The Hudson
The Rivers of America Series
by: Carl Carmer   Illustrated by: Stow Wengenroth

CHAPTER 14

Fireflies in the Rigging

The big yachts that brought the Dutch across the Atlantic were unwieldy for navigable river waters. And so, while the Hudson was reflecting the glory of the spread sails of the Bachelor’s Delight and the Broken Heart, the Gilded Otter and the Spotted Cow, the Salt Mountain and the Seven Stars, the Good Bear and the Blue Rooster, the Glowing Oven and the Golden Shark, the Blind Ass and the Angel Gabriel, water-wise boatmen on the shore were planning simpler craft for general river use. Out of their experience and shrewdness came the Hudson River sloop--a type that was to become known throughout the world and to dominate the river’s traffic for two centuries.

The sloops the Dutch built were like their wives--well rounded in the bow and high aft. Their average length was about seventy feet, though ambitious masters in eager competition sometimes insisted on ninety or a hundred. At first sight the sloops seemed all mainsail. The mast was set well forward and the jib and topsail were small, while the big main sheet bellied Out with more than a little bag from the long, heavy boom.

From these sturdy vessels the Dutch boatmen learned the ways of Hudson’s "Great River of the Mountains." Through many a windy night they leaned on the heavy tillers, their eyes fixed on the points of the high horizons where hill slopes end and stars begin. White sails in the shadow of the Great Chip Rock moved upriver while the moon rolled a salty tide against mountain waters pouring down and cloud masses to the north muttered grumbling protest. Through the wide choppy waters of Tappan Zee the Dutch skippers tacked with their eyes on the peak of Hook Mountain, always so long in view that they dubbed it "Tedious Hook." Then they scudded past Haverstraw, and through the reach known as Sailmakers to the shining curve of the Crescent. Above lay other reaches, Hoge’s and the high banks of Vorsen, Fisher’s and the sweet smelling clover with the long high wail of mountain wildcats drifting over it. Then Bacerack, Playsier--the almost endless waters of the Vast, and finally the jungle banks of Hunter’s.

Skippers learned to follow the tides as they glanced off the bank at a bend and to go with them even across midstream rather than sail shorter distances in straighter lines and slower time. It was safer to anchor than to lose ground when both wind and tide were set against them. Voyages came to be measured by tides--"two ebbs and a flood." When it was low water at Kingston it was high water at the Hudson’s mouth. The thunderstorms and gushing brooks of spring could check the northward rush of the moon tide forty miles below Albany. They learned to take advantage of land breezes that spring up off the Palisades even in weeks of summer calm and blow a little while when the moon is waning and dawnlight has not yet begun to grow. They found out that in a southeaster the farther upriver they went the stronger the wind blew. In a northeaster it was better to begin reefing if Manhattan bound. Taking in the topsail was generally enough of a compromise with a Hudson wind, but if it became very strong the mainsail was lowered a bit. Sudden squalls had to be watched for, too. These came strong enough to capsize any unprepared sloop when they came. But usually lowering the mainsail halfway and setting part of the jib would be a sufficient answer to wind and thunder.

Novices used to be afraid to watch an experienced skipper jibe--change his mainsail from one side to the other while running before the wind. It seemed suicidal, even after trimming down the sheet, to put the helm hard up and let her swing to an angle of forty-five degrees. The wind would hit the loose sail and send it across the deck, the heavy ninety-foot boom swinging as if it were a fishpole. The sail would go thundering over the taffrail, obviously about to yank the mast out by the roots when it fetched up. Calmly the skipper would hold the helm hard up, while letting the sheet run freely. Just as catastrophe seemed inevitable the sloop would have swung far enough around for the wind to catch the sail on the other side and blow it all aluff. Then the skipper would throw the helm hard over, and as gently as a disciplined pony the sloop would take to her course again. That trick had to be played "mighty careful," though. A latter-day sailor, Ben Hunt, tried it once when he was at the wheel of the sloop James Coats. When the mainsail came over the deck a loop in the sheet caught him around the neck and popped his head into the river without taking the rest of him along.

It did not take many trips upriver to convince a sloop skipper that he should wait in the lee of Thunder Mountain if a west wind was blowing, because it would be dead ahead once he had rounded the point into the Race. When sloop commerce was at its height fifty sail might be waiting here, and when the wind changed or a flood tide came there would be a great fluttering of canvas as they came all together around Jones Point. Then thunderous curses echoed in the gateway of the Highlands as the sloops veered into the swift deep water of the Race, taking the wind from each other, running athwart their rivals’ bows, bumping and scraping. An hour later, having passed Anthony’s Nose at the end of the Race, they would be a dignified peaceful parade of shining white sails more than a mile long, all well on their way toward the safe waters of Newburgh Bay.

Soon after the Dutch came to the Hudson the sloops became the usual means of transport for the polyglot populations of Manhattan and Fort Orange and the occasional settlers between. David de Vries sailed his to Fort Orange and return in 1640 and several months after that he took it to the Tappan Zee to trade with the Indians. There he found that a government sloop had preceded him and was trying to collect a tax in corn from a group of spluttering redskins who advised him not to land.

Profane Jacob Klomp was the captain of the most generally used sloop between Fort Orange and New Amsterdam a few years later. He carried beaverskins and grain and lumber in cargoes so heavy that his vessel sat low in the water as she sailed downriver. On the return journey he sometimes brought hogs, butter, brandy. He had to pay a fine of 250 guilders for throwing in a generous portion of the last-named stimulant when he sold a kettle to the Indians of Catskill.

In 1654, as a result of a number of similar episodes, all boatmen were forbidden by court order to sail from Fort Orange without permission and a rigid inspection of their vessels. In the same year the sloops of Klomp and Claes Thysz sailed to New Amsterdam bearing beaverskins and grain as the contribution of Fort Orange to the expenses of fortifying Manhattan. More than a score of years later, when the British had taken over the government of the river lands, Claes Lock’s Hester had replaced Klomp’s sloop as a favorite transport.

The Hollander boatmen were more skillful than the English and the language of most men who "followed the river" remained Dutch after English rule came, and for a considerable time after it had gone. Negro slaves, the Dutchmen discovered, easily adapted themselves to river life and it was not an unusual sight to see a sloop manned by blacks and commanded by a white captain--all carrying on loquaciously in excited Dutch.

As experienced builders and masters gradually improved on the early models, the sloops became gay boats. Dutch owners slapped vivid colors on them until they looked gaudier on the water than an Italian peasant’s cart on its way to fiesta. Prettiest of all were the Nyack sloops--trim and fancy in gold and red and green and blue stripes--sailing palettes on the Hudson’s mirror. Hudson River sailors have never held with flat sails. "Just don’t hold the wind," they say. They have always loved to see the air at work--bellying the mainsail, keeping it rap-full when beating to windward. They have been wrong, as the yachtsmen of today know, but few sights could be lovelier than that of a river sloop with a bagful of wind, looking as if she might be lifted Gut of the water at any moment and become a many-colored magic carpet blowing down the channel between the mountains.

In the days before the big steamboats the packet sloops were roomy and had plenty of deck space. Passengers promenaded during the day, and on gala occasions danced to the music of fiddles under the stars. As the young republic grew and the river towns filled up, the stream was dotted with hundreds of sail day and night. Each town had its market sloops and on the way to New York the green of vegetables, the gold of hay and grain, the red of apples bobbed above the bright paint of the gunwales. In 1769, Albany claimed more than thirty such craft, each carrying four or five hundred barrels of flour on its eleven or twelve trips a year to New York.

The captains of these sloops were general agents for the whole town. They sold a farmer’s produce in the city, bought him what he wished, and sailed back to deliver the purchases and the remaining money. They matched cloth for the housewives, took care of passengers young or old entrusted to them, hove to for a pleasant chat with the captain of a passing sloop when they felt like it. They sent ashore for milk to put in the tea or stopped so that passengers might take a walk and admire the "sublimity" of the river scenery. At the beginning of the Revolution they helped many a rebellious colonist and his family flee bag and baggage from the advancing British; at the end of the Revolution they piloted weeping Tory families downriver to the big boats which would take them to their new life in exile.

As more Yankee skippers took to the river at the beginning of the nineteenth century, new American water lingo replaced the Dutch. Scholarly talk about the moon’s phases and their effect on the tides was soon translated by the unlettered skippers into familiar idiom. Apogee and perigee were easy for them. Flood tides were weak when the moon hung far away "in the apple tree" and were full when the moon hung near "in the pear tree." They spoke of inexplicable "witch tides," so slow that it seemed the moonlit brine was being held back from its periodic race by some mysterious enchantment. But cobwebs in the rigging were spell-breaking counter charms. Spider-spun traceries hung over the decks could mean but one thing--a spanking breeze in the morning.

The Cruise of the Experiment

Through November and half of December the vessel lay at Murray’s Wharf on Manhattan’s edge while her dozen and more owners, the India Company of Experiment, met each Tuesday night to consume ever-increasing amounts of porter as they planned her great adventure. Thousands of pounds of ginseng were in her hold--they knew a land where ginseng was a treasure of high price. From up the river had come furs of many squirrels, of mink and foxes, muskrats and raccoons, a bearskin and four pelts of spotted fawns, and, for the wonder of people in a far land, the coats of three of those howling cats that had given the river mountains their name. More than four hundred gallons of Jamaica spirits went rolling up the gangplank and with them four fine casks of William Maxwell’s best Scotch snuff. There was tar and turpentine, rosin and varnish to add to the pungent smell of the Experiment as she made ready to sail. On December eighteenth the Experiment cleared New York, and kept on south. "And so God send the good sloop to the desired Port in safety. Amen"--thus ended her bill of lading.

Word reached Albany in July that she had been reported at Antigua. After that there was a long silence. A year went by and another six months. The insurance companies that had refused to insure the boat congratulated themselves on their good judgment while they mourned her probable fate. Then on a late April day in 1787 a rumor ran about New York that sent all who heard it scurrying toward the North River wharves. The Experiment had been sighted. She was beating up the river at that very moment. A Hudson River sloop had sailed around the Horn, on through the Strait of Sunda, and still farther to the great Chinese city of Canton. She had been the first American craft to make a direct voyage from the United States to China, the second to reach Canton.

The big crowd cheered and waved as Captain Dean proudly gave orders to make her fast. Because he had commanded the Enterprise of the American Navy during the Revolution, he was in full uniform and had taken the liberty of uniforming his entire crew as well. A band was playing martial music and a boatswain’s whistle was sounding as "with all the pomp and circumstance of war" six self-conscious men and two nonchalant little boys, Billy De Wever and Black-boy Prince, came ashore to be idolized. It was nothing, they said, smooth sailing all the way and not a day’s sickness among the lot of them. The only real excitement had been that at some distant ports the people had mistaken the little Experiment for the tender of a fleet of men-of-war and had been frightened nearly out of their wits at the prospect of a bombardment. No, they had not been obliged to use any of the six carriage guns mounted on the sloop or any of the big collection of muskets, boarding pikes, and cutlasses they had taken along just "in case."

New York’s Empress of China, first American ship to reach Canton, had been there when they arrived. While they lay at the Pagoda Anchorage of Whampoa, suburb of Canton, the Truxtan of Philadelphia, the Hope of New York, and the Grand Turk of West Salem had come in. The harbor had been crowded with ships of England, Sweden, France, Holland, Spain, India, but the greatest harmony had pervaded the whole fleet, "all being ready to assist one another on every occasion." The Experiment had left Canton only four months and twelve days ago, and here they were.

And now perhaps some of the crowd would like to see the great chests of the finest bohea tea they had brought back, or hyson tea; or the eighty bales of striped yellow Nankeen silks; the incredible black taffetas and cinnamon-colored satins that all America was talking about; the thirty-one chests of exquisitely decorated porcelain, so beautiful that it had come to be known simply by the name of the place of its origin--China. Eagerly the New Yorkers trooped aboard. The Experiment and her crew were the wonder of the town.

A hundred and fifty miles upriver the homefolks went wild with joy. Captain Dean had brought great credit on Albany and that thankful town immediately named a water-front thoroughfare Dean Street, a title it still bears. He had given distant nations "an exalted conception of the enterprising spirit of the United States." Said the New York Packet: "The successful and safe return of Captain Dean has taught us that fancy oft times paints danger in much higher colours than is found really to exist and that by maintaining a spirit of enterprise, diligence, and activity we are enabled to surmount difficulties which on a cursory view are deemed fraught with dangers."

The captain sailed off to China seven times after that, but the Experiment, sold at auction to new owners, capitalized on her reputation by going back into regular New York-to-Albany passenger service. Hector St. John de Crèvecceur, Normandy-born farmer of Orange County, wrote an interesting reminiscence of a trip he took on her after her return from Canton. He said he and his companion chose the Experiment for their journey from New York to New Windsor because of "the beauty of its construction, the unusual size of its cabin, and above all the expectation that the conversation of Captain Dean. . . would be very interesting."

The captain--who had evidently returned to the command of the Experiment--told them that in all his extraordinary voyages to Canton he did not make "a piastre worth of repairs" and that "if the Chinese duty at Canton had only required a sum in proportion to the size of his sloop he would have made an advantageous voyage."

He went on then, if Crèvecceur’s memory is to be trusted, to prove his conversation interesting by giving a long stilted speech on the beauties of the Hudson and to prophesy that "it is here that the rich, the idle and the aged will come to find rest, freshness and health."

When the Experiment had entered the Highlands, country of echoes, her skipper told Crèvecceur that within the high hill walls the "wood-nymphs hear every language and repeat with pleasure the songs of the travelers." He said that once with the aid of his megaphone he had shouted out over the channel, "Hail, fair wood-nymphs!" and that no less than seventeen of the lovely forest creatures had answered, repeating his hail.

"With these words," wrote Crèvecceur, "the Captain shouted 'Hail, Passengers!’ But the wind and the noise made by the wake of the boat permitted us to hear only the nearest wood-nymphs."

After the retreat cannon at West Point had sounded and darkness had begun to dim the shore lines Captain Dean took the passengers into the Experiment’s big cabin, which was furnished and decorated in elaborate Chinese style with many a memento of the great voyage, all visible in the glimmering light of Chinese candles, "each one inclosed in its glass bowl." On the wall hung a big map of the Hudson drawn during the Revolution "under the surveillance and by the order of Washington." The captain said wistfully that he wanted to be a farmer. "I navigate only to become one some day," he said; and pointing out on the map the rich lands on the far side of the Catskills, he added that if he ever did he would prefer to live there, out of sight of the river.

At midnight underneath the moon the passengers of the Experiment were still trying out the echoes, making them repeat verses and songs. They heard great splashes "as if some giant, lodged on the top of the mountains, had thrown great rocks into the river."

"Those are sturgeons," said the captain, "which having jumped to a great height, fall back into the river. I am ignorant of the motive of such strange exercise."

After many years of voyaging Captain Dean retired to live on Arbor Hill in Albany, most honored of the old town’s hearty sea dogs and a fitting predecessor to the tough upstate whalers and traders of the river ports. He was a very old man full of memories when he died.

Memory of Sloops

As the steamboats took more and more of the passenger trade, the sloops lost prestige and became freight carriers. They bore to market Hudson River brick, Rosendale cement, bluestone, hogs, and butter. Conservative travelers still used them as packets, however, until late in the fifties, because bursting boilers continued to make steamboat travel perilous. As late as 1860 there were at least two hundred sloops on the river. Those built early in the century were very sharpprowed, with deep keels and a considerable draught. Many of the interiors were paneled in West Indian mahogany. The people of the valley remembered and loved them long after the palatial steamboats had driven them from the Hudson.

There was the American Eagle, swiftest in all Haverstraw, the lovely Ariel, and Cornwall’s white-clad Bride; the famous Greene County Tanner that later became a schooner, the slim Huntress, the Jewel and the Linnet, and New Hamburg’s Little Martha with her black captain and crew of his two black brothers. From Peekskill came the wide-winged Mohican, fit rival to the Mad Anthony, the Zenobia, the Rising Sun. From Rondout sailed the Phoebe Jane Minnerley and from Eewisburg the Flying Cloud. The Twilight was a graceful sloop--no lovelier, though, than the Ophelia. The Victorine of Cold Spring was swiftest of the lot when she was new but not even she could show her heels to the sturdy old Canaan beating up the river in a northeast blow. "Old Horse" her captain called her because once she had felt a nor’easter in her bones she was mighty hard to blanket. Everybody knew the Samsondale and loved to pass her at night because Captain George Woolsey, standing at the tiller on the quarterdeck, lifted a rich baritone in sentimental melodies through the dark hours.

The Hudson sloops had experienced much before they left the river. Their skippers and their passengers had seen many things that once were beautiful and that, like the sloops themselves, have gone from the river now. They had seen clouds of pigeons so thick that the sunlight of a fair day had been shut out and the big shining surface had been turned to sullen gray. In the early days they had beheld the great autumn bushburnings when--to clear away the dead underbrush and make hunting and berrypicking easy--the Indians had set forest fires on both sides of the river and the sloops seemed to be drifting through the golden nave of a high cathedral pillared with towering flame. On some nights while they were scudding in mid-channel sailors saw by the black pine torches’ flare Indians and whites hurling spears into the twisting flanks of leaping 200-pound sturgeon whose scales were aglitter with reflected light. Perhaps most beautiful of all were the quiet clear hours when the blue hills and bluer mountains of the twilight had been lost in darkness and a little breeze brought swirling clouds of fireflies to dart downward and give their evanescent imitations of the distant stars.

Young Peter Kalm, sensitive Swedish naturalist, on an American journey saw fireflies invade the dusk of crooked streets in Albany and dare to crowd into the open doors and windows of the Dutch river town. And once on a warm June night he lay on the deck of a packet sloop anchored just above "Danskammer"to see swarms of the little flying lamps descend upon the rigging, making each rope into a shimmering chain of light.