Old Steamboat Days on The Hudson River
By: David Lear Buckman, The Grafton Press, 1907

CHAPTER 14

Henry Hudson's River

Hudson had made two previous trips under English auspices and failed. The third attempt was made under the Dutch flag and in a vessel, a very small one, almost a yacht, called the Half Moon.

The beautiful Bay of New York was first entered by Hudson, who rounded Sandy Hook August 8, 1609, and kept on his course to the north past what is now Manhattan Island and up what is now the Hudson River.

Here surely was a great stream of water, deep enough to indicate a strait, with the walls of the Palisades suggesting the gigantic erosions of the glacial age, witnesses of the mighty forces of ice and water that swept down from the northward and made the Hudson Valley what it is.

Is there any wonder Hudson and his crew rejoiced as they sailed northward, satisfied that the mariner's goal for hundreds of years, the Northwest Passage, had at last been found? Every mile of the way seemed to add to the certainty. The broad expanse of water three and a half miles wide at Tarrytown, now the Tappan Zee (Sea), the still wider Haverstraw Bay all hastened the mariner and his men to the open ocean they believed must lie ahead. Then came the Highlands, the Dunderberg and Anthony’s Nose, clothed with their primeval forests, looking like veritable headland capes guarding the secrets of the undiscovered country and waters beyond. What a journey of mysterious enchantment and of unexpected developments this first trip of the Half Moon up the Hudson must have afforded!

It was not until Hudson began to detect the shoaling water near the site of the present city of Hudson, his dreams of the Northwest Passage began to fade and the fact he was rapidly approaching the head of a great river dawned upon him. He pushed on, however, to just below where Albany, the capital of the State, now stands on the western bank and from that point sent small boats still further up the river to ascertain if there was any way out. They returned with the disappointing statement that the stream became, rapidly shallow and that they would have to return to the sea, one hundred and fifty miles away at the mouth of the river they had been exploring for so many days.

Some of Hudson’s men evidently left the river in their small boat expedition and went up the Mohawk, for to-day there is a hamlet midway on the peninsula made by the two rivers, called Half Moon, which, tradition says, is so called because some of the first explorers from the little Dutch vessel visited the place when endeavoring to ascertain the limitations of Henry Hudson’s great discovery.

The commander of the Half Moon spent several days in visiting the friendly Indians living on the shores. After retracing his voyage and having an unfortunate fight with some Indians, he again stood out to sea on October 4th, and never returned to the beautiful river he had discovered, which was to be known by his name for all time and preserve for him a place in American history.

Hudson kept a journal of the many points he had noticed about his discovery. He called it the Great River and also the River of the Mountains. Some of his old crew returned the following year and soon the Dutch began to settle on Manhattan Island. They called it the River Mauritus, after Prince Maurice of Nassau. It was also named the North River to distinguish it from the South or Delaware River, but it came to be called, and will always be known as the Hudson, after the man who located it on the map of the New World.

An unkind fate appears to have followed Hudson to the close of his life. His crew mutinied on the return voyage and when he reached Dartmouth, England, in November, the Government detained both him and his ship on the pretext that an Englishman had no right to be in the employ of foreign nations, making discoveries that would not redound to the credit of England.

She paid but little attention, however, to the Dutchman’s colony at New Amsterdam until years afterward, when the importance of the river and the settlement on Manhattan Island had become manifest. Hudson was not permitted to return to Holland and the crew of the Half Moon was not allowed to carry the news of the discovery to those who had sent her on her voyage, until the following July.

The spring of 1610 witnessed Hudson’s departure from England on his last voyage, in the Discoverie, and this time in the employ of the Muscovy Company. He was still seeking the Northwest Passage when he entered the great sheet of water surrounded by desolate shores, which still bears the name of its discoverer, Hudson’s Bay. But the crew mutinied and Hudson, his son and seven men were put into a small boat and told to shift for themselves. Undoubtedly the great navigator and his companions met an unmerited fate on the stormy waters of the bay, for they were never heard of again.

The people in every land love their rivers. In some countries they are sacred. In others they bring fertility and wealth to the lovely valleys through which they flow. Their praises are sung in the poetry of the people and told of in story. When, as is often the case, they form the boundaries between foreign States, nations have plunged into war in order that the free passage of these great natural waterways might be maintained.

To none has been given a more beautiful and useful stream than that which sweeps its majestic course from the forests of the Adirondacks, past the cities that line its shores, through the rocky Highlands and by the parapetted Palisades, until it mingles its waters with those of the hay in front of the great metropolis, the very gateway through which by far the largest influx of the wealth of the nation, namely, its people, have reached the New World.

A river three hundred and twenty miles in length, one-half of which is open to unobstructed navigation by sail and steam for the larger boats, is a great asset in the building of a state. The hudson has had much to do with making New York the Empire State and the city at its outlet the metropolis of the country.

From the first the Hudson played a most important part in the colonization of America. When the young colonies had grown strong and asserted their freedom and the War of Independence was on, with what solicitous care did Washington and his generals fight to maintain the Hudson Valley. They were fully alive to the supreme necessity of keeping Burgoyne’s forces in the north from making any coalition with those in the south, under Howe and Clinton.

The British commanders also realized the advantage of the control of the Hudson and planned to secure it. Every vantage point along the Hudson was fortified by the Americans. Fort Washington on Manhattan Island and Fort Lee opposite, Stony Point and its fortifications, Fort Montgomery and the redoubts at various places along the shore, make the river one of rare historical interest. It was on the Hudson the patriots built their fire rafts, to float down on the British ships and it was at West Point the great chain was stretched across the stream, to obstruct any passage of the river the enemy might attempt to make.

The surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga after defeats in two battles at Bemis Heights in 1777 and the recapture of Stony and Verplancks Points in 1779, from the British, only made the enemy more determined than ever to control the river and led up to that base attempt of Clinton to secure through Benedict Arnold’s perfidy, what he had failed to accomplish by the fair means of assault, the occupation of West Point and the key to the whole situation.

What an absorbing chapter of American history this treason of Arnold and the sacrifice of André makes and how the recollection of it all comes to one, as he wends his way through the beautiful Highlands and views the handsome buildings that now crown the bluff, in which the future defenders of the nation are being educated in the arts of war.

Indian legends, Dutch Sprookje, the romance of real life and the tales of fiction hover over nearly every mile of the river’s course from its source in the mountains to its outlet in the great ocean.

Indian Head, a noble pinnacle of rock in the Palisades, was a veritable watch tower for the red men, from which they detected the approach of their foes. But, alas! the ravages of the stone contractors with their crushers have ruined its former rugged beauty.

The broad expanse of the Tappan Zee brings to mind the story of the hapless Rambout and his phantom ship, the Flying Dutchman. “Sunny Side,” the home of Washington Irving, on the eastern shore at Irvington, is suggestive of the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow, which is just above Tarrytown, and where Irving lies buried beside a quaint old church, the bricks in which were imported from Holland two centuries ago by the pious Dutchmen.

Bold Hook Mountain, another point of attack by the voracious stone contractor, whose picturesque beauty some public-spirited citizens are seeking to preserve from further spoliation, marks the northern limitation of the Tappan Zee. This headland was the Verdrietig (tedious) Hceck of the first Dutch navigators and so called because it remained so long in sight and took so many tacks to round on their trips up the river.

Once around the Hook, traverse “Haverstroo” Bay, passing the scene of Mad Anthony Waynes’ attack at Stony Point, you are soon well in the midst of the most beautiful scenery. Dunderberg and Anthony’s Nose, a mile or two beyond, form the portals to this enchanting section of the river whose culminating beauty is at West Point from which Crow’s Nest, Storm King, Cloud Rest and Breakneck Ridge are all in the superb panorama.

Further north the “Highlands” recede from the river. To the east are the Berkshires, to the west are the Catskills and the haunts of Rip Van Winkle.

These are the river stretches and those above, that have brought from the pens of Washington Irving, Fitz Green Halleck, Charles F. Hoffman, N. P. Willis, Joseph Rodman Drake and Fenimore Cooper, some of their choicest contributions to English literature and induced Charles M. Skinner to furnish in his “Myths and Legends” those charming tales of “The Hudson and its Hills.”

If you travel to the north you will find, as you have on the shores of the lower river, prosperous cities, many of them picturesquely situated on the steep banks, some in amphitheaters of natural beauty in which river and mountain combine, to make the outlook one of abiding grandeur.

Distinctly pastoral views are afforded on the upper reaches of the river, except when great unattractive whitewashed ice houses are perched on the river banks, suggesting the outreaching grasp of the monopolistic ice barons.

The dam across the river just above Troy marks the limitation of steam navigation by the big boats. Some of the most beautiful stretches on the river are to be found above, as the stream winds its way down the fertile valleys of Saratoga, Washington, Warren and Essex Counties. Glens Falls has a picturesque beauty of its own and one remembers “The Last of the Mohicans,” while Baker’s Falls just below is not to be overlooked on account of its scenic attractiveness. Commercialism is, however, painfully manifest at both places on account of the presence of the factories that utilize the water power.

Trace the river to its source in the mountain lakes of the Adirondacks, if you would find it in its crystal purity, far from the haunts of men and free from the pollution of the towns that it has helped to make great. As you contemplate the little wellspring of this mighty and glorious river in its forest vastness, rejoice that it has its rise and runs its entire course through a State, whose people are proud of the fact, that the Hudson in point of beauty, of historical association, of storied interest and of usefulness to mankind, has no equal in the whole round world.

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