Newburgh was the shipbuilding center of the mid-Hudson for well over a century and a half. Although the earliest accomplishments of local shipwrights are clouded by the passage of time, sailing vessels were constructed during the colonial days by such men as George Gardner, Jason Rogers, Richard Hill and William Seymour along the village’s waterfront, which extended approximately from the foot of present day Washington Street north to South Street.
 
Strategically well placed at the southernmost point before one entered the Hudson Highlands, Newburgh became the river transportation center, serving the inland towns and villages to the north and west. The Highlands form a magnificent scenic delight in the mid-Hudson region, but in the pre-railroad era they were decidedly unfriendly to the movement of goods and people. In short, the Hudson became a marine highway which connected upstate regions to the Metropolis at its mouth. A significant freighting business therefore developed at Newburgh, and, in addition, the village became one of the region’s bases for the whaling industry. Both of these undertakings required sailing vessels, and with forests of suitable timber nearby, the local shipbuilders were well placed to support the burgeoning commerce on the river.

​Much of this changed with the introduction of the steamboat in the summer of 1807, when Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat made her first trip to Albany. It was inevitable that steam should be adopted almost universally on America’s waterways. The earliest steamboat built at Newburgh is reputed to have been the side-wheel ferry Gold Hunter, constructed in 1836 for the ferry between Newburgh and Fishkill Landing. We are not certain of the identity of her builder, but her appearance coincided with the start of local shipbuilding by the dynasty which dominated that industry for 110 years - Thomas S. Marvel; his son of the same name; and his grandson, Harry A. Marvel.
 
The shipbuilding activities of these three generations of the Marvel family encompassed the period from 1836 until 1946, when Harry Marvel retired from business. Although their activity was not continuous throughout this period, the reputations of these men as master shipbuilders survived the periodic and all too frequent ups and downs that have always plagued this industry.
 
The senior Thomas Marvel, born in Newport, Rhode Island in 1808, served his apprenticeship as a shipwright with Isaac Webb, a well-known shipbuilder in New York. Around 1836, he moved to Newburgh and commenced building small wooden sailing vessels, sloops, schooners and the occasional brig or half-brig, near the foot of Little Ann Street, later moving to the foot of Kemp Street (no longer in existence). Among the vessels he built was a Hudson River sloop launched in the spring of 1847 for Hiram Travis, of Peekskill. Travis elected to name his vessel Thomas S. Marvel, a name she carried at least until she was converted to a barge in 1890.
 
An unidentified 160-foot steamboat was built at the Marvel yard in 1853. She was described by the local press as a “new and splendid propeller built for parties in New York.” Possibly the first steamboat built by Thomas Marvel, this vessel was important for another reason- she was propelled by a double-cylinder oscillating engine built on the Wolff, or high-and-low pressure principle. Ernest Wolff had patented his design in 1834, utilizing the multiple expansion of steam to improve the efficiency of the engine. The Wolff engine was a rudimentary forerunner of the compound engine, which did not appear for another two decades.
 
The younger Thomas joined his father in 1847, at the age of 13. The young man, who was born in 1834 at New York, was entrusted with building a steamboat hull in 1854. This was a classic case of on-the-job training, for the boat was entirely young Tom’s responsibility. She is believed to have been Mohawk Chief, for service on the eastern end of the Erie Canal. The 85-3/95 ton Mohawk Chief, 86 feet in length, was described in her first enrollment document as a “square-sterner steam propeller, round tuck, no galleries and no figurehead.” The dry, archaic language of vessel documentation was hardly accurate, for her builder’s half model, still in existence, proves that she was a handsomely crafted little ship with a graceful bow and fine lines aft.
 
The elder Thomas Marvel retired from shipbuilding at Newburgh sometime around 1860. He later built some additional vessels elsewhere, including the schooner Amos Briggs at Cornwall. He may have commanded sailing vessels on the river in his later years, for he was referred to from time to time as “Captain Marvel.”
 
By the mid-1850s, the younger Thomas Marvel had become a thoroughly professional shipwright, and undertook the management of the yard’s operation, at first as the sole owner and later in partnership with George F. Riley, a local shipwright. The partnership continued until Marvel volunteered for service in the Union Army almost immediately after the start of the Civil War in April 1861. He served as Captain of Company A of the 56th Regiment until he was mustered out due to illness in August 1862.
 
He returned to Newburgh, but shortly afterwards moved to Port Richmond, Staten Island, where he built sailing vessels and at least one steamboat. A two-year period in the late 1860s saw him constructing sailing craft on the Choptank River at Denton, Maryland, after which he returned to Port Richmond.
 
During the Civil War and for a few years afterwards, George Riley continued a modest shipbuilding business at Newburgh, later with Adam Bulman as a partner. They went their separate ways in the late 1860s, and Bulman teamed with Joel M. Brown in 1871, doing business as Bulman & Brown. For the next eight years, they built ships in a yard south of the foot of Washington Street, where they turned out tugs, schooners and barges. Their output of tugs consisted of James Bigler, Manhattan, A.C. Cheney and George Garlick, and their most prominent sailing vessels were the schooners Peter C. Schultz (332 tons) and Henry P. Havens (300 tons), both launched in 1874.
 
Another source of business was the brick-making industry, which required deck barges to move its products to the New York market. Nearly all of 19th century New York City was built of Hudson River brick, and the brick yards on both shores of Newburgh Bay contributed to this enormous undertaking. In 1872 alone, Bulman & Brown built at least five brick barges for various local manufacturers.
 
Vessel repair went hand in hand with construction. Bulman & Brown built and operated what might have been the first floating dry dock at Newburgh. In 1879, the firm moved to Jersey City, New Jersey, and Newburgh lost a valuable asset. This prompted Homer Ramsdell, the local entrepreneurial steamboat owner, to finance construction of a marine railway located at the foot of South William Street. Ramsdell, whose interests included the ferry to Fishkill Landing and the Newburgh and New York Railroad, as well as his line of steamboats to New York, wanted to be sure that his fleet could be hauled out and repaired locally without the need for a trip to a New York repair yard.
 
The mid-1870s, which marked the end of the wooden ship era at Newburgh and the start of the age of iron and steel, brings us to the close of this portion of the sketch of the area’s shipbuilding. From this time onward, the local scene would change radically. The firm of Ward, Stanton & Company, successors to Stanton & Mallery, a local manufacturer of machinery for sugar mills and other shoreside activities, entered shipbuilding and persuaded Thomas S. Marvel to join the company in 1877 to manage its shipyard. Newburgh, which had been incorporated as a city in 1865, was about to enter the major leagues in ship construction.

Editor's Note: This article was originally written by William duBarry Thomas and  published in the 2000 Pilot Log. Thank you to Hudson River Maritime Museum volunteer Adam Kaplan for transcribing the article.

                                                                    No. 89- Nuhpa
Built originally for service on the Hudson river, the “Nuhpa” was in use for 33 years and was finally broken up at Boston, Massachusetts, after spending her last years on Long Island Sound. During her career on the Hudson river, she ran afoul of the ice on two occasions, sinking in one instance and being run aground to save herself in the second encounter.
              
The hull of the “Nuhpa” was rebuilt from the hull of the ill-fated steamboat “Berkshire” which was destroyed by fire in 1864 with a loss of 30 lives.  [Editor's Note: see "Berkshire"'s story below.} J.R. Baldwin and H.S. Baldwin rebuilt this hull in 1865 at New Baltimore, N.Y., the length recorded as 253 feet, breadth of beam 37 feet, depth of hold 10 feet. The gross tonnage of the “Nuhpa” was listed at 1232, not (sic) tonnage 906, and she was powered with a vertical beam engine with a cylinder diameter of 37 inches with a five foot stroke. A feature of this engine was its placement- crosswise of the vessel with a direct connection with the propeller which was a departure from the usual custom of gears. This resulted in an exceptionally fast steamboat, and the “Nuhpa” was the largest propeller steamboat built for the Hudson river up to that period.
              
The “Nuhpa” was constructed for George H. Powers and other parties of Hudson, N.Y., for service on the Hudson and New York night route, and she has the distinction of being the largest and fastest vessel that ever made the city of Hudson her home port.
              
April 7, 1873, is the date of the first encounter with the ice- and the “Nuhpa” came out of the affair “second best.” She was on her way from the up-river city to the metropolis when she was crushed by the ice off Barrytown about 2 o’clock in the morning. She sank and was abandoned, and about April 25th was raised and towed to New York. She was repaired and returned to her regular route. In December, 1876, she again met defeat before the crush of the river ice- this time she was cut through by the ice and run ashore on Esopus Island to avoid sinking. This accident took place just above the location where the “Sunnyside” met her fate a year before.
              
​In the spring of 1877 the “Nuhpa” was returned to her regular route- seeing service for another year, when she was transferred to the excursion business, making a round trip per day from New York to Iona Island. On August 24, 1878, she was sold by the New York and Hudson Steamboat Company to parties in Bridgeport, Conn., and in 1879 she was again placed in service on excursion trips to Iona Island. In July, 1879, the name of the “Nuhpa” was changed to the “Metropolitan” and in 1880 the “Metropolitan” was sold to the New London Northern Railroad Company who operated her in line with the “Tillie” and “Doris” between New York and Groton, Connecticut, until 1896 when two new steamboats, the “Mohawk” and “Mohegan,” made their appearance, and the “Metropolitan” was laid aside as a spare vessel.
              
​ In 1897 the “Nuhpa” under the name of the “Metropolitan” was sold to a concern in Boston, Mass., who took her to Boston where she was broken up.

                                                            No. 22- Berkshire - 1864
The largest steamboat ever constructed for the Hudson-New York Route, the “Berkshire,” was one of the show boats of her time, but her career was short, and the memory of the “Berkshire” is one of those horrors which occurred in the early days of steamboating.

The “Berkshire” was built at Athens in 1864 with a 250 foot keel and a beam of 37 feet. She was owned by George H. Powers, of Hudson, and had a speed of 18 miles per hour.
           
On June 8, 1864, one of the most heartrending disasters in the annals of steamboating occurred to the “Berkshire.” She left Hudson early in the evening for New York City, and as she was rounding Krum Elbow about two miles from Hyde Park, a fire was discovered in her crank pit. The cause of this blaze was never determined but it was thought that some interested passenger who had been watching the great crank revolve, had actually dropped the lighted stump of a cigar into some cotton waste in the pit.
           
It was not long before the flames were roaring up through the engine shaft and setting fire to the deck cargo of bailed hay, cutting off communication from either end of the boat. There were 130 passengers aboard, most of whom had embarked at Hudson and Catskill, and of these 40 were either burned to death or drowned. The scene of the catastrophe was one that will long be remembered by the survivors, and the bravery of a Mr. Carter, of the editorial staff of the New York Times, who crawled over one of the paddle boxes to safety, leading with him many more, was one of the highlights of the accident. A Mrs. Hannaford, with a baby in one arm and her daughter in the other, leaped overboard, leaving her little son on the deck. Both her baby and daughter slipped from her grasp in the water and she herself was saved by a man who was obliged to let go his grasp on his own little boy in order to save the woman. All the children were lost. A Saugerties merchant by the name of French, jumped from the hurricane deck with his son and daughter clinging to him, and escaped the clutching fingers of death.
           
The heat of the flames had driven the engineers from their posts and the paddle wheels continued to revolve after the boat had run aground. Many of the struggling passengers who found themselves in the water, were disabled by being struck by the paddles or were forced out into the river by the current set up by the motion of the wheels, and were drowned. Those who were fortunate enough to escape were picked up by the “James W. Baldwin” of Rondout, which hurried to the rescue and put out small boats to pick up those in the water.
           
​What remained of the “Berkshire” was rebuilt into a freight and passenger craft named the “Nuhpa”, which ran the same route between Hudson and New York.

​The hamlet of New Baltimore is an unincorporated community of less than 200 homes situated on the west bank of the Hudson River approximately 15 miles south of Albany. From the river, New Baltimore is identified by several early nineteenth century houses with verandahs, the steeple of the Dutch Reformed Church and the squared bell tower of a former Methodist church. Driving through the hamlet, one might notice the well-preserved nineteenth century houses, carriage barns and church buildings, as well as the lawns and mature trees which contribute to its attractiveness. The core of the hamlet was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. At its height of its prosperity and physical development, New Baltimore was a substantial community with hotels, stores, hundreds of houses, docks and industries. Of the latter, shipbuilding and ice harvesting were dominant. Today’s New Baltimore reflects little of the urban density and industrial character typical of much of its waterfront during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
 
The hamlet was first settled by several Dutch families and New Englanders at the end of the eighteenth century. By 1800, the place had accumulated two dozen houses and the name New Baltimore, often abbreviated as simply “Baltimore.”  New Baltimore was strategically located just below an area of the river choked with islands and bars that often impeded ship navigation to Albany. One of these obstructions, the infamous “overslaugh” bottled up shipping during periods of low water. New Baltimore had the advantage of being below these obstructions and still close to Albany. A promotional map from 1809 encouraging investment in real estate describes the place as “commanding a spacious harbor and intersected by extensive turnpike roads opening a fair prospect for the mercantile and seafaring adventurer.”

​Shipbuilding was clearly underway in New Baltimore by 1793 when the sloop Sea Flower was built by Nathan Dunbar. This was followed by more than a dozen new sloops, schooners and a brig built for the river trade and even trade with the West Indies. These sailing vessels tended to average 60 to 70 feet in length on deck and carried freight and passengers up and down the river while maintaining communications between Hudson River towns, New York City and southern New England. At least one New Baltimore sloop remained in service locally into the 1870s. The town’s yards also thrived repairing and rebuilding sailing vessels. By 1830, a community of shipbuilders, masters, owners and merchants had emerged building docks, warehouses, several shipyards and a series of mostly frame houses on small lots along what are now Main and Washington streets.

​
​A drydock was added to New Baltimore’s yard facilities in 1835. Sloops continued to be built and repaired here into the 1850s, when steamboats and barges began to be produced. In 1858, Jedediah R. and Henry S. Baldwin purchased the Goldsmith and Ten Eyck shipyard and began a business that continued almost uninterrupted until 1919. The Baldwins built at least 100 steamboats, canal barges, hay barges, tugboats and a large steam dredge over their 61-year history and repaired many more. A marine railway was built at the company’s Mill Street yard in 1884 which facilitated the launching of new boats and the repair of passenger steamboats of all but the largest sizes. Among the more notable boats built here were the 182-foot sidewheeler Andrew Harder in 1863, 253-foot propeller steamboat Nuhpa in 1865, the sidewheel towboat Jacob Leonard in 1872, the 127-foot sidewheel steamboat G.V.S. Quackenbush in 1878 and the 139-foot hay and excursion barge Andrew M. Church in 1892. Between 1905 and 1906, 13 boats were launched at the Baldwin yard. Photographs of the yard taken in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries show the marine railway in use, new boats being built on the shoulders of the railway slip, an office and loft building, several storage buildings, a steam mill for sawing and planning lumber, a basin adjacent to the river to keep logs from drying and checking, several steam boxes with brick furnaces and teams of workers with caulking mallets in hand. Launches of the larger boats were often celebratory events for the community and recorded in photographs. 

​​Small boats were also produced and serviced in New Baltimore. In the 1880s, Herrick & Powell produced yachts and launches with steam and early internal combustion engines. In 1898, William H. Couser moved his boat shop to Mill Street where he produced and repaired small craft for some years. The Baldwin firm built or repaired at least one small auxiliary schooner at its Mill Street yard and briefly operated a small yard nearby at Matthews Point for building smaller tugs.

​​New Baltimore’s mid and later nineteenth century prosperity was expressed in its fine homes and churches. Stylish homes with verandahs overlooking the river and sometimes distinctive cupolas were built by the town’s leading industrialists and merchants in the latest styles of the day. Steamboats connected New Baltimore to Albany, Hudson and ports in between and a five-story hotel was built on the town square. Large warehouses flanked the public dock and coal pockets were built near the steamboat dock and a short distance south on Mill Street. By the 1890s, the waterfront was flanked by enormous icehouses at its north and south ends and across the river on Hotaling Island.
 
New Baltimore’s decline was gradual. The West Shore Railroad by-passed the hamlet by more than a mile when service began in 1883, limiting the possibilities that direct rail service might have provided. Major fires in 1897, 1905, 1912 and 1929 largely destroyed the business center of the community. The natural ice industry declined during this same period due to public concerns over bacterial contamination from polluted river water and the simultaneous rise of clean manufactured ice.
 
The Baldwin shipyard was purchased by William Wade in 1919 and incorporated as the New Baltimore Shipbuilding and Repair Corporation. It may have built one or more wooden tugs. The last launch in town was the 90-foot wooden steamship Kittaning built in 1922 for the Manhattan State Hospital on Ward’s Island. Thereafter, the yard became a dock for Wade’s adapted sand and dredging company. While ideal for building wooden sloops, barges, tugs, ferries, and small to mid-sized steamboats, New Baltimore did not have enough available flat land along the river or the access to rail shipments necessary to create an efficient yard for building with steel. Steel shipbuilding succeeded elsewhere on the Hudson River where adequate land and infrastructure were available, notably at Kingston, Newburgh, and Cohoes.

With its prime industries lost, New Baltimore lost status, population, and a number of ancillary businesses that once thrived on its booming economy. Images taken by Office of War Information photographer John Collier, Jr. in October 1941 show a town with little apparent activity, dilapidated fences, unpainted porches and a waterfront with rotting barges. Buildings continued to be lost to fire and neglect and trees reclaimed industrial sites and yards. Areas of dense-packed housing were gradually thinned and by the 1970s, the town had lost as much as one-fourth of its historic building stock.
 
The hamlet’s stabilization and recovery, beginning in the 1970s, paralleled a broadened appreciation for the Hudson River and the gradual clean-up of its waters. Today, the hamlet is an attractive bedroom community for families and individuals with employment in adjacent communities and nearby cities. Its maritime heritage is echoed in the houses of the shipbuilders, captains, shipwrights and rivermen, the remains of the earth-filled docks and slips, a lone derrick, several subbing posts along the shoreline and the stone foundations of some of its lost buildings and industrial sites.
​

Sources:
Bush, Clesson S. Episodes from a Hudson River Town, New Baltimore, New York. SUNY Albany, 2011.
Gambino, Anthony J. By the Shores of New Baltimore: Its Shipyards and Nautical History. Self-published C.D., 2009.

​Twenty-seven years ago, the remains of two Hudson River schooners were identified at a remote dock where they were abandoned in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.  Historic photographs of the schooners from 1914 and 1918 were located offering detailed information about their layout and rig.  The New York State Division for Historic Preservation and Grossman and Associates Archaeology digitally recorded the more intact of the two hull bottoms producing photographs and a plan drawing.  An article describing this project and summarizing the historic context of Hudson River sloops and schooners appeared in Sea History No. 77, Spring, 1996.
 
The Hudson River was New York’s “Main Street” for at least 200 years and sloops and schooners were the principle vehicles of its commerce.  Even after the Age of Steam dawned in 1807, these boats continued to evolve and improve through the introduction of centerboards, greater carrying capacity and changes in working equipment.  The last generation of these boats soldiered on until the end of the nineteenth century carrying bulk freights such as iron ore, sand and bricks.  Their graceful movements and white sails were often captured by the artists of the Hudson River School and nostalgia for these quiet, powerful and non-polluting boats led to the construction of the Clearwater, a modified replica of a mid-nineteenth century example, launched in 1969.  
 
Since this effort, more has been learned about the Hudson’s sloops and schooners.  Intact examples with preserved decks, bowsprits, and in some cases deck cargos have been discovered well below the river’s surface through remote sensing technologies and diver surveys.  Nevertheless, the schooners studied in 1993 revealed important details about the framing and configuration of these regionally significant boats not available in the sparse written record.  We observed that the centerboards were placed on one or the other side of the keel so as not to weaken the backbone of these boats.  To counteract the added weight on one side, we found that the mainmast of one was stepped off center on the opposite side.  We also found evidence in the more intact hull of added frames and riders used ostensibly to reinforce an aging hull for continuing service.  There was some evidence to suggest that the more intact hull was built as a single-masted sloop and later re-rigged with two masts as a schooner at a time when this was done to reduce crews in the face of rising labor costs.
 
Carla Lesh, Collections Manager and Digital Archivist of the Hudson River Maritime Museum and I visited the site at low tide several days ago.  Ice and debris have demolished the more lightly framed of the two schooners but the one that was carefully recorded thankfully remains much as it did in 1993.  The site is located on public land and protected under state and federal statute.  Should you encounter this or other historic wreck sites, please refrain from disturbing them in any way.  They are important touchstones of our maritime heritage and can still answer questions about our past that cannot be answered in the written record.