​            p. 50                                                                 July 7, 1801
Very suddenly conceived the design of voyaging up the Hudson river, as far as Albany.  Had heard much of the grandeur of its shores, but never had gone above ten miles from New York.  My friend C. having some leisure was willing to adventure for ten days or a fortnight, and I having still more, and being greatly in want of air and exercise, agreed to accompany him.  We found a most spacious and well furnished vessel, captain R.----- in which we embarked at sunset this day.  The wind propitious and the air wonderfully bland. 
p. 51     We bade adieu to our friends B.----- J.----- and D.----.  I took my post at the stern, and found much employment for my feelings, in marking through the dusk, the receding city and the glimmering lights; first of quays and avenues, and afterwards of farms and village.  It is just three years since my visit to New York in 1798.  an interval replete with events, various and momentous.  Some of them humiliating and disastrous, but, on the whole leading me to my present situation in which I have reason for congratulation. 
                                                                    
July 8, 1801
I write this seated in the cabin, from the windows of which, we have a view of wooded slopes, rocky promontories and waving summits.  Our attention has been, for some time, fixed upon Stony Point, a memorable post in the late war, a spot familiar to my ears since my infancy, but which I have now seen for the first time.  It is a rocky and rugged mass advancing into the river, the sides of which are covered with dwarf cedars, and the summit conspicuous still with some remains of fortification, a general solitude and vacancy around it, and a white cow grazing within the ruinous walls, produce a pleasing effect on my imagination.  A craggy eminence, crowned with the ruins of a fortress, is an interesting spectacle every where, but a very rare one in America.  I much wished to go ashore and ascend this hill, but it was not convenient.
           
What are called the highlands of the North river, are a mountainous district, through which the river flows for some miles.  I had heard much of the stupendous and alpine magnificence of the scenery.  We entered it this morning, with a mild breeze and serene sky, and the prospect hitherto has been soft and beautiful.  Nothing abrupt, rugged or gigantic.  Farms and cultivated fields seldom appear.  Six or eight vessels like our own, have been constantly in sight, and greatly enliven the scene.
           
We are now at anchor, have just dined.  My companions have gone to sleep.  The utmost stillness prevails.  Nothing to be heard but the buzzing of flies near at hand, and the (p. 52) cawing of distant crows.  We lay surrounded on all hands by loftier ridges, than I ever before saw bordered by water.
           
We have formed various conjectures as to the heights of these summits.  The captain's statements of five and six hundred feet are extravagant.  Three hundred would be nearer the truth.  Few or none of them are absolute precipices, but most of them are steep, and not to be scaled without difficulty.
           
​I have gazed at the passing scene from Stony Point to West Point, with great eagerness, and till my eye was weary and pained.  how shall I describe them.  I cannot particularize the substance of the rock, or the kind of tree, save oaks and cedars.  I am as little versed in the picturesque.  I can only describe their influence on me.

​My friend is a very diligent observer, and frequently betakes himself to the pen.  Heavy brows and languid blood has made me indolent, and I have done nothing but look about me, or muse for the last two days. 
           
On Thursday afternoon with a brisk southward gale and a serene sky, we left the highlands.  At the spot where the mountains recede from the river, the river expands into a kind of lake, about two miles wide and ten miles long.  The entrance is formed by cliffs, lofty, steep and gloomy with woods, which the borders of the lake itself are easy slopes, checkered with cultivated fields, farms and villages.
           
The highlands from the heights and boldness of the promontories and ruggedness of the rocks, and the fantastic shape the assume, fully answer the expectations which my friends had excited.  But the voyage over the lake, exceeded whatever my fancy had pictured of delightful.  Three populous villages, Peekskill, New Windsor and Newburg, and innumerable farms decorate its borders.
           
Yesterday we moved but slowly, the wind becoming adverse.  At noon we drew into a wharf at Red-hook, and remained there till evening.  My friend and I seized the opportunity of wandering.  The river bank is lofty, and wooded as usual, but no wise remarkable.

p. 53     Some hours before, a waving and bluish line in the horizon reminded us of the Kaats-kill mountains.  These are seen very advantageously from Red-hook, distant about twenty miles, and appear of stupendous height.  Their elevation has been ascertained, but I do not recollect what it is.
           
We roamed along the shore and among the bushes, highly pleased with the exercise, and concluded our rambles with a bathing in the river.  In leaving the sloop, I left most of my sluggish feelings behind me, and walked enough to make the night's repose acceptable and sound.
           
With the tide to favour us we left Red-hook at eight o'clock, but were obliged to anchor again before morning.  At six o'clock my friend and I accompanied the captain ashore, in search of milk and blackberries.  I have since seated myself on deck, watching the shore, as the breeze carried us along.  My friend is busy with his spy glass, reconnoitering the rocks and ay stacks, and surveying the wharves and store houses of Lunenburg and Hudson, villages we have just passed.  I have observed but little besides a steep bank, roughened by rocks and bushes, occasionally yielding to slopes of a parched and yellowish soil, with poor cottages sparingly scattered, and now and then a small garden or field of corn.  A fellow passenger left us at Hudson.  One only remaining, a Mr. H.---- of Albany, a well behaved man, whose attention is swallowed up by Mrs. Bennet's "Beggar Girl." [Editor's Note: A 7 volume work by Anna Maria Bennett in 1797 "The Beggar Girl and Her Benefactors"]
           
The sloop's crew consists of captain, mate, a man and a boy as cook; all orderly, peaceful obliging persons. The cabin being perfectly clean and comfortable, and provisions plentiful and good, we have no reason to regret the delays occasioned by adverse winds, and by calms.  I have some vacant moments when a book might amuse. The captain's whole stock consists of a book on navigation, Dillworth's Arithmetic, and Goldsmith's Citizen of the World.  I have looked into the last, but it does not please me.  The fiction is ill supported, the style smooth and elegant, but the sentiments and observations far from judicious or profound.
           
The mate has been telling me his adventures.  A very crude and brief tale it was, but acceptable and pleasing to me.  (p. 54)  A voyage round the globe is a very trivial adventure, now-a-days.  This man has been twice to Nootka, thence to Canton, and thence to Europe and home.  He performed one whaling voyage to Greenland, and was fifteen months a seaman in a British seventy-four.  His South Sea voyage occupied eighteen months, during which there was neither sickness nor death among the crew.

           
In the mid-1800s, the Hudson River was a busy waterway between the fast-growing New York metropolitan area and the cities, crop lands, timber, and mining regions of the West and North. The Delaware and Hudson Canal linked the Pennsylvania coal fields to the Hudson River at its harbor town of Rondout, about one hundred miles north of New York city.
           
In the 1830s, Thomas Cornell came with a sailing sloop to Rondout to ship coal from the D&H Canal. A native of White Plains, N.Y., Cornell was just twenty-two years old. Until then, sailboats had done the work of carrying freight and passengers, but Cornell saw that steam-powered vessels were the future. In a few years, he became the owner and operator of steamboats running between Rondout and New York. Cornell settled in Rondout, where he established the Cornell Steamboat Company.
           
In those booming years of growth and construction, there was plenty of business for steamboats plying the Hudson. New York City’s thriving metropolitan area needed coal from the D&H Canal, ice that was harvested in winter from the frozen river, building material produced in the mid-Hudson valley brick, lumber, stone, and cement- and agricultural products grain, livestock, dairy, fruit, and hay- which came from near and far.
           
Rondout Creek offered the best deep-water port in the Hudson Valley and thus became the center of maritime activity between New York and Albany. The Cornell Steamboat Company made its headquarters in Rondout village, where many boats were berthed and repaired, and some were built. Between 1830 and 1900, few harbors of comparable size anywhere in America were as busy as Rondout Creek.
                                                                
By the mid-1800s, the Hudson River had many sidewheel steamboats passing north and south, one grander than the other. They carried both freight and passengers, and speed was of the essence- both for bragging rights and because passengers favored the fastest boats. In the 1860s, Thomas Cornell acquired Mary Powell, the Hudson River’s fastest and most beautiful passenger boat.
           
In this time, Cornell built a magnificent sidewheeler to ply the route from Rondout to New York. She was named in his honor- Thomas Cornell- and was one of the finest vessels operating on the Hudson.
           
Steamboats not able to compete in speed or luxury were often turned into towboats, hauling loaded barges that were lashed together to be towed up or down the river. Cornell began to develop a fleet of towboats, which in time would be replaced by tugboats, designed and built especially for towing on the river.
           
After the Civil War, Cornell was joined in the business by Samuel D. Coykendall, who became his son-in-law as well as a partner in the firm. The combination of Thomas Cornell and S.D. Coykendall soon would create the most powerful towing operation on the Hudson River. At its peak in the late 1800s, the Cornell Steamboat Company ran more than sixty towing vessels and was the largest maritime organization of its kind in the nation.
           
Early in 1890, Thomas Cornell died at home at the age of 77. In son-in-law S.D. Coykendall, Cornell had a worthy successor.
           
During a career of more than fifty years, Thomas Cornell built a mighty business empire and became a leading figure in New York and the nation. In addition to running the Cornell Steamboat Company and the Kingston-Rhinecliff ferry, he built and operated railroads on both sides of the Hudson, helped establish two banks, was a principal in a large Catskill Mountain hotel, and served two terms in Congress.
           
By 1900, the Cornell Steamboat Company had given up the passenger business and turned completely to towing. There were more than sixty steam-powered towing vessels and tugboats in the Cornell fleet. Their boilers were fired by burning coal. Cornell vessels were well-known on the river, with their familiar black and yellow smokestacks clearly recognizable from the northern canals to New York harbor.
           
As the years passed, S.D. Coykendall gave his six sons positions of authority and management in the Cornell business empire. “S.D.,” as he was known, was the leading citizen of Ulster County, heading up banks, developing railroads, operating a hotel and a ferryboat line, and building and operating trolley lines and an amusement park. He invested in many enterprises, including cement works, the ice industry, brickyards, and quarrying operations.
           
The diverse Cornell-Coykendall business empire faced rapid changes, including the coming of the automobile and the increased use of oil instead of coal as fuel. Further, new construction methods in the cities no longer required the bricks, stone, and cement of the Hudson River valley. So, there was less cargo on the river, and less work for Cornell tugboats.
           
In January 1913, S.D. Coykendall died suddenly at his home in Kingston at the age of seventy-six.
           
Frederick Coykendall, who was forty years of age, succeeded his father as president of the Cornell Steamboat Company. Frederick lived in New York and was active in alumni and trustee affairs at Columbia University. He would become chairman of the university’s board of trustees and president of the  university press.
           
Frederick Coykendall and the Cornell Steamboat Company faced adverse economic conditions that in many ways were beyond their control. Around 1930, the Hudson River was deepened to allow ocean-going ships to reach Albany and this ended the towing of grain barges. Railroads and trucks could transport most cargoes faster and more effectively than shipping them by boat. Also, electric refrigeration ended the demand for natural ice, once a major commodity towed by Cornell- as had been the Hudson Valley brick, cement, and bluestone no longer used in construction.
           
Assisting Frederick Coykendall was company vice president C.W. “Bill” Spangenberger, who had been through the ranks since joining Cornell in 1933. When Frederick passed away in 1954, Spangenberger became president. Although company executives worked hard and with considerable success to rebuild Cornell, they were forced to sell out in 1958 when their largest customer, New York Trap Rock Corporation -a producer of crushed stone — offered to buy the company. Trap Rock retained Spanberger as president of Cornell.
           
In 1960, the Cornell Steamboat Company built Rockland County, an innovative, push-type towboat—the first of its kind in permanent service on the Hudson River. With Rockland County, a new age of towing began on the Hudson, but there would be no future for Cornell. Trap Rock was soon acquired by a larger corporation, and the towing company was no longer needed.
           
In 1964, the Cornell Steamboat Company finally closed its doors, after making Hudson River maritime history for an unprecedented one hundred and thirty-seven years. 

                    Muffled Drums for Albany-Potomac by Thomas A. Larremore
"Washington, May 16 [1949] – (AP) – The Potomac River Line announced today its 69-year-old excursion steamer, The POTOMAC, is headed for the scrap heap. The ship, built in Wilmington, Del., and originally known as the S.S. ALBANY, served until 1933 on the New York-to-Albany Hudson River Day run. The POTOMAC, with a passenger capacity of 2,400, will be scrapped at Baltimore. It will be towed there sometime next week, officials of the line said."

Another oldster is gone, suddenly and unexpectedly. This time is it MARY POWELL's side-kicking ex-side-kick of happy years ago on the Hudson River, the ex-Day Liner ALBANY, since 1934 running excursions out of Washington, D.C., for the Potomac River Line, as POTOMAC.

Almost 69 years ago, on July 3, 1880 ALBANY made her first regular trip from New York up-stream to her namesake city. Save for a few years "on reserve" for the Day Line, she performed regularly, earning her living quietly, dependably, surely, safely – recalling, in this respect, PRISCILLA, COMMONWEALTH and the rest of the Fall River liners. Only last summer, at 68 plus, the POTOMAC completed another annual tour of duty and was ready to resume this coming season. Just when the decision to end her career was made is unknown. Only as recently as Feb. 3 [1949] Her Captain, SSHSA member Harry E. Slye, told the writer that had been no suggestion that she was about to be replaced by BEAR MOUNTAIN a WILLIAM G. PAYNE b BRIDGEPORT c HIGHLANDER, despite the transfer last fall of the latter to Washington.
           
Fearing something of the sort was in the air the writer devoted several hours of a business trip to the capital to photographing POTOMAC tied up alongside BEAR MOUNTAIN. Now he is happy indeed to have done so, although the need for rewriting this essay, begun in a different vein, makes his present task sorrowful. Perhaps his feelings can best be gauged by the fact that he had been trying to organizing an excursion anniversary trip on POTOMAC this coming July 3, [1949].
       
 Instead she is off to the wreckers, to join METEOR a CHESTER W. CHAPIN (SB 29;18) and to go the way of those other Hudson River titans: NORWICH (87 when taken off her run) and MARY POWELL, who lived to be 63. Note that ALBANY-POTOMAC’s near-69 years rank her ahead of the famous MARY in the longevity tables. Let there be hats off and muffled drums. A great steamer has passed, and the writer feels as if he has lost a close relative, overnight, for reasons that will presently appear.
           
According to A.V.S. Olcott, president of the Old Day Line, ALBANY’s hull was built in 1879-1880 by Harlan and Hollingsworth, Wilmington, Del., and her machinery and joiner work were put into her iron hull (first of its kind for the line) in 1880. At that time her length was over 295’, her beam (moulded) 40’, and depth 11’6”. Launched in Jan. 1880, she was christened buy Mr. Olcott’s uncle, Charles. T. Van Santvoord. Her paddle boxes, then, were ungainly and semi-circular. In 1892-1893 she was rebuilt and lengthened to 325’6”, with the same beam (accounting for her lanky look), and her gross tonnage became 1,415.42, with net of 815.03. Feathering paddle wheels were added at the time, and her paddle boxes assumed the oblong, streamlined shape that set the fashion.
           
In 1916 she had new boilers, replacing the “3 lobster back boilers” of the early days. Her passenger capacity became 2000. Her original cost, according to Book 23 of the Day Line Journals now at the N.Y. Historical Society, was $187,318.58, including fittings, dry dock fees, cost of towing and customs charges.
           
When HENDRICK HUDSON appeared in 1906, ALBANY was transferred to the Poughkeepsie run as a special boat and when WASHINGTON IRVING came out in 1913, ALBANY replaced MARY POWELL on the run to Rondout. ALBANY was laid up at Athens in 1931 and was sold at public auction on March 6, 1934 at the new County Court House, N.Y. City, to B.B. Wills. On April 19 she left West 42nd Street Pier at 2:50 p.m. for Washington, D.C.
           
After taking ALBANY to Washington Mr. Wills changed her name to POTOMAC, registered her there, put a dance floor on main deck from the forward gangway to the lower deck housing, and installed a band stand. Later a second dance floor was added, on the saloon deck, and the band stand was raised to enable the music to suffice for both floors at once. POTOMAC was converted to oil burning and so remained save for one year during World War II when the oil shortage compelled temporary reconversion to coal. Captain Slye said her registry had recently been transferred to Baltimore, as is evidenced by the current leg ending on the stern. So much for the strictly statistical indispensables.
           
Let us turn to more personal traits. In physical appearance ALBANY, the older and rebuilt CHAUNCEY VIBBARD and the later NEW YORK set a contemporary “new look” for Hudson River boats. The most conspicuous features of this were the three tall funnels set transversely; the ungainly, high, top-heavy-looking, semi-circular paddle boxes; and the general color scheme, perhaps borrowed from the famous “White Squadron” of pre-Spanish War days, i.e., overall whiteness, relieved principally by yellow or buff, most notable on the later-period smoke pipes. ALBANY and VIBBARD looked very much alike, with smokestacks abaft both walking beam and paddle boxes, while in NEW YORK these relative positions were reversed.
           
ALBANY, always a quiet, efficient, dependable, unsensational performer, got away to an appropriately inconspicuous start. After a trial trip to Yonkers on July 2, 1880, to test her machinery, she opened her regular career the next day replacing DANIEL DREW and paddled upstream to her namesake city. New York newspapers paid little attention, being preoccupied with five ocean liners starting trans-Atlantic voyages the same day and commenting on the possibility that they might encounter summer icebergs. Some journals didn’t mention the new river steamer, and only one, the New York World, paid reasonable attention. Perhaps the big city had already become sophisticated enough to take such trivia as the inauguration of another Day Liner too completely in stride to bother about.
           
But there well may have been another reason. In June and July 1880, passenger steamers around New York had suddenly become non grata, recalling very pointedly the earlier days around 1825 when frequent boiler explosions had forced definite recourse to trailer passenger barges. An incredible series of mishaps had taken place. On June 11, 1880, NARRAGANSETT, bound east up L.I. Sound, had collided off Cornfield Point with STONINGTON and burned with the loss of 30 lives. On June 17, two girls had drowned when their rowboat was struck by ELIZA HOWARD, and ugly rumors persisted that adequate efforts to rescue them had not been made. On June 19 GRAND REPUBLIC had engaged in a spectacular collision with ADELAIDE, and an acrimonious investigation of the crash was starting. On June 28 had come the most frightful catastrophe of all. SEAWANHAKA, steamboat for Glen Cove’s commuters, had caught fire passing through Hell Gate and, although skillfully beached broadside to, not five minutes later on Sunken Meadows at Randall’s Island, had notched a toll of 44 or 45 fatalities. On June 29 the stage had been set for a ghastly foreshadowing of the holocaust of the GENERAL SLOCUM (1904) when LONG BRANCH with some 700 passengers, mostly Sunday school children on a picnic, had her bows (openly alleged in the newspapers to be quite rotten) crushed by the oil barge HOP - fortunately, however, without the loss of life. On July 2, 1880, the very day ALBANY made her trial run, the New York Daily Tribune, reporting another accident the day before, had struck the current keynote by writing: “The daily steamboat accident shifted its longitude, yesterday. The boiler of a pleasure boat on one of the Minnesota lakes exploded, killing three persons outright, wounding one fatally and several others seriously.”
           
On the same day the New York Herald announced, as the tragicomic climax to all this: “A barrel of beer exploded on the steamboat STONINGTON, fracturing the leg, arm and collar bone of a sailor named John McCarthy.” Perhaps because of such episodes the Day Line owners preferred to soft-pedal advance publicity about their new boat until they could see how she behaved on the job.
           
At any rate, off she steamed out on the mild blue yonder, as planned, July 3, and that afternoon made a happy landing at Albany, sans fire, sans collision, sans explosion, without even a beer barrel bursting in the air. The New York World gave her this passing mention, July 4. “The new steamer ALBANY, of the Albany day line, made her first regular trip up the Hudson yesterday. She took about one thousand five hundred passengers….She was due at Albany at 6:10 p.m. and was received with fifty guns and a display of bunting. There was a crowd at the wharf to greet her…”
           
Apparently they ordered such things better upstate, for, according to John H. Flandreau, Assistant Archivist, New York State, a clipping from an unidentified newspaper in the Hallenbeck material at Albany reads in part as follows:
           
"On Saturday the ALBANY left her landing in New York nine minutes late, with over 2,000 passengers aboard and against a strong head wind and ebb tide, made West Point and Newburgh on time. Ny the time the boat reached Rhinebeck (then the port of call of Rondout, reached by ferry, and the Southern Catskills), she was about an half hour late, caused by some slight difficulty with her new machinery. By this time the crowd of people had swelled to immense proportions and at this landing fully 500 disembarked, and when Catskill was reached. Fully as many more got off there. From Catskill to this city tows and other hindrances caused the vessel to lose time, and she did not reach here until half-past seven o’clock. All along the river, residents had their houses decorated, and with cannon and other explosives welcomed the advent of the ALBANY.
           
“At Hudson, the dock and hills were crowded with people despite the fact that quite a rain prevailed at the time. When she hove in sight of the city, the greatest excitement prevailed, and, amid the booming of cannon, the screeching of steamboat whistles, the ringing of bells, the playing of Austin’s band, and the shouts of a thousand people assembled on the docks and piers, the ALBANY steamed into port and touched her dock.

Description accompanying print: The original painting, by noted artist, John Gould, might well be called an inspired masterpiece. It was developed with help for accuracy from the well known expert, retired captain William O. Benson of Sleightsburgh, N.Y. He is an authority on the Hudson River History, its boats and shipping. Learn more about John Gould (1906-1996) here: https://johngouldart.com/about/

The maiden voyage of the "Alexander Hamilton" was placed by the artist for this painting, passing Rondout Creek, Kingston, N.Y. The area with the two Kingston Lighthouses makes an important historical background for this great documentary painting.

The maiden voyage suggests a wedding procession with the gleaming white boat, the accompanying flotilla and the sparkling reflection of the sun on the water, resembling wedding confetti.

[Editor's note: 2023 season lighthouse tours and Solaris solar powered boat rides are offered by HRMM here: https://www.hrmm.org/all-boat-tours.html]

                                   The ALEXANDER HAMILTON'S First Trip 
The following is a brief description of the event by Captain William O. Benson: On the 29th of May, 1924, the Hudson River Day Line steamer ALEXANDER HAMILTON made her first voyage on the great Hudson River from New York City to the State Capital at Albany.

I was a student in the old District No. 13 School at Port Ewen, and we had been told the HAMILTON was making her first trip up river. I was wishing she would be late, so I could rush out at 3:30 p.m. and run to the sand bank at Sleightsburgh and watch her come up. I will admit all day in school my mind was on the new HAMILTON and sure enough when school was dismissed I guess I was the first out and on my way to the sand bank.

I could see the new flyer coming up off Schleede's brick yard south of Port Ewen. She was about an hour late due to some problem with her new engine, I guess due to the fact she was new.

As she was passing the Rondout Lighthouse, the steamer JACOB H. TREMPER was just coming out of Rondout Creek. When the HAMILTON blew her landing whistle for Kingston Point of one long, one short and one long, how the sea gulls and egrets rose high in the air. The Lighthouse keeper rang the fog bell three times and the ferry TRANSPORT, just inside of the Lighthouse, blew three whistles in salute which the HAMILTON answered. Also on the starboard side of the HAMILTON, out in the river, was Cornell Steamboat Company tug HARRY blowing her chime whistle. It sure was great to stand and watch a new sidewheeler being greeted by other much older steamboats from another age.

She was all decorated out with American flags and signal colors for her first trip up the river.

She was faithful to the old Hudson for 47 long years, carrying many happy people up and down and to the pleasure parks along the beautiful Hudson River.

                                         More about Port Ewen brickyards:
At the end of his school day in Port Ewen, William O. Benson ran to the Sleightsburg shore and spotted the ALEXANDER HAMILTON coming up off Schleede's brickyard south of Port Ewen. The tall brick stack in the painting might have been remnants of one of the Port Ewen Brickyards, Turner or Jacob Kline/Bishop. The chute was probably used to load bricks or ice blocks onto barges for transport to New York City.

In 1852, Jacob Kline, became cashier for the Pennsylvania Coal Co., and John Ewen (namesake of Port Ewen) became President. From then until 1865, Port Ewen thrived as a terminal for Honesdale, PA coal which came on Delaware & Hudson canal boats and was transferred to barges going to New York City on the Hudson River.

However, after litigation between the D&H and Pennsylvania Coal companies, the latter moved to Newburgh in 1865 leaving many Irish canal workers who lived on that Port Ewen hill unemployed. Jacob Kline built a brickyard which employed these workers and saved Port Ewen from economic collapse. Tugs were named after Kline's daughters.

John D. Schoonmaker of Kingston had a large 23,000 ton ice house erected, helping employment in the winter when the river was frozen. Ice was harvested from Turner's pond on the Port Ewen hill and stored in the icehouse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                                   Steamboat "Jacob H. Tremper"

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

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

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