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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 March 14, 1972.  The Cornell Steamboat Company tugboat fleet, left, ca. 1900 along the Rondout in early spring. On the right are passenger boats along Island Dock awaiting the start of the boating season. Saulpaugh Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum Up until the time the Cornell Steamboat Company acquired the diesel tugboats “Lion’’ and “Jumbo” in 1924, all of their tugboats were steam propelled. As steamers, all the tugs burned coal and taking on coal - or coaling up - was a regular event of day to day operations. For many decades, Cornell maintained a coal pocket at the easterly end of its property on East Strand. Coal would be transferred by conveyor from railroad cars on an adjacent siding into large bins in the coal pocket. The coal pocket itself was located right next to the dock and the tugboats would berth at the coal pocket and take on coal from large shutes direct from the bins. When I was a boy growing up along Rondout Creek, it was quite a sight watching the big Cornell tugs taking on coal at the coal pocket. As the tug would come in the creek, she would tie up at the coal pocket and first take coal on the starboard side. As the coal went aboard, the tug would lay over on her side and it seemed the large smokestacks would be only a few feet from the upper part of the coal pocket. Then seeing the tugs turn around with their starboard guards and main deck rail part under water, one would think they were going to turn over on their sides and sink. Always Wondered There I used to watch the “Pocahontas,” “Osceola,” “George W. Washburn,” “Edwin H. Mead,” “Perseverance” and the smaller helper tugs take on coal and wonder what kept them from rolling over. Always I would watch, thinking in my young mind I was going to see something happen that no one had seen before. But, they always got around, took coal on their port side, came back to an even keel, and went back out to the river. As the years rolled on, the day came when I was to do the same thing with many of the same tugboats at the same coal pocket that the men of my youth had done. Now, however, the steam tugs are all gone as is the coal pocket. Once, in May 1935, one tug did sink at the coal pocket and as far as I can recall this is the only time it happened. The small tug ‘‘Empire’’ was coaling up. Her starboard guard caught on a broken spile [sic] under water which held her up. The men in the engine room and the pilot house thought she could take a little more coal and put some more aboard. Then, when they went to turn her around, she slipped off the spile and really lay over on her side. They wound her around and when the port side hit the dock, she went over just enough more for the water to pour in her deck scuttles — and down she went. In a few days a Merritt, Chapman and Scott derrick was brought up from New York and raised her.  The Cornell Steamboat Company tug “Pocahontas” was built in 1884 and acquired by Cornell in 1901. The “Pocahontas” had a sister tug, the “Osceola.” This large and handsome tug operated on the Hudson River until 1939. The Hudson River Maritime Museum has a nameboard from the “Pocahontas.” Donald C. Ringwald Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum Always A Hazard Since coal burns, fire was always a hazard to a coal pocket. The Cornell Steamboat Company lost two of theirs by burning, the first time in 1907 and the second time in 1936. The fire in 1907 — on November 3, a Sunday — totally destroyed the coal pocket, several hundred tons of coal, and almost destroyed the big tugboat “John H. Cordts.” The “Cordts’’ was tied up at the dock adjacent to the coal pocket. The fire broke out in the coal pocket and got a good start before it was discovered. The fire spread rapidly and soon the forward part of the “Cordts” was also aflame. The burning coal in the coal pocket made an incredibly hot fire. Although the coal pocket and most of its contents were total losses, the Kingston Fire Department was able to save the “Cordts” — not however before the forward half of the tugboat had been burned away and the tug had been purposely sunk at the dock. The “Cordts” was subsequently raised, rebuilt and continued in service for nearly another 20 years. After the 1907 fire, Cornell built a new coal pocket at the same site, somewhat smaller in size. Once during the mid 1920’s, the big tugboat “George W. Washburn” came into the Cornell shops and tied up at the coal pocket dock. During the night a fire broke out on the tugboat and spread to the coal pocket. Prompt action by the Kingston Fire Department, however saved both the “Washburn” and the coal pocket. Thanksgiving Disaster Finally, at 2 a.m, on Thanksgiving morning 1936, this coal pocket again caught fire and this time the fire got such a start it was impossible to save it. The fire which was a two alarmer, completely destroyed the coal pocket and about 50 tons of coal. The 1936 fire marked the end of steamboat coal pockets on Rondout Creek. By this time, the Cornell fleet was considerably reduced in size due to a decline in towing on the Hudson River and diesel tugboats were taking the place of steam tugs. And so another era — the age of coal — came to a close along the banks of the Rondout. AuthorCaptain William Odell Benson was a life-long resident of Sleightsburgh, N.Y., where he was born on March 17, 1911, the son of the late Albert and Ida Olson Benson. He served as captain of Callanan Company tugs including Peter Callanan, and Callanan No. 1 and was an early member of the Hudson River Maritime Museum. He retained, and shared, lifelong memories of incidents and anecdotes along the Hudson River. If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today!
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 A busy day at Rondout c. 1880, shows the passenger steamer “M. Martin” turning in the Rondout Creek to leave amid a crowd of canal boats, some full of coal, at the end of Island Dock, during the heyday of the D. & H. Canal. Hudson River Maritime Museum Collection If you enjoyed this post and would like to support more history blog content, please make a donation to the Hudson River Maritime Museum or become a member today! The Hudson River was integral to the development of the Delaware and Hudson Canal. The Canal was conceived by Philadelphia dry goods merchants Maurice and Charles Wurts in the second decade of the 19th century, in order to transport anthracite coal from Pennsylvania mines to New York City. The coal traversed the 108-mile-long Canal, winding through the Lackawaxen, Delaware, Neversink, Bashakill, Sandburgh and Rondout valleys before arriving at the Hudson River near Kingston, NY. From there, the cargo would travel south on the Hudson for over eighty miles to supply the primary market in New York City. Coal was also shipped north to Albany—about forty-five miles—and from there it could be transported on the Erie Canal to support the westward expansion of the population.  Island Dock in the Rondout Creek showing coal loader machines made by the Dodge Coal Storage Co. of Philadelphia. The canal boats behind the steamboat have had their rear compartments 'hipped', the addition of higher sidewalls to accommodate a greater load, and appear to possibly rafted together to be towed by the steamboat. D&H Canal Historical Society Collection, #73.22. Benjamin Wright (the chief engineer of the middle section of the Erie Canal) oversaw the original plans for the D&H Canal, which date from 1823. He believed that “the Canal boats may navigate the Hudson. A steam boat of 50 horse power will tow ten of them, and if double manned will perform the trip to New York and back in 2 days, the distance 100 miles.”[1] However, the earliest canal boats, which were 75 feet long and 9 feet wide, with a capacity 30 tons, proved unsuitable for travel on the river. As a result, coal had to be offloaded from canal boats to other vessels at Rondout for transport on the Hudson River—a time-consuming and costly process. In Steamboats for Rondout Donald Ringwald writes, “...the canalboats obviously had to be small size and because of this and a need to keep them on their regular work, they generally did not go beyond the Company works on Rondout Creek.”[2] By 1831, the Company had begun purchasing barges for use on the Hudson. The first two were the Lackawanna (146 feet in length) and the James Kent (135 feet in length), and to tow them, the D&H Canal Company “chartered and then purchased an elderly sidewinder named Delaware.”[3]  Canal boats being unloaded with elevators made by the Chase Patent Elevator Company of Fall River, Mass. The picture was taken c1890 by amateur photographer and D&H employee Louis Hoysradt, who signed it on the reverse. D&H Canal Historical Society Collection, #82.19.14 As the Canal Company prospered, the Canal was enlarged. In the 1840s, the depth was incrementally increased from four to five feet, with no change in the original width of thirty-two feet. In 1847, anticipating increased traffic from a deal with the Wyoming Coal Association (which later became the Pennsylvania Coal Company) to transport their coal on the D&H Canal, the company enlarged the waterway, which reached its final depth of six feet and width of forty to fifty feet by 1850. The new dimensions of the Canal accommodated boats that were ninety-one feet long, fourteen and a half feet wide, and could carry up to 130 tons of coal.[4]  Men with shovels and wheel barrows moving coal on the banks of the Creek in Rondout. The cost of handling coal was greatly reduced after the 1850 final enlargement of the D&H Canal, as the larger boats could be towed on the Hudson River. D&H Canal Historical Society Collection, #82.19.2 Safe navigation of the Hudson was considered so important that, in a letter dated January 21, 1852 from head engineer Russel Farnum Lord to President John Wurts, a discussion of the new boats for the enlarged canal noted: “The Birdsall Lattice Boats derive their advantage of carrying the largest cargoes, mainly, if not entirely, from the difference in their weight when light – Their plan of construction however is such that there is a reason to doubt their durability and substantial ability for use on the river.”[5] Later, referring to boats from a different builder, he wrote: “From the experience had, it is evident that the Round Bow Section Scows are, and will be, the best and most desirable for the Coal Canal business – With them an important and permanent reduction in the rate of freight may be established – The only draw back is, whether they will be competent for the river transportation.”[6] The cost of handling the coal at Rondout was uppermost in their minds and the larger boats that the company ordered proved Hudson River – worthy.  The steamboat "M. Martin" turning around in the Rondout Creek in a 1896 photo. D&H Canal Historical Society Collection, #73.158 Throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, rafts of up to 100 canal scows were frequently encountered on the Hudson. On August 18, 1889 The New York Times wrote: Very few persons who journey up or down the Hudson River either upon the palatial steamers or upon the railway trains that run along both banks of this great waterway know how great an amount of wealth is daily floated to this city on the canalboats and barges that compose the immense tows that daily leave West Troy, Lansingburg, Albany, Kingston, and other points along the river bound for this city…. From Kingston, which is the tide-water outlet of the Delaware and Hudson Canal, another class of merchandise is shipped in the same manner. From the mouth of the Rondout Creek, which forms the harbor of the thriving and busy city of Kingston, can be seen emerging every evening huge rafts of canalboats, tall-masted down-Easters, and barges of various sorts, laden with coal, ice, hay, lumber, lime, cement, bluestone, brick, and country produce. Many of these craft have received their cargoes at the wharves of Kingston, while others have come from the coal regions about Honesdale and Scranton, in Pennsylvania, all bound for this port and consigned to, perhaps, as many different persons as there are boats in the tow.”[7]  Large tows of canal boats were a common sight on the Hudson River in the second half of the nineteenth century. D&H Canal Historical Society Collection, #73.143 From its opening in 1828 through the closing of most of the canal in 1898—and even through 1917, when the section from Rosendale to Rondout finally stopped carrying cement—the Delaware and Hudson Canal was responsible for vast amounts of traffic on the Hudson River. Indeed there would not have been a Delaware and Hudson Canal without the Hudson River! Notes: [1] H. Hollister M.D., History of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. Unpublished MS c1880. p. 22. [2] Donald C. Ringwald, Steamboats For Rondout, Passenger Service Between New York and Rondout Creek, 1829 Through 1863. Steamship Historical Society of America, Inc. 1981. p. 17. [3] Ibid. [4] Larry Lowenthal, From the Coalfields to the Hudson. Purple Mountain Press. 1997. pp. 142-48. [5] The letters of Russell F. Lord, chief engineer of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, June 1848 to October 1852. D&H Canal Historical Society collection #2016.01.01. Transcribed by Audrey M. Klinkenberg. [6] Ibid. [7] New York Times, August 18, 1889. AuthorBill Merchant is the historian and curator of the D&H Canal Historical Society in High Falls, NY. He lives in a canal side, canal era house in High Falls with his wife Kelly where he also works as a double bass luthier and antique dealer. |
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