Editor's Note: This series of blog posts recounts the dramatic story of the Esopus Indian Nation’s Revolutionary War exodus. The original inhabitants of Ulster County, the Esopus Indians successfully maintained their sovereignty and traditional way of life in the face of overwhelming odds for over a century. These blog posts are summaries of a much fuller story that will be published in 2027.

Part 5. Refugees: 1779

Raids by Rebel ranging companies and Continental Army soldiers over the course of 1778 turned the Esopus Indians and their neighbors into refugees. In late December of 1778, with their towns destroyed, Loyalist Mohawks, Oneidas, Tuscaroras, and Mohicans of Onaquaga moved to the British outpost of Fort Niagara for safety.[1] Censuses taken by the British Indian Department at Fort Niagara over the winter of 1779 note that the Esopus Indians had also temporarily moved to Fort Niagara, where their leaders were present at councils. With the arrival of springtime, they dispersed to the Genesee Valley, where they were given land to plant corn by the Senecas near Gandagaro.[2] Their preemptive move to Seneca Country – close to the British Indian Department and forces at Fort Niagara, but far from Rebel strongholds on the East Coast – was badly timed, for in the winter and spring of 1779, George Washington was helping to plan an expedition for later that year that would destroy virtually every town in Indian Country.

In the meantime, Esopus men began to trek back to their Ulster County homeland in warparties. These were not simply retaliatory attacks: records from the British Indian Department reveal that the Esopus Indians acted in special operations and intentionally sought to capture high-ranking Rebel officials for information and for ransom. They also acted as spies and were paid for bringing back information.[3] However, these expeditions often incorporated traditional raiding tactics, especially when warriors were able to inflict retribution on individuals who had abused them in the past. On May 4th, they led a violent raid at Fantinekill, burning several houses and killing six.[4] Two weeks later, Governor Clinton was informed that a large Loyalist and Indian raiding party, likely the same one, was in the environs of Shandaken; he was also informed that Esopus Indian warriors had built a blockhouse (a small fortification) somewhere on the West Branch of the Delaware River, and that they were being supplied with food by isolated Loyalist settlers in the Catskill Mountains.[5]

On July 23rd, Esopus Indian leader John Runnupe returned to Fort Niagara with a number of Rebel newspapers that he had taken in Ulster County. He also reported some major news: eighteen days earlier, from a lookout on the Catskill Escarpment – likely Overlook Mountain – he had “heard the firing and saw the smoke of two armies engaged [down the Hudson River] at Fish Kill… and it was afterwards told that General Washington had been defeated and was pursued twenty miles…. He also says that on his return he met, a little beyond Schoharie, fourteen days ago, a man who had come from the rebel army and was told by him that two days before that, the time the man came away, the British Forces were taking up the chain that the rebels had fixed across the river at the Highlands.”[6] Amazingly, based on the usual route taken by the Esopus Indians and their allies to reach Fort Niagara from the Catskills, John Runnupe would have traversed well over 300 miles in less than three weeks.
​
Simultaneously, George Washington’s massive expedition – known as the Sullivan Campaign – was making its way through Indian Country, destroying every house, every stalk of corn, and every fruit tree in their path until October. The Esopus Indian refugees who had temporarily resettled in the Genesee Valley a few months earlier were uprooted once again. Thousands of Native and Loyalist refugees fled to Fort Niagara for protection, just in time for one of the coldest winters on record. Many would not survive the frigid months that spanned 1779 and 1780, but most did; the British Indian Department’s ability to feed and shelter so many refugees of so many nations is nothing short of miraculous. When winter thawed to spring in May of 1780, the Esopus Indians who had camped outside Fort Niagara shifted to Buffalo Creek to the south near Lake Erie (near what is now Buffalo, NY), where the women could plant corn and survive for another year.[7] The warriors of the Six Nations and their allies prepared for revenge.
                                                                To Be Continued…

Citations:
[1] Correspondence with Officers at Niagara, 1777-1784. Haldimand Collection, Microfilm Reel number A-682. National Archives of Canada.
[2] “Major General Philip Schuyler to George Washington, 3 April 1779,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-19-02-0684. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 19, 15 January–7 April 1779, ed. Philander D. Chase and William M. Ferraro. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009, pp. 729–734.
[3] Haldimand Papers, 21767 Pt 4. National Archives of Canada.
[4] Public Papers of George Clinton, Vol IV. Albany, NY: 1900. 798-799; "The Story of Fatine Kill" in Olde Ulster, Vol. II. Benjamin Myer Brink, Kingston: 1906. 105-112.
[5] Sparks, Jared. Correspondence of the American Revolution. 299-301
[6] Correspondence with Officers at Niagara, 1777-1784. Haldimand Collection, Microfilm Reel number A-682. National Archives of Canada.
[7] Haldimand Papers, Reel h1448.1304. National Archives of Canada.

Editor's Note: This series of blog posts recounts the dramatic story of the Esopus Indian Nation’s Revolutionary War exodus. The original inhabitants of Ulster County, the Esopus Indians successfully maintained their sovereignty and traditional way of life in the face of overwhelming odds for over a century. These blog posts are summaries of a much fuller story that will be published in 2027.

Part 4. Destruction: Autumn 1778

Over the latter half of 1778, it became abundantly clear that peace in Ulster County was no longer possible. On September 6th, 1778 – the same day that Esopus Indian war captains Benjamin Shanks and John Runnupe sent their letter of grievance and threat of retaliation to the militia officers in Marbletown – Colonel Johannes Cantine received a letter from Governor Clinton, who informed him that he was “…fully convinced that we are not to have Peace on our Frontier, untill the Straggling Indians & Tories who infest it are exterminated or drove back & their Settlements destroyed. If, therefore, you can destroy the Settlement of [Onaquaga] it will in my Oppinion be a good Piece of Service.”[1] A few days later, a group of two dozen militiamen stumbled upon the Esopus warriors’ encampment on the East Branch of the Delaware near present-day Downsville.

The warriors, who knew of the militia’s approach, ambushed them; the two sides fought in a dense hemlock forest on a nearby mountainside until nightfall, when both sides retreated, leaving four or five dead on each side. The most detailed account of this battle was recorded from militia participants decades after the war ended. They assumed that their professed superior fighting prowess meant that the Esopus warriors had lost even more men but had removed the bodies from view. (This was most certainly not the case).[2] By the end of the month, Governor Clinton had planned an invasion for the other side of the Catskills, with the express aim of sending militiamen and Continental Army soldiers to destroy the villages of the Esopus Indians on the West Branch of the Delaware as well as Joseph Brant’s base at the nearby large mixed town of Onaquaga.[3]

That October, a large Rebel invasion force set out from the Schoharie Valley and headed towards the upper Susquehanna. Under Lieut. Col. William Butler (not to be confused with prominent Loyalist John Butler), this force destroyed the mixed Native towns of Onaquaga and Unadilla as well as the farms of outlying Loyalist settlers.[4] They did so with little opposition, for the warriors and Loyalist volunteers under Joseph Brant were absent, raiding Rebel farms in the Delaware Valley. Fortunately, the inhabitants of Onaquaga and Unadilla knew that the Rebel forces were coming, and most of the non-combattants were able to safely evacuate a few hours beforehand. Tragically, a number of Indian children, hiding in a cornfield, were discovered and were murdered by the Rebels with bayonets.[5] Now, nearly all the farms and settlements in the Western Catskills and upper Susquehanna – Native and European – had been destroyed.
​
The close proximity of the now-destroyed Loyalist Mohican settlements at Unadilla to the Esopus Indian settlements on the West Branch of the Delaware, combined with the destruction on the East Branch, meant that the Esopus Indians were surrounded by destruction on all sides. Those Esopus families who had moved to Onaquaga for safety in the previous year were also now homeless. With the loss of their prime agricultural lands on the East Branch of the Delaware and the loss of Onaquaga as a secure base of operations, they could no longer remain on the Catskill Mountain frontier. The Esopus Indians subsequently moved their women and children further westward for safety to the towns of Otsiningo and Chughnut, where many Esopus Indians already lived (near Binghamton, NY).[6] They had been forced out of what remained of their ancestral territory.
                                                        To Be Continued…

Citations:
[1] Ibid, Vol. III: 250-251.
[2] Munsell & Co., History of Delaware County, N. Y. 135
[3] Ibid., Vol. IV. 114-115.
[4] Montgomery, Thomas Lynch, ed. Pennsylvania Archives, Fifth Series, Vol. II. Harrisburg, PA: Harisburg Publishing Company, 1906. 1026-1029
[5] Preston, Samuel. "Journey to Harmony" in Patricia H. Christian, ed., Samuel Preston, 1789-1989. Equinunk, PA: Equinunk Historical Society, 1989. 100-101.
[6] Public Papers of George Clinton, Vol IV. Albany, NY: 1900. 412-414

Editor's Note: This series of blog posts recounts the dramatic story of the Esopus Indian Nation’s Revolutionary War exodus. The original inhabitants of Ulster County, the Esopus Indians successfully maintained their sovereignty and traditional way of life in the face of overwhelming odds for over a century. These blog posts are summaries of a much fuller story that will be published in 2027.

Part 3. In Their Old Barbarous Manner: 1778

​By May of 1778, multiple reports had filtered into Ulster County that the Esopus Indians had transferred their families and non-combattants from the East Branch of the Delaware River to two settlements on the more distant West Branch. Simultaneously, the greater part of their warriors remained encamped on the East Branch near Downsville. Wandering companies of Rebel rangers or militiamen posed a serious threat to both the remaining Catskill Mountain frontier settlers – who were largely Loyalists – and to the Esopus Indians themselves. In fact, a Loyalist officer in Cochecton as much as stated that the presence of these ranging companies, who regularly plundered suspected Loyalist farms, would be the ultimate reason for the Esopus Indians wholeheartedly switching to the British side.[1]

On July 8th, 1778, the Esopus Indians had had enough of maintaining neutrality with the Rebels in Ulster County. Their warriors had been among the victors at the previous year’s Battle of Oriskany to the north, and they were tired of the threats and abuses inflicted on the frontier by Rebel militiamen. In preparation for a potential invasion of their ancestral country, the Esopus Indian war captains –  by order of the Six Nations council at Onondaga – sent a letter meant for the Loyalist inhabitants of Hurley, Marbletown and Kingston, warning them to get out before they were accidentally mistaken for Rebels in the upcoming expedition.[2] Two days later, it was reported that 20 Esopus Indian warriors and 20 Loyalists were planning to raid the area of Rochester and the upper Rondout Valley, and had already taken the livestock and a number of prisoners from Lackawack near the headwaters of the Rondout.[3] Simultaneously, a Munsee and Loyalist warparty raided Minisink on the Delaware River to the southwest. And a report surfaced that John Butler, commander of the loyalist corp Butler’s Rangers, had sent Esopus Indian war captain Ben Shanks to collect Loyalist volunteers from the Western Catskills.[4] Combined with the bloody Battle of Wyoming to the west in Pennsylvania on July 3rd, frontier settlers in Ulster County had reason to be nervous, regardless of whose side they were on.

In August, New York’s Governor Clinton sent a letter to Colonel John Cantine of Marbletown, informing him that it would be best to send out militia companies to remove or destroy all grain and other provisions on the East Branch of the Delaware River in order to weaken frontier Loyalist forces.[5] At least two ranging expeditions made their way over the mountains, one out of Schoharie. On September 4th, Clinton reported success, noting that the rangers had taken great numbers of “…Sheeps, Hogs, and Cattle also a Quantity of Dears Leather; Destroyed all ye grain on the [East Branch of the Delaware] River for tweenty miles, Exceept Indian Corn (tho they where but thirteen In Number)” and planned “to Destroy that as Soon as possible.”[6] The parties of militiamen returned to Marbletown and, high on their success, wanted to expand operations to destroy the town of Onaquaga on the nearby Susquehanna River near Windsor, NY. Onaquaga had become Joseph Brant’s base of operations in early 1778, and functioned as the place of authority for all Loyalists – white, black and Indian – on the frontiers of Ulster County.[7]

Evidently, the militiamen who had burned twenty miles of grain and taken so many livestock on the East Branch of the Delaware had also committed various foul deeds against the neutral and Loyalist inhabitants. In retaliation for the destruction of their homes and for these crimes, around 20 Esopus warriors and Loyalists raided the Rondout Valley as far as Kerhonkson. On their return towards the Catskills, they were pursued by a similar number of militiamen led by Lieutenant John Graham. When in the vicinity of what is now Grahamsville, the Esopus Indian raiding party encountered the pursuing militiamen and, after some fierce fighting, forced them to retreat. Lt. Graham and two of his men were killed and scalped.[8]

On the following day (September 6th), the Esopus Indians’ two war captains – Benjamin Shanks and John Runnupe – sent a remarkable letter to the militia officers in Marbletown to inform them “of the Conduct of the Rangers in theire two Excursions on the Papaconck [i.e. East Branch] River… Your Old Friends the Esopus Indians had allwase ment to Screen Your part of the Country as much as possible in the Present Unhapy Contest as they had no Particular spite at you… your Rangers has Stript severall familys & not Left them one Cow; they have Stript the Women and Children of all their Blanketts & Bed Cloaths & a Great many of their other cloathes; their knocking Women down [likely committing rape] & many more acts Unbecoming men… their Burning every bitt of Grain they could find on the River for fear of the Indian have some Little off, they say may be the means of many of your [own] Barns being Destroyed… They Desire me to Inform you that if your Rangers Come out any more to hurt the Women & Children they will Revenge it Dredfuly on your Women & Children & will spare none tho they never ment to hurt them. In regard of Prisioners that are or may be taken they desire to Inform you that if you hang or put to Death any one of them, that they will burn every Prisioner they Gett in their Old Barbarous manner.”[9]
                                                               To Be Continued…
 
Citations:         
[1] Public Papers of George Clinton, Vol. III. Albany: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Co. 1900.  368-369.
[2] “Letter from the Indians of Papagonk to Ulster County Settlers” WHS 68.8 Call number 68.8, No. 47. The Scheide Library Collections, Princeton University.
[3] Public Papers of George Clinton, Vol. II:  544-545
[4] Monroe, John D. Chapters in the History of Delaware County, New York. Delhi, NY:
Delaware County Historical Association, 1949. 50.
[5] Brink, Benjamin. Olde Ulster, Vol.3. Kingston, NY: 1907. 20.
[6] Public Papers of George Clinton, Vol. III: 728-730.
[7] Public Papers of George Clinton, Vol. III: 728-730.
[8] Ibid., Vol. IV: 16-19.
[9] Public Papers of George Clinton, Vol. II. Albany: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Co. 1900. 644-645.

Editor's Note: This series of blog posts recounts the dramatic story of the Esopus Indian Nation’s Revolutionary War exodus. The original inhabitants of Ulster County, the Esopus Indians successfully maintained their sovereignty and traditional way of life in the face of overwhelming odds for over a century. These blog posts are summaries of a much fuller story that will be published in 2027.

Part 2: A Peaceable Disposition (1776-1777)
​
Spring, 1776. Over the New England border to the east, revolution was brewing. Within a few months, it had reached the isolated settlers living near to the Esopus Indians on the far side of the Catskill Mountains. In that year, Kingston resident Charles DeWitt, a member of the New York Provincial Congress, became colonel of the 2nd Ulster County Militia regiment. Like other colonial officials, he knew that the outcome of previous colonial wars greatly depended on the support of Native allies, especially the powerful Six Nations. In Ulster County, the Esopus Indians no longer resided in appreciable numbers around Kingston and the river towns. Over the preceding decades, nearly the entirety of the Esopus Indian Nation had moved over the Catskill Mountains to the headwaters of the Delaware and Suquehanna Rivers, where they were in regular communication with both the government of the Six Nations and with that of Ulster County. Individuals and families continued to visit their old Hudson Valley homeland, where many still counted friends among their Dutch colonial former neighbors. For DeWitt, maintaining friendly relations with the county’s former Native residents might ensure some measure of protection in case the war were to spread into the Colony of New York. And so, Col. Charles DeWitt and other Ulster County officials strove to strengthen the traditional bonds of friendship between Ulster County and its Esopus Indians.

Over the course of 1776, Kingston authorities sent letters and gifts to the Esopus Indians’ tribal government and elected chief, Philip Houghtaling. Notably, they sent quantities of gunflints, powder, and lead for ammunition over the mountains. These gifts of ammunition seem to indicate that DeWitt hoped for more than simply peaceful relations. Perhaps he hoped that, like the Stockbridge Mohicans in New England to the east, the Esopus Indians also sympathized with the Rebel cause. Indeed, quantities of ammunition were also sent over the mountains to those settlers who were known to be “hearty friends of the American cause.”[1] The Esopus Nation’s leadership, like that of their Nanticoke, Munsee, Mohican, and Tuscarora neighbors on the nearby upper Susquehanna, emphasized to colonial officials in both Pennsylvania and New York of their desire to stay out of conflict. They offered, instead, to shield Ulster County from the war while not otherwise offering support.[2]

That autumn, the thinly-scattered European settlers on the far side of the Catskills expressed alarm at a possible war afoot in adjacent Indian Country. The paranoia of Indian raids that spread among them was much like that which overtook Ulster County two decades earlier during the French and Indian War. What these settlers did not mention in their panicked letters was the fact that some of them had formed a gang and were actively persecuting Loyalist neighbors on the upper Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers. Many of the so-called Loyalists were simply peaceful farmers who had little interest in joining a rebellion. The persecutions – which included violent evictions and theft of property – got so out of hand that armed local Indian warriors felt the need to protect these settlers.[3] The harassment by the roving Rebel gangs pushed many on the frontier – Indian and white – towards Loyalism. In that September, leaders from the tribal governments on the western side of the Catskills pledged loyalty to the British at a large treaty held at Fort Niagara.[4] Upon returning from Fort Niagara, Esopus Indian chief sachem Philip Houghtaling sent a representative, the war captain John Runnupe, with a message to local Rebel settlers: they had one week to leave the Western Catskills, with no guarantee of safety for those who refused.[5]

In response, Ulster County resolved that a company of rangers be formed to patrol the western frontier of Ulster County to protect non-Loyalist settlers.[6] A few days later, more alarming news arrived from over the Catskills: an elderly Esopus Indian woman “…weeping much… desired the [settlers] to move this week to get out danger, and that she would not see them [again for] a long time… she expected that in case they did not move off they would be murdered by the Indians in a short time…”[7] Many settlers now abandoned their frontier farms and fled eastward to the safety of the river towns. And yet, even if they had warned off rebellious frontier settlers, the Esopus Indians still showed no inclination towards conflict with Ulster County as a whole. A number of their leaders arrived in Kingston in November of 1776 to renew the treaty of peace, just as they had done nearly annually since the Second Esopus War ended in 1664. This would be the last time in history that the Nicolls Treaty was renewed.
           
The winter of early 1777 passed by relatively uneventfully. When travel became easier with the melting of winter snow, messengers were once again sent from Kingston to the Esopus Indians on the other side of the Catskills to enquire as to their intentions.[8] By early April of 1777, the Esopus Indians’ response was received: they still wished to maintain peace with Ulster County. The Esopus Indian leadership even offered to send one of their most respected citizens, Nicholas, to Kingston with his family to remain for the duration of the war as a sign of their good will (and as a potential hostage). Chief Sachem Philip Houghtaling ended his message stating that “We assure you of a truth, that it is our determination that we will lay still in this distressing time, and that you shall not receive damage by us… The remote tribes of Indians are mostly joined at Niagara, and we expect they will be on your [i.e., the rebels’] backs some time this moon, at the northward [towards the Mohawk River]…”[9]
           
Pragmatically, the Esopus Indians wished to avoid conflict with their friends and former neighbors in the river towns of Ulster County, regardless of political orientation. They promised to protect Ulster County from raids by Loyalists and loyal Indian allies, so long as Ulster County protected Esopus Indian families and settlements on the upper Susquehanna and along the upper branches of the Delaware River. But by all indications, in following the lead of the Six Nations, the Esopus Indian Nation had allied itself with Great Britain the previous autumn two months before renewing the Nicholls Treaty in Kingston for the last time. And they had good reason to do so: should the Rebels win the war, they would prove to be an existential threat to all of those Native Nations dwelling near to the Fort Stanwix Treaty Line.[10] Moreover, it is likely that many young Esopus Indian warriors were inspired by charismatic Mohawk war chief and British officer Joseph Brant, who spent lengths of time in these years living amongst them. By early August of 1777, the Esopus Indians had participated as victors in one of the bloodiest ambushes of the American Revolution: the Battle of Oriskany in the western Mohawk Valley.

Several weeks later, on August 23rd, a rumor spread among the Esopus Indian communities that a large Rebel force from Kingston was on its way to destroy them. Although the rumor was unfounded, Esopus Indian families and non-combattants were sent eastward for safety up the West Branch to an isolated one of their settlements, as well as to Joseph Brant’s base of operations at the town of Onaquaga. It is possible that they imagined that this attack would be retribution for their involvement at Oriskany. They then sent a friendly overture to the authorities in Kingston; just as in previous overtures, they noted that they would continue to shield the river towns in Ulster County from any Loyalist raids, while hoping that Ulster County would cast a blind eye towards their warriors’ support of British military endeavors in the Mohawk Valley to the north.[11] New York Governor Clinton’s response to the Esopus Indians was indignant: that since “…the young Indians & warriors who had joined [the Loyalist officer] Butler went there designedly to fight and kill our People and to assist the English, that we cannot, therefore, consider the Fathers & Mothers of those young Indians as our Friends…”[12]
 
                                                               To Be Continued…
 
Citations:
[1] Journals of the Provincial Congress of the State of New-York: 1775-1776-1777, Vol. I. Albany: Thurlow Weed. 1842. 539-540.
[2] Harvey, Oscar Jewell & Ernest Gray Smith. A History of Wilkes-Barré, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Vol. II. Wilkes-Barré: 1909. 888-889.
[3] McGinnis, Richard. "A Loyalist Journal, Part 1" in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Vol. 105(4). New York: 1974. 193-202.
[4] Journals of the Provincial Congress of the State of New-York: 1775-1776-1777, Vol. II. Albany: Thurlow Weed. 1842. 216.
[5] John Runnupe was likely the son or grandson of his namesake, whose full name was recorded under variations of Noondawiharind and who was involved in land sales in Shawangunk and for the Hardenbergh Patent earlier in the century.
[6] Journals of the Provincial Congress of the State of New-York: 1775-1776-1777, Vol. I. Albany: Thurlow Weed. 1842. 656-657.
[7] Ibid, Vol. II: 340.
[8] Calendar of Historic Manuscripts Relating to the American Revolution in NYS, Vol II. Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons & Company. 1863. 93-94.
[9] Journals of the Provincial Congress of the State of New-York: 1775-1776-1777, Vol. II. Albany: Thurlow Weed. 1842. 423-424.
[10] The 1768 Fort Stanwix Treaty line was a boundary that more-or-less followed the Appalachian Mountains and which was meant to keep the peace by dividing the British colonies from the Indian Nations to the west.
[11] Calendar of Historic Manuscripts Relating to the American Revolution in NYS, Vol II. Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons & Company. 1863. 276-277.
[12] Public Papers of George Clinton, Vol. II. Albany: Wynkoop Hallenbeck Crawford Co. 1900. 272-274.

Editor's Note: This series of monthly blog posts by Justin Wexler recounts the dramatic story of the Esopus Indian Nation’s Revolutionary War exodus. The original inhabitants of Ulster County, the Esopus Indians successfully maintained their sovereignty and traditional way of life in the face of overwhelming odds for over a century.. These blog posts are summaries of a much fuller story that will be published in 2027.

Post 1: Setting the Scene (1770)
Five centuries ago, the hazy-blue peaks of the Catskill Mountains towered over a vast expanse of fertile, grassy flats and cornfields that stretched in swathes from Saugerties to Kingston and far to the westward. On these flats lay a mosaic of cornfields, lush bottoms of tall bluestem grass, and dense thickets of hazelnuts, blackberries and wild plums. Clusters of dome-shaped, bark-shingled houses were found here and there on the edges of the floodplains. The shimmering rivers that wound through these flats – the Esopus, the Rondout and others – were periodically crisscrossed with fence-like weirs and fish traps. The surrounding rocky uplands were cloaked in a forests of oaks and pitch pines and, in many cases, were barren at their tops due to frequent fires. This idyllic, park-like landscape was the result of centuries of careful management by the region’s human inhabitants: the Esopus Indians.

The Esopus Indians appear in the earliest colonial records under variations of the name Waranawankong, perhaps meaning ‘The Cove People.’ They spoke a dialect of what linguists today call the Munsee language.[1] The Esopus dialect survives today in the dozens of place names that still grace their ancestral homeland, including Ponckhockie, Ashokan, Shandaken, Wawarsing and, of course, Esopus. The Esopus Nation’s territory was divided among four matrilineal clans, and included the valleys of the Esopus, the Rondout, the Shawangunk, and the lower Wallkill Rivers as well as the headwaters of the Delaware River and lands across the Hudson River in the current towns of Red Hook and Rhinebeck. A chief sachem was elected to represent the four clans.

In the decades before and after the arrival of Dutch colonists in the early 17th century, the Esopus Indians lived in dispersed settlements that stretched along the terraces of land that border the fertile floodplain bottomlands. There, they grew their crops of maize, pole beans, squash, sunflowers and tobacco. They built stockaded strongholds in select elevated locations to retreat to during times of war. Theirs was a life built around the seasons: in the springtime, when the women were busy preparing their maize fields, most of the men could be found downstream in fishing camps where they took advantage of successive visits of spawning fish including alewives, shad, striped bass, sea lampreys, sturgeon, and eels. Summers were spent close to their cornfields. After the autumn crop harvest, younger and more mobile families visited hunting cabins in the uplands of the Shawangunk Ridge and in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. There, they hunted numbers of white-tailed deer, Eastern elk, black bears and beavers in massive collective hunts. By early springtime, everyone returned to their villages in the bottomlands.

The 1660s were a time of major upheaval in the region. The Esopus Indians controlled the largest stretch of contiguous cleared arable farmland in the entire Hudson Valley. This was extremely attractive to settlers, creating friction that eventually led to the devastating First and Second Esopus Wars with the Dutch settlers. Concurrently, the Esopus Indians were involved in a massive intertribal war with the Five Nations or Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Between 1664 and 1669, the Esopus Indians had little other recourse than to make peace with the Haudenosaunee, with the Dutch and with the British. They would renew these treaties of peace regularly over the entire following century.

Over the 17th and 18th centuries, the Esopus Indians and other regional Native Peoples faced catastrophic population declines, largely due to Old World viruses to which they had little immunity. They soon found themselves to be a minority in their own land. And yet, the New York colonial government continued to treat with them as the sovereign indigenous nation that they were. As a strategy of survival, between the mid-17th century and the mid-18th century the Esopus Indians sold the vast majority of their territory in dozens of land sales, many preserved in deeds to this day. The deeds occasionally reserved their right to reside in or to use select areas. They soon held legal title to very little of their traditional territory.

Land sales, the growing colonial population, and environmental degradation made a traditional life difficult. By the 1750s, the majority of the Esopus Indian People had moved to the other side of the Catskill Mountains. There, they dwelled in communities along Delaware River’s East Branch, where they preserved the traditional spring fish camps for American shad and striped bass and the tradition of winter hunting camps. Over the preceding century, many had gained some level of fluency in the Dutch language. They had also adopted many customs from their colonial neighbors, including keeping of dairy cows, horses, hogs and chickens and growing of new crops including apples, peaches, cucumbers and turnips. Records from this period reveal Esopus Indian individuals who had adopted colonial skills including cider production, violin making, and blacksmithing. And yet, they tenaciously maintained their traditional religion: the Esopus Indians are the only Native group in the Hudson Valley who refused to join the Christian mission at Stockbridge, and only a handful of members joined the Moravian Missions.

By the early 1770s, it became clear that an influx of settlers was coming to the isolated valleys of the western Catskills and upper Susquehanna River, where they had a village called Ahlapeeng. Between the sales of the Hardenbergh Patent and the 1768 Fort Stanwix Treaty, land speculators and settlers were ready to pour over the mountains. Early in 1770, the Esopus Indians even met with British Indian Superintendent Sir William Johnson to try to find a solution. Ultimately, their destiny lay with that of the Haudenosaunee, now the Six Nations, whose lead they had followed since 1669. With the coming of the American Revolution, the consequences would be disastrous.
 
[1] The Munsee language, which belongs to the Eastern Algonquian language subfamily, is still spoken by a handful of descendants on the Moraviantown Reserve in Ontario, Canada.

​The steamboats CONNECTICUT and CHANCELLOR LIVINGSTON will take people to see the launch of the OHIO; the ferry master of the Williamsburgh ferry says that a good view may be had from Williamsburgh

Caution. -- The launch to-morrow will necessarily attract a number of persons, and it is more than possible, that many boat will be on the water. We trust that it will be recollected that the ship by its great size, will create much agitation and swell in the water, sufficient to fill small boats; those therefore, who are for aquatic excursions, will be warned thereby. Boys and children will also be looked after. and let there be no pressing or hurry to cross the ferries; accidents too frequently occur by an overweening anxiety to get a good view or an early sight of the object. The best position is from Corlaers Hook.
National Advocate, May 29, 1820, N-Y D Advertiser, May 30, 1820,

THE LAUNCH. FIRST BRIGADE N. Y. S. ARTILLERY. BRIGADE ORDERS.

A NATIONAL SALUTE will be fired on Tuesday, (this day), the 30th instant, at Corlaers Hook, in honor of the U. S. 74 gun ship, by a battalion from the 9th Regiment. 
. .
Ammunition will be provided on applying to the Brigade Quarter Master
***
THE LAUNCH. PERSONS who wish to see the launch of the Line of Battle Ship from the Navy Yard, are advised to be at the ferries to cross early in the morning, as the crowd will probably be immense, and many persons prevented from getting there in time. The steam ferry-boat will take passengers to see the Launch, at half past ten.

FOR THE LAUNCH, THE sloop RANDOLPH will leave the end of the Pier at East Rutgers-street, or at Rutgers-slip, this morning at 9 o'clock, cross over and anchor as near the Ship to be launched as is proper. As the Randolph is large and commodious, she can accommodate 50 or 60 persons more than have engaged. *** Price 25 cents.

LAUNCH, THE Steam-Boat FRANKLIN, Captain Macey, will start from Pike-slip . . . and take her station at a convenient distance, with safety, to afford the passengers a good view of the Launch. . . . Tickets of admission, 50 cents each. . . .

LAUNCH, THE sloop HOPE, a vessel of 70 tons, (with good accommodations). . . . Passage 25 cts. Refreshments to be had on board.

THE LAUNCH, THE sloop FANNY. . . . [25¢]

THE LAUNCH. AN elegant STAGE, erected at Lawrence and Sneedens Ship Yard, Corlaers Hook, east end of Water-street, completely fitted with seats for the accommodation of gentlemen and ladies. . . . The prospect is superior to any in the city. Admittance from 12½ to 25 cents.

THE LAUNCH, THE most eligible place for a sight of the Launch of the New Ship of the Line, . . . will be on the Bluff Point, a little south of the Williamsburgh Ferry, Long-Island. This Bluff being high, and commanding so elegant a view of the Navy-Yard, Wallabout, Corlaers Hook, and the surrounding harbor, that there is no place equally inviting. Besides, it will not be attended with that bustle and possible accident that may occur at those places likely to be more thronged. ***

THE LAUNCH, THE elegant Steamboat OLIVE BRANCH. . . . Fare 50 cents each. Refreshments may be had on board. After the Launch she will sail round the Islands,
and touch at the Quarantine Ground. ***

THE LAUNCH, THE elegant fast sailing sloop SYREN. . . . "the moderate price of 25 cents each" The SYREN will, if the wind should breeze, take a sail after the Launch, if the passengers wish, as far as the Quarantine Ground, and also round the Harbor. John Hunt, Corner of Corlaers Hook has made arrangements to accommodate a large number of Ladies and Gentlemen with seats at his residence at Corlaers-Hook, directly opposite the Navy Yard, which will afford a beautiful prospect of the Launch. . . . Admittance 12½ cents each -- children half price.

THE new and swift Steam-Boat MANHATTAN, is plying continually from the foot of Walnut-street to Little-street, Brooklyn, within a few yards of the Eastern Gate of the Navy Yard. ***
also the Steam-Boat CONNECTICUT and the Steamboat CHANCELLOR LIVINGSTON, each 50¢
New-York Gazette & General Advertiser, May 30, 1820.

Launch. -- At 15 minutes past 11 o'clock, this forenoon, the beautiful line of battle ship OHIO, built under the superintendence of Mr. Eckford, at the navy-yard, left her cradle and majestically glided into her destined element, amidst the firing of cannon and acclamations of thousands of spectators, which crowded the surrounding hills and house-tops in the neighborhood. The day was fine, and all the steam-boats, and indeed almost every other kind of water craft, were put in requisition to convey parties of ladies and gentlemen to the spot, to witness her descent. . . . Wallabout Bay and the East River were literally covered with boats, many having on board elegant bands of music. . . . salutes were fired from the navy yard, from a detachment at Corlaers Hook, from the WASHINGTON 74 and from the HORNET; the latter vessel being decorated, in a most tasteful manner, with the flags of all nations, and her yards manned with hardy American tars. *** The concourse of people which lined the margin of the East River, from the country and from the city, it is calculated, amounted to upwards of twenty-five thousand. *** New-York Evening Post, May 30, 1820, 

​On May 23, 1701, my ninth-great-grandfather Captain William Kidd was gruesomely hung at the gallows at Execution Dock in Wapping, East London. The New York sea captain, who knew the Hudson (North) River and New York’s other tidal estuaries like the back of his hand, had been tried two weeks earlier at the Old Bailey on five counts of piracy and one count of premeditated murder. The crimes were allegedly committed during his 1696-1699 Indian Ocean voyage to fight the French and hunt down pirates. Although the piracy charges against the prominent New York sea commander were weak and the death of his fractious chief gunner, William Moore, was accidental when Kidd struck him with an empty wooden bucket while quelling a mutiny, it made no difference in the outcome of the trial.
The courtroom drama proved to be nothing but a sham proceeding to make an example of Kidd and protect England’s trade with the Great Mughal of India, Emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir I, and the East India Company’s profitable monopoly in the region. He was swiftly convicted on all counts based on the perjured testimony of two of his mutinous seamen, both of whom served as the Crown’s star witnesses and received full pardons for their betrayal of their commander. Today, Captain Kidd is known as perhaps the most famous “pirate” of all time, but his notorious legend is built on a bed of lies and he was railroaded by a corrupt English Crown. Thus, instead of indulging in the popular mythology of a villainous cutthroat and treasure-chest burying scoundrel who never existed, we should be celebrating the heroism of this most famous New Yorker with deep Hudson River Valley roots, a man who was called the “trusty and well-beloved Captain Kidd” by the King of England himself.

At the time of his high-profile public execution in 1701, the English-born Captain Kidd was not only a New York war hero in King William’s War against France (1689-1697), successful merchant ship captain, and a licensed private naval commander, or privateer, but a propertied gentleman, widely liked family man, and well-known community leader. He stood as one of the most prosperous citizens of not only he and his wife Sarah’s affluent East Ward neighborhood but all of Manhattan, which at the time had a population of 5,000 souls. His lawfully purchased New York real-estate properties included what are today some of the most expensive real estate holdings in the entire world, worth hundreds of millions of dollars: 90-92 and 119-121 Pearl Street; 52-56 Water Street; 25, 27, and 29 Pine Street; and his Saw Kill farm in Niew Haarlem at today’s 73rd Street and the East River.

For his privateering voyage to the Indian Ocean, Kidd was recruited in 1695 by a group of wealthy London financial backers, who hoped to make a bundle of money for King William III and themselves. Among them was Lord Bellomont, a powerful Whig House of Commons member and soon-to-be royal governor of New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. The plan was for Kidd to not only fight the French but to hunt down the Euro-American pirates of Madagascar, legally seize their ill-gotten riches, and keep them for not only himself and his crew but for the king and other lordly sponsors from the powerful Whig party, who would take a hefty 60% cut of the proceeds. Kidd was to capture these predators of the seas—the “Red Sea Men” as they were known at the time—and seize their freshly plundered riches after they had raided the royal treasure fleets of the Great Mughal and other East Indian shipping between the Malabar Coast of India and Mocha and Jeddah in the Red Sea. Based on the colonial New Yorker’s sterling reputation, the investment group not only issued Kidd two special government licenses but built a 34-gun warship, the Adventure Galley, to his personal specifications.

Unfortunately for Kidd, his nearly three-year-long voyage turned out to be an epic disaster and turned him overnight into a notorious criminal and media sensation. During the hellish voyage that involved biblical storms, a tropical disease outbreak that took the lives of 35 of his crewmen, and constant attacks on his ship by virtually everyone, Kidd lawfully seized two Moorish (Muslim East Indian) ships, the Rouparelle and Quedagh Merchant, that presented authentic French passports and carried gold, silver, silks, opium, and other riches of the East. However, while these wartime seizures were 100% legal and he never once himself committed piracy in the Indian Ocean, he soon thereafter looked the other way during the capture of a Portuguese merchant galliot that presented official papers of a nation friendly to England (at least marginally). His seamen sailing separately from his 34-gun Adventure Galley in the captured Rouparelle seized from the Portuguese vessel two small chests of opium, four small bales of silk, 60 to 70 bags of rice, and some butter, wax, and iron.

It was a measly haul, and if Kidd hadn’t later become such an infamous figure, few would have cared that he had turned a blind eye to his unruly sailors from a separate ship plundering a few foodstuffs from a Catholic merchant vessel crewed by Moors. However, it was technically piracy even though Kidd wasn’t directly involved in the capture. He only allowed the seizure to pacify his unruly and mutinous crew, who had by this time divided into “pirate” and “non-pirate” factions aboard his three separate privateering gunships; and in reprisal for the damage inflicted upon the Adventure Galley and serious injuries sustained by a dozen of his crewmen from two Portuguese men-of-war that had attacked him without provocation months earlier.

Despite the numerous challenges he faced during his grueling voyage and a full-scale mutiny because he refused to go all-in on piracy, Kidd miraculously made it back to the American colonies from Madagascar with around £40,000 ($14,000,000 today) of treasure in his hold and the French passports that proved he had taken the Rouparelle and Quedagh Merchant legally in accordance with his commission. However, when he and his small band of loyalists reached Antigua in the Caribbean on April 2, 1699, they received heartbreaking news. The Crown, at the urging of the East India Company, had sent an alarm to the colonies in late November 1698 declaring them pirates and ordering an all-out manhunt to capture and bring them to justice.

Kidd decided to try to present his case for his innocence and obtain a pardon from his lead sponsor in the voyage, Lord Bellomont, who had by this time taken office as the royal governor of New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. After burying a portion of his legally obtained treasure on Gardiner’s Island in Long Island Sound and distributing a number of goods to trusted community leaders as a precautionary measure, Kidd sailed into Boston on July 3, 1699, to meet with Bellomont, who had promised him a full pardon. However, the treacherous governor had merely lured him into the Puritan stronghold: upon Kidd’s arrival, Bellomont treated him with suspicion and several days later arrested him and his seamen.

After being stripped of all his lawfully seized plunder and enduring six months of incarceration in Boston, Kidd was shipped to England to stand trial, was found guilty, and hung in public shame before a drunken, jeering mob of Londoners. Days later, his corpse was coated with tar and hoisted in a gibbeted iron cage downriver at Tilbury Point near the mouth of the Thames, where it would remain for the next twenty years to serve as the English State’s grisly warning to other would-be pirates of the fate that awaited them if they dared disrupt England’s valuable trade relations with India by pursuing the short but merry life of a marauding freebooter.

                                                                   ΨΨΨ

Today, my ancestor Captain William Kidd stands as one of the three most famous “pirates” of all time, along with Sir Henry Morgan plastered on rum bottles and Edward Thache, better known as Blackbeard. But the truth is he was no pirate at all and was most certainly not “the sinister personification of piratical wickedness” or “most fiendish pirate that ever ravaged the seven seas,” as he has been called by some melodramatic researchers over the centuries. Like so many tall tales of Captain Kidd — especially stories of barbaric cruelty, piratical villainy, and treasure chests overflowing with gold and silver buried up and down the Hudson River and Atlantic seaboard — the Kidd-as-evil-arch-pirate myth has its roots in the anti-piracy propaganda campaign of the English Crown and the East India Company.

Because England failed to arrest and capture the most dastardly and successful pirate of the day, the Englishman Henry Every, the authorities made the colonial American Kidd out to be a Public Enemy #1, even though William III and his powerful Whig leaders in England had commissioned the privateer commander in the first place. Kidd’s biggest crime was disrupting England’s enormously lucrative East Indian trade. Because he followed in the wake of Henry Every during his 1696-1699 Indian Ocean voyage to hunt down pirates, the English State and its largest corporate monopoly launched a massive public relations smear campaign, spinning countless Treasure Island-like yarns of a brutal and mean-spirited Kidd, because they were unable to capture the real pirate Every and needed a scapegoat.

Over the centuries, Captain Kidd has come to define the “pirate” brand even though he was never actually a pirate. In his own lifetime he was a global sensation, and his fame has endured for more than 320 years and shows no sign of letting up. The wildly inflated estimates of his buried treasure have been a huge part of his allure over the centuries and they continue to fuel treasure hunters all over the globe, but they do not explain his longevity as an American icon and his exalted position as a favorite of Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Robert Louis Stevenson. His unique and captivating life story, his moral ambiguity, and his unfair trial in London have also played a huge role in this most famous New Yorker’s enduring popularity.

                                                                 ΨΨΨ

What continues to make Captain Kidd important today is not merely his remarkable rags-to-riches-back-to-rags story but how many people were profoundly affected by his actions and how entrenched his myth has become in popular culture. In Kidd’s own day, he was a luminary of the media and popular culture, the hot topic of “the courtrooms and coffee shops of New York, Boston, London, and India.” He rose to fame, and later infamy, while rubbing elbows with an unbelievably vast network of shipmates, friends, family members, colonial officials, and esteemed peers of the realm, ranging from ordinary seamen, to wealthy merchants and royal governors, to the most powerful English lords of the late seventeenth century.

But what many people don’t know is that Captain Kidd made his mark in America along the Hudson River and that he has deep roots in the Hudson River Valley as a result of American folklore. On two separate occasions in mid-March of 1691, the duly commissioned New York privateer sailed his 16-cannon gunship Antigua from New York Harbor westward around the southern tip of Manhattan, anchored a quarter mile up the Hudson River, and threatened to unleash a blistering fire upon Fort William with his 12-pounders. The fort was occupied by Jacob Leisler, the leader of Leisler’s Rebellion, and his provincial militia, who had seized power from the rightful English government and taken over the city. The fifty-year-old merchant, militia captain, and ultraorthodox Calvinist Protestant of German extraction had capitalized on the unsettled state of affairs in New York in response to the 1688-1689 Glorious Revolution, the ongoing political struggle in Europe between Protestants and Catholics over the English throne that had sent several American colonies into disarray.

On March 17, Captain Kidd forced Leisler’s militiamen to abandon the blockhouse by training his heavy guns on the fort in a raging storm from his upriver position on the Hudson. The next day, he personally ferried the incoming English governor, Richard Sloughter, from Sandy Hook into New York City to assume office and replace the “usurper” Leisler; and on March 19, he again threatened Leisler from the Hudson with his big carriage guns, forcing the tyrannical leader and his army in the fort’s garrison to ground arms and march out. Thanks to Kidd, the leader of the two-year rebellion and his top lieutenants were promptly arrested and tossed into the fort’s prison.

Captain Kidd also played a pivotal role in the building of sacred Trinity Church overlooking the Hudson River. To assist with the construction of the Anglican house of worship in 1696, Kidd lent his runner and tackle from his privateering ship Adventure Galley as a pulley system to help the workers hoist the stones. In return for his community service, Kidd was given Pew Number 4 in the original church, located right up front near the rector and which bore the nameplate inscription “Captain Kidd—Commanded ‘Adventure Galley.’” Unfortunately, the gentlemanly New York privateer would never get the opportunity to pray at the magnificent church he helped build in the New World, but his wife Sarah and daughters Elizabeth and little Sarah would. As one of New York City’s greatest links to its historic past, the latest incarnation of legendary Trinity Church stands today in the exact same spot where Captain Kidd lent his runner and tackle over 330 years ago. Fittingly, Captain Kidd’s wife Sarah is buried today in the churchyard of Trinity Church looking out on the mighty Hudson.

But Captain Kidd’s greatest Hudson River connection comes from his buried treasure mythology. The legend of the colorful outlaw and swaggering pirate, with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of buried treasure still to be found in the northeastern U.S. and throughout the world, began soon after his grisly hanging at Wapping. However, it was the buried-treasure myths in Hudson River Valley lore that by the early nineteenth century secured his place in the pantheon of American folk heroes as our maritime Kit Carson and Jesse James. It is in the Hudson River Valley of authors Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper, both of whom were obsessed with Kidd, where his cultural legacy began and where it continues to resonate in unusual ways.

In the 1820s, American newspapers published stories claiming that Captain Kidd had constructed a subterranean hideout in Kiddenhooghten, New York, or “Kidd Heights” along the banks of the Hudson near Dutch Albany, where he stashed away fifty boxes of gold for a rainy day. By mid-century, the myths of his vast hidden caches of gold and jewels had spurred treasure-hunting expeditions from Maryland to Nova Scotia. Fortune hunters claimed to have discovered these long-buried troves of treasure in virtually every state along the Eastern Seaboard, with gold and silver literally washing up on the shores of the Hudson. Others reported to have found sealed bottles containing letters and treasure maps scratched out by Kidd himself. At this time, several companies began scouring the lower Hudson River Valley for Captain Kidd’s lost treasure and his undiscovered fortune became linked with the supernatural.

For the past two hundred years, treasure hunters have claimed an occult connection to the privateer. “Scholars have well established that the prevalent use of folk magic and divining practices in New York and the New England states for the search of buried treasure was motivated by Captain Kidd’s legend.” When one reads the countless tales of Captain Kidd’s unrecovered treasure from the nineteenth-century to the present day—featuring treasure chests guarded by headless men, guardian dogs with red eyes, monster horses, enormous crows, and magical rings that deflect bullets—one cannot help but wonder if all this insanity is my ancestor’s revenge for the miscarriage of justice that brought him to his inglorious demise at Wapping in 1701.

To this day, Captain Kidd stands as one of the most well-known, popular, and controversial figures in world history, with countless books, short stories, articles, ballads, and songs written about him, as well as rock bands, pubs, restaurants, streets, and hotels named after him. There are a large number of websites on the man and the myth, including more than a few with helpful tips on where plucky treasure hunters can find his long-lost fortune. In the U.S. alone, legend still places buried chests of Captain Kidd’s treasure in not only New York’s Hudson River Valley but in Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.

However, Captain Kidd’s contribution to history is not limited to his romantic myth of the flamboyant pirate, or his treasure rumored to be scattered throughout the Hudson River Valley and all over the world. More important is his role in planting the seeds of rebellion against the English Crown that would grow into a full-fledged revolution by 1776. Kidd was not merely a leading New Yorker who helped build Trinity Church, the latest incarnation of which still stands proudly today on Wall Street and Broadway, nor was he just a courageous privateer commander in King William’s War against France and important member of America’s first unofficial Coast Guard. His story—as much as any other between the settling of Jamestown and the American Revolution—symbolized defiance against the English Crown and its Navigation Acts.

The spectacular irony is that Captain Kidd has won a posthumous victory over his English foes who publicly shamed, tried, and hung him for the crimes of Henry Every and the other true Red Sea pirates. The same powerful forces that humiliated and destroyed the American colonial have made him a staple of popular culture and sanctified his historical legacy in a way he never could have imagined. For today, Captain Kidd remains every bit as popular, puzzling, and controversial as he was four centuries ago. The delicious irony of my ninth-great-grandfather, of course, is that, as legendary historian Philip Gosse declared over a century ago, the greatest pirate of all time was “no pirate at all.”
​
Instead, he was the consummate New York “Gent” and war hero of the Hudson.

The hybrid sailing ship/sidewheeler steamer  Savannah’s 1819 Atlantic crossing, the first with a steam powered engine, signaled the start of the transition from sail to steam. The May 22 date for National Maritime Day commemorates the day Savannah set sail from Savannah, Georgia to England. The Savannah transported both passengers and cargo. More information about the SS Savannah is here: ​

United States Merchant Marine TrainingModern day training of merchant marines is held at seven academies, two of which U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and SUNY Maritime College, are in New York State.

The U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, NY (USMMA) is one of the five United States service academies. When the academy was dedicated on 30 September 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, noted "the Academy serves the Merchant Marine as West Point serves the Army and Annapolis the Navy."

​USMMA graduates earn:

• a Bachelor of Science degree;
• an unlimited US Coast Guard License as a Merchant Marine Officer, either 3rd Mate or 3rd Assistant Engineer
• a Commission as an ensign in the U.S. Navy Reserve Strategic Sealift Officer Program (see: Navy Reserve Merchant Marine Insignia), or if accepted, as an ensign in the U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, or National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or as a 2nd lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Army, or U.S. Air Force. Graduates who choose military service must serve at least five years in the active duty force of their respective service.

USMMA graduates fulfill their service obligations on their own, providing annual proof of employment in a wide variety of MARAD approved occupations. Either as active duty officers in any branch of the military or uniformed services, including the Public Health Service and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration or entering the civilian work force in the maritime industry.
​
State-supported maritime colleges:
There are six state-supported maritime colleges. These graduates earn appropriate licenses from the U.S. Coast Guard and/or U.S. Merchant Marine. They have the opportunity to participate in a commissioning program, but do not receive an immediate commission as an Officer within a service.

• California State University Maritime Academy 
• Great Lakes Maritime Academy 
• Maine Maritime Academy 
• Massachusetts Maritime Academy 
• State University of New York Maritime College 
• Texas A&M Maritime Academy 

More information about the U.S. Merchant Marines can be found here:

• https://www.maritime.dot.gov/about-us
• https://www.usmma.edu/
• https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/wwii/wwii-atlantic/battle-of-the-atlantic/merchant-ships/merchant-marine-service.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Merchant_Marine
• https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/merchant-marine-records-document-maritime-service
• https://ammv.us/
• http://righttofightexhibit.org/during-war/merchant-marine.php 
• “Heroes in Dungarees: The Story of the American Merchant Marine in World War II” by John Bunker
• “America’s Maritime Legacy, A History of the U.S. Merchant Marine and the Shipbuilding Industry since Colonial Times” by Robert A. Kilmarx​

Hiding away in Rondout Creek, New York at 41.91245, -73.98639 is the last known surviving example of a World War I Navy ‘Oil & Coal’ Barge. 

It is less than a kilometer up the Rondout Creek from the Hudson River Maritime Museum.
Based on a lot of ‘Googling’, it seems probable this is the first time that the provenance and history of this particular relic of concrete shipbuilding in the United States during the World War I era has been recognized. [Editor's Note: The concrete barge is featured on the Solaris tours of Rondout Creek.]
​
The hulk is, in fact, the initial prototype of a ‘Navy Department Coal Barge’, concrete barges that were commissioned by the Navy Department : Bureau of Construction and Repair. This was the department of the U.S. Navy that was responsible for supervising the design, construction, conversion, procurement, maintenance, and repair of ships and other craft for the Navy.

​Launched on 1st June 1918, the ‘Directory of Vessels chartered by Naval Districts’ lists ‘Concrete Barge No.1’, Registration number 2531, as being chartered by the Navy from Louis L. Brown at $360 per month from 11th September 1918. 
In Spring 1918, the Navy Department had commissioned twelve, 500 Gross Registered Tonnage barges from three separate constructors in Spring 1918 to be used in New York harbour. 

Long Island’s coastal waters are rich in maritime history.  Some stories are well known, others lesser known, and some waiting to tell their tale.  In 2020, a friend, knowing I enjoyed local history, showed me an undated black and white photo of two surplus U.S. Navy boats in a cove off of Shore Road, Cold Spring Harbor, NY.  The area is presently Eagle Dock Beach. I was intrigued with the boat stenciled 182 on her bow and began my research.
               
​Perhaps from watching the movie PT109 and building the model boat as a child, I initially presumed it was a Patrol Torpedo boat, but I learned that very few survived their service.  Utilizing the website, Navsource, I forwarded the photograph and they provided me with a link to SC182, a World War I Submarine Chaser.  The webpage included: photos from the Naval History and Heritage Command of the first crew, the boat serving in the North Atlantic and returning to the United States.

The SC-1 class of 77 ton, 110’ submarine chasers, affectionately known as the Splinter Fleet, had a crew of two officers and 18 sailors.  Powered by three, six cylinder 220hp engines, with a speed of 18 knots, they had a range of 1,000 nm.  Four 600 gallon fuel tanks would “cover just a third of an Atlantic crossing, the 200+ subchasers … were either towed or accompanied by escorts with fuel and provisions.”[1] Armament included a 3”/23 caliber gun, two .30 caliber Colt machine guns and depth charges.  They featured that latest in hydrophone sensors to detect German U boats. With the major shipyards tasked with building the larger vessels, smaller boat builders, already skilled at crafting wooden boats, were called upon to build the chasers.  SC182 was constructed by International Shipbuilding Company in Nyack, NY and delivered to the U.S. Navy on May 6, 1918.[2]  She arrived at Inverness, Scotland on April 24, 1919 and eventually saw service with the North Sea Minesweeping Detachment.[3] 
​
Three years later, SC182 was sold on June 24, 1921 from the Third Naval District Supply Depot, South Brooklyn, NY with an appraised value of $11,400.[4]  For prospective buyers, the Sale of Navy Vessels catalogue included plans on how the chasers could be converted to yachts or fishing vessels.

From the angle the photo was taken, the bow of another boat is partially obstructed, leaving only her last number “3” visible.  The South Brooklyn location sale catalogue lists only one chaser for sale with an ending number of “3”… SC43.[5]  Records indicate that both 182 and 43 were sold to Joseph G. Hitner of Philadelphia, P.A.  Henry A. Hitner's Sons Company (later Hitner Industrial Dismantling Company) purchased many surplus Navy vessels; converting some to merchant ships while scrapping others.[6]

A 1947 aerial photograph from the Suffolk County (NY) GIS website shows the boats in the cove[7]   and again in 1953.[8]  Interestingly today at low tide, remnants of a relatively large, wooden-planked boat, partially buried in silt, become visible in the tidal wetlands, proximate to the submarine chasers location.  Could this be SC182 or her sister boat SC43? Perhaps.  While this may never be confirmed, it is certain SC182, and possibly SC43, spent some of their last days here.

More information about WW1 submarine chasers can be found in the book, Hunters of the Steel Shark: The Submarine Chasers of WW1 by Todd A. Woofenden.

​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!