Little Martha Was Different

LITTLE MARTHA WAS DIFFERENT!

by Richard A. Dwelley

She was unlike most Hudson River sloops as we have learned to know them. Most certainly she was not a craft with lines as graceful as those of the present-day descendant of all sloops of the Hudson, the Clearwater. Nor was she as large. Only 47-feet as compared with 65 or 75-feet the average size of a Hudson River sloop.

As a Hudson River sloop, she was downright ugly! Known as a scow or market sloop, she was really a square-ended flat-bottomed barge rigged as a sloop and designed to carry lumber. And that's all. She was named after my wife's grandmother, then a little girl in New Hamburgh, so today the model of the Little Martha is centrally displayed in our living room!

As sloops went, she didn't travel great distances. Four years abuilding at the Millard Tile Yard, New Hamburgh, having been started in 1871 by William Bull Millard, Millard Lumber Company, the Little Martha was used during her best years to deliver lumber from the Millard yard (now White's Marina) to such nearby ports as Low Point (Chelsea), Fishkill Landing (Beacon), Dutchess Junction, Newburgh, Marlboro, Milton, Poughkeepsie and Barnegat.

In 1884 Millard sold the Little Martha to Captain Moses W. Collyer of Low Point who later turned her over to an iron ore concern in New York City probably ending her useful days as a harbor barge as happened to so many of the old Hudson River sloops.

There seems to be some slight difference of opinion about when the Little Martha was built. "Sloops of the Hudson" (1908, Captain Moses W.

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