was brought here by the Dutch settlers who were the dominant group among the early European settlers in the Hudson Valley. Everything and everybody traveled by Hudson River sloop, but they didn’t travel fast. In those pre-engine days, it could take a week to sail between New York and Albany. According to ads of the times, the sloops operated on a two-week schedule (one week down and one week back), to allow for the vagaries of the wind and the time it took to fill the boat at various landings and towns. For passengers in a hurry, or perishable freight, such a schedule could be a problem.
           
After 1807, with the advent of the steamboat, life for passengers on the Hudson in a hurry became much better. From a one week trip between New York and Albany, the time was reduced to slightly more than one day, and then became even faster as better and better steamboats and engines were built. However, freight continued to travel by slower sailing vessels because it was much cheaper to ship cargo that way. As more and more steamboats came onto the river and competition made shipping on these boats cheaper, perishable freight like fruit, vegetables and milk traveled by steamboat. Less perishable bulk cargoes traveled in barges pulled by steamboats especially built for towing. Even so, sailing vessels, sloops and schooners still carried bulky heavy cargoes like bluestone and cement until the end of the 19th century. The schooners included a steady traffic of coastal schooners from New England which would bring lumber to the Hudson Valley and return home with cargoes like coal, bricks, bluestone and cement. Ironically, though, the coastal schooners usually did not sail up the Hudson but were towed in convoys by steam towboats or tugs. The smaller Hudson River sloops and schooners, whose scale was more in keeping with the narrow reaches of the Hudson, could sail up the river.
           
By the mid-19th century the railroad began to come on the scene in the Hudson Valley to compete with boats. The railroad had the advantage of being able to run in the winter when the river was frozen and closed for boat traffic, so it steadily gained favor with shippers. However, the river retained a large amount of freight traffic because it was still a cheap way to ship things.

Towing was a big business on the Hudson River during most of the 19th century into the early 20th century. The towing steamers were first outmoded passenger steamers with cabins and extra decks removed. Then steamers especially made for towing were built, like the famous Norwich, the Oswego, the Austin and others which still resembled stripped down passenger steamboats with the usual side paddlewheels. However, around the time of the Civil War a new type of towboat with a screw propeller appeared on the scene. This was the tugboat which we are still familiar with today, a small but powerful vessel, whose attractive shape is easily recognizable and used in many work situations worldwide. Towboats and tugs pulled long strings of barges, often as many as forty, carrying many types of cargoes slowly up and down the Hudson day and night from the late 19th into the early 20th centuries. Usually a second helper tug was employed to take barges on and off the tow as it moved along, helping with the towing also as needed.
           
Often the individual barges had captains who lived in tiny houses onboard their boats, sometimes with their families accompanying them. It was not unusual to see laundry hung out on the backs of the barges or dogs and children playing on deck. Small children were usually tethered with some sort of rope to keep them from falling overboard. Small supply boats called bumboats came alongside the tows as they moved slowly along to sell groceries and other necessities to the barge families.
           
Rondout was the home of the Cornell Steamboat Company, which was the dominant towing company on the Hudson from the 1880s through the 1930s, with a fleet of up to 60 tugs and towboats of all sizes. Rondout was also the home of a number of boat builders who built hundreds of barges and canal boats over the years to carry many different types of cargoes on the Hudson and on the canals like the Delaware and Hudson which fed into the Hudson. Most of the towns along the Hudson had boat-building operations in the early days of the sloops, but by the late 19th century boatbuilding was concentrated in fewer places, like Newburgh and Rondout.
           
What were the cargoes carried on the Hudson River by boat? Farm products and wood dominated the trade from the 17th into the 19th centuries. Industrial products, particularly building products like cement, bluestone and bricks produced in the Hudson Valley in the 19th and early 20th centuries, were the major cargoes traveling on the river to New York City to build the city. Coal was also a major cargo, coming to the Hudson on the Delaware and Hudson Canal in the 19th century, and later by rail from eastern Pennsylvania. Ice cut in the Hudson and lakes along the river was also another major cargo from the mid-19th century into the 1920s transported in fleets of covered barges. Grain from the west was carried on the Hudson, and fruit produced in the mid and upper Hudson regions was transported in huge quantities by steamer through the 1930s.
           
In the 20th century, self-propelled freighters served to carry cargoes not handled by towboats and barges. Sometimes these were cargoes that traveled to or from distant ports, sometimes across the ocean or halfway around the world. Some cargoes that had previously come by coastal schooner, like lumber, now arrived by freighter. Liquid cargoes arrived by tanker including oil and molasses. Fuel oil is today the dominant cargo on the Hudson and it travels by barge and by tanker. The molasses which used to go to Albany by tanker was used as a component in cattle feed. Gypsum remains a cargo carried by freighter on the Hudson.
             
Of the old cargoes carried on the Hudson, few remain today. Only cement and crushed rock or traprock remain of the old building materials excavated and produced along the banks of the Hudson and carried by barge. Most cargo moving along the Hudson today goes by rail or road. Where water was once the cheapest way to ship along the Hudson, it is no longer necessarily true. The industries that shipped by water are gone for the most part. Also much of the bulk cargo that once traveled to Albany from all over the world like bananas or foreign cars now go elsewhere. Those colorful days are gone and are missed by those who remember them.

                                                   Steamboat "Jacob H. Tremper"

Built originally for a local concern, Romer & Tremper, with offices in Rondout, the steamboat “Jacob H. Tremper” was a familiar sight sailing in and out of the Rondout creek a few years ago. Today, the “Jacob H. Tremper” is no more as she was broken up in 1928, but memories of this graceful steamboat are not very dim in the minds of local residents, and the tone of her whistle still haunts the hillsides along the banks of the Rondout creek.
               
The wooden hull of the “Jacob H. Tremper” was built by Herbert Lawrence at Greenpoint, New York, in 1885, and her engine was constructed by W.A. Fletcher & Company of New York. She was 180 feet long, breadth of beam 30 feet, two inches. Her tonnage was listed as gross 572 and net 432, and her vertical beam engine had a cylinder diameter of 44 inches with a 10 foot stroke.
               
The “Jacob H. Tremper” was built for the firm of Romer & Tremper of Rondout to be used as a freight and passenger vessel on a daytime run between Newburgh and Albany. She ran in line with the steamboat “M. Martin.” In August of 1884 the steamboat “Eagle,” which had been running on the Newburgh route since 1856 and for several years before 1884 in line with the “M. Martin,” was destroyed by fire, and the “Jacob H. Tremper” was built to replace the “Eagle.”
               
The new steamboat proved to be an exceptionally fine vessel for the purpose for which she was built. She had a large freight capacity and fine accommodations for passengers, and these advantages soon made themselves evident by the appearance of the “Jacob H. Tremper” as one of the first vessels placed in service in the spring of the year and the last steamboat to be laid up in the fall.
               
In the winter of 1899 the Romer & Tremper fleet of river steamboats was purchased by the Central Hudson Steamboat Company of Newburgh. This transaction included the steamboats “Jacob H. Tremper, “M. Martin,” “James W. Baldwin,” and “William F. Romer.”
               
Another distinction which places the “Jacob H. Tremper” apart from many of the other Hudson river steamboats was her exceptionally clear record. In fact, only one accident to the “Jacob H. Tremper” was demed worthy of note in her history. This accident occurred on Monday morning, July 21, 1913. On this morning, the “Jacob H. Tremper” left Newburgh at her usual time for Albany. On her way up the river she struck an uncharted rock off Esopus Island. The captain immediately ordered her course set for the mud flats off Staatsburgh on the east side of the river, and at this place she sunk rapidly.
               
Following this experience, the “Jacob H. Tremper” was raised and repaired and again placed in service, and in 1916 she was plying her regular route under the command of Captain John Dearstyne.
               
​The “Jacob H. Tremper” was also one of the last of the sidewheel steamboats of her class to continue in service on the waters of the Hudson river as a freight and passenger vessel. In the fall of 1928 the “Jacob H. Tremper” was deemed unfit for further service and was laid up at Newburgh, and in July of the following year she was sold to a junk dealer and broken up at Newburgh.

A different mural this time! This mural featuring an image of the steamboat "Mary Powell"  is one of Hudson River Maritime Museum's early artifacts. It measures 12 feet by 5 feet 4 inches and was donated in 1984, shortly after the museum's move to the present location at 50 Rondout Landing. The museum's donor file tells us that this section of the mural was painted in the 1920s and hung in a branch of the Bowery Savings Bank opposite Penn Station in New York City. 

One night back in the late 1930’s, I was pilot on the tugboat “Cornell No. 41” of the Cornell Steamboat Company. We were the helper tug on a tow in charge of the tug “Lion” headed for Albany. As was the custom in those days, the helper tug would take off and add barges for local delivery as the tow slowly moved up or down the river.
           
When we were off Athens about 2 a.m., we went along the tow to take off two cement lighters to land them at Hudson. The cement lighters were alongside a big coastwise barge in the tow destined for Albany. My deckhand, the late William “Darby” Corbett of Port Ewen, had to climb up on the coastwise barge to cast off the lines of the cement lighters.
           
As “Darby” was about to let the lines go, I saw this big dog come sneaking up the deck in the shadow of one of her hatches. He looked as if he was about to pounce, I yelled over, “Watch out ‘Darb’, here comes a dog after you!” With that, “Darby” turned quickly, caught the dog with his foot and raised him over the barge’s low rail almost quicker than the eye could see. Overboard the dog went, between the barges, without a sound. I thought sure the dog was a goner. We saw nothing of him as we pulled away from the tow with the cement lighters.
           
The next morning as we lay on the other side of the tow, the captain of the coastwise barge came over and asked if we had seen anything of his dog. We didn’t have the heart to tell him what happened.
           
Later that morning, when we were up off New Baltimore, there, to my incredible surprise, was the dog running along the shore, following the tow. When we landed the coastwise barge in the old D&H slip just below Albany, he was waiting for us.
           
He sure was a tuckered out dog.
           
Fortunately, we were bucking an ebb tide during the last part of the tow, which slowed our rate of progress overground.
           
The dog must have swum to shore at Athens and followed the lights of the tow until daylight.
           
How he ever lived after going down between the barges, no one but the dog ever knew.

                                              ICE YACHTING AT POUGHKEEPSIE.
           
Sir,—I thought I would send you a little account of the sport an old subscriber of yours is enjoying at present.  My profession — that of a civil engineer — carries me into all parts of the country, and sometimes I am fortunate enough to run across good sport of one kind or another, fishing and duck shooting being my general pastime; but at present I am located at the head-quarters of a sport less common, viz., ice boating, which beats everything I ever engaged in in this country.  You cannot credit the amount of speed these boats gather until you have ridden in one with a good stiff breeze blowing off shore.  The frames of the boats are mere skeletons.  The chief timbers are placed in the form of a T; the centre timber, including bowsprit, is generally about 50ft. in length, and the cross piece or runner plank about 20ft.  The commonest rig is jib and mainsail; the cat rig is sometimes used, and this season the lateen rig is coming into favour.  A boat this size can be built for £100.  The sailing is very simple; she wears without gybing, and tacks without trimming sails, which are always trimmed flat aft, unless the wind is very strong on her beam, then the sheet is allowed to go off a foot or so.  A mile a minute is common speed, and is often beaten.   Here are some records: The Snowflake made nine miles from here to New Hamburgh in seven minutes; the Haze made the same time, at one part of the run doing two miles in one minute.  In 1879 the Comet, Phantom, Zephyr, and Magic together sailed ten miles in ten minutes; most of the time the wind blew so hard that their windward runners were elevated at an angle of 46°.  There is very little friction on the runners, but the boats never make any leeway except with a very high wind and smooth ice.

If any of your subscribers should happen to be in this country this time next season, they could not enjoy themselves better than by coming up here, where they will find a good hotel, and will be very well received by the members of the club.  This is the height of the season, the afternoon sun melting the snow, and the night frost making a hard smooth surface for morning. To-day, if there is any wind, the champion pennant is to be sailed for. — Edwr. T. N. MACDOUGALL. Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Feb. 14. — Field. The Cumberland Mercury (Parramatta, NSW, June 4, 1887. 1887-06-04 -- The Cumberland Mercury (Parramatta, NSW)