One Accident Leads to Another

Editor’s Note: The following text is a verbatim transcription of an article featuring stories by Captain William O. Benson (1911-1986). Beginning in 1971, Benson, a retired tugboat captain, reminisced about his 40 years on the Hudson River in a regular column for the Kingston (NY) Freeman’s Sunday Tempo magazine. Captain Benson's articles were compiled and transcribed by HRMM Contributing Scholar Carl Mayer. This article was originally published March 5, 1972.

A SKETCH OF THE “REINDEER” by marine artist Samuel Ward Stanton, of Newburgh. Since early steamboats operated in the age before photography, Stanton’s sketches and paintings, in many cases, are the only known likeness of the vessels. Stanton perished as a passenger on the ill-fated maiden voyage of the liner “Titanic.” He was returning from Europe where he had gathered source material for a series of murals for the Day Liner “Washington Irving,” then being built.

Back in 1938, the tugboats “Winthrop” and “Brimstone’’ of the Hedger Transportation Company were coming down the Hudson River with a tow of canal boats.  Off Evesport, north of Saugerties, they ran into heavy fog.

Feeling their way along in the fog, the tow started to pull to the eastward towards Tivoli.  But, the tow didn’t get very far before it fetched up on the mud flats on the east side of the channel.  Before long, some of the barges started to leak and two of them sank.

When the barges were pumped out and raised, it was discovered that their bottoms were cut by deep gashes.  The gashes looked as though they had been made by heavy steel obstructions and not by rocks on the river bottom.  At low tide, an inspection, made by divers for the insurance company in the area just north of where the tow had run aground, disclosed the remains of a boiler and engine bed of an old steamboat wreck.  The wreck was about nine feet under water and close to the flats.

Was it the ‘Reindeer’?

Because of the location of the old steamboat wreck, it was generally thought the wreck on the river bottom was that of the old steamboat “Reindeer” which had burned and gone under at that location way back in 1852.

The ‘‘Reindeer” had originally been built in 1846 for service between New York City and New Brunswick, N.J. on the Raritan River.  She later ran between New York and New Haven, Conn. — and on this run her ability to travel at high speed was soon noted.  Because of her speed, in 1851 she was placed in service on the Hudson River in the then highly competitive service between New York and Albany.
On September 4, 1852, the “Reindeer’’ was proceeding up river for Albany with between 300 and 400 passengers aboard.  She had just made her landing at Bristol, now called Malden-On-Hudson, when her boiler blew up.  The smoke stack fell, demolishing the pilot house and upper deck.  Steam from the bursted boiler flooded the lower cabin where many passengers sat eating dinner.  Some 31 persons lost their lives in the accident.  She caught fire as a result, but the flames were apparently extinguished.

Three days after the accident, fire broke out again and got out of control.  The ‘‘Reindeer’’ was cut loose from the Bristol dock where she had been secured, and the remains of the steamboat drifted aflame to the east side of the channel where the fire burned itself out.  What was left of the “Reindeer” sank on Green’s Flats, just north of where the red flashing Beacon No. 38 is now standing.

So in 1938 — 86 years after her fatal accident — the “Reindeer” came back to plague boatmen of another era in another century.  At that time, stories were again told of her feats of speed and races she had engaged in against other steamboats — an age when the first steamboat to reach a landing got the waiting passengers.

Author

Captain William Odell Benson was a life-long resident of Sleightsburgh, N.Y., where he was born on March 17, 1911, the son of the late Albert and Ida Olson Benson. He served as captain of Callanan Company tugs including Peter Callanan, and Callanan No. 1 and was an early member of the Hudson River Maritime Museum. He retained, and shared, lifelong memories of incidents and anecdotes along the Hudson River. ​

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