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. 

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.

One of the major industries along the upper Hudson River, prior to World War I, was the natural ice business. The ice, once it had reached a desired thickness of at least 12 inches, was cut, or harvested, and stored in huge double-walled wooden structures known as ice houses.
           
The invention and marketing of the home electric refrigerator quickly brought the industry to an end after World War I. Prior to this, almost every household would have had an ice box and used natural ice. Most of the ice for New York City came from the upper Hudson and was delivered to the market by special barges in long river tows.
           
Before World War I, the River would normally begin to freeze over by mid December, at which time all navigation on the River would cease. This was due to two factors. At that time, virtually all commercial vessels were made of wood and new ice would raise havoc with a wooden hull. Also, coal was the most common fuel used for heating and coal all virtually came into the area by railroad, eliminating the need to keep the river open in the winter.
           
During the warmer months of the year, a common sight in city residential areas was an ice wagon pulled by a horse delivering ice in quantities desired by the home owner.
           
In November, most of the horses owned by the ice companies would be taken to the steamboat piers and put on board the freight and passenger boats for transportation to the up-river ice houses. The steamers would stop at the ice house docks, and there a number of horses put ashore for later work on the ice, clearing snow, marking out the ice fields, pulling large pieces of ice through a cut channel to the ice house for storage, etc. The following spring, the process would be reversed and the horses returned to their summer employment of delivering the ice to the city dwellers.

Working on the ice was hard, back breaking, and cold wet work, the work day starting, during the harvest, at dawn and ending at dusk, six days a week. Most of the work, sawing the ice, pushing and pulling the ice cakes by long pike poles, and storing the ice inside the ice houses was pure manual labor. The pay was often but a $1.50 a day. It was not unusual at the peak of the ice harvest for the workers to strike for more money. The settlement would depend on how much ice was already in the ice house and the weather forecast- -since during a mild winter it was crucial to harvest the ice at the right point in time.
           
​The electric refrigerator and artificial ice making brought the natural ice industry to an abrupt end. The large ice houses gradually passed from the scene. Some were torn down, others burned to the ground in impressive fires and a very few survived until World War II for the growing of mushrooms.

It is a quiet, cold evening in December 1918. Spread-eagled on the extreme end of our dock, I am fascinated by watching the lake start to freeze. First the surface stops moving, becomes smooth and still - then, suddenly, it wrinkles up into sheets of frozen surface-film, with long crystals spreading out all over. In a few minutes, the frozen film is actually thick enough to lift - very carefully - but of course it is delicate and fragile.

Suddenly my mother's voice calls down from the house, and I have to abandon my scientific research into how ice really forms - but I had seen enough so I have never forgotten it. The entire experience of growing up by the side of a beautiful lake which provided swimming, fishing, sailing, skating and eventually iceboating colored my life from then on - I was eight when we moved there, and twenty-seven when we were forced to abandon the place by the implacable march of the Great Depression.

Of all the activities that Lake Mahopac offered, those I loved the most were those of Winter. Both my parents were excellent skaters - I recall at the age of five I was equipped with a proper pair of single-runner skates firmly attached to shoes, taken to a rink in New York, given a little push and told to "Skate!"

Of course it took a few minutes to get the hang of it - but by mid-afternoon I was waddling around the rink on my own - no holding of parental hands. The folks knew, of course, that double-runner skates are an abomination, and that holding someone's hand is really no help either until after one reaches puberty! Then the motivation is quite another story.

So here is a ten-year-old, excited about winter and all it has I to offer up there in the country, and also an avid reader. I found a book by Ralph Henry Barbour entitled Iceboat Number One in the school library. Clearly this was my undoing - or doing, which ever way you look at it. The story was a typical boy's book - the hero built his own boat, and finally beat the rich boy who had a fancy professionally-built boat, but didn't know how to sail it very well. It didn't take me long to identify with the local hero - but how to begin? 

Right here is where my father's support became what made it all happen. First he bought us a litte book - as it turned out, one of the best books on the subject that existed at that time - about 1920. The title was simply “Ice Boating”, but the contents included articles by most of the leading sportsmen of the time, including the famous Archibald Rogers, owner of “Jack Frost”, last winner of the Ice Yacht Challenge Pennant of America. Mr. Rogers' reminiscences of sailing and racing on the Hudson opened our eyes to a really terrific sport - plagued by the vagaries of weather, as always, but truly terrific when it could be done.

Our immediate problem, now that our appetite was whetted, was what sort of boat could we build, with our limited resources and complete lack of facilities to enable us to even dream of a craft like “Jack Frost”, or even a miniature of her. We did have the rig of my father's sailing canoe - strictly Old Town, vintage 1913. We decided to put together something to carry that rig, and see what we could do.

This had to be built of material at hand - planks, framing lumber remaining from the building of our house a year or two earlier. What emerged was a triangular platform with 2x8 planks on edge surrounding it - to keep us from falling out The mast was stepped in a wooden block, and stayed with odd pieces of wire - probably wire clothes line. Three little turnbuckles served to keep this in some sort of order, and the sail hung well enough exactly as it had on the canoe.

Of course, here we were ready to set forth, but on what? What do we do for runners? We had learned enough from our little book to understand that runners had to be sharpened to a V-edge, must have some slight rocker rather than be dead straight on the bottom, and so forth. It was clearly time for Dad to step in again. After all, he was an engineer, he understood the problem, and as it turned out, he knew where to go for help - Naylor's Foundry, in Peekskill. He made some sketches and after a few days, the word came that our runners were ready. They were cut from 313" steel plate, sharpened to a V on the bottom, and hung between pairs of angle irons on a single bolt, so they could rock. The rudder-post and tiller were a little more complex, but they worked OK, which was the main purpose.

It was easy enough to mount these steel parts on our little platform - we were ready to launch! Imagine the excitement by all hands - Mother included (after all, she had learned to skate on the Hudson River and had often hooked a ride behind the local iceboats). To our delight, the little rig sailed fine. As it turned out, the real beneficiaries of this craft were my folks, who sailed it by daylight and by moonlight, while I was away at school playing hockey and getting myself ready for college.

During my college years - 1925-1931 - a fellow-sailor from the Lake who had some remains of a big Hudson River iceboat that had been allowed to lie outdoors in the summer time (the "kiss of death" for any wooden boat not properly covered) - decided to use the rig of his one-design sailboat and build a simple 24-foot boat to carry it. He was lucky to have those fine Hudson River runners - with the good spars and sails he also had, from the summer-sailing class on the Lake, the rest was easy enough. His boat sailed very well - so well that I resolved to go and do likewise - since I too had a sailing rig from the summer boat.

The obvious gap in my equipment was runners, rudder-post and tiller. I resolved to go to New Jersey - Red Bank and Long Branch - where there were lots of iceboats. I finally salvaged a set of runners from a marsh where they had been thrown when the shed where the boat was stored had burned down. This meant the owner no longer had a boat, and had about given up on iceboating. He sold me the lot for a ten-dollar bill. I had my work cut out for me - the shoes were terribly rusty and pitted, and even the oak tops had started to rot. But persistence and plenty of sweat resulted in a fine set of runners, when they were finally finished. The iron was excellent, which I surely did not realize when I found them. Admittedly, I was lucky (and persistent).

This boat sailed very well - in fact, with her good runners and sails, she had a head start on most of the others that were around at that time.

By now, I was an avid iceboater, and the Depression provided me with opportunities for working on boats and sailing them which would never have existed in more prosperous times. At that time (1935-6-7) I was running a small resort hotel, and in the winter, there wasn't much going on during the week. So I tinkered with boats and sailed them whenever possible.
​
In the January 1935 issue of “The Sportsman” magazine, there appeared an article about the great mid-western breakthrough in iceboat design - the advent of the front-steering boat, in Wisconsin. These first bow-steerers were large, like their stern-steering predecessors in the more successful racing classes. But a series of very serious capsizes nearly caused the whole idea of bow-steering to be abandoned while yet really untried. The problem was not with bow-steering per se, but with lack of understanding of the proper size, weight and design of a successful boat that steered from the bow. 

The way to go turned out to be small, rather than large. A man named Walter Beauvais built what he called the “Beau-Skeeter”, only about twelve feet long with an eight-foot cross-plank. Because it was small and light, it could be sailed on the ragged edge of a capsize without fear or danger - if it went over, the pilot fell only a few feet, and by "starting" the sheet, he often kept it right-side-up anyway. The fact that the driver always went up when a bow-steerer "hiked", carried with it the message of possible trouble, and resulted in many improvements in the “Beau-Skeeter” design.

The Palmer Boat Company of Fontana, Wisconsin on Lake Geneva, brought out some very fast single-and-two-seater skeeters that opened my eyes rudely the first time I encountered them on Greenwood Lake. I had won a race the day before with the boat that carried my Lake Mahopac one-design sloop rig, and I thought she was at the least, a pretty good iceboat for the time. We set up a little scrub race between my boat and two of these Palmer skeeters, and they sailed three laps to my two. That was convincing enough -clearly the bow-steerer was the faster type, regardless of size or sail area.

This had continued to be true - the only interest that today exists among the older stern-steerers is confined to racing within their own classes in the Eastern Ice Yachting Association, and competing for certain trophies that are restricted to the classic type. They are entirely different in action and in speed, but they require enough skill to present a challenge -as long as you don't have to be the fastest boat out there.

In the meantime, over the past half-century, the so-called “Skeeter”, which started at 12 ft. long x 8 ft wide, has grown to 24 to 26 ft long and 16 to 18 ft wide, still carrying (theoretically) the original 75 square feet of sail. By taking full advantage of a loophole in the sail-area rule which permits a 12-inch "roach" or projection outside of the straight chord of the sail's leech, with 24 to 26-foot masts, giving a long leech, the actual sail area now being carried is closer to 90 sq. ft. Speeds have jumped into the unbelievable regions - there is even a story from Wisconsin (the hotbed of the big Skeeters) of a boat reputed to have been "clocked" by a State Policeman's radar at over 150 miles per hour.

There are many reasons why this is possible - suffice it to say here that the big, long, "lean and mean" skeeter is the fastest thing on the ice today.
​
Back in the 1936-1937 days, I got involved in building the very best boat I could, following the overall setup of the big Palmer boat that looked to be unreachable. Surely as to finish and fittings she was far out of my reach - but it turned out some of the basic design decisions I had made were correct, and I beat her on every occasion we raced. That is another story - suffice it to say that my 1937 boat, named “Charette II” reposes today in the New York State Museum in Albany, contemplating her medals and past trophies. It has been a nice wind-up to a lengthy career. Ray Ruge. 

Iron shipbuilding came to Newburgh in the 1870s. That this happened at all can best be
attributed to the serendipitous conjunction of several forces. For us to better understand how these forces acted, we must start by examining briefly the industrial domain of Newburgh’s waterfront, its facilities and its people, immediately after the Civil War.
 
With the exception of the Newburgh Steam Mills and the newly-established Higginson
Manufacturing Company (the former a cotton mill and the latter a plaster mill, both
located to the north of South Street), Newburgh’s major industrial activity along the river was centered around the foot of Washington Street.
 
Here could be found the foundry and machine shops of the Washington Iron Works, which had been active during the war building machinery for naval vessels. Dating from the 1850s and under the management of Isaac Stanton and his partner named Mallery, its normal peacetime activity included the building of sugar-mill machinery, much of which was exported to plantations in Cuba and elsewhere throughout the Caribbean region. The works’ output also included sawmills, shingle mills, and steam engines and boilers. (It is of interest to note that some of this company’s buildings from that period survive at the southwest corner of South Water and Washington Streets, and that one lathe from their machine shop was still in use by Harry Marvel as late as 1946.)
 
Clustered around the iron works could be found the boiler shops-first that of D.A. Rheutan (and later that of Alexander Cauldwell), as well as the machine shop of Melrose and Moss. Pat Delany, who would later have a boiler shop at the corner of Renwick and South Colden Streets, served an apprenticeship with Cauldwell. Further to the south were the village’s shipyards-George F. Riley (who had once been a partner of Thomas S. Marvel) and a newcomer, Adam Busman, who had a short-lived partnership with L. Stewart. Later he teamed with Joel W. Brown to form Bulman and Brown, and maintained a shipbuilding and repair yard to the south of the foot of Washington Street.
 
In the late 1860s, Thomas S. Marvel had left Newburgh and was engaged in shipbuilding at Port Richmond, New York, and Denton, Maryland. Near the foot of Renwick Street had been the sawmill and planing mill of James Bigler, and nearby the lumber yard of D. Moore. Bigler built many wooden gun carriages there during the war.
 
At this time, heavy industry in Newburgh was composed of two parts- wooden shipbuilding and the iron-working trades. Changes were taking place, in that the Washington Iron Works had gone bankrupt, and their shops were taken over by William Wright, who came to Newburgh from Providence, Rhode Island. (Wright who had been employed at the engine works of George Corliss, was allegedly the inventor of the popper-valve mechanism which made the Corliss engine so popular, but Corliss himself took credit for this technological breakthrough and Wright eventually departed.)
In 1872, some of those previously associated with the Washington Iron Works- Luther C. Ward, Samuel Stanton (Isaac’s son) and John Delany (Pat’s brother)- founded Ward, Stanton and Company for the purpose of continuing the manufacture of the defunct firm’s machinery line. To this was added marine engines, and a short time later they bid upon and won the contract for a wooden tugboat for the City of New York. Lacking shipbuilding experience, they sub-contracted the hull and joiner work to Bulman and Brown, whose yard was adjacent to their shops. Ward, Stanton and Company built the engine, boiler and other machinery, and installed these components in the completed hull. The tug, named Manhattan, was delivered in August 1874. At about the same time, they had constructed engines and boilers for two small steam yachts, Revenge and Fanny (built elsewhere), and, apparently, a small iron-hulled steam lighter was built for use in Mexico. (The construction of the last named vessel has never been verified.)
 
With these initial forays into small ship construction, the partners concluded that this was a way of expanding the firm’s business, and, at some undetermined time, Thomas S. Marvel joined Ward, Stanton and Company to oversee the firm’s shipbuilding activities. Concurrently came what is considered the first major contact for a vessel with an iron hull- a steamboat for Greenwood Lake.
 
Incorporated in 1874, the Montclair Railway Company was built to provide access to Greenwood Lake for vacationing New Yorkers.  In the 1870s, the lake, which straddles the New York-New Jersey state line, had become an important resort area with hotels lining the shore on both sides. What was needed was a large steamboat to move passengers to the hotels from the rail terminus at the lower end of the lake, replacing an inefficient and unreliable “mosquito fleet.”
 
The railroad contracted with Ward, Stanton and Company for the steamboat, a classic little side-wheeler whose iron hull was erected at the Newburgh yard using bolts instead of rivets. When complete, the hull was unbolted, moved to a site at the head of the lake and re-erected, this time using rivets. She was launched on June 29, 1876, at which time she was named Montclair. The engine and boiler were then installed, the joiner work fitted, and the completed vessel made her first revenue trip in the late summer of 1876. A crew of Ward, Stanton’s artisans from Newburgh assembled the steamer at the lake site.
 
What should have been a time of celebration was indeed not. The Montclair Railway had declared bankruptcy before Montclair was delivered, but the steamboat was handed over to a successor company. After still another bankruptcy and change of name, the company, now the New York and Greenwood Lake Railroad, became part of the Erie. The steamboat continued to run regularly, making the scheduled hotel landings and stopping on signal at other ports along the lake. She ran until the 1920s, when her machinery and joiner work were removed and the hull scuttled in the middle of the lake.
 
A handsome little steamboat, Montclair was 80 feet long, with a beam of 20 feet. Her beam engine, built by Ward, Stanton and Company, was equally diminutive, with a cylinder eighteen inches in diameter and a piston stroke of four feet. The shipbuilders also built her boiler.
 
The construction of Montclair was sufficient to convince Messrs. Ward, Stanton and Delany that iron shipbuilding, so successfully introduced in the Delaware River shipyards but rarely seen in New York, was the key to their future success. Delaware River shipbuilders like Neafie and Levy, John H. Dialogue, Harlan and Hollingsworth and others were much closer to sources of iron plates and shapes, and their iron hulls were therefore able to compete with wood in the 1860s. By the late 1870s improved rail connections to the east lessened this handicap for New York and Hudson River shipbuilders, but by this time shipbuilding in New York was nearly extinct.
 
A gradual transition at Ward, Stanton’s shops saw shipbuilding commence in earnest in 1879, when ten wooden vessels and the iron-hulled ferryboat City of Newburgh were completed. In 1880, the output was seven hulls of wood and two of iron, including the large Hoboken side-wheel ferry Lackawanna. The following year, there were three wooden vessels, a composite yacht (with iron frames and wood planking) and a second Hoboken ferry, and in 1882, iron finally surpassed wood four vessels to three.
 
The year 1883 was a determinant one for the yard; seven iron hulls and a single wooden one (the powerful tug John H. Cordts, built for the Washburn Steamboat Company of Saugerties, but acquired by the Cornell Steamboat Company in 1884.) The following year, 1884, three iron hulls and two wooden vessels were completed, and contracts for two more iron ferryboats were in hand.
           
Alas, 1884, proved to be the end of the line for Ward, Stanton and Company. After a disastrous fire the year before and for other reasons, the company was declared bankrupt a few days before Christmas. Of the partners, Luther C. Ward became what was then called a “commercial traveler,” Samuel Stanton retired and moved his family to Bradenton, Florida, aboard the steamboat Manatee (perhaps the last vessel completed by Ward, Stanton and Company) and John Delany entered into a partnership with Thomas S. Marvel under the name T.S. Marvel and Company.
 
The shipbuilding facilities would be shared between T.S. Marvel and Company and James Bigler (who won the contract to complete the two unfinished ferries) until Bigler retired from shipbuilding in the early 1890s. T.S. Marvel and Company (later T.S. Marvel Shipbuilding Company) would quickly earn a reputation for quality ship construction in iron and steel, turning out such noted vessels as the Cornell Steamboat Company’s tug Geo. W. Washburn in 1890, J.P. Morgan’s steam yacht Corsair in 1898, and the Hudson River Day Line’s Hendrick Hudson in 1906.
 
But it was the building of the side-wheeler Montclair that was the turning point. The age of iron had finally come to the New York region, the Hudson River and to Newburgh. ​

​As important to the Hudson’s transportation infrastructure as the express steamers that plied from major towns and cities to New York were the local steamboats- called “yachts” - which connected many riverside villages with these major localities. They were the buses of a bygone era, from the 1870s to about 1920. The network of local routes was the lifeblood of the villages, which were isolated from the centers of commerce like Newburgh, Poughkeepsie, Rondout/Kingston, and Hudson- and too small to merit a landing by the larger steamers.
 
The “yachts” were small propeller steamboats carrying on average about a hundred passengers. Typically they were two-decked craft, 60 to 80 feet in length, propelled by a minuscule engine to which steam was fed by an equally small boiler.
 
The small steamers maintained a fixed schedule during the months when the river was free of ice. During their off-hours, they might be chartered for an excursion by a local organization like a volunteer firemen’s association.
 
Rondout was the base of operations for the vessels that operated to Glasco and Malden (near Saugerties), downriver to Poughkeepsie, and along the Rondout Creek on which one could venture as far as Eddyville by boat. The upriver towns of Caymans, Coxsackie, New Baltimore, and other points were way landings on a web of routes between Hudson and Albany and on to Troy. Similar routes were maintained out of Newburgh and other downriver locations.
 
At Rondout, vessels like Augustus J. Phillips, Charles T. Coutant, Edwin B. Gardner, Glenerie (later Elihu Bunker), Henry A. Hater, John McCausland, Kingston, Morris Block and others maintained these local services, providing for the transportation needs of many residents and businesses along the creek and in the small riverside villages and hamlets.
 
With the construction of paved roads and the popularization of the bus and motor car for transportation in the 1920s, the era of the “yachts” on the river came to a close. One by one the yachts were dismantled or otherwise left the routes over which they had been so much a part of life along the Hudson. No longer would the daily routine on the river be punctuated by the whistles of the “yachts” as they made their frequent landings.

Want to recreate a bit of the small passenger "yacht" experience? Take a ride on "Solaris"! ​https://www.hrmm.org/all-boat-tours.html

After the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, the Hudson River-Erie Canal corridor immediately became one of the leading access routes to the mid-west. In addition to the movement of people, the transportation of freight and agricultural products in substantial quantities took places in both directions. It was a new and relatively easy method for the products of the west to reach the east coast of the relatively young country.
           
At first the early steamboats provided the principal means of transportation on the river for both people and freight. However, as the variety and quantity of the freight products increased, barges began to be used. At times they were lashed alongside of the steamboat or towed singly astern. This method obviously slowed the passage of the steamer and barges in tows behind a towing vessel became the general practice.
           
Early Albany entrepreneurs who recognized the monetary returns to be gained from towing were “Commodore” Alfred Van Santvoord, Samuel Schuyler with his Albany and Canal Towing Line, and Jerry Austin. All three used older side wheel steamboats that had lost their appeal to the traveling public but still possessed serviceable engines and boilers. These were converted to towing vessels by the removal of most of their superstructure and the installation of towing bitts and winches. The barge tows of the Albany trio traversed the entire length of the river and the competition was spirited.
           
It would appear that Alfred Van Santvoord was perhaps the most foresighted of the Albany towing operators. In any event, in 1848 he undertook the construction of a side-wheel steamboat designed solely for use as a towboat. She was named “Oswego” and was the first of seven such vessels to be built for the towing of large barge tows on the Hudson River. In 1849, Van Santvoord followed with “Cayuga”, Samuel Schuyler in 1852 followed with “America”, and in 1853 Jerry Austin added “Austin”. All were 200’ to 213’ in length. “Anna”, the smallest of the seven, was built in 1854 for Van Santvoord, and “Syracuse” in 1857, at 218’ the largest, for Austin. To complete the septet, the “Geo A. Hoyt” was built in 1873 for Thomas Cornell.
                       
​During the latter half of the 19th century, the steamboat operators traded vessels, somewhat like major league baseball teams trade players today. For example, in 1868 Van Santvoord traded the towboats “Oswego”, “Cayuga” and “New York” to Thomas Cornell for the passenger steamboat “Mary Powell”.

During the decade preceding the Van Santvoord-Cornell trade of vessels, Van Santvoord had become more and more involved in the operation of passenger steamboats. With the completion of the trade, Van Santvoord got out of the business of towing entirely and devoted his efforts solely to that of passenger steamers, which in time became the famous Hudson River Day Line. Thomas Cornell, whose towing operations had been centered on the lower river south of Rondout, gained access to the upper river and the operation of towing over the river’s entire length.
           
Thomas Cornell and his son-in-law, S.D. Coykendall were extremely aggressive competitors. By the last decade of the 19th century, their Cornell Steamboat Company had fashioned a virtual monopoly of towing on the Hudson River and their fleet of towing vessels was the largest in the nation.
           
Steamboats, like people, during their life time achieve minor claims to fame. “Oswego”, the first of the seven built, lasted the longest and out lived all of her successors. She made her last trip in September 1918, 70 years after her launching. “Syracuse”, the largest of the group, was generally considered by boatmen to be the best looking of all the towboats that saw service on the river. “America”, perhaps because of her name, was the subject of more paintings by the famed maritime artist James Bard than any other vessel.
           
The towboats were big and probably had generous accommodations for their crew. However, they were also cumbersome and in time were succeeded by the smaller, but more efficient and maneuverable screw-propelled tugboats. By the early years of the 20th century the towboats were history. They were, however, an important part of the maritime saga of the Hudson River and deserve to be remembered for the role they played in it. 

This article was originally published in the 2002 Pilot Log. Thank you to Hudson River Maritime Museum volunteer Adam Kaplan for transcribing the article.

Since the Hudson River was first navigated by steamboats in 1807, there have been hazards- natural and man-made- that have plagued the captains and pilots of these vessels. Fog, low water level, treacherous currents and ice have all taken their toll over the years, as have the occasional cases of inattention to duty, confusing or misunderstood whistle signals between steamers- not to mention fires, boiler explosions or mechanical failure of engine or steering gear.
 
Some of these accidents are well known, such as the loss of the steamer Thomas Cornell when she ran up Danskammer Point, north of Newburgh, in the fog on 27 March 1882 as she was making her regular trip from Rondout to New York.
 
Many years later, the Hudson River Day Line’s flagship Washington Irving was lost as a result of a collision just after she left her pier in New York on 1 June 1926. She was struck on the port side by an oil barge in tow of the tug Thomas E. Moran and sank after she was hurriedly run across the river to shallower water on the New Jersey side.
 
Most of the accidents or incidents have never had the dramatic impact of losses such as that of the Thomas Cornell or Washington Irving. Many of them didn’t result in the loss of the vessel. The Cornell tug G.W. Decker was an example. This small tug was for many years employed as a “helper” tug on Cornell’s tows- picking up or dropping off individual barges at intermediate points on the journey to or from New York. Many years ago, the many brickyards at Haverstraw sent their production to New York on barges, with the helper tug shuttling between the brickyard wharves and the tow. The depth of the river at Haverstraw Bay is not particularly deep, and the fact that the Decker’s bottom plates were eventually found to be very thin was ascribed- in part at least- to the cumulative action of Haverstraw Bay sand on her bottom. We shall never know for sure, but it is a reasonable theory.
 
The river’s depth is very shallow on the wide reaches of Haverstraw Bay outside of the main channel, and on the upper river where dredging had to be accomplished to allow ships to reach the port of Albany. In March 1910, long before the upper river was dredged, the very large and powerful steel-hulled Cornell tug named Cornell- accompanied by her helper Rob- was sent to Albany to break up an enormous ice jam in order that the river might be opened for traffic. It was found that her draft was so great that she grounded from time to time on the northbound trip, but she eventually accomplished her task with no small measure of hazard to Cornell and her crew. It was never attempted again.
 
Over most of the river’s course from New York to the start of the dredged channel north of Hudson the channel is of moderate depth, but in the Highlands- from Peekskill north to Cornwall- there is a lot of water, sometimes extending almost to the shoreline because of the mountainous nature of the area. At Anthony’s Nose, the depth reaches about 90 feet, and under the Bear Mountain Bridge we may find nearly 130 feet of depth.
 
In the region around West Point is where we may find the deepest point on the entire river. Between West Point and Constitution Island, in that part of the river called World’s End, a depth of 202 feet was recorded during one survey many years ago- and that is at mean low water during the lowest river stages.
 
A small steamboat- or “steam yacht” in river parlance- named Carrie A. Ward, built in New Baltimore in 1878, maintained a local service between Newburgh and Peekskill during the 1880s. In late July of 1882, she sank near Cold Spring and was raised. On Saturday, 29 July, she sank for a second time for reasons thus far unknown, again in the vicinity of Cold Spring. By Tuesday, 1 August, she had not been located. The Newburgh Daily Journal reported on that day under the headline “Is She Gone For Good?”:
 
“It is said that the river bed consists of rocks in the locality where she went down, and that the water is of varying depth. It may be fifty [feet] deep in one spot, and nearly twice that a few yards off. Some boatmen have doubts if the Carrie will ever be found. They say she may have settled into a hollow between some of the rocks and her presence may never be discovered.”
 
The situation was not quite as dire as the boatmen predicted. By the next day, she had been located in 60 feet of water. The Journal remarked, “Arrangements are under way to have the yacht raised again.” The Baxter Wrecking Company brought in their divers and equipment on 5 August, and in a short time, the Carrie A. Ward had been raised, repaired and back in service.
 
The Hudson hasn’t always been that kind to its vessels. There have been scores of sail and steamboats, barges and other craft that have sunk in the river never to be raised. We shall unfortunately never know the tales told by their crews.