Steamboats on the Hudson
by Vivian Wadlin

With the steady beat of about 25 freight trains a day along the railroad tracks of the Hudson--and no steamboat traffic--it is now obvious to anyone which of these two modes of transportation won the competition for freight and passenger loyalty that arose between them in the latter half of the 1800s. This duel developed as rail lines popped up all over the Hudson Valley, but especially after tracks were laid on the east and west shores. Before that competition had a clear winner, steam-powered boats on the Hudson were regular, plentiful, often beautiful, and frequently, dangerous.

Steamboats had a good head start on railroads here in the Hudson Valley. The first steam-powered boat on the Hudson was Robert Fulton's Clermont in 1809. According to Beatrice Hasbrouck Wadlin's Times and Tales of the Town of Lloyd, John H. Coe (born 1798) was that rare person to witness the beginning of both the steamboat and railroad eras. Coe recalled seeing the maiden voyage of the Clermont from his Highland home on Bellevue Road above the West shore of the Hudson. By the mid-1830s, there was a regularly scheduled night boat carrying passengers and freight from Ulster Landing (now Saugerties) to New York City and back. In his later years, Coe witnessed the building of Vanderbilt's NY Central west shore railroad (1880s) and saw "the telegraph wires strung along the shore."

The market for freight haulers boomed, and with the lure of New York City just down the river, and even more alluring, fresh air and beautiful scenery upriver, passenger traffic swelled, too. The Saugerties and New York Steamboat Company had four sidewheelers: the Saugerties (1882), the Ansonia (1848), the Ulster (1892), and the Ida (1881).

Since its settlement the Hudson River had been an important produce shipping lane for the agrarian counties along its length. Ports along the river bristled with moorings, ice houses, warehouses, factories, housing, and storage buildings for lumber, blue stone, and farm produce. At Yelverton's Landing, later known as New Paltz Landing in the Town of Lloyd, the building of the West Shore rail line necessitated the demolition of many buildings because the shore's topography rises so abruptly to inaccessible cliffs. Rock and dirt fill was brought in, the brick hotel that now stands just west of the tracks was moved inland, and the landing was built out into the water, so that the 1754 Yelverton house now stands significantly back from the shore line that was once nearly adjacent.

The steamship era had its share of memorable catastrophes, but the following has to be one of the strangest. It's hard to imagine what went through the mind of the engineer at the controls of the northbound express train on the West Shore Railroad on November 11, 1897, when... "Rounding a curve at 40 miles an hour, he nearly fainted when he saw that apparently he was about to collide with a steamboat."

The steamboat that appeared to block his path was the Ulster. According to the account by John Overbagh and Donald Ringwald in Steamboat Bill, Journal of The Steamship Historical Society of America, the Ulster "left Saugerties as usual on Thursday evening, November 11, bound for the way landing and New York City. The night was a windy one, and with a flood tide running, First Pilot Ezra Whitttaker, who was on watch, kept to the westward as the steamer neared the northern gate of the Highlands of the Hudson. . . . Twenty-seven-year-old wheelsman (or quartermaster) Charles R. Tiffany brought a sandwich to the pilot house for Pilot Whittaker and took over the big hand-geared steering wheel while Whittaker ate. Then, at Tiffany's request, the pilot again manned the wheel and Tiffany left on what was to have been a brief absence. About two minutes later Whittaker, by his own statement, was seized with cramps so severe that he released his grip on the wheel and dropped back into his chair. It seems reasonable to believe that at the time, he had the rudder over sufficiently to port to counteract the effects of the tide or the wind or both. When he let go of the wheel, the rudder swung back to the normal amidships position and so spun the steering wheel. Whittaker may have attempted to regain a grip on it, but, whether or not he did, he was struck as it whirled around. Two of his ribs were broken and one was cracked. By now it was too late for further action, for the Ulster had yawed off to starboard and at full speed had gone up on the rocks at the foot of the Storm King Mountain. The time was about midnight."

Which brings us back to the engineer on the West Shore train, speeding around a bend headed north at 40 miles an hour. Fortunately for him, his passengers and his company, the rail track ahead straightened out of the curve and the train passed harmlessly within feet of the grounded steamer. The steamboat met no such happy fate. In an eerie premonition of the world to come, all of the ship's passengers got off the shipwrecked boat, made their way to the Cornwall Railroad station, and caught a train to NYC. The Ulster itself was rebuilt some 20 years later as the Robert A. Snyder, and was done in by ice in February of 1936.

Of course, it was not just the railroads that supplanted the steam (and later diesel) boats that plied the Hudson. River traffic was always at the mercy of seasonal shutdowns when ice clogged the channel. As roads improved and bridges were built, trucks became more common as freight carriers and the automobile became the travel mode of choice for people. Although the Hudson River Day Line continued operations as a tourist boat into the early 1970s, there was simply less and less economic reason for river boats. Many steam-powered ships burned while in service. Many were sold for scrap during the 1930s, burned, or sunk. Some just rotted away at their last docking. A few were used as entertainment venues. However ignoble their endings, their stories and photos continue to inspire a sense of awe and adventure.

The Maritime Museum in Kingston is currently running a special exhibit "Ringwald's River: One Man's Passion for the Hudson and Its Steamboats." The Museum is located at the Rondout Landing and is open Friday to Monday from 11am to 5pm. (845) 338-0071 for more information.