Fliers of the Old Days

Editor's note: The following text is from an article printed in the New York Times on October 11, 1891. Thank you to Contributing Scholar Carl Mayer for finding, cataloging and transcribing the articles. The language, spelling and grammar of the articles reflects the time period when they were written.

Steamboat "Henry Clay". Donald C. Ringwald Collection, Hudson River Maritime Museum.

FLIERS OF THE OLD DAYS: FAMOUS RACES ON THE HUDSON RIVER COURSE.
HOW THE SWALLOW BEAT THE ROCHESTER — COMMODORE VANDERBILT'S COSTLY BLUNDER — LIQUOR, OIL, AND FURNITURE USED AS FUEL.
With what emotions of interest some of the old steamboat Captains of the Hudson River would come out of their graves to observe the forthcoming race between those modern marvels of speed, the steam yachts Vamoose and Norwood, can easily be guessed. In the old days, when the Hudson River was practically the only highway between New-York and Canada and the West, it was the scene of many a race as exciting as any that ever occurred on the Mississippi. While the Mississippi Captain would boldly venture to take a short cut across the grass if there had been a heavy dew that morning, the Hudson River Captain would not hesitate to flash through rocky channels, and no risk was too great with victory at stake. 

The first of the great races of bygone days on the Hudson was that between the Swallow and the Rochester. The former was designed by Anthony N. Hoffman, and was the type of all modern boats of her class — that is to say, of all boats that are sharp both fore and aft. She was built in 1836 at the yard of Copes & Burtis, on Wallabout Bay, Williamsburg.

There were at this time two great rival New-York and Albany steamboat organizations on the Hudson, the one known as the Hudson River Steamboat Association, controlled by Mr. Hoffman, and the other, known then as now as the People’s Line, controlled by Daniel Drew. The Hudson River Steamboat Association was composed of several steamboat owners whose interests were combined for mutual profit. The steamers which belonged to the association in the order in which they were built, down to the time of the creation of the famous Swallow, were as follows:
The North America, which had a double engine and one walking-beam on either aide. She was under the command of Capt. Lathrop and was controlled by Robert L. Stevens.

The Albany, also owned by Robert L. Stevens, and commanded by Capt. Joseph E. Jenkins.

The De Witt Clinton, owned by Robert Dunlap of Albany.

The Empire, owned and controlled by Le Grand B. Cannon the elder, Richard P. Hart, and others.

The Troy, owned by the same persons.

The Swallow, designed and owned by Anthony N. Hoffman, and launched in July, 1836. She made a trial trip to Albany, but was found to be a trifle too short. The boat did not “stand up well" in the water, and Copes & Burtis added twenty-five feet to her length.

The Swallow was the first clipper steamboat ever built. When her model was first exhibited at the office of Mr. Hoffman, it aroused no small degree of ridicule, and the general prophecy was to the effect that such a shape would never produce a high rate of speed under any circumstances, no matter what the engine power might be. After the Swallow had been lengthened, it was put on the regular route between New-York and Albany, and was thereafter, and until the appearance of the Rochester, the undisputed crack of the river, and was the wonder of the age, its speed being regarded as phenomenal.

Anthony N. Hoffman, designer of the Swallow, then had his office at 71 Dey Street, corner of Washington Street, this city. Mr. Hoffman was born in 1780, at Upper Red Hook Landing, Tivoli-on-the Hudson, and became connected with Robert Fulton through his association with Edward P. Livingston of Clermont, the neighboring town. Fulton had married Livingston’s daughter, and it was through her that he obtained the money that enabled him to pursue his experiments in applying steam to navigation that finally led him to success and enduring fame. Hoffman became Fulton’s secretary at the request of the latter, and was closely connected with him during his association with the Hudson River Steamboat Association, and assumed the business after his death, which occurred in 1815. Besides the Swallow, Hoffman controlled the Independence, the Constitution, the Constellation, and the Ohio. The Independence was afterward withdrawn from the Hudson, and was run from New-York to Amboy, N. J. It was sunk at Jersey City in 1822. All of these boats had cross-head engines, and the Ohio boasted of two smoke-stacks.

Daniel Drew did not relish the idea of holding second place in Hudson River steamboat navigation. He wanted to own the fastest boat on the river and enjoy the prestige and patronage incident thereto. Wallabout Bay was lined with private shipyards in those days, and thither Drew repaired in search of a firm that could build a faster boat than the Swallow. The old man had plenty of money, and he promised a liberal share of it for a boat that could beat the Swallow. Smith & Dimon undertook the task, and in 1837 the Rochester, built on the Swallow’s lines, was launched and added to the People’s Line, the boats of which started from the foot of Liberty Street. The Captain of the Swallow was Alexander McLean and that of the Rochester was A. P. St. John.

From the appearance of the Rochester, the hot rivalry between it and the Swallow began, and was constantly kept up. They raced regularity. The Swallow always enjoyed a slight advantage by reason of the fact that its pier was one block above that of the Rochester, thus enabling it to get out into the current first. Both boats started for Albany every other day at 5 o'clock P. M. This was before the introduction of coal as fuel, and wood alone was burned. The water front was not so valuable or as thickly settled then as now, and for twenty to thirty blocks along West Street the docks were piled high with cord wood, which was carried on board the steamers without being sawed or split and there piled on deck. The Swallow carried the United States mails, and, as this privilege went to the fastest boat, it furnished another incentive for racing.

The first race, between the Swallow and the Rochester, excited much interest. There was a great crowd at the docks. The pilots of the boats watched each other with the eyes of a hawk to discover the first signal given to the engineers to start, and there were men on deck to yell to the engineers at the least move of the walking beams, so that it was impossible for the Rochester to get out ahead of the Swallow and thus make an advantageous start. The boats started together, amid cheers from the crowd on shore. The regular stops on the way to Albany for both boats were Cornwall, West Point, Newburg, Poughkeepsie, Rhinebeck, Hudson, Coxsackie, and Kinderhook. Up the river went the Swallow and the Rochester side by side, the people running along the shore in a vain effort to keep up, and as soon as the boats got fairly under way, gangs of men appeared on deck and began to saw and cut wood.

But cut as fast as they could, the gang on the Rochester could not feed the furnace enough to send their boat ahead of the Swallow, and they went side by side to Caldwell’s Landing, a distance of forty miles, and at that bend in the river the Swallow slowly took the lead. Then was there excitement on the Rochester, and barrels of sperm oil were rolled out and the oil drawn out into five-gallon cans, which were thrown into the furnace. On board the Swallow the same thing was done, and one five gallon package after another was converted into speed, with the result of voluminous clouds of dense smoke from the funnels, which obscured everything in the wake of the racers.

The Swallow gradually increased her lead, and was two miles in advance at Newburg, having covered the distance, sixty-four miles, in 3 hours and 5 minutes. This was at the rate of over twenty miles per hour, and that time has never been much improved on, even at the end of half a century of progress in fast steam navigation.

A favorite point for observing the races between the Swallow and the Rochester was what was then Burnham’s Mansion House, on the Hudson, near the foot of the present Seventy-fifth Street. There it was no uncommon thing for thousands to congregate. At every landing on the river, also, there were crowds, and often cannon[s] were fired, bells rung, and colored lights sent up. Each boat carried hundreds of passengers on every trip, and many were the distinguished citizens of that generation who thus participated in those exciting races. The steamers were shoved out from the docks in New-York and from every landing with long poles, and as soon as the Swallow got ahead of the Rochester, the crew of the former would wrap the ends of the poles in hemp, soak the hemp in sperm oil, set the oil and hemp on fire, and push the flaming poles out through the windows of the engine room on each side of the boat to “light the way” for the Rochester. Although Daniel Drew was often on the Rochester, Hoffman never went up or down the river on the Swallow, but always patronized the day boat from Upper Red Hook.

His standing orders to the Captain of the Swallow were to keep ahead of the Rochester if he got to Albany with nothing left on board but the boiler and the hull, and to go past the landings if necessary. Frequently the mails were not landed at one or another town along the way until the down trip, but the Government fine of $50 for each failure to land mails was usually remitted. The Rochester never beat the Swallow, which was sold to Daniel Drew in 1844, who withdrew her from the Albany Line. On April 7, 1845, at 8 P. M., while running at full speed, in a blinding snowstorm, the Swallow ran on a rock near Athens. Although the boat sank only to the after gangway, 23 passengers out of 200 lost their lives by jumping into the water. The boat was raised and subsequently turned into a barge, and may still be in existence. The engines were taken to Troy, where they can now be seen dally, operating the machinery of the Burden Iron Works, apparently as good as ever.

On the sale of the Swallow, Mr. Hoffman withdrew from the New-York and Albany service. From that time to this, the People’s Line has run the following steamboats between New York and Albany, naming them in their order: The Westchester, the Emerald, the Rochester, the Utica, the (new) North America, the South America, the Knickerbocker, the Hendrick Hudson, the Isaac Newton, the Dean Richmond, the St. John, and the Drew. Of these, only the Dean Richmond and the Drew are now [1891] in active service.

The next great race on the Hudson was between Le Grand B. Cannon's Empire of the Hudson River Steamboat Association and the South America of Drew's People’s Line, after the introduction of coal for fuel. This occurred in July, 1847. The boats started from their perspective piers at 6:40 A. M., having no passengers on board, nor anything that would add weight to the boats and hamper their speed.

On the signal, both boats moved off together, to the cheers of a vast crowd, and ran side by side twenty-five miles, when the Empire forged ahead, and at Kinderhook, eighty miles above New-York, was nine minutes in advance. As the Empire neared Hudson, Engineer Lighthall approached Capt. Stephen R. Roe and said that it would be necessary to put in there to get coal, the supply having almost run out. Now Roe’s orders were to beat the South America or to burn the inside of the boat up, and to put in at Hudson for coal meant sure defeat, so he told the engineer to go ahead. "We are now in shallow water," he said, "the South America can't pass us, and all we've got to do is to keep the old thing going.”

They kept the old thing going. When the last pound of coal was in the furnace, they threw the fenders in after it, and then they burned the chairs and the tables, then they stripped the boat of all the light woodwork and burned that, too. A search was instituted, and a lot of demijohns and champagne baskets was found and sacrificed, and when the Empire reached the Lydius Street wharf in Albany there was literally nothing of her left, but the hull and solid woodwork. The race was so close that, as the Empire turned into her pier, the South America was abreast of the bulkhead. One of those on board the Empire visited the South America and found not a pound of coal in the bunkers or a chair or settee in the cabin. The Captain of the South America was L. W. Brainerd.

The third and last of the great ante-bellum races was that between the C. Vanderbilt and the Oregon, in July, 1860. The C. Vanderbilt was owned by Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Oregon by George Law, father of the present Sixth and Eighth Avenue surface railroad magnate. The stake was $10,000. The start was from a stakeboat off the Battery, and the course was to and around a stakeboat off Sing Sing and return. No passengers or guests were allowed on either boat. The umpire on board the C. Vanderbilt was George Law and the umpire on the Oregon was Capt. Jacob H. Vanderbilt of Staten Island, brother of the Commodore. The Commodore was in the pilot house of the C. Vanderbilt from start to finish, and thus lost his $10,000, as the sequel will tell.

The start was made at 10 A. M., and the C. Vanderbilt got the lead at the outset, and kept it until the stakeboat off Sing Sing was reached. In turning the stakeboat the Commodore, in a fit of excitement and fancying that the boat was not swinging around fast enough, pulled what he thought was the signal for the engineer to increase speed. But he pulled the wrong bell, and, to his horror and to the rage of the pilot, the boat stopped, and the Oregon gracefully swung around and into the lead. The Commodore could swear fluently on all occasions, but the volubility of his profanity on that occasion beat his record.

The C. Vanderbilt was built in 1859 by Sneden at the foot of Tenth Street, East River. The Oregon afterward ran on the Stonington Line through Long Island Sound, and was impaled on a rook at Hell Gate at 2:30 o’clock one morning. [editor's note: around 3:30 and 3:45 a.m., April 18, 1846.] No lives were lost. The boat was got off the rock, but so many heavy keelsons were required in strengthening the frame that the boat never afterward developed great speed.

An appalling casualty marked one of the old-time races on the Hudson. This was the race between the Henry Clay and the Armenia, both boats of the smaller class, in 1850. The Armenia belonged to the People's Line, but is now one of the fleet of the Day Line, which consists of the New-York, the Albany, the C. Vibbard, and the Armenia. Of these, only the New-York and the Albany are in active service. The Henry Clay and the Armenia were racing from Albany, with a full complement of passengers and freight, and the Henry Clay was several miles in advance, when it took fire near the boiler. The boat was headed for the east shore of the river and was beached two miles below Sing Sing at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. The passengers congregated aft, but many of them were driven into the water by the flames, which were swept backward by the wind, and about fifty persons were either burned to death or drowned. Among the lost was Stephen Allen, a prominent citizen of New-York and one of the Croton Aqueduct Commissioners. The Armenia was too far in the rear to render assistance.

The opening of the New-York Central and Hudson River Railroad in 1851 completed the demoralization of the steamboat traffic on the Hudson, begun by the sale of the Swallow and the retirement of Mr. Hoffman. The decline of this branch of travel and transportation is shown by the great decrease in the number of Albany steam boats.

The Dean Richmond sank off Rondout in 1868. Several months and elaborate efforts were required to raise the boat, and this and the repairs cost over $100,000. The St. John was burned at the foot of Canal Street several years ago.

Of the modern Hudson River steamboats, the fastest are said to be the Mary Powell and the New-York. There are many who consider the New-York to be faster than the Mary Powell, but the two boats have never raced. Indeed, although the Mary Powell has long held the name of being the swiftest steamboat afloat — has enjoyed the reputation, indeed, since 1862 — it is asserted by steamboat men that she has never been in an actual race with another steamboat in her long career. In connection with some of the tales of high speed by the Mary Powell and other boats, it should not be forgotten that the tide in the Hudson, in places, runs at the rate of nine miles an hour.

The Utica, one of the old-time racers of the People’s Line, figured incidentally in 1840 in one of the biggest thefts on record. At that time there was no Adams Express, and the business of that kind was controlled by Pomeroy & Co., which firm had its head offices in Wall Street. The firm used black trunks for the transportation of its valuables, and the black trunk was the well-known sign of the business. Models of it were nailed to the tops of wooden posts all over town and all over the country. Most of the money passing between the bank of New-York and those of the West was forwarded by Pomeroy & Co.

In the year in question the Utica reached her pier from Albany at 4:30 o'clock one Monday with a black trunk for Pomeroy & Co., containing $600,000 in gold and notes. On the arrival of the steamer at the dock, a man went on board with a push cart and calmly walked off with the black trunk, which was in front of the Captain's office. When the agent for Pomeroy & Co. went for the trunk at 7 A. M., it was gone, and the whole city was in a hubbub in a few hours. There was no trace of the thief, as no one had paid any attention to him.

A man named Banks, proprietor of Rathbun's Hotel, Buffalo, and Philo N. Rust, proprietor of the Syracuse House, Syracuse, N. Y., and several others, all friends, came to town on the Utica, and the party bought a two-thousand-five-hundred-dollar team of horses, and spent money freely for champagne, and literally ‘‘painted things red.” James Watson Webb, then editor of the New-York Courier and Enquirer, received information that Banks and his friends had stolen the trunk, and he published a long story accusing them of the crime. The information was furnished by a clairvoyant, a woman who knew Rust. They were put under police surveillance for a long time, but were not arrested.

One day a man took a five-hundred-dollar note of the old Merchants’ Bank into that bank for payment, and Teller Felter at once recognized the note by a private mark as one of those in the missing black trunk. The man was detained, and he confessed to getting the note from a man in Baxter Street. This person, who proved to have been the man with the push cart, was arrested forthwith, on the very eve of his departure for the West, and the trunk was recovered, together with all of the $600,000, except $1,500, which had been invested by the thief in Western land warrants at $1.25 per acre. He was convicted and sent to prison. The thief did not know what was in the trunk when he took it.

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