History Blog
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Today's Featured Artifact is a once-shiny metal jewelry box - a memento of a trip on the Hudson River Day Line steamboat "Peter Stuyvesant." The steamboats had shops onboard where passengers could purchase souvenirs of their voyage on the Hudson River. The last steamer built for the Day Line was the Peter Stuyvesant in 1927. She was the only propeller steamer built for the line. The Stuyvesant was built for charters and for service mostly on the lower river. Moonlight dance cruises were a popular part of her service. She was a well-known and popular vessel in her day and ran through 1962. After the Stuyvesant retired from the Hudson she was bought by a restauranteur in Boston to become a cocktail lounge moored at Anthony’s Pier 4 Restaurant. Unfortunately, a bad winter storm sank her in early 1978, and she was left underwater for many years. Her wreck was only recently removed from her resting place in Boston harbor. 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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Today's Media Monday post features Frank LoBuono/Sojourner Productions circa 1990 Shad Fishing the Hudson feature for "Metro Magazine". Hudson River Maritime Museum thanks Frank LoBuono/Sojourner Productions for allowing us to share this video. "Since the beginning of time, in early Spring, the Shad have made their annual trek from the ocean to the fresh waters of the upper Hudson River to spawn. And, for centuries before Europeans set foot on this continent, the Native Americans were on the banks of the Hudson to harvest them. Eventually, Europeans replaced the Native Americans throughout the region. However, they continued the tradition of harvesting the Shad every Spring. In fact, at one point, there were hundreds of small shad boats fishing the river, from Fort Lee, NJ to Poughkeepsie, NY. They took them by the thousands to be sold mostly at fine Manhattan restaurants. Many of these boats were operated by families who passed the tradition down through generations. People forget that in the 1970’s the Hudson nearly died from the ravages of pollution. It became unsafe to eat fish taken from the river. This decimated the industry and most of the boats disappeared. Eventually, the EPA cleaned up the river to the point that it was safe once again to harvest SOME fish, including the shad. One of the families that had made a tradition of fishing for shad were the Gabrielson’s of Nyack. The father and son team returned to the Hudson year after year to claim their prize. It was backbreaking work, but they wouldn’t miss it for anything. TKR Cables “Eye On Rockland” decided to feature the shad fishing Gabrielson family and their time on the Hudson as Spring returned to the river. This is their story." Click on the button to listen to more Hudson River Commercial Fishermen Oral Histories. 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!
In May of 2022, the Hudson River Maritime Museum will be running a Grain Race in cooperation with the Schooner Apollonia, The Northeast Grainshed Alliance, and the Center for Post Carbon Logistics. Anyone interested in the race can find out more here. Once a shipload of grains arrives in a harbor, what do you do with it? In the sail freight systems of the past, and the likely sail freight systems of the future, this is an important question which needs to be answered as part of the integration of sail freight into commercial networks. Traditionally, and throughout most of the world, grain was and is still stored in Granaries, warehouses specifically designed to have favorable conditions for keeping grain and keeping out rats and other pests. The designs are as varied as the cultures who build them, but all have the same basic objectives. While some are built at the scale of a farm or small village, others were absolutely massive, such as those used in the Cura Annonae systems of ancient Rome. At export and import hubs these massive granaries could be found, and were an important stopping and storage point for grain before it made its way to table. Throughout history these types of systems have been organized either by the state or commercial interests under the same basic technical arrangements of aggregation, movement, and distribution. Another option is immediate distribution without storage. In this case, the sale of the cargo happens immediately, and it is taken away to the points of use such as mills, breweries, malt houses, bakeries, and homes. This Just-In-Time delivery system is not well suited to Sail Freight, as schedules when running your economy on the weather are not precise. While not a good option at an economy or city scale, this works fine for a single cargo. These are the two basic options for doing something with your cargo of grains through history, and they haven't changed a lot in the last few hundred years. However, there are a few variations on them. In some situations, cargos of grain would sit on ships until prices rose, or until there was space in granaries to take the cargo. This especially happens with foods when they are in season, as illustrated by Hedden in his 1929 book "How Great Cities Are Fed." While Hedden referred to warehouses and railroad cars as the means of storage, with railcars being the flexible storage space, ships can and do serve the same purpose as floating granaries. When granaries are full, ships can add to the capacity, or sell directly, leaving granary stocks untouched. In addition, ships full of grain can function as storage en route, and as mobile storage. For example, if the granaries at the point of arrival are full, a ship can be diverted to another port without incurring additional labor of loading and cross loading. With modern communications systems, ships can be diverted while still at sea, preventing congestion of both ports and granaries. At the systems scale, storage is highly important, whether onboard a ship, in a rail car, or in a granary. It is normally better to have this storage near the point of use than near the point of production. As we saw recently in the COVID-10 Pandemic, food systems can be easily disrupted, and having food stored in reserve near the point of use is an easy way to mitigate these disruptions. It was recommended in 2015 that between 16-43 days of food be stored near US Cities for just this type of pandemic risk; clearly this warning was ignored, as we saw disruptions across the board in early 2020. In an Energy-Scarce future, warehouses can function as a type of energy storage by letting us use energy when it is plentiful to get crops to the city, and not transport foods when energy is scarcer. What we will likely be doing with most shiploads of grains in a sail freight future is unloading them into storage, and selling them directly when the granaries are full. You can find more information on the Grain Race here. AuthorSteven Woods is the Solaris and Education coordinator at HRMM. He earned his Master's degree in Resilient and Sustainable Communities at Prescott College, and wrote his thesis on the revival of Sail Freight for supplying the New York Metro Area's food needs. Steven has worked in Museums for over 20 years. 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!
Hopefully I don't have to explain what the image above is, but I'm sure you're wondering what it has to do with sail freight. Last I checked, a pair of jeans isn't a ship, and it also isn't a set of sails. What it is, though, is freight, the very important second element of sail freight. Jeans are very common, since the 1870s and not made locally today. Jeans weigh about a pound per pair, on average, and they have for a hundred and fifty years or so. This is a very convenient weight to use for a very simple exercise in looking at supply chains today, and 150 years ago with the same item. We can look at carbon impact, miles of travel, and just the complexity of each supply chain, when we think about jeans then and jeans now. Just to keep the comparison the same, we'll say the jeans are purchased in Albany, NY 150 years apart: One in 1872 and one in 2022. We'll trace them from cotton field to customer in both periods, and compare miles, carbon emissions, and complexity along the way. In 1872, the picture is pretty clear. The cotton is grown in Georgia, reaching a depot in Atlanta in the form of a massive bale. The coal-fueled train will carry it to the coast, spewing black soot and carbon the whole way. Our cotton is going to take that train to Savannah, where it's loaded with a couple hundred other bales onto a coastal schooner, which sails to New York harbor. The cotton is offloaded to a mill in New York City, which spins the thread, weaves the cloth, cuts it, and then has it sewn into the final product. Let’s assume the finished jeans go back to the dock and are thrown aboard a schooner bound for Albany. Two weeks later, they're purchased off the shelf by a local ironworker at a store downtown. Pretty simple, right? Now let's compare it to today. We'll say the cotton comes from Egypt, because it has a direct route to Bangladesh, one of the world’s largest clothing manufacturing nations. Our pound of raw cotton will start at Port Said, Egypt, loaded onto a ship bound for Chalna, Bangladesh. There, it is spun, woven, cut, and sewn into a pair of jeans. From there, it takes another ship to Los Angeles, California, a journey of nearly 11,000 miles, and hops a truck to Albany via New York City. In reality, there might be a lot more stops and longer distances involved, too: The cotton might start in Brazil or India, be woven in Bangladesh, cut and sewn in Vietnam or Taiwan or Nicaragua, and then imported through the Port of Los Angeles and cross the United States on any manner of routes. For this article, though, let's keep it a bit simpler. So, how do these systems compare in terms of journey length and carbon emissions? Those are the two things we're most interested in comparing, and to do so we need to sort a few things out. First, the technologies involved: In 1872, we're looking at schooners and a steam train, while today we're looking at a modern truck and container ships. Transportation is usually rated in Fuel per Ton-Mile, and since jeans weigh one pound, or 1/2000th of a ton, for every 2000 miles you move them you rack up a ton-mile. So, let's take a look at some figures: So now that we have the figures in front of us, let's compare: In 1872, your jeans traveled 1,210 miles, and caused 0.125 pound of CO2 emissions. In 2022, your jeans traveled 19,138 miles, and caused .503 pounds of CO2 emissions. Today they travel almost 16 times as far and emit 3.76 times more carbon into the atmosphere than 150 years ago. Transport may have gotten hundreds of times more efficient than 1872, but since we transport things so much more, we actually cause more damage using our more efficient technology. This is known as the Rebound Effect or Jevons' Paradox: As something becomes more resource efficient, people just do more of it and use a resource more overall. Unless we do something to re-localize production and bring it closer to the point of use, we can't reduce miles traveled, and unless we increase transport efficiency, we can't reduce emissions. The only real answer to the climate crisis is to do both. By combining Sail Freight with relocalization, we can get the most effect out of the technology, but just using sail freight at all would be a major boost to reducing the carbon impact of your pants. Oh, if you're wondering: 450,000,000 pairs of jeans are sold in the US Annually, or just about one and a half pairs per person. That's 113,175 TONS of CO2 by this model. If you drive an average car with 22 miles per gallon, that's about the same emissions as you driving to the moon and back 586 times, or 18,675 average cars worth of average annual driving. The numbers may sound small when you look at one thing at a time, but at scale they're absurdly large. If we all went a year without buying any jeans, the climate would thank us just the same as if we took over 18 thousand cars off the road. That's a big impact in a short time. AuthorSteven Woods is the Solaris and Education coordinator at HRMM. He earned his Master's degree in Resilient and Sustainable Communities at Prescott College, and wrote his thesis on the revival of Sail Freight for supplying the New York Metro Area's food needs. Steven has worked in Museums for over 20 years. 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!
Towing on the Hudson River undoubtedly began in earnest with the earliest steamboats once the Erie Canal began at the time of its grand opening on 26 October 1825.1 After that date, canal boats loaded with eastbound grain cargoes needed a way to deliver their cargoes to New York City. Nearly all of the towboats of that age were primarily side-wheel steamers which normally carried passengers. Little is known of how the concept of the dedicated towboat developed. As the traffic on the Canal increased, it was undoubtedly found that there was more traffic than could be handled by the passenger boats. It is surmised that this occurred sometime during the mid-to-late 1830s. It should be noted that the marine propeller did not exist at this time, so that all of this earliest towing was carried out by side-wheel steamboats. The side-wheel steamboats- whether engaged in towing or otherwise employed- were propelled by engines of two designs. One was the walking-beam engine, in which the connecting rod from a vertically-mounted cylinder was attached to one end of a diamond shaped cast iron beam. From the other end of the beam, a rod led to a crank in the transverse shaft that led to the paddle wheels. In this way, the paddle wheels turned as a result of the up-and-down movement of the engine’s piston. The other type of engine used on the side-wheelers was the crosshead engine, similarly configured to the beam engine except that instead of the walking beam, a crosshead moved vertically in guides at each side. The connecting rod movement from the cylinder caused the crosshead to move vertically and a second connecting rod rotated the crank on the transverse shaft in the same manner as that of the beam engine. The crosshead engine, common in the early days of the steamboat, virtually disappeared from production during the late 1850s. Most of the side-wheel towboats in use on the river were former passenger steamers which had been converted to towboats, mainly by the removal of the passenger quarters. During the entire history of the side-wheel steamboat, there were only seven such vessels built for towing purposes between 1848 and 1873. These vessels were Oswego (1848; Cayuga (1849); America (1852); Austin (1853); Anna (1854); Syracuse (1857) and George A. Hoyt (1873). All were built for well-known towboat operators- A. Van Santvoord, Samuel Schuyler, Jerry Austin and Thomas Cornell. The last named vessel was somewhat of an anachronism, built at the beginning of the propeller era. The last side-wheel towboat in operation on the Hudson was Norwich, built in 1936 beginning in 1848, she was a member of the fleet of Thomas Cornell (and later the Cornell Steamboat Company). A star performer in the 1909 Hudson-Fulton Celebration, she last operated commercially in 1917 and was dismantled in 1923. She was also the last vessel afloat powered by a crosshead engine. Small propeller tugs appear to have made their first appearance on the river at about the time of the Civil War. One of these pioneering craft, Wm. S. Earl, was around the river until the later 1940s. She had been built at Philadelphia for Albany owners in 1859. The appearance of these vessels at Albany was to provide a fleet of tugs was for two principal reasons: (1)to handle the towing of barges locally, and (2)to make up the increasingly more frequent and larger New York tows composed primarily of grain traffic through the Erie Canal. During the post-war period and beyond, the burgeoning City of New York required increasingly large amounts of materials to construct the buildings that made up the city. In those days, the principal materials of construction were bricks and mortar, both of which were manufactured along the river. A multitude of brickyards on the upper and lower portions of the river provided nearly all of the brick required for this undertaking, being carried to New York on 100-foot long wooden barges, nearly all of which were built in shipyards along the river. Another commodity that was significant in the pre-refrigerator days was ice, and before the era of manufactured ice, the Hudson River provided a very large percentage of New York’s ice needs for many years. Ice was harvested from the river during the river and stored in riverside ice houses. The ice was shipped to New York by barge, to be used during the warmer part of the year. As a result, ice became an important factor- alongside of brick- for many years in the river’s towing industry. There was still another commodity which required transportation to New York from the middle region of the river. This was coal- the only fuel available during the 19th century. Anthracite coal was brought from the Pennsylvania fields by the Delaware & Hudson Canal to Rondout Creek, where the Island Dock (especially built by the canal company for the purpose) became the entrepôt between canal boats and river barges or sailing vessels. Similarly, rail terminals at Newburgh and Cornwall provided the means for transfer of Pennsylvania coal to barges and seagoing vessels. From the 1870s onwards, the size of the propeller tugboat- and its power- increased continuously, and this was not lost on the Hudson River operators. Most, if not all, of the operators utilized side-wheelers, but only a single owner was able to foresee the day in which this type of motive power would be obsolete- and eventually non-existent. This was Thomas Cornell, an owner who had come to the river in the late 1830s operating passenger steamers. His towing business grew continually, and by 1872, he had taken delivery of two propeller tugs of then large size- Thomas Dickson and Coe F. Young, each powered by a single cylinder condensing engine of about 240 horsepower. This, it turned out, was a major step towards the future. During the 1880s, Cornell expanded his propeller fleet with a modest fleet, primarily built in Philadelphia, the largest being J.C. Hartt, which boasted a 750-horsepower compound engine. Still more technical accomplishments followed, beginning with the iron-hulled Geo. W. Washburn, built at the T.S. Marvel yard in Newburgh in 1890 (with a near sister, Edwin H. Mead, following two years later). Perhaps the only wrong decision of the era was Cornell’s construction of a then-enormous vessel, a 1400-horsepower behemoth named Cornell, at a Staten Island shipyard in 1902. She proved to have a draft too deep for service on the upper river and was sold to a New Orleans operator who kept her in service until the end of World War II. A handful of other operators built and operated modern vessels during this period, but they were no match for the Cornell fleet and their business method. Many abandoned their river operations, some selling their vessels to the Cornell organization, at this time headed by Samuel D. Coykendall, a son-in-law of Thomas Cornell. Some of the long-time workhorses of the Cornell fleet came from these absorbed businesses, such as Ronan’s Osceola and Pocahantas, built in 1883 at Newburgh and still in the Cornell fleet in the early 1930s. Another operator who failed in his tilt with Cornell was C.W. Morse, whose Knickerbocker Ice Company gave up river towing under the fierce Cornell attack. It was during this period of increasing barge traffic that the latter day concept of the river tow came into being. The main towing- either side-wheel or propeller driven- was in charge of the tow. As the New York-Albany tow progressed up or down the river, it was necessary to drop off or pick up barges at intermediate points along the route, such as at the brickyards, stone quarries or other industries that required barges. It was inconvenient, and in most cases, impossible for the towing steamer to accomplish this task, and in this way the concept of the “helper” tug came into being. This small tugboat would shift individual barges from the main tow to a shoreside destination without affecting the movement of the main tow. Similarly, barges were moved to the tow in the same way. In between these shuttle trips, the helper tug would provide its power to assist in moving the main tow, and under certain circumstances, such as rounding the potentially dangerous course change needed when rounding West Point, she would help in altering the course of the flotilla of barges. The sheer size of these tows during the peak period of barge towing on the river was astonishing. Some of the larger tows were made up of as many as 125 barges. Assuming that the average length and beam of individual barges was 100 feet by 25 feet, the area of the entire flotilla might amount to as much as seven acres! The diesel tug made its initial appearance on the Hudson shortly after the end of World War One. The Cornell Steamboat Company purchased two 100-foot tugs that had been cancelled members of the Shipping Board’s 100-vessel harbor tug fleet. These two- Jumbo and Lion- acquired in 1924 and 1925 respectively, were propelled by 600-horsepower Nelseco engines. These two line-haul tugs were joined during this period by four “helper” tugs- Cornell, Cornell No. 20, Cornell No. 21, and Cornell No. 41- all of which were converted steam tugs. One operational breakthrough in the Cornell company’s latter days was the construction and operation of the diesel-powered Rockland County, a pusher tug in the style of the western river-based towing fleets. Rockland County was built in 1960 by Dravo Corporation at its Wilmington, Delaware yard, and was used primarily to move crushed stone-laden barges (another longtime important cargo on the river) of the New York Trap Rock Company from its quarries on the lower river. The latest towboats seen on the river are powerful pusher tugs which move the oil barges to the upper river. These tugs, owned by K-Sea, Moran, McAllister and others, are typically of around 4000 or more horsepower, with elevated pilot houses to provide adequate visibility when moving an empty barge. Although these tugs are of a type that could never be imagined in the days of the side-wheel towboat, they are also a remarkable development that might have been unforeseen twenty-five years ago. Today, towing on the Hudson is but a shadow of its former self. Cornell went in the 1980s, when it sold out to New York Trap Rock (although the Cornell shop buildings are still standing in Rondout Creek). Ice, coal and brick disappeared as cargoes many years ago. Still with us are petroleum, crushed stone and cement, and a small quantity of container cargo is brought from New York’s container terminals to the Albany area by barge. One must remember, however, that Hudson River towboats and barges were of great importance in the development of the City of New York and the lower Hudson River virtually from the beginning of the powered vessel. Endnotes: 1. Adams, Samuel Hopkins, “The Erie Canal”, published in New York in 1953 by Random House, Inc. Editor's Note: This article was originally written by William duBarry Thomas and published in the 2009-2010 Pilot Log. Thank you to Hudson River Maritime Museum volunteer Adam Kaplan for transcribing the article. 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!
In this virtual lecture from March 17, 2021 Hudson River Maritime Museum Director of Exhibits and Outreach Sarah Wassberg Johnson discusses the role of women as lighthouse keepers and caretakers of Hudson River lighthouses. From the 1830s to the present, women have played a special role in staffing and preserving Hudson River lighthouses. For more information about Hudson River Lighthouses, visit http://www.hudsonriverlighthouses.org Or purchase the book "Hudson River Lighthouses," published by the Hudson River Maritime Museum, available here: https://www.amazon.com/Hudson-River-L... The Hudson River Maritime Museum's Follow the River Lecture Series is sponsored by Rondout Savings Bank. For upcoming lectures, visit http://www.hrmm.org/lecture-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!
This 6 inch diameter commemorative tile was created years after the DeWitt Clinton was no longer plying the waters of the Hudson River. This artifact was donated to Hudson River Maritime Museum in 2000. The Dewitt Clinton was a Hudson River Day Line steamboat which was originally a nightboat called the Manhattan built in 1913 to run to Providence, R.I. with another steamer, the Narragansett, as a night boat. The new company did not start up, and the boats lay idle until they were called to serve in World War I in 1917 when the Manhattan became a naval transport called Nopatin, and crossed the Atlantic to serve on the English Channel. After the war, back in America she became a Day Line boat and was rechristened DeWitt Clinton. She began service on the Hudson in May of 1921. The DeWitt Clinton, after rechristening again, also served as transport vessel to Europe during World War II, and later as a refugee and immigrant ship in the Mediterranean. To learn more about the Hudson River Day Line visit the online exhibit by clicking the button below. 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 following text is a verbatim transcription of an article featuring stories by Captain William O. Benson (1911-1986). Beginning in 1971, Benson, a retired tugboat captain, reminisced about his 40 years on the Hudson River in a regular column for the Kingston (NY) Freeman’s Sunday Tempo magazine. Captain Benson's articles were compiled and transcribed by HRMM volunteer Carl Mayer. See more of Captain Benson’s articles here. This article was originally published November 10, 1974. “Steamboat racing was once a way of life ... when racing was banned due to accidents friendly ‘goes’ became popular.” Back in the 19th century, steamboat racing was a way of life. After a number of accidents traced directly to racing as the cause, steamboat racing was prohibited. This, however, didn’t prevent latter day steamboats from time to time having a friendly "go" if the conditions were right. One such incident took place in June 1922 between the "DeWitt Clinton” of the Hudson River Day Line and the “Benjamin B. Odell" of the Central Hudson Line. The story of the “race” was related by Lester “Happy” Diehl who was then the 1st Assistant Engineer of the "Odell.” At the time, I was coming across Rondout Creek on the "Skillypot" with my brother Algot who was home for a few days from his job as Chief Mate on the steamer “Onteora." We had gone to Rondout to get a copy of the old New York World, the newspaper my father always liked to read. "Happy" was also a passenger on the "Skillypot" and, on seeing my brother, said "Hey, Algot, you ought to see what we did to the "DeWitt Clinton" coming up on Sunday." As he told the story, I was all ears. It had been a beautiful summer’s Sunday. As boatmen used to say, both boats were crowded to the guards. The "Odell" was a soft coal burner in those days and the “Clinton" burned hard coal to make her steam. As the “DeWitt Clinton” was leaving her pier at Yonkers, the “Odell" was just a little ahead. A south wind was blowing making the flags, while underway, hang limp from the flag poles. The black smoke from the “Odell” went straight up in the air, as did the blue smoke from the "DeWitt." The "Clinton" was about one length of open water astern of the "Odell." Sometimes her bow was only fifty feet off the "Odell's" stern. But try as she would, she couldn’t get out of the "Odell's" back swell. Up the river they went, both dragging deep in the shallow waters of Tappan Zee and Haverstraw Bay. The only slow down for each steamer was, when passing a Cornell tow, and in those days there were plenty going up and down. At that time the "DeWitt Clinton" in her second year on the river was a very hard boat to keep steam on with hard coal. On the other hand, the "Odell" was always ready to blow off steam. Nevertheless, like a dog chasing a cat the two steamboats sped up the Hudson. Passengers on both steamers got into the spirit of the occasion, cheering their boat on when one or the other would gain slightly. At times, a slight shift in the wind would cause cinders from one to drop on the other. A fellow later told me he had stood on the dock at Haverstraw when they went by. How the Cornell tugs “Engels” and “H. D. Mould,” that were tied up there over Sunday, rocked and pulled on their lines from the drag of both these big steamers racing up through the bay. Some of the brick scows that were at the brick yards were only half loaded, otherwise he said they would have swamped. When arriving at Bear Mountain, the "DeWitt Clinton" had to temporarily give up as she had the landing to make. The "Benjamin B. Odell”, however, had a landing to make at Highland Falls. When the "Odell" was leaving Highland Falls, the “Clinton" was already underway and coming up fast. By the time the "Odell" was up to speed, she as a scant length in front of her adversary. Captain Greenwood of the "Odell" gave his engineer of the watch, "Happy" Diehl, the extra hook up signal to get around West Point and Magazine Point ahead of the Day Liner. Of course, when they got off the Military Academy both steamers had to slow down to get around West Point. By pure chance, the pilots of both steamboats blew their whistles at the same instant — the one prolonged blast required by the rules of the road when approaching a sharp bend in the river. Both boats had beautiful sounding steam whistles. How that pleasant sound must have pealed up through those old Highlands on that long ago day. As the two steamers came up to Little Stony Point north of Cold Spring, there was a Cornell tow on the way down in charge of the tugboat “Edwin H. Mead" with her helper tug the "R. G. Townsend." When they passed the tow, both steamboats had to go dead slow, it was such a big tow. The "Odell" passed to the west of the tow and the "Clinton" to the east. The "Odell" slowed a little more than the "Clinton," so by the time they were clear of the tow the two foes were neck and neck up through Cornwall Bay. Both steamboats were scheduled to make landings at Newburgh and off New Windsor both began to slow down. As they did, both steamers started to blow off steam since the engineers on both the "Clinton" and “Odell” had their steam pressures at the upper limits. What a racket that must have made over Newburgh Bay and the streets of Newburgh. When the “Benjamin B. Odell" landed at Newburgh, Mr. Herbert R. Odell, General Manager of the Central Hudson Line, was on the dock and came aboard. He asked Captain Greenwood not to do that again. When he gave his admonition, however, Mr. Odell did so with a smile on his face. Years later I was talking to Jim Malia of the Cornell tug "R. G. Townsend" and asked him if he had been on the "Townsend" at that time. He said he was and remembered the incident well, as the “Clinton” did not slow down enough when passing on the port side in the tow and had done some damage to a canal boat in the tow owned by his uncle. Some chocks had been pulled out and other minor damage. Actually the “race" between the "DeWitt Clinton" and the “Benjamin B. Odell” from Yonkers to Newburgh had been pretty much of a draw, a brush between two evenly matched steamboats. The following winter, allegedly because of her reputation as a hard steamer, the "DeWitt Clinton" was converted from coal firing to oil burning, the first Day Liner to be so converted. After that, the single screw “Odell" with her 2,500 h.p. engine was no longer a match for the "Clinton" with her twin screws and 4,000 h.p. AuthorCaptain William Odell Benson was a life-long resident of Sleightsburgh, N.Y., where he was born on March 17, 1911, the son of the late Albert and Ida Olson Benson. He served as captain of Callanan Company tugs including Peter Callanan, and Callanan No. 1 and was an early member of the Hudson River Maritime Museum. He retained, and shared, lifelong memories of incidents and anecdotes along the Hudson River. 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!
The Hudson River Maritime Museum was featured in a recent episode of the United States Lighthouse Society's Light Hearted Podcast! Director of Exhibits & Outreach Sarah Wassberg Johnson spoke with lighthouse historian and podcast host Jeremy D'Entremont about the Hudson River Maritime Museum, Hudson River Lighthouses and their history, including why the Hudson River has lighthouses, women lighthouse keepers like Catherine Murdock and Nancy Rose, the forthcoming film "Seven Sentinels: Lighthouses of the Hudson River," and more! Click on the button to visit the Light Hearted podcast website and listen there. Editor's Note: The following text is a verbatim transcription of an article written by George W. Murdock, for the Kingston (NY) Daily Freeman newspaper in the 1930s. Murdock, a veteran marine engineer, wrote a regular column. Articles transcribed by HRMM volunteer Adam Kaplan. The “Chauncey Vibbard” was a wooden hull steamer built by Lawrence and Foulkes of Brooklyn for dayline service running between New York and Albany. When constructed in 1864, her original length was 265 feet, but after two seasons on the river she was hauled out of the river, cut in two, and lengthened 16 feet which gave her a hull span of 281 feet. At this time her 55-inch cylinder was replaced with a 64 ½ inch cylinder. Destined to become one of the famous river boats, the “Chauncey Vibbard” began her passenger-carrying career on June 20, 1864, and her appearance was the cause of a great deal of comment concerning her graceful proportions and beauty of structure. While running at high speed she portrayed a dignity and grace which was almost unseen up to that period, and scarcely a wave broke from her stem to the paddlewheels. She was for years the pride of the late Commodore Van Santvoord who spared neither time nor money in his efforts to make the “Chauncey Vibbard” second to none of the steamboats plying the waters of the Hudson. In 1864 she made the run from New York to Albany in 6 hours and 21 minutes- fast time for a steamboat of that period. In 1880 the “Chauncey Vibbard” was rebuilt. Her two boilers located on the guards were removed and three new boilers were placed in the hold of the vessel with three smokestacks going up from the center of the vessel- an operation which altered the appearance of the vessel considerably. Thus she ran for seven years, then giving way to the steamer “New York.” Following her retirement from regular service, the “Chauncey Vibbard” was held in reserve as the “Daniel Drew” had been, but her territory was soon shifted and her last years were spent away from the Hudson river. In 1895 she was sold, going to the Delaware river for service between Philadelphia and Lincoln Park, being used both on regular runs and for excursions. During the peace jubilee in 1899 directly following the Spanish-American War, she joined the naval parade - and this was the beginning of the end for the once-proud vessel. Crowded with passengers celebrating the return of peace, the “Chauncey Vibbard” began leaking and was run on a sand bar to prevent disaster. She was later towed to Cramer’s Hill and there dismantled as late as 1902 where the wreck of her hull remained for many years. One noteworthy fact in the career of the “Chauncey Vibbard” was her clean slate- no disaster or accident until her last trip to the sand bar. During her quarter-century activity on the Hudson river she carried millions of travelers from all over the world who viewed with delight the wonderful scenery of the highlands of the Hudson from the deck of one of the finest steamboats ever to ply the waters of the Hudson river- the “Chauncey Vibbard.” AuthorGeorge W. Murdock, (b. 1853-d. 1940) was a veteran marine engineer who served on the steamboats "Utica", "Sunnyside", "City of Troy", and "Mary Powell". He also helped dismantle engines in scrapped steamboats in the winter months and later in his career worked as an engineer at the brickyards in Port Ewen. In 1883 he moved to Brooklyn, NY and operated several private yachts. He ended his career working in power houses in the outer boroughs of New York City. His mother Catherine Murdock was the keeper of the Rondout Lighthouse for 50 years. 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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