Hudson River Whalers
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When visiting Hudson, NY, today, it’s hard to believe that it was once the state’s second busiest city after New York City and only one vote away from being named the capital of New York. Although the ocean was 120 miles away, Hudson’s docks were crowded with incoming and outgoing ships and its waterfront bristled with seafaring activity from the late 18th to mid 19th century.
During the American Revolution, several wealthy Nantucket families fearing marauding privateers and the British Navy, sold all they had and searched to find a safe harbor as suitable, but less vulnerable, than Nantucket for their whaling fleet. They found it along the Hudson River, at spot then known as Claverack Landing.
This group, numbering no more than thirty, called themselves the Proprietors, and they made a pact that bound each individual to settle here personally or sell his holdings to the others "at first cost, without interest". They established rules and regulations and laid out the City on a grid pattern, with lots 50 x 120 feet.
It didn’t take long for the waterfront, which started with a wharf and a single store, to become a mass of warehouses, shipyards, caulkers, blacksmith shops, sailmakers, and riggers. In 1785, the City of Hudson was Chartered — it was the third City in the State. In 1790, the city became an official seaport with customs officers and government seals.
The good times came to a halt in the early 1800s because of hostilities in Europe. The British declared contraband any ships trading with France and her allies, and Napoleon replied that France would seize any ships entering or leaving a British port. Thomas Jefferson mixed up the whole business further with his embargo act forbidding all commerce with foreign countries. By the time War of 1812 was over, Hudson’s economy was in shambles. In 1815, it lost its designation as a federal Port of Entry; and five years later, the Bank of Hudson failed.
Rolling to Hyorky from the Catskill Shore
Whaling fleets of the Hudson River
From The Hudson, by Carl Carmer, Published: New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1939When Hudson River ports boomed as whaling towns
By Herbert K. Saxe, The Half Moon Press, June 1997Nantucket-on-the-Hudson
Remembering the halcyon days Hudson's whaling fleet
by Paul Smart, Ulster Publishing, October 23, 2003A new book chronicles City of Hudson's rise and fall
Review by Richard Buttler, Hudson Valley Magazine, November 2003