Lecture Series

Follow the River Lecture and Film Series

Upcoming Events

March 26: Life on the Erie Canal as a Tugboat Cook

April 9: Clipper Yacht Races

APRIL 18: An Apprentice Boatbuilder in Japan

April 23: Paul Kane's Poetry of the Hudson

Ticket Information: $10 (General Public); $5 for HRMM Members

Location: Lectures are hosted at the Wooden Boat School on the Hudson River Maritime Museum's campus unless stated otherwise.

For more than a decade the Hudson River Maritime Museum's "Follow the River Lecture Series" has hosted historians, authors, and maritime experts covering a variety of subjects ranging from regional and maritime history to ecology and art inspired by the river. Past lectures that were able to be recorded are available to view on the museum's YouTube channel. Click here to view.

For more information about upcoming lectures, please see the descriptions below or click on the event image to be taken to the event information and registration page.

If you are interested in participating in our lecture series as a guest speaker, please contact the Museum's Education Department or call 845-338-0071 ext. 16.

2025 Lecture Lineup

MARCH: Women's History Month

Life on the Erie Canal as a Tugboat Cook
with Bettina Mueller

Wednesday, March 26th
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

In 1976 & 1977, Bettina Mueller made three trips on a tugboat from New York Harbor to Buffalo on the Erie Canal. Each trip took about three weeks to travel over 400 miles. It was a working boat with five crew members and Bettina was the cook. From a chance meeting with the Captain, a girl friend of mine and I joined the boat for what would become one of the great adventures of our lives.

Bettina documented the trips in a new book called Photographique – A Journal. In this lecture Bettina will show photographs of the Philip T. Feeney and the Canal and describe some of our adventures.

Guest Speaker

Bettina Mueller has been a cook on a working tugboat, a news photographer, owner of a pioneering vegetarian restaurant and executive of a cutting edge Internet company. In addition to her interest in food and media, she’s been a lifelong student of Zen, the Japanese Tea Ceremony, and the natural world.

APRIL

Clipper Yacht Races
with Jacqueline Kavanagh

Wednesday, April 9th
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race is a 40,000-nautical-mile, eleven-month adventure for non- professional sailors. Founded in 1996 by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, it pushes endurance, teamwork and skill while racing across the planet’s oceans. Crews, led by professional Skippers and Mates, battle storms, towering waves, and blistering heat on identical 70-foot yachts. Crews, led by professional Skippers and First Mates, face raging storms, towering waves, and scorching heat while navigating some of the world’s most demanding waters.

Guest Speaker

Ireland-born-and-raised Jacqueline Kavanagh, 53, is an ocean racer. Once a stranger to sailing, she circumnavigated the globe as part of the Clipper 2019-20 Race, clocking up 40,000nm and adding big ocean crossings to her list of achievements.
She now fronts the Clipper Race Recruitment Team where she encourages others to pursue their dreams and take on the adventure of a lifetime. She’s just an ordinary person who has been there, done it, and worn the foulies, making her the perfect sounding board for anyone wanting to take on the challenge.

Ways of Learning: An Apprentice Boatbuilder in Japan
by Douglas Brooks

Friday, April 18th, 2025
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

Douglas Brooks is a boatbuilder who has been studying traditional Japanese boatbuilding for over twenty-five years. Since 1996 he has worked with nine boatbuilders from throughout Japan, and he is the sole apprentice for seven of his teachers. His teachers represent the last generation of craftspeople in Japan building wooden boats. Brooks’ research involves recording his teachers’ design secrets and techniques before they are lost. His latest book, Japanese Wooden Boatbuilding, is the first comprehensive study of the craft.

In this lecture Brooks will discuss the crucial role of the apprentice system nurturing Japanese crafts and the threat posed by the absence of a new generation of apprentices. His talk is a lesson in craft, learning, and boatbuilding, and includes his photographs of traditional boats from throughout Japan.

Guest Speaker

Douglas Brooks is a boatbuilder, writer, and researcher specializing in the construction of traditional wooden boats for museums and private clients. His boats have been displayed at museums across the United States and Japan. Since 1990, he has been researching traditional Japanese boatbuilding, focusing on the techniques and design secrets of the craft.
Brooks is the sole non-Japanese listed in a 2003 Nippon Foundation survey of craftsmen capable of building traditional Japanese boats. In 2014, Brooks received the Rare Craft Fellowship Award for his work from the American Craft Council.

Poetry of the Hudson
with Paul Kane

Wednesday, April 23rd, 2025
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM

The Hudson is a storied river, celebrated in both prose and poetry, as well as in myths and legends handed down over generations. This illustrated talk focuses on poems about the Hudson but also considers the notion that there is something poetic about the river itself, the way it fascinates with its beauty, variety and constant presence in the valleys it has formed over aeons. In our exploration, we journey through time as well as along the shores of the river, from the Adirondacks to the broad bay of New York, looking at work from early American poets up to contemporary ones, traveling in our minds and imaginations, as we too celebrate the poetry of the Hudson.

Guest Speaker

Paul Kane has published, as author or editor, twenty books and many essays, reviews and poems in literary and scholarly periodicals. His work includes eight collections of poems and a collaboration with the photographer William Clift: A Hudson Landscape. He has taught at Yale University, Monash University (Australia), the University of Bologna (Italy), and Vassar College, where he was Professor of English and Environmental Studies. His awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Bogliasco Foundation, and in 2022 he was awarded The Order of Australia.

Past Events

With permission from our speakers we were able to film some of our lectures, so you can catch up on ones you missed! Due to restrictions, not all lectures may be available on video or in full. Watch via our Lecture Series playlist on YouTube or simply click on the graphics below to be taken to recordings of recent lectures.

A Year in the Life of an Orchard
Kevin Clark, lead orchardist at Rose Hill Farm

Vertical Divider

Finding Joy in Color and Peace in Nature: Becoming a Coast Guard Artist with Fred Feiler

Geology and History of the Rosendale Natural Cement Industry

Ladies of the Valley

Brick & Brick Ruins of Hudson Valley

Author Mary Mistler leads a talk on her novel 'Ladies of the Valley" Women of the Hudson Valley's Great Estates' highlighting several of these women and and offering insights and anecdotes from their lives, which largely reflect women’s changing roles over centuries.

Thomas Rinaldi and Robert Yasinsac’s talk about brickyard ruins as well as notable ruins constructed from local bricks.

The Land Doesn't Forget

Manhattan Phoenix

All the land that makes up the United States was in its entirety Indigenous land. Learn about the policies used to remove Indigenous Nations from their homes and pushed them onto reservations. Heather Bruegl explains why the fight to regain this land is important.

Based on his book, "Manhattan Phoenix: The Great Fire of 1835 and the Emergence of Modern New York", author Daniel S. Levy describes in detail the Great Fire of 1835 —which destroyed nearly 700 buildings in lower Manhattan—and the forces that transformed New York from a large unruly metropolis during the early years of the 19th century.

Seasons of Life

Marginalized Workers on the D&H Canal

Frank Beres, an aquatic ecologist and naturalist based out of Port Ewen, New York, examines the phenology of biodiversity as he travels through a year in our local area of the Hudson River watershed.

The construction of the 108-mile-long Delaware and Hudson (D&H) Canal required about 5000 laborers working in hard and dangerous conditions. D&H Historian and Bill Merchant gives a presentation about the lives and experiences of the diverse group of people who worked on the Canal.