OLD TIME RIVER CAPTAINS BEMOAN PASSING OF THEIR SAILING VESSELS

Editor's note: The following is from the "Journal News" Nyack, NY, March 23, 1934. Thank you to Contributing Scholar George A. Thompson for finding, cataloging and transcribing this article. The language, spelling and grammar of the article reflects the time period when it was written.

Three masted schooner under sail on Hudson River. Photograph by R. Saulpaugh. Hudson River Maritime Museum collection

The opening of the Hudson River after having bean frozen for several breaks recalled to the minds of old river man the halcyon days when river traffic was at its height. But those who survive will never agree with their predecessors that the romance left the river when the sailboats gave way to steam and barges. 

The men who handled the sloops and the schooners had no more excitement than the barge captains and the tugboat masters of a later era.  Their problems were different, but when the river started to kick up there was little to choose between managing a sloop or handling a barge in a tow.

When the Cornell Towing Co. took over the assignment of the winds and replaced the old sailing vessels, the Hudson River brick industry lost some of its picturesqueness but took on magnitude.  The number of bricks transported down the Hudson River increased from 20,000 to 25,000 on the sailboats to 275,000 to 400,000 on the barges. And there ware many more barges than there ware sailing vessels.

Haverstraw’s four famous Captain Bills, all products of the days of sails and halyards and all well past the 80 year mark, used to sit in the Polka Dot cottage of Capt Bill VanHouten on the river front in Haverstraw and watch the tows moving up and down the river. The old seafarers would bemoan the fate that replaced the sails with steam, but they admitted that more bricks were being moved than previously.

Besides Capt. VanHouten, the other ancient mariners who made up the quartet which was famous throughout the Hudson Valley in the early part of the century were Capt. Bill Seam, Capt Bill Chapman and Capt. Bill Kingsland. 

With the passing of the schooners and sloops, the tow came into being and it was John Rose of Roseton, father of former Senator John B. Rose of Haverstraw, who first conceived the idea of chaining two or more barges together to form a tow.  It was this device as much as anything else that pushed the sailboats off the river and brought the barges to the fore.  Transportation was quicker and more economical and gradually the sailing vessels disappeared. 

A few of the old captains became captains of steam vessels but most of them scorned the new mode of transportation. Barges were far beneath their dignity. 

But in their stead arose a younger and different type of riverman, the barge captain.  Not a whit less colorful than his predecessor but less romantic in the public view, the barge captain took up the work where the sailing captains stopped.

Some of the barges carried real crews, with a captain, a second hand and a cook making up the personnel.  In most cases, however, the captain was solely responsible for his craft and in times of stress must work out alone the safety of himself and his boat. 

Wind, wave and tide buffeted the tows as they went up and down the river and, without steering apparatus or means of propulsion, life itself depended upon keeping the barge in the tow. The barge captains are a doughty and arresting clan. They are a one-for-all-and-all-for-one group who meet none too frequently when their barges are in use. Their spirit of camaraderie was evidenced at their annual ball, which was held each spring at Waldron’s opera house in Haverstraw.

An incomplete list of the barge captains who called Haverstraw and Stony Point their home ports in the halcyon days of the brick industry includes Jonas Greene, George Smith, Tommy Francis, Boo Gordon, Tug Wilson, Tom Freeman, Bill Freeman, Jimmy Kennedy, Billy Kennedy, Jim Tierney, Pete Clark, Mose Clark, Jack Feeney. Butch Feeney, Bill Uhl, Hughey McVeigh, Alex June, Charles Fisher, Joe Fox, Paul Brooke, Sam Tremper, Abe Blauvelt, Tommy Walsh. Jim Clark, Daddy Clark, Jerry Curran, Tom Lynch, Sly Camay, Jerry Lavender, Charley Knapp and others.

Hudson River, a Tow just North of West Point. Hudson River Maritime Museum collection

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