1899

June 10, 1899. Rockland County Journal (Nyack, N.Y.)
 CAPT. WOOLSEY RETIRES. He Has Sold His Boat, Built in Nyack in 1851.
The following item is from the Newburgh News; Captain George D. Woolsey has sold his vessel, the Samsondale, and has retired to private life.  The Samsondale was built at Nyack In 1851, and was one of the most powerful and one of the fastest sloops on river and sound.  She was 95 feet long over all, and 70 feet on the keel.  Her mast had a length of 88 feet and when she carried a topmast it was 50 feet long.  The boom was 75 feet, the gaff 40 and the bowsprit 40.  These figures indicate an Immense spread of sail.  The Captain always kept his boat in fine trim, and when in a hurry he could make every ounce of wind count.  The Samsondale has beaten many a crack yacht on the sound.  Captain Woolsey knows the river and sound, rocks and shoals, tides and currents, like a book, besides being an expert sailing-master and navigator.

---

November 11, 1899. Rockland County Journal (Nyack, N.Y.)
BIG SLOOPS ON THE HUDSON. What an Old Man Says of Them in Former Times.
An old river man expresses surprise that so much ado should have been made over the length of the spars of the Columbia and Shamrock.  "Why," said he, "when I sailed the Hudson our spar was just ninety-nine feet high, and we carried a topmast of fifty-six feet.  We thought nothing of this big spread of sail in those days and we were never known to take in full reefs at that, for those big single stick sloops were unmanageable almost unless under full spread of canvass.  Now there's the Columbia's spar which is 100 feet 8 inches with a topmast 64 feet, that carries the total length up to 170 feet, not mentioning, of course, a club topsail stick, and the newspapers and magazines are making a great hullabaloo over the immense sticks and the great spread of her canvas.  Why, I remember distinctly the sloop Tanner, which hailed from Saugerties, about eight miles above Kingston, having a spar 100 feet tall, only eight Inches less than the Columbia, and carrying a topmast 58 feet long, and the Tanner was only one of the general class of big freight sloops that sailed the Hudson and the East coast up to twenty years ago.  The big spread of canvas these sloops carried was looked upon as commonplace and very few of them had spars less than 100 feet in length."