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 volunteers Carl and Joan Mayer. See more of Captain Benson’s articles here. This article was originally published November 4, 1973.

Now that the early morning fogs of autumn and the duck hunting season are both with us, I recall an incident in my youth when I went duck hunting and got lost in the fog.
 
One time in my late teens in October 1927, I went down to the flats at Sleightsburgh to hunt ducks. When I got down on the shore to get my duck boat it was about 3:30 a.m., still very dark and with a heavy autumn fog. I could hear ducks quacking out around the old Rondout lighthouse, which still stood along the south dike of Rondout Creek quite a ways in from the present Creek entrance.
 
I started out over the flats planning to follow the shore and then follow the dryed up purple loose leaf weeds to the area near the old lighthouse station. However, on my way out somehow or other I got a little too smart for my own good and lost sight of the shore line. It seemed that no matter in which direction I thought I rowed, I couldn’t find the shore. Even the ducks stopped quacking.
 
I kept on rowing, figuring I had to end up some place. In the distance, I could hear some steamboat blowing its whistle periodically with one long blast. I would stop and listen, thinking I would hear something on shoe. There wasn’t a sound through the murk except that steamboat whistle which kept getting closer and closer. Obviously, I had rowed out into the middle of the river and was either in or near the channel.
 
Shortly, I began to hear the thump, thump, thump – thump, thump, thump of the steamboat’s paddle wheels. I realized it was one of the Albany night boats. I wasn’t sure as to just what I should do for I certainly didn’t relish the thought of getting run down by the Albany night liner in the middle of the fog enshrouded Hudson. So I fired my shotgun into the air so I would have an empty shell to blow like a whistle. When I fired my gun, I could hear the thumping of the paddle wheels slow right down.
 
I suppose the pilots of the steamboat knew they were close to something, but didn’t know what. I kept blowing on my empty shell, and by the sound of the steamer’s whistle. I knew they were going by me. In a few moments I could feel the steamer’s waves going by me, so I knew the danger of getting run down was past. The fog was so thick I didn’t even see the vessel’s lights.
 
I still didn’t know which way to go, so I just sat still and drifted with the tide. After a while I could hear another steamboat blowing her fog signal. By the sound of her whistle, I recognized her as the freight steamer Storm King of the Catskill Evening Line. Her whistle, however, was quite a ways off so I knew there was no danger. About five minutes later, her little swells passed by me and I could hear both boats getting further away as they went on up river.
 
After daylight broke I was still drifting with the ebb tide. Finally I drifted into shore alongside the remains of the old towboat Norwich, which was being broken up at lower Port Ewen. That incident taught me a lesson – never try to go out in a fog without a compass. It can be a very lonely and unnerving experience.
 
Some years later in October of the middle 1930’s, I was pilot on the tugboat Lion of the Cornell Steamboat Company and coming down the upper Hudson with a good sized tow. It set in foggy at New Baltimore and the fog continued heavy all the way to Athens.
 
When opposite Coxsackie at about 8 a.m. the fog was particularly dense. All of a sudden I could hear people talking and a bell ringing out in the middle of the river. So I took the megaphone and asked what it was. The reply came back it was the Queen Mary.
 
Now, lest you think the former giant Cunarder of that name had sailed right by New York and somehow got to the upper Hudson, there was also a small diesel ferryboat – not much bigger than the old Skillypot – that carried the rather improbable name of Queen Mary. At that time, she was running back and forth between Coxsackie and Newton Hook.
 
After the ferryboat identified herself, the voice in the fog said they were anchored on the middle ground off Coxsackie. The voice further said. “Be careful. You are going up inside Coxsackie Island.”
 
Now, if I were to be going up inside Coxsackie Island I would have to be going in the opposite direction I was headed. I certainly knew my compass course was south and my whistle echoes were all in good order. It wasn’t me who was mixed up, it was the ferryboat. Obviously, anchored in the thick fog they had swung around with the tide and didn’t realize in what direction they were heading. I continued on and eventually ran out of the fog off Athens.
 
I often wondered who it could have been on that ferryboat who was so balled up in his directions he was 180 degrees off in the direction he thought he was headed. But, that’s the way one can easily find himself in heavy foggy weather. Intuition is no substitute for a good compass.

​The wars of the 20th century called forth boat and ship-building efforts in the Hudson Valley to serve the needs of the country in time of peril. At Kingston, Newburgh, and other river towns, vessels of various types and sizes were built. During World War I the United States Shipping Board was organized to procure vessels to meet the needs of the war effort in this country and, after a certain point, our Allies fighting in Europe and elsewhere. Wooden minesweepers and sub-chasers were built at Hiltebrant’s on the Rondout. At Island Dock the Kingston Shipbuilding Company was set up to build four wooden freighters to carry cargo to our Allies abroad. At Newburgh the Newburgh Shipyards were set up to build a more ambitious group of ten steel freighters.
 
The World War I shipyards began their cargo ship-building efforts in mid-1917 as the United States entered the war. At Newburgh noted engineer Thomas C. Desmond acquired property just south of the city after lining up financial backing from Irving T. Bush, president of Bush Terminal in Brooklyn, and other shipping businessmen. Construction of the shipyard began in the summer of 1917 with the expansion of the property by filling in the river front. Actual building of the buildings did not begin until September 1917. Four ship building berths were constructed to build 9000 ton steel cargo ships. The first keel was not laid until March 1918 due to a severe winter. The first ship, the Newburgh, was launched on Labor Day of 1918 with thousands of people in attendance and former President Theodore Roosevelt on hand to deliver a typical rousing speech. The ship was finished at the Newburgh yard and was delivered to the U.S. Shipping Board at the end of December 1918 (after the war was officially over). Shipbuilding continued with ten ships completed in total. The needs of war-torn Europe for food and other supplies, did not end with the official end of the war, so the ships being built at Newburgh and other similar yards were still needed.

The World War I cargo ships built at Newburgh were named for local towns: Newburgh, New Windsor, Poughkeepsie, Walden, Cold Spring, Firthcliffe, Irvington, Peekskill, and the last two, Half Moon and Storm King with locally inspired but not town names.
 
At its height the Newburgh shipyards employed 4000 workers, probably a record number for the area at any time. The majority of these workers were not originally ship builders and were trained by the Newburgh Shipyards. Given that the shipyard was built from the ground up (including some of the ground,) and that the majority of workers had to be trained, the output of ten 9000 ton, 415 foot length cargo ships in two and a half years is remarkable. Among the U.S. Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation shipyards established for World War I the Newburgh Shipyards was one of the more successful. Newburgh Shipyard was a source of great local pride as well as prosperity during its years of operation from September 1917 to 1921.
            
By contrast, the Kingston Shipbuilding Company established during World War I to build wooden cargo ships was less successful, though also a source of pride and jobs for the local community. Four building berths were built for wooden ships at Island Dock on the Rondout Creek. Four ships were begun, but only two were launched, and only one was actually used. The building of wooden cargo ships seems strange at that period, since iron and steel ships had been built since the 1880s. A possible shortage of steel may have been behind the idea of building in wood. The two wooden ships built at Kingston were called Esopus and Catskill, and great rejoicing attended their launchings as they were the largest vessels built in the Rondout.

This article was originally published in the 2006 issue of the Pilot Log. Thank you to Hudson River Maritime Museum volunteer Adam Kaplan for transcribing the article.

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Kingston-Rhinecliff ferries “Transport” and “Kingston” in their slips along the Rondout in the 1930s. The steam ferry “Transport” had been running on the route since 1881 while the “Kingston” a more modern diesel ferry began operating locally in 1930. It was unusual for the ferry company to own and operate more than one boat on the route. The historic ferry slip location is along the Rondout Creek Promenade at the eastern edge of the Hudson River Maritime Museum campus.

In 1942, so few automobiles were using the ferry, due to World War II gas rationing, the privately owned ferry company discontinued operation. In 1946 the New York State Bridge Authority (NYSBA) was charged by the New York State Legislature with the operation of the ferry. NYSBA purchased the necessary equipment and the ferry crossings started up again in May 1946. The George Clinton ran for the nine years of planning and construction of the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge. The ferry was discontinued with the 1957 opening of the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge.

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 volunteers Carl and Joan Mayer. See more of Captain Benson’s articles here. This article was originally published December 16, 1973.

​In today’s jet age of airplane travel, and human nature being what it is, some people seem to take a perverse delight in recounting incidents where their flight — because of adverse weather conditions — was diverted to an airport other than that of their original destination, or now of delays encountered because of the energy crisis.  In the simpler age of steamboat travel, there were also on occasion unforeseen delays.
​ 
In that long ago era before the advent of the automobile and the airplane, virtually every trip of more than a few miles was made either by railroad or, if the destination was adjacent to navigable water, by steamboat.  Travel by steamboat was generally leisurely and delightful.  However, you always didn’t get to where you were going when you expected to. 

One such incident was related to me years ago by Captain Ed Van Woert of the Cornell tugboat “G. C. Adams.” In December 1913, Captain Van Woert had to go to New York to testify in a lawsuit being held there pertaining to damage to a schooner that occurred while being landed at Hudson some months before.  He thought he would take his wife along for the trip.

On this particular day, Captain Ed left the ‘‘Adams” at Athens and went home to get ready.  That evening, he and his wife boarded the steamer “Onteora” of the Catskill Evening Line at Athens, expecting to be in New York the following morning. 

After going aboard the “Onteora” and getting their stateroom, they had a leisurely supper in the steamer’s dining room. 

After eating, Captain Ed said to his wife, “I guess I'll go up in the pilot house awhile and talk to my friend the pilot.”’ At this point, the “Onty” was approaching the landing at Cheviot and a snow storm had set in. 

On leaving Cheviot, the "Onteora" headed for County Island to get over in the main channel.  The snow storm had increased in intensity and visibility had decreased almost to zero.  The pilot held her on the west course a little bit too long and she went hard aground just north of County Island, with her bow in about five feet of water and her stern in deep water.  They backed and backed, but she wouldn’t come off.

The tide was falling and at daybreak the next morning the "Onteora" was still hard aground.  Captain Van Woert and his wife got off in a small boat and after being rowed to shore, walked through two feet of snow to the nearest railroad station to catch a train for New York.  The “Onteora” got herself off on the next high tide and was back on her run — although nearly 12 hours late — none the worse for her mishap.

Another incident that took place about the same period, although this time during the summer, was related to me by my old friend George W. Murdock, an old time Hudson River steamboat engineer who died at his home in Ponckhockie in 1940, well into his eighties. 

On a Saturday summer’s afternoon, Mr. Murdock boarded the “William F. Romer” at her New York pier for the run to Kingston.  At that time, the “Romer" of the New York to Rondout night line regularly would leave New York on Saturday in the early afternoon and arrive at Rondout in the early evening.  Mr. Murdock’s brother-in-law, Joel Rightmyer of Ponckhockie, was the “Romer's" pilot.  On this particular trip, the “Romer” was bucking a strong ebb tide from the time she left her New York pier.

The wind, like it so often does during the summer, was blowing straight up river out of the south.  Worse yet, what breeze there was was blowing at about the same velocity as the “Romer’s" speed through the water, so that while underway the “Romer’s” flags hung limp on their poles.  Underway, it was hot, humid, virtually airless and, because of the strong ebb tide, the steamer was running later and later with each passing hour. 

Past the Palisades and up through Tappan Zee and Haverstraw Bay, the “Romer” plodded her way up river.  It wasn’t much of a day for steamboating.  Finally, the "Romer" reached the Hudson Highlands and as she approached the landing at West Point, Mr. Murdock noticed a West Shore passenger train chuffing away from Highland Falls.  He decided to leave the steamer and catch the train for the rest of his trip to Rondout,

As he was leaving the steamboat, Mr. Murdock said to his brother-in-law, “Joel, I don’t think you'll get to Kingston by nightfall." Replied Pilot Rightmyer, “Well, George, if we don’t get there today, we’ll get there tomorrow.”

Mr. Murdock boarded the train at West Point, thinking he’d get home well ahead of the steamer.  However, as luck would have it, there was a freight train stuck on the West Park hill where the tracks make their incline from the river and head inland.  His train, on the same track as the freight, stood on the tracks for what seemed like an eternity in the hot summer air. 

Finally another locomotive was sent down from Kingston and got the freight train ahead moving.  Eventually, Mr. Murdock got to Kingston and took the trolley car for Rondout.  As he was walking up Abruyn Street to his home in Ponckhockie, he glanced over his shoulder — just in time to see the top deck of the “William F. Romer” gliding past on her way in Rondout Creek to her berth on Ferry Street!
​
During the 1950’s the Cunard Line had a great slogan — “Getting there is half the fun.”  Generally it was.  Sometimes, though, as it is in all forms of travel, the fraction was wrong.

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The Ashokan Reservoir was built between 1907 and 1915 to supply water to New York City. The flooding of twelve communities and thousands of acres of farmland sparked long-lasting controversy. The last of the land claims were settled in 1940. Two thousand residents were moved, some of the communities were relocated, others were flooded.  The dam was constructed with Rosendale cement. Today trails along the Reservoir provide pleasant walking and biking opportunities.

In 1905 the New York State Legislature enacted legislation to create the New York City Board of Water Supply.  The Board had the authority to acquire land and build dams and reservoirs in the Catskill Mountain watershed. At the time it was built, the Ashokan was one of the largest reservoirs in the world. Water from the Esopus Creek and tributaries feed the Ashokan.

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 volunteers Carl and Joan Mayer. See more of Captain Benson’s articles here. This article originally published July 4, 1976.

When I was pilot and captain of the tugboat “Callanan No. 1” from 1946 until 1954, we had a steward by the name of Ed Carpenter from Port Ewen.  In addition to being the best cook on the river, he was also an excellent story teller.  On more than one occasion, he would recall the summer months of 1910 when Halley’s Comet was streaking through the heavens.  He would also recall the days of another generation when the natural ice business was a big employer of men along the Hudson.  

At the time when Halley’s Comet was at its most spectacular, Ed Carpenter was cook on a repair barge of the Knickerbocker Ice Company by the name of “Beverwick.” During the summer of 1910, the “Beverwick” was tied up at the old ice house dock on Rattlesnake Island, just north of Coxsackie.  

Ed would relate how, night after night, he and other members of the ice house gang would sit on deck and watch with awe as Halley’s Comet would go through the skies.  Apparently, the comet had a fiery tail that never failed to amaze the comet watchers.  

A more earthly sight that also enthralled the comet fans was the passage of the big Albany night boats — the “Adirondack” and the “C.W. Morse,” the largest steamboats on the river.  Along the upper reaches of the Hudson, where the river is so narrow, they, too, were a particularly impressive sight.

In the narrow channel the huge steamers would dwarf everything else.  As they glided past with their hundreds of electric lights, their names spelled out in large electric signs on their hurricane decks, and their search lights probing the darkness of the night, they would appear to be one of mankind's most wondrous achievements.  

After the Albany night boat would pass from sight, Ed would turn in for a night’s rest, for it was up at 3:30 a.m. to start the hearty breakfast for the men working at the ice house, loading the ice barges for the New York market.  
​
In those days, before the invention of the home electric refrigerator, almost everyone used ice.  And most of the ice for the New York City area would come from the Hudson River north of Poughkeepsie.  A traveller on the upper Hudson would never be out of sight of an ice house — those huge wooden structures with double walls filled with sawdust that housed the winter’s harvest.  

The ice harvest would follow a fixed and then familiar pattern.  In the fall of the year, after pulling ice wagons through the streets of New York all summer, the ice company’s horses would be herded to the New York piers where they would board a steamboat to the upper Hudson ice houses.  

There they would be stationed until needed on the ice.  

Once the river froze over, generally in January, the ice harvest would begin.  Large numbers of men, usually boatmen layed off for the winter months, would be hired.  The horses would then be put to work and used to pull plows to scrape off the snow covering the ice, pull the markers to lay out the ice field, and to help pull the cut ice through the ice channels to the ice house elevators.  During a good winter, the same ice field might be harvested several times in order to fill the ice house.  

In the spring of the year, the horses would go back to New York by steamboat to resume their summer job of pulling the ice wagons through the city streets.  The ice itself would all be transported to New York by ice barges and a gang of men would be employed at the ice houses to load the barges.  

An ice barge was somewhat like a floating box.  The ice would be loaded on the inside of the box — the barge's hold — so that as much of the barge as possible, when loaded, would be set low in the water to use the lower river temperatures to keep the ice melting to a minimum.  

A river watcher could always spot an ice barge for it would invariably have a wind mill atop the barge.  The wind mill served the practical purpose of operating the barge’s pumps to pump overboard the water from the melting ice as the barge was towed down river.  There would be tows on the river during the summer that would consist solely of dozens of nested ice barges.  
​
The electric refrigerator and artificial ice making brought the natural ice industry to an abrupt end.  The ice barges soon disappeared from the scene.  The huge ice houses gradually passed from the river's banks.  Some were torn down, others burned to the ground in rather impressive conflagrations, and a very few survived until the 1940’s for the growing of mushrooms.  Like Halley’s Comet, the natural ice industry was a great show while it lasted.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  In 2018, the Hudson River Maritime Museum opened the Hudson River and its Canals exhibit to help celebrate the 200th anniversary of the construction of the Erie and Champlain canals between 1817 and 1825.  These canal led to far reaching economic and social changes for the areas adjacent to these canals but also for New York City and the Hudson River upon which this system ultimately depended.  The Barge Canal system, the backdrop for Paul Schneider’s article, was, completed little more than 100 years ago.  Built upon the work of the earlier canals, it was conceived instead on the use of motive power versus animal power.  And yet much of the construction still depended upon human labor. Paul Schneider’s article provides important insight into the labor practices and culture surrounding this enormous public works undertaking.

On a dreary November day three women and a photographer trudged through rain to examine conditions in a construction labor camp on the state’s barge canal. In one of the unkempt shacks housing workers, they “came upon an Italian who seemed to feel the camp[’s] desolation. He sighed as he said to us: ‘This, America?’” After proudly sharing photographs, pulled from his bunk, of Rome and of his children, “he pointed again to the waste of mud and water [outside]. ‘This, America?’ he said, ‘All for nine dollars a week.’”1
              
​This encounter occurred in 1909. The building of the barge canal system had been underway for four years. An additional nine years would pass before the massive undertaking spanning the state was completed. Now in its 101st year of operation, the New York State Barge Canal System is most easily recognizable by the enormous concrete structures that define it: hulking locks punctuated by gigantic steel gates, immense dams spanning and transforming the Mohawk River, and distinctive powerhouses once generating the electricity to operate each lock and the valves that filled and emptied it. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 2017 as “an embodiment of the Progressive Era emphasis on public works,” the barge canal was further recognized as “a nationally significant work of early twentieth century engineering and construction.”2 In 2015, the American Society of Civil Engineers named the five locks at Waterford, New York as a Historical Civil Engineering Landmark representing “the greatest series of high lift locks in the world … elevating boats through a height of 169 feet."3

Largely overlooked in the superlatives emphasizing engineering and construction prowess are the thousands of un-skilled laborers – many of them immigrants – whose back-breaking and often dangerous work made its construction possible. There are no monuments to them. No preserved shacks or reconstructed labor camps to reveal to modern visitors the conditions in which these laborers lived and worked.
              
The four unannounced callers to that unspecified construction camp were making an automobile tour – an arduous undertaking itself in that early era of auto travel – visiting similar camps associated with major governmental construction projects. In addition to the state barge canal system, New York City’s Board of Water Supply was, by damming the Esopus Creek in Ulster County, constructing the immense Ashokan Reservoir, linking it by a 120-mile long aqueduct to deliver an increased supply of water to the city.4 The small group of intrepid travelers included two members of the New York State’s Commission of Immigration, Lillian D. Wald and Frances A. Kellor. They were accompanied by Mary Dreier and photographer Lewis W. Hine.
              
A founder of the Henry Street Settlement House (which celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2018) in New York City, Lillian Wald was forty-two years old. While focusing her dynamic energies in the Lower East Side, she had expanded her advocation for improving the health, education, working and living conditions of the poor and immigrant communities to a state and national level. She invited the then serving Republican governor, Charles Evans Hughes, to Henry Street in 1908 and persuasively made her case regarding the exploitation of immigrants. In response, Governor Hughes appointed both she and Frances A. Kellor to the nine-member commission mandated by the state legislature to "make full inquiry, examination and investigation into the condition, welfare and industrial opportunities of aliens in the State of New York."5
              
Frances A. Kellor, described as a “hard-driving personality,” was thirty-six, had earned a law degree from Cornell University Law School in 1897, studied the newly emerging fields of sociology and social work at the University of Chicago, where she lived in Jane Addams Hull-House, and then in 1903 moved to New York City and the Henry Street Settlement House, where she concentrated her attention on the “difficulties of immigrants and other minorities in gaining equal treatment and opportunity in U.S. society.”6 Mary Dreier, age thirty-four, was at the time, the president of the New York Women’s Trade Union League. Characterized as “an ally of workers,” she, like Kellor, “believed that reform was best achieved by investigation, analysis, and legislation."7
              
The fourth member of the group, the photographer Lewis Wickes Hine, was the youngest at thirty-two. Writing of Hine’s work, American photographer, Walter Rosenblum suggests that, “the social turmoil of the Progressive period of American history was the fabric of his vision.” The work camp conditions he saw through his 5 x 7 view camera became part of that vision.8

What the lone Italian laborer sitting in the dismal surroundings of his work camp must have thought when these four suddenly trooped in unannounced is not recorded. Certainly, he must have been surprised by the fact that three of them were women. Wald, in her 1915 book, The House on Henry Street, records the meeting with a bit more detail:
​
In a shack that held three tiers of bunks, occupied alternately by the day and night shifts, with a cook-stove in a little clearing in the middle, we found a homesick man, who chanced not to be on the works, reading a book. When we engaged in conversation with him he pointed contemptuously to the bunks and their dirty coverings, and said, "This America! I show you Rome," and produced from under his bed a photograph of the Coliseum.9

The photograph shown above is of that same “homesick” laborer quoted above. This photograph was one of twenty taken by Hine that graphically illustrated Wald and Kellor’s report on the findings of their investigation published in the January 1910 issue of The Survey.
              
Wald’s criticisms of what she, Kellor, Dreier, and Hine discovered are blunt:
[The state] takes great care to prevent the freezing of cement, but permits any kind of houses to be used for its laborers. It is wholly indifferent as to how they are ventilated, lighted, or heated, how many men sleep in them, or whether the sleeping quarters are also used for cooking and eating and the bunks as cupboards. Neither does it care whether the men can keep themselves or their clothes clean.10

Quoting a New York Times article, The Albany Evening Journal of Tuesday, January 4, 1910 noted that the investigators discovered that “the mules were found to be housed in better quarters than the laborers.” Further, the reprinted article stated that,

“One entire state camp consists of five buildings. The largest about 50 by 20 feet, contains 52 bunks in a double tier and has a small stove for heating and cooking. The windows are closed tightly and there is one door. This building is set flat upon the side of the canal, upon swampy ground in the midst of mud so deep that on the day of the visit it was necessary to wear rubber boots.”11
              
Wald and Kellor in their published report articulated their belief that “here in a democracy, in our greatest creative achievements, we can set standards which will make for democracy and not for petty despotism, immorality and physical deterioration. State and city can set standards for life and labor in the construction camps, and see that they are enforced, as easily as they can determine the grade of stone used and the tensile strength of steel.”12 Particularly in the state barge canal camps, however, what they found fell far short of such standards.

 “With one exception, they found state and city personified, so far as the immigrant workers were concerned, by the padrone whose largest profits are to be drawn from the vice, drunkenness, instability and ignorance of the men …. In state camps they found the padrone in full control, supplying job, bed, board and drink; they found a building with sixty-five cots for a hundred men, another with bunks in the dark cellar; they found state camps wholly dependent upon any spring, well or pump in the neighborhood; they found nuisances committed without restriction, the grounds filthy, and no means for recreation.”13
              
​Who was the “padrone” Wald and Kellor referred to so vehemently? The word had its origins in fourteenth century Italy according to the Oxford English Dictionary. At that time, it referred to the master of a ship. The term came to be associated in the United States with “an exploitative (usually Italian) labor contractor, who employs unskilled Italian immigrants.”14 On the state and city government construction projects that Wald, Kellor, Dreier and Hine were investigating during their auto tour, the padrone acted as the intermediary between the construction contractor and the unskilled laborers that contractor required. This freed the governmental agencies responsible for these massive projects from having to recruit, care for, administer, manage, and supervise the huge temporary workforce needed to turn plans and specifications into physical and monumental reality.

In 1909 the padrone system was already decades old: a proven method of acquiring cheap labor needed to construct dams, railroads, canals, and roads in addition to mining operations of all types throughout the United States.15 It was extremely exploitive of those unskilled workers on whom it depended. John Koren in an 1897 report he wrote for the federal Department of Labor described in detail how it worked.

The American contractor, wishing to secure the cheapest possible labor wherewith to carry out some new enterprise, would apply to a resident Italian immigration agent (soon to be dignified by the name ‘banker’) for a stated number of men. The latter, having through subagents in Italy collected as many as required, shipped them across on prepaid tickets, for which he received a stipulated commission. On arrival of these immigrants the agent would make an additional profit by boarding them at exorbitant prices until they could be sent to their destination, the expense being deducted from their prospective wages. The further privilege of supplying them with food and shelter while at work was also commonly granted the agent, and if a banker, he could from time to time add to his profits by charging unreasonable rates for sending the scanty savings of the laborer to Italy. Finally, he had in prospect a commission on the return passage to Italy when the contract expired, for the immigration then as now, was chiefly of a migratory character. Few remained here beyond the time of their contract….16

The lonely Italian laborer encountered by Wald, Kellor, Dreier, and Hine had undoubtedly undergone something very similar to find himself sitting in that work camp shack in November 1909. While Hungarians and immigrants from Slavic countries were also caught up in the clutches of the padrone system, the majority of unskilled laborers came from Italy, specifically from southern Italy. In a report published in 1907 for the federal Bureau of Labor, Frank J. Sheridan included numerous tables of statistical information clearly showing the higher percentage of unskilled laborers immigrating into the United States and especially into New York State were southern Italians. For example, in the span of a year ending in June of 1906, 117,119 immigrants from southern Italy versus just 12,984 from northern Italy came to New York.17 The historic causes that created this late-nineteenth through early-twentieth century geographic wave are far too complex to address in this article. However, Sheridan presents three primary reasons driving “common laborers” to leave their native countries: “(1) primary necessity; (2) to escape compulsory military service and other burdens; (3) to become self-supporting.”18 Another compelling reason was unremitting poverty. Historian Michael La Sorte writes, “by the decade of 1910 Italians in the United States were sending home large sums of money …. for some families back home, this money represented a large portion of their total income.”19 Wald and Kellor echo this in the opening sentence of their 1910 report on the work camps: “Word has gone down the line and across the water that New York state is ‘America’ and that a ‘harvest is on.’ Thousands of alien laborers, writing home or returning to Italy or Austria, have told their countrymen of ‘America’ as they have seen it …”20

The expectations raised by such words going “down the line,” were often dampened by the reality immigrants found. For not only were the living conditions many were forced to endure terrible, but often their very presence was resented. The construction of the barge canal itself had faced considerable opposition from those who saw it has an enormous expenditure by the state in an outmoded form of transportation. A printed circular advancing opposition arguments was published in May 1903, asserting in part that, “if the policy of the State requires the expenditure of the State’s moneys for the purpose of creating facilities for transporting freight in competition with the existing railroads, why should it not be better for the State to construct a four track railroad from Buffalo to Albany along the present route of the Erie canal?”21 The same circular also pressed home an anti-immigrant labor contention: “if carried through, the enterprise is sure to injure the laboring population now employed to the upmost and to bring … tens of thousands of foreign laborers of the lowest type, who will remain when the work is done a drag on our own civilization and a menace to our native workers.”22
              
Obviously, the opposition challenges to the barge canal’s construction failed, but criticism remained as the actual work proceeded slowly. The Buffalo Times newspaper for Sunday, August 22, 1909, for example, reported on the findings of a tour of inspection a group of state legislators had just completed. Senator Henry W. Hill of Buffalo was quoted as saying, “we found the work progressing very satisfactorily in most places and the contractors generally entering into the work with enthusiasm.” He also asserted that the “undertaking …. in some respects is more difficult than the building of the Panama Canal, because the New York waterways involve so many more engineering and hydraulic problems.”23 Within such an atmosphere, it seems fair to conclude that both state officials in charge of the work and the contractors hired to implement it were under pressure to pursue construction with as much speed and economy as possible. Tellingly, the 1910 inspection tour by the legislators did not mention the laborers toiling across the state or the conditions under which they lived and worked.
              
​Did Lillian Wald or Frances Kellor or Mary Dreier or Lewis Hine – each of whom were well versed in the plight of immigrants coming into New York – tell the lonely Italian laborer they met in that barge canal work camp, that his experience was far from unique? We will never know, unless some written record of their visit eventually is found. His fellow countryman, Napoleone Colajanni, writing in 1909 bitterly observed that “the Americans consider the Italians as unclean, small foreigners who play the accordion, operate fruit stands, sweep the streets, work in the mines or tunnels, on the railroad or as ‘bricklayers.’”24 In fact, far more Italian immigrant laborers were employed on railroad construction in the northern states than on both the city and state construction projects Wald and her party were visiting. The living and working conditions of these workers were similar if not worse in some cases.25 It is from the experiences of those Italians in railroad construction work camps reported by Frank Sheridan that we finally hear the actual voices of some of these men. 

Sheridan writes that their declarations were given in evidence of the abuses they had undergone while working on railroad construction projects. He also notes that their words “are translations from the statements made in Italian by each of the laborers.”26 Below is just a portion extracted from one such statement. Names and locations were deleted in the original.

"During the summer of 1903 I was working on the _________ Railroad in the gang of ______, and was lodged at the shanties conducted by [the padrone] at _________. On account of the unhealthy conditions of the shanties, the rottenness of the groceries sold in the store therein, and the exorbitant prices charged, I couldn’t live there and I quitted work. I had to sleep on a handful of straw [charged 25 cents], pay $1 monthly for rent of the shanty, 25 cents per month for lamp and light, 50 cents monthly for coal, beer 6 cents per bottle, 1 ½-pound loaf of bread 10 cents, macaroni 8 cents per pound, tomatoes 14 cents a can, cheese 36 and 40 cents per pound …. and not only that, but bound to spend at least $10 per month, and with such high prices $10 was not enough to keep a man in shape for work fifteen days. Further, to secure work on the _______Railroad at such conditions, I had to pay to [the padrone] $10 [$5 per time] otherwise he wouldn’t allow me to work.27"
              
Today, we might think such prices remarkably cheap until we are reminded that unskilled Italian laborers were typically charged amounts that “were never less than two to four times the prevailing market prices.”28 So, for example, if a consumer paid $2.35 for a loaf of fresh white bread today in 2019, the immigrant buying that same loaf from the padrone run store in a work camp might be charged anywhere from $4.70 to $9.40. It is small wonder that workers sometimes simply walked away looking for better work and living conditions, sometimes scrimped together enough money to return to Italy, sometimes tenuously managed to establish themselves in the communities near where they worked, and sometimes simply had enough and attacked the padrone or his representatives. Late in April of 1908 this is exactly what happened in Waterford, New York. The Wyoming County Herald ran a story datelined April 29, Troy, which reported that:

 “a riot occurred among the Italians employed on the barge canal work at Waterford. The padrone who places men at work, it is charged, gets $5 from each man and then if the man does not trade at the supply store conducted by the padrone, that person is discharged, and another is hired. Several hundred Italians descended upon the store and there was a free fight in which clubs and fists were freely used. The Italians prevented all work at the section. Deputy sheriffs were necessary to quell the riot.29"

​What happened to either the padrone or the rioting laborers is not reported, but it illustrates the sheer frustration and anger that could build-up in the confines of the laborer camps.
              
​While not all canal construction workers lived in such camps, they represent what was an indispensable component in the creation of the barge canal system; a massively re-imagined and re-engineered waterway that served the state’s and nation’s urgent needs for the shipment of materials, fuel, and equipment during both World Wars I and II. 

​Today’s barge canal is characterized by pleasure boats, kayaks, tour boats, and leisurely piloted rental canal boats carrying visitors eager to experience its beauty and to explore the villages, towns, and cities it connects. Walkers, joggers, and bicyclists ply its banks along paved towpaths, the original need for which was eliminated by the self-powered vessels and towing tugs that replaced horses and mules from the pre-barge canal era. In the reigning tranquility of the canal today, its users hear no echoes of the shouts, groans, cries of pain or anger, laughter, insults, name calling, curt orders, hammers, squeaking wheel barrow wheels, dynamite detonations, shrill whistles and exhaust blasts from steam dredges and locomotives, and the myriad of other sounds that heralded its birth. The physical remains of those flimsy structures composing the work camps where thousands temporarily lived amid those sounds are long gone, but the human lives they barely sheltered are woven into the fabric of the history of the state. 

 1 Lillan D. Wald and Frances A. Kellor, “The Construction Camps of the People: The Findings of an Automobile Tour of Investigation of Camp Conditions Along the Line of New York State’s New Barge Canal and New York City’s New Aqueduct,” The Survey, January 1, 1910, 460 (hereafter cited as Wald, “Construction Camps”). The Survey was published by the Charity Organization Society of New York City, founded in 1882 and characterized as “one of the most influential philanthropic organizations in New York City.” For this quote see Anne M. Filiaci, “Lowell and the Charity Organization Society of New York,” accessed 30 December 2018, http://www.lillianwald.com/?page_id=216.
2 National Historic Landmark, A National Honor” Erie Canal National Heritage Corridor website, accessed 27 December 2018, https://eriecanalway.org/resources/NHL.
3 “Flight of Five Locks,” ASCE American Society of Civil Engineers, Historic Landmarks, accessed 27 December 2018, https://www.asce.org/project/flight-of-five-locks/.
 4 Edward Hagaman Hall, The Catskill Aqueduct and Earlier Water Supplies of the City of New York […] (New York: The Mayor’s Catskill Aqueduct Celebration Committee, 1917), 112. “The length of the aqueduct from Ashokan to this reservoir [Silver Lake Reservoir in Staten Island] is 119 miles, to be exact, but it is called 120 miles in round numbers.”
5 Report of the Commission of Immigration of the State of New York (Albany, NY: J. B. Lyon Company, 1909), 1. For an overview of the history of the Henry Street Settlement House and Lillian D. Wald visit its website at: https://www.henrystreet.org/about/our-history/exhibit-the-house-on-henry-street/ and especially view the short video there “Baptism of Fire – The House on Henry Street.”  
6 Allison D. Murdach, “France Kellor and the Americanization Movement,” Social Work 53, no.1 (January 2008): 93.
7 Ann Schofield, "To do & to be": portraits of four women activists, 1893-1986 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997), 50, 60.
 8 Walter Rosenblum, foreword to America & Lewis Hine: Photographs 1904-1940 (New York: Aperture, 1997), 12, 15.
9 Lillian D. Wald, The House on Henry Street, with a new introduction by Eleanor L. Brilliant, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1991). First published 1915 by Henry Holt and Company. 295, (hereafter cited as Wald, House on Henry Street).
10  Wald, House on Henry Street, 296.
 11 “Barge Canal Labor,” The Albany Evening Journal (Albany, NY), January 4, 1910.
12 Wald, “Construction Camps,” from the Foreword, unpaginated, following page 448
13 Wald, “Construction Camps,” from the Foreword, unpaginated, following page 448
14 “padrone,” Oxford English Dictionary online, accessed February 9, 2019, http://www.oed.com.dbgateway.nysed.gov/view/Entry/135946?redirectedFrom=padrone#eid. The plural of padrone is padroni.
 15 Edwin Fenton asserts that the padrone system dates to the 1840s, while John Koren, writing about it for the Department of Labor in 1897, says its origins “are not easily traced” but seems to have come into prominent use after the Civil War during industrial recovery and growth during “which capital sought labor with almost reckless eagerness.” See Edwin Fenton, Immigrants and Unions, A Case Study: Italians and American Labor, 1870-1920 (New York: Arno Press, 1975), 77, and John Koren, "The Padrone System and Padrone Banks," Bulletin of the Department of Labor 9, March 1897 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1897), 113, hereafter cited as Koren, “The Padrone System.”
16 Koren, “The Padrone System,” 114.
 17 Frank J. Sheridan, “Italian, Slavic, and Hungarian Unskilled Immigrant Laborers in the United States,” Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor 72, September 1907 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1907), 409.
18 Sheridan, “Immigrant Laborers,” 406.
19 Michael La Sorte, La Merica: Images of Italian Greenhorn Experience (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985). 5.
20 Wald, “Construction Camps,” 449.
21 This circular is quoted in Henry Wayland Hill, “An Historical Review of Waterways and Canal Construction in New York State,” Buffalo Historical Society Publications, 12 (Buffalo: Buffalo Historical Society, 1908), 346.
22 Hill, “Historical Review,” 347.
23 “Four Years Yet on Barge Canal, Says H. W. Hill,” The Buffalo Times (Buffalo, NY), August 22, 1909. The Senator Hill quoted in the news article is very likely the same Henry W. Hill who wrote the 1908 article quoted in footnote 21.
 24 This quotation is from Napoleone Colajanni, Gli Italiani negli Stati Uniti (Napoli: Rivista Popolare, 1909), 44, translated and cited in La Sorte, La Merica, 61.
25 In a table included with Frank Sheridan’s 1907 report illustrated the numbers and percentages of various immigrant nationalities (dominated by Italians, Slavs, and Hungarians) employed in various occupations in both northern and southern states. In the North fully 75.93 percent of those immigrants engaged in railroad construction and repairs were Italians. Those immigrants in occupations categorized as “canal construction laborers” or “dam and waterworks construction,” were quite small by comparison. Sheridan’s breakdown of occupations may distort his results. For example, “excavating laborers, ditching laborers, and concrete and cement laborers” could all have been employed on either the barge canal or the Ashokan Reservoir projects. Also, his numbers are based on immigrants sent to these occupations by New York Employment Agencies and very likely do not reflect those hired out through the difficult to regulate padrone system. See Sheridan, “Immigrant Laborers,” 420.
26 Sheridan, “Immigrant Laborers,” 445.
27 Sheridan, “Immigrant Laborers,” 447.
28 La Sorte, La Merica, 81.
 29 “Riot Among Barge Canal Laborers,” Wyoming County Herald (Arcade, NY), May 01, 1908. 

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!​

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 volunteers Carl and Joan Mayer. See more of Captain Benson’s articles here. This article was originally published August 18, 1974.

During the 1920's, every Sunday from late May until early September, the steamer “Homer Ramsdell" of the Central Hudson Line offered an excursion from Kingston to New York.  Leaving Rondout at 6:30 a.m., she would make landings at Poughkeepsie and Newburgh and arrive in New York at her pier at the foot of Franklin Street at 1 p.m.  Returning, she would leave New York at 4:30 p.m. and get back to Kingston at 11 p.m. 

In those days of long ago, the Sunday excursions on the “Homer Ramsdell” were very popular with residents of the mid-Hudson valley and many Kingston families made this day long sail on the Hudson an annual event.  In July of 1924, as a boy of 15, my father took me on one of these excursions. 

To a boy who thought the greatest thing in the world was a steamboat, the excursion was a memorable experience.  I made a note of every steamer we passed and in retrospect it is difficult to believe there were once so many steamboats in operation on the Hudson. 

After leaving Rondout on that sunny Sunday morning a half a century ago, the first steamer we met was the “Poughkeepsie” of the Central Hudson Line, off Staatsburgh.  She was coming up on her way to Kingston, having left New York the night before.  Landing at Poughkeepsie, I saw the ferryboat “Gove Winthrop” going into her Poughkeepsie slip and her running mate “Rinckerhoff" [Brinckerhoff?] landing at Highland. 

After we left Poughkeepsie, we saw very few boats as it was too early in the morning.  At Newburgh, the old ferryboat "City of Newburgh” was just coming over from Beacon and as we passed Cornwall we overtook the "Perseverance” of the Cornell Steamboat Company going down with the down tow of about forty loaded scows and barges.  The Cornell tugs “Victoria” and ‘‘Hercules” were helping on the tow.  When passing West Point, the ferry “Garrison” was going over the river to her namesake landing. 

Down off Grassy Point, the graceful “Hendrick Hudson” of the Day Line went by on her way to Albany and looked as if she were almost loaded to her passenger capacity of 5,500.  Off Croton Point, the brand new “Alexander Hamilton” went past on her way to Kingston Point — and just below Hook Mountain the “DeWitt Clinton” was going up river bound for Poughkeepsie.  Not too far behind her was the “Albany,” probably going to Indian Point.  In slightly over an hour we had passed four Day Liners.  Then came the Bear Mountain steamer “Clermont.”

By that time we were off Tarrytown.  Looking down the river on that clear day, one could see all the way down to New York harbor and could see everywhere all kinds of passenger steamboats and yachts coming up the river.  I was eagerly peering ahead to see if I could find my favorite, the “Benjamin B. Odell.” Sure enough, there she was coming up river with a big bone in her teeth, flags flying and black smoke pouring out of her big black smokestack. 
​
The "Odell" was overtaking the “Rensselaer” of the Albany Night Line — and had just passed the  propellor “Ossining” and the sidewheeler ‘‘Sirius" of the Iron Steamboat Company.  As she sped by the “Ramsdell", she blew one long blast salute on her whistle.  The white steam from her whistle ascending skyward and the big red house flag of the Central Hudson Line with the white letters “C.H.,” briskly flapping in the breeze from the flag staff in back of her pilot house, made a very impressive scene. 

​After we had passed this cluster of steamboats, along came the “Benjamin Franklin” of the Yonkers Line, closely followed by the Day Liner “Robert Fulton" on her way to Newburgh.  We then passed the ‘‘Mandalay" headed up river.  With her ferry boat-like bow, she was a nice looking steamer.  Below Hastings, a tow in charge of the Cornell tugboats “Geo. W. Washburn” and “Senator Rice" was on its way up river.  The “Washburn” blew a long salute to the "Ramsdell."

​Down off Yonkers, the speedy “Monmouth” of the Jersey Central Railroad and the Central Hudson steamer “Newburgh” were coming up, loaded with passengers for a day's outing up the river.  When we landed at 129th Street, I couldn't help but wonder how many people had boarded boats at that pier that morning.  It must have been several thousand.  On the south side of the pier lay the "Cetus" of the Iron Steamboat Company taking on passengers for Coney Island.

Going down through the harbor I saw the "Leviathan” of the U.S. Lines, then called the largest liner in the world, lying at her pier.  With her three big red, white and blue smokestacks, it was the first time I had ever seen her.

Christopher Street, the ‘‘Robert A. Snyder" of the Saugerties Evening Line was lying on the south side.  Going up river was the little sidewheeler ‘‘Sea Bird" with her large hog frame and walking beam.  The ‘‘Sandy Hook" was just leaving her pier at Houston Street on her way to Atlantic Highlands and the “Mary Patten" was on her way to Gansevoort Street, coming back from Long Branch.  By that time it was nearly 1 p.m. and we were landing at the Franklin Street pier. 

We left New York on our return trip promptly at 4:30 p.m.  For the next two and a half hours we passed a steady parade of steamboats, only this time they were all returning to New York.  We passed again all of the steamers we had in the morning except the "Hendrick Hudson" which had gone on to Albany.  In her stead, we passed the big “Washington Irving" which that day was the down Day Liner from Albany.  The down Cornell tow in charge of the "Perserverance" had gotten all the way down to Hook Mountain.  As we passed very close I remember how loud her whistle sounded when she blew a passing salute. 

When we were at Iona Island, I could see the "Onteora,” another favorite of mine, just pulling away from Bear Mountain.  That was the first I had seen her in two years as she had gone up river after we had landed at New York.  My older brother, Algot, had been the mate of the “Onteora" and in March of the year before he died of pneumonia.  When my father saw the “Onteora" ahead, I remember he got up and without saying a word walked to the other side of the "Ramsdell." I suppose he could not bear to see her got [go?] by knowing my brother was no longer aboard.

As the "Onteora" went by she was just straightening out on her course down river with a heavy port list after completing her turn around.  We passed so close I could make out Ben Hoff, her captain, at the wheel in the pilot house.  We again passed the “Geo. W. Washburn” and the "Senator Rice" with the up Cornell tow off Cons Hook.
​ 
After we left Newburgh we passed the steamer ‘‘Ida" of the Saugerties Evening Line on her way to New York and, off Danskammer Point, the freighter "Storm King" of the Catskill Evening Line also bound south.  After that, as far as I know, we didn’t pass anything.  I remember dozing off in an easy chair on the saloon deck and getting off at Rondout about 11 p.m, and going home to bed.  For a boy, it had been a day to remember.

Editor's Note: This detailed account of the fire on the Citizens' Line steamer City of Troy at Dobbs Ferry is from the April 6, 1907 New York Times. The tone of the article reflects the time period in which it was written.

CITY OF TROY BURNS IN HUDSON
The Old River Steamer Lands Her 65 Passengers Just in Time.
​
A FIRE OFF DOBBS FERRY
Captain the Last to Leave After Bringing Her to Edwin Gould's Pier.

BOAT A WRECK IN AN HOUR
Fire Started in Mid-River at 9 o'clock - No Panic - Some Passengers , Helped Fight the Flames.

With her hold a mass of crackling flames, the big steamer City of Troy of the Citizens' Line, a wooden side-wheeler, 280 feet long, on which were 65 passengers, plowed through the Hudson at full speed last night, her Captain endeavoring to find a pier to which he might tie long enough to land the passengers and crew. The City of Troy was on the Jersey side of the river off Yonkers, going up the river, when the fire was discovered, and it was an hour later before she was finally tied up at the private pier of Edwin Gould at Dobbs Ferry. There every passenger was safely landed. Mate W. S. Eagle was the only one overcome by smoke. He was taken ashore and soon recovered. The vessel, an hour later, was a blackened mass burned to the water's edge.

Some of the passengers who had retired early, were already asleep when shortly after 8 o'clock tiny puffs of smoke creeping up through hatches and companionways were noticed by other passengers and deckhands.

The fire alarm signal was rung through the boat and the crew rushed to their places, while terrified passengers rushed to the decks begging to be told what had happened. Many had been awakened from sleep by the alarm, and these, rushing on deck, added to the excitement. In the meantime the flames had been found in the hold amidships.

It is thought detective insulation on the electric wiring in the pantry started the fire. It gained rapid headway, eating its way fore and aft and licking at the deck above. Several streams of water were quickly turned into the hold and a desperate fight was made to check the flames. Many of the more cool-headed of the passengers joined with the crew in handling hose and carrying water.

Across the River on Fire.
Despite their efforts[,] the flames continued to gain headway. When it was seen that there was no longer hope of saving the boat[,] Capt Charles H. Bruder turned his vessel's head off the shore and rung for full speed ahead. Straight across the river the boat ploughed, and at the Dobbs Ferry pier an effort was made to tie up.

For some reason the boat could not be made fast, and, despairingly, Capt. Bruder turned toward the pier of the Manila Anchor Brewery. The terror of the passengers was redoubled when it was found that here also the boat would be unable to land. By this time, too, the flames had gained dangerous headway and the passengers crowded on to the upper decks.

When the vessel approached Dobbs Ferry there was to those ashore no sign of fire aboard except a cloud of smoke trailing off to the stern, as she ran shoreward, and her whistles for help did not seem justified to those who saw her approaching.

There was no panic aboard as the boat neared land. All hands were ready to leave as quickly and quietly as might be. Planks were run out to the pier, and everybody got off safely, though it was said none of the baggage was saved. There being only a few passengers, they got off in two minutes.

Some time after she landed the vessel drifted away from the pier somewhat. She was then ablaze from stem to stern. Capt. Bruder was the last man off and he left in a rowboat.

When the steamboat was laid alongside the pier the crew had knocked out the forerail and had a gangplank ready to run out. It took but a couple of minutes to get the passengers ashore and on to the tracks of the Central Railroad. The fire broke out all over the vessel, flames breaking forth in a dozen places just as the last of the passengers got ashore.

Running toward the east side of the river, the steamboat had been running with the wind, so that there did not seem to be much draught for the fire, but once she stopped and the wind began to whistle through her the flames seemed to leap out in a dozen places.

The fire swept through the boat within a very few minutes. All effort had to be turned toward saving the brewery and the pier as well as the cottage on the pier. The latter was saved, as was the brewery, but a portion of the pier will have to be rebuilt, even to the pilings as the fire extended to it.

Then Capt Bruder ran his boat toward Mr. Gould's dock. Here at last he was able to make fast, and with the flames crackling almost at their heels[,] the passengers were tossed and tumbled over the gang planks to the pier.

The Dobbs Ferry Fire Department had turned out as the blazing City of Troy was seen approaching the town, and the men set to work to save the steamer. Their work was hopeless, however, and the flames were already eating into the upper works of the steamer when the word flashed through the crowd that a woman passenger was still asleep in her berth.

Alfred Smith and Robert Wilson of the Fire Department immediately darted down into the burning cabin. Choking with the dense smoke they fought their way from stateroom to stateroom until they came to one which was locked.

Sleeping Passenger Saved.
Putting their shoulders to the door they smashed it in. In the berth they found a woman, whom neither smoke nor noise had awakened. She had not been overcome by smoke, however, and grabbing her in their arms, Smith and Wilson rushed with her to the deck. From here she was got safely ashore.

In the meantime the flames had been communicated to the pier, and this, too, soon blazing fiercely, driving the firemen, back foot by foot, until at last they were compelled to abandon all hopes of saving the vessel. On board of her were thirteen horses, besides a valuable cargo of freight. All the horses and the freight were lost.
Before the firemen were driven from the pier an effort was made to reach the horses. Several men dropped into the burning hold, but it was quickly found that the horses could not be reached.

The passengers hurried to the railroad station after leaving the boat, and many of them returned to this city on the 11:30 o'clock train, while others left for Troy shortly after midnight.

STORIES OF PASSENGERS.
All Praise Bravery of Capt. Bruder, Who Was Last to Leave.
Seven passengers and about twenty-five members of the City of Troy's crew arrived at the Grand Central Station on the 12:53 train from Yonkers this morning. The passengers looked very little the worse for their experience, but it was different with most of the crew.

They were asleep in their bunks when the fire was discovered, and as the quarters were close to where the fire started they had no time to get together their belongings. Several of the negro stewards when they got to New York had on only an undershirt, overalls, shoes, and a blanket. They were bareheaded, and were still wondering what had happened when sadly they walked down the platform of the Grand Central.

On only one point did those who got here this morning agree, and that was the bravery of Capt. Bruder, the skipper of the City of Troy. The skipper, all said, was the bravest man on the boat, and it was not until the last person had been safely landed that he made his way through the smoke to the gangway that led to Edwin Gould's dock at Dobbs Ferry.

"I was in the engine room watching the machinery;" said Carl Carlson of 5 Water Street, this city, "when the fire was discovered. I immediately ran up on deck and made my way to the bridge. where I informed Capt. Bruder what was the matter. I never saw a cooler man than that Hudson River skipper. He did not lose his head for a single second. He called his officers to him and then ordered every man to the place assigned to him in the fire drill.

Captain Reassures Passengers.
Then he made his way to the saloon where the passengers were and begged them to keep cool and trust to him to get them to land. He said that we were in danger, but that the greatest danger of all was a panic. When we got ashore he told us to meet him at the police station and he would furnish us transportation to wherever we wished to go. Then the skipper rushed back to the bridge and guided the boat to the pier at Dobbs Ferry. So far as I know no one was lost, although I did hear that two men had jumped overboard but were rescued.

"The passengers had just finished dinner and were making themselves known to one another in the saloon," said R. H. Keller of Troy, "when the skipper came into the saloon and informed us in a cool business-like way that bad luck had come our way, and that the boat was on fire. Several of the women appeared to be on the verge of going into hysterics, but the skipper had foreseen all that and assured them that the greatest danger of all lay in their losing their heads. Then he told us what to do and where to go, and hurried back to his place on the bridge.

"It was as cool a piece of work as I have ever seen under such serious conditions. 'Meet me at the police station and I'll send you home,' the skipper said as he hurried out of the saloon."

As far as I was able to ascertain," said Frank Fletcher, one of the engineers of the City of Troy, "the fire started in the pantry, which is located on the main deck about amidships. I have not yet learned the cause, but imagine that defective insulation must have started it. The moment the skipper realized what the matter was[,] he headed straight for Dobbs Ferry. There was not any panic, and we did not lose a soul, either among the passengers or the crew."

Four Streams Didn't Check Flames.
"When the fire alarm was sounded Capt Bruder hustled every man to the place assigned to him in the fire drill, and soon we had four streams playing on the fire. Despite our efforts the flames gained rapidly on us, and in a few minutes after we bumped up against the dock at Dobbs Ferry the boat was a mass of flames from stem to stern.

"We were going at full speed when the fire started, that is, about 14 knots an hour. The most pitiful incident of the fire was the loss of seven [or 13?] fine horses that we had on board. We all wanted to save the poor beasts, but it was impossible to do so. I do not know to whom the animals belonged."

Michael Murray and Thomas O'Hara were two of the crew that arrived here this morning. They did the talking for their fellows and all agreed that they were mighty lucky to get back to New York alive.

Most of these men were asleep when the fire drill was sounded. They did not stop to pick up any of their personal belongings, but hustled on deck to help try put out the fire. O'Hara said that Capt. Bruder had to be taken off the ship in a lifeboat, as the vessel was ablaze from stem to stern on the landing side when the skipper deserted the boat, after the last of the passengers were taken off.

Some of the others said that O'Hara was mistaken in this and that the skipper had left the boat via the gangplank, which he reached by a perilous groping through the smoke that enveloped the ship.

The negro cooks and stewards were the great sufferers and saved almost nothing at all. Several of them had very few clothes on last night and were trying to keep themselves warm with blankets that had been given them by kindhearted people in Dobbs Ferry.

One of the crew said that one of the officers found a crowd of fifteen excited Italians preparing to jump overboard. He remained among them until the boat landed, after issuing a standing threat to brain the first man that moved, with a belaying-pin. The Italian re[m]ained quiet.

The City of Troy was a wooden side-wheel steamboat, 280.6 feet long and 38 feet in breadth, drawing ten feet of water. She was built in Brooklyn in 1876 for inland passenger service, and had continued in the Hudson River service for the Citizens' Steamboat Company since. She cost $250,000 originally. Her gross tonnage was 1,527, and net tonnage 1,280. The steamboat had a crew of forty-eight men and 200 staterooms.

Some thirteen years ago, when the present management of the Citizens Line assumed control, the boat was remodeled at a cost of $150,000. On each deck she was provided with fire cocks and hose. The officers and crew have always been considered most efficient, and were well versed in the fire drill.