Explore Hudson Valley MAY 7, 2015 • ULSTER PUBLISHING • WWW.EXPLOREHUDSONVALLEY.COM
Festival Guide
NEW YORK RIVERS BOATING FESTIVAL 2015
Celebrating the richness of regional water lore --------------------
Saturday & Sunday, May 16 and 17 Henry Hudson Waterfront Park Hudson, NY
7, 2015 2 | May Explore Hudson Valley
The Commodore welcomes you
T
he New York Rivers Boating Festival is a big step for the Mohawk Hudson Council of Yacht Clubs. Don’t let our long name scare you off. We are local to you anywhere on the Hudson and Mohawk rivers from Poughkeepsie to Schenectady. Our council includes boaters and boat clubs from every river community. We’re guys and gals who build docks, launch boats, fish, sail, paddle, raft up, put on great parties, and love having our kids with us. We want to bring you all here together with us. Enjoy the water, the air, the magnificent views. Get to know us. We are your neighbors, parents of kids in the same schools, fellow firefighters, commuters, local business folks and supporters of boat clubs on these beautiful waters. Our message is that there is nothing but room on our New York rivers for all of you: on these rivers, next to the rivers, sitting, cruising, painting, kayaking, sailing, building small craft, restoring historic boats, working with Sea Scouts, barbecuing, watching the stars next to a bonfire. We hope to be able to meet you, to tell you about our clubs, to show you frankly how inexpensive it can be to have a small boat, kayak or sailboat or to live aboard a boat docked on the river, close to home. It’s an experience that your whole family will enjoy, with lots of support from folks just like you. So come on down to The New York Rivers Boating Festival, sponsored by your people, the local clubs of the Mohawk Hudson Council of Yacht Clubs. Visit our website,www.mohawkhudsoncouncil.org, meet all of us, see where we are and what we have to offer in or near your community. Our council is now 55 years old. Most of our 20 member clubs were started before World War II or just after by our grandfathers and grandmoth-
The Hudson has long been more than an estuary and river for those who love it, but a way of life — and a dream — as well.
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THESE IMAGES AND THE COVER PHOTO BY STEVE WALSH.
ers -- the Greatest Generation kids. They came home, fully aware of the value and beauty they had in the river communities and build little clubs to enjoy it. Many of their kids, the Baby Boomers, continued building, adding onto the tiny shack and old barge clubhouses and scrap-built docks. Their own kids, the Gen Xers, now have their
own family birthdays and weddings in the clubhouses, teach their children safe boating and respect for the river, and build and maintain impressive dock systems. The cycle continues. New boaters constantly fill the ranks of retiring and passing members. There is no rank. This is about people working and playing, shoulder to shoulder together. It is you who will attend who will continue the fellowship and float the next boats. We are 2000 boaters who want all of you to come by and join the fun. We can’t wait to meet you and your family at the New York Rivers Boating Festival. Commodore of the Council, Van Calhoun
Commodore Van Calhoun from the Castleton Yacht Club recently crewed on the historic Half Moon down the Hudson River on its way to Boston, where it was prepared for shipment to the Netherlands.
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May 7, 2015 Explore Hudson Valley
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IMAGE FROM WIKICOMMONS
Sea Scouting on the Hudson River New York Rivers Boating Festival supports instruction of local youths by Michael Puccini
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’ve heard some people say that the best day of their life was when they bought a boat and the second best was when they sold it. That may be true for some people. The new boat owner may not have had the proper instruction or guidance in owning and operating a boat. It’s analogous to learning how to drive or take care of your car. If you are going to go it alone, then it will come down to trial and error – often a lot of error. If you have ever wanted to venture into boating, now would be a great time and place to learn everything you need to know about buying, owning and operating a boat properly and safely. The Mohawk Hudson Council of Boating Clubs is hosting the first New York Rivers Boating Festival at the Hudson River Park in Hudson from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 16 and Sunday, May 17. The event will provide first-time boat owners all the information they will need. The Mohawk Hudson Council supports the local Sea Scouts. Sea what? Sea Scouts, a subdivision of Boy Scouts,
are a specialized segment of what is referred to in Boy Scouts as a Venturing program, meant for older Scouts who seek more challenging experiences. Sea Scouts, which is open to boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 21, was organized to address boating skills and promote knowledge of our long maritime heritage. Sea Scout units, called “Ships,” focus on sailing and cruising sailboats or power vessels. During the boating season, Sea Scouts learn to maintain and operate their vessels, with a focus on learning the safe and proper methods of handling boats. Sea Scouts learn the meaning of buoys and lights, how to take advantage of wind and tide, and how to drop anchor, approach a dock and navigate. Courses in swimming, lifesaving, first aid, Coast Guard auxiliary sailing and seamanship and cardiopulmonary resuscitation are taught. The state safeboating course is also offered by many Ships. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s take a closer look at the little-known history of this group of dedicated youth known as Sea Scouts. The Boy Scouts were founded in England in 1907 by Sir Robert Baden-Powell. Sea Scouts began three years later when Baden-Powell’s brother Warington wrote the first official Sea Scout manual, called Sea Scouting and Seamanship for Boys. Boy Scouting was brought to America by William D. Boyce in 1910. Sea Scouting followed two years later. Occasional acts of Sea Scout hero-
7, 2015 4 | May Explore Hudson Valley
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May 7, 2015 Explore Hudson Valley ism in America were noted. On one of the most dramatic incidents, a Sea Scout wireless operator sailing on the schooner Eastward saved a score of lives by not abandoning his post. His ship began to sink fast, and he was ordered to send out a distress signal. He kept sending the distress signal while waiting for a response. While all hands and passengers were abandoning ship, he finally received an acknowledgment of his S.O.S. The ship went under with him still manning the radio. His body was never recovered. The public mourned his loss and recognized his bravery. In February 1913 Secretary of the Navy G.V. L. Meyer issued an official order recognizing and endorsing the Sea Scout program. In the present day, the member clubs of the Mohawk Hudson Council sponsor Sea Scouts Ships. As part of this sponsorship, the clubs seek boats to donate to the Sea Scouts. They provide docking, moorings and a place for the Scouts to meet. They provide instruction on maintenance, proper boat handing and mentoring. It’s a strong foundation for a great boating and learning experience, not to mention an opportunity to get young adults outdoors more. The Sea Scouts have a promising future. There’s room for many more young men and women as
well as adult leaders to register with the program. Today the program has over 6500 youth and over 2200 adult leaders. Although these totals pale in comparison to the pre-World War II numbers, Sea Scouting is the fastest-growing program of the Boy Scouts. Venture scouting is opening the Sea Scouts to a more diverse membership. Maybe it’s because there are so many different types of Ships, or maybe it’s just because people love boating. The Sea Scouts have a Ship at the Poughkeepsie
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Yacht Club. If you want more information about Sea Scouting, establishing a Sea Scout Ship at any one of the local boating clubs, or just seeking a fun day, come visit us at the New York Rivers Boating Festival at the Henry Hudson Park on the banks of the Hudson River in Hudson. Don’t forget to check us out on the web atwww.nyriversboatingfestival. com andwww.mohawkhudsoncouncil.org. See you there!Â
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Trade and recreation All manner of craft have plied the historic river By Vern Benjamin
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lipping into the tributaries under the cover of darkness, the early Dutch traders in hides and rum maneuvered their small sloops away from the river traffic to the very edges of the Native American villages where their “customers� awaited. In the seventeenth century, these small, one-man boats on the Hudson River estuary were the craft of choice for the bootleggers of the night, who came to break the rules by dealing rum for hides, a practice which Indian and Dutch leaders abhorred and prohibited. Small boating was commonplace in the colonial and early American periods. If not a trader (illicit or otherwise) with local goods coming and going from community to community, then the craft might contain a family crossing to visit relatives or attend a church, or river boys cavorting in makeshift crafts they had made themselves and had managed to keep afloat. The larger sloops of the eighteenth century, their interiors often fitted out in fine mahogany with berths for travelers, carried commerce and people both. A flock of sheep might be fenced in on the deck, providing warmth for the travelers below. Alexander Hamilton was said to have composed the first Federalist Paper on one of these well-appointed craft while traveling from Albany to New York to meet with John Jay and James Madison, co-writers of the series. Often the vicissitudes of the wind and tide required several days for such a voyage. The sloops would become stranded on the Overslaugh Bar, a long and broken stretch of heavy siltation on the narrow stretch of the river above Hudson that captured many a craft in muddy ooze until the tide came and plucked them back into the current. James Kirke Pauling, writing in the 1830s, spent several enjoyable days lolling on a sloop deck waiting for the proper tide before resuming his voyage to Albany. Hudson was an international port of call in the early nineteenth century because ships often could not proceed because of the Overslaugh. For a few years the city hosted a substantial international whaling trade.
IMAGE BY L.F. TANTILLO.
In 1647, residents of Fort Orange (today’s Albany) were treated to a rare spectacle when a white whale appeared in the Hudson River. Speed became a paramount consideration after the steamboat arrived. Men like Asa Bigelow of Malden built racing sloops to carry the tanners’ hides, and later the bricks and bluestone of the Hudson Valley to market. The commercial needs and the beauty of these early craft enabled the wealthier river families to develop competitive recreational craft that became the forebears of the clubs and community racing events of the twentieth century. In all periods of the history young boys found ample time in the summers to move around their river neighborhoods in small craft that they and some of their friends made, or that were patiently crafted with a father or favored uncle offering advice and instruction. In the early 1890s, Franklin Roosevelt and his neighbor, Edmond Rogers, built a sailboat of sorts “on the top of a hemlock tree� and played at seafaring with the toy. They also hewed and tied logs into a makeshift fishing raft, but when they boarded she sank. Plans for a yacht club were drawn up by the boys, a field was cleared and flooded, and a dam and part of a clubhouse constructed. Young Franklin was outfitted with a small, lateen-rigged iceboat called the Hawk, with which he became adept. The Hawk survived and is currently on view at the FDR
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historic site museum in Hyde Park. After 1861, when the Poughkeepsie Yacht Club was formed, ice boating became a favorite pastime among the wealthy estate owners in the mid-Hudson region. Ice yachting was not particularly expensive (not yet), and was not altogether new. By 1866, as other ice-craft clubs arose and the technology matured, more than a hundred of these sail were on the river. New Hamburg was a favored locale, where the finest of the nineteenth-century ice boats, the Whiff, was commissioned by Irving Grinnell. Grinnell introduced the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Ice Challenge Pennant in Americaâ&#x20AC;? in 1881. The event attracted competitors from several northeastern states. The annual prize of a 30-foot silk banner, most often won by Archibald Rogersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Jack Frost, never left the Hudson Valley and was also retired to the Roosevelt Memorial Library museum. Some of these boats carried a thousand feet of sail, and in their day the ice boats were the fastest vehicles ever made by man. John Rooseveltâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Icicle could easily exceed 80 miles per hour. The sport survives and indeed flourishes in the Barrytown area every winter (when thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s enough ice), and downriver near Beacon and on the Tappan Zee. The popularity of boat clubs in the twentieth century expanded into the wider community when sleek, high-powered single-man racing boats competed for bragging rights and the occasional prize at summer competitions. Power boating in the 1940s and 1950s often involved racing categories for 100and 200-horsepower craft, including the innovatively designed hydroplanes developed in the 1930s. Crowds from the local villages came and crowded the marinas, giving a festive, beer-infused atmosphere to these events. The waterfronts remained special neighborhoods for kids and their dads, fishermen from far and wide, and lately the new breed of kayakers who come to brave the currents and the tides. Often, thoughtful marina owners, like Connie Lynch in Saugerties, drew the kids back in the winter by using gasoline-powered ice plows to clear large circles of snow for skating. Lynch opened a large old brick barn for hot chocolates and toddies for the families to come and congregate while the youth cavorted on the ice. They mingled with the ice fishermen, for whom a good string of bass or panfish was a royal treat in the good old days. The Hudson River still hosts these recreational pastimes, which have by and large supplanted the old industrial corridor that once defined New York as the Empire State and New York City as the commercial capital of America. An Edwardian Great Lawn and Porch Party, a fundraiser for the Hudson River Historic Boat Restoration & Societyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s efforts to restore and maintain the 1915 sloop Eleanor, will take place at Rokeby Farm in Barrytown from 3 to 6 p.m. on Sunday, May 31. For more info, go to http://hudsonriverhistoricboat.org/edwardian-great-lawn-and-grandporch-party
May 7, 2015 Explore Hudson Valley
Magic lighthouses
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Festival Map
Exhibition at Hudson River Maritime Museum celebrates a vanished maritime culture By Lynn Woods
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entinels that once guided ships to safety through rain, fog, and the darkness of night, lighthouses continue to intrigue the imagination, even as they have become an anachronism, replaced in most cases by the functional “light on a pole,” as Hudson River Maritime Museum curator Allyne Lange disdainfully describes the modern device. The paintings of Edward Hopper helped reinforce the iconic status of the lighthouse as a symbol of independence and endurance, dramatically silhouetted against the sky from windswept shores. These navigational beacons weren’t limited to the Atlantic Coast. Here on the Hudson River seven surviving lighthouses bear witness to the maritime traffic that was once the region’s lifeline. Those on the upper river are distinguished by a fanciful, Victorian architecture that bears a kinship to Hopper’s lonely lighthouses, and yet have their own distinctive charm. Rather than punctuate a treeless coast, they are surrounded by water, gabled or mansard-roofed domiciles that from a distance seem to float fantastically, surreally, as though apparitions from another century literally adrift from the shores of time. In Kingston, the sturdy, yellow-bricked lighthouse at the end of a boulder- strewn jetty has marked the entrance to the Rondout Creek for exactly a century. In commemoration of that anniversary, the Hudson River Maritime Museum has organized “Hudson River Lighthouses: Past & Present” for its 2015 season. Consistent with the museum’s mission, the exhibition chronicles the vanished culture that coalesced around the river’s lighthouses — the duties and lives of the keepers and their families, the passing panorama of the river with which they interacted, the history of the various structures and the technologies of the lights. ne entire wall of the gallery is covered by a reproduction of a colorful illustration of a map of the river that graces the Beacon post office, as photographed by museum acting executive director Russell Lange. Painted in 1937 by noted Woodstock artist Charles Rosen, it was commissioned by the federal government as part of its Depression-era public art projects. The map serves as a reference point for the location of each of the river’s original dozen lighthouses. Below it is affixed a photograph of each lighthouse with explanatory text. The work provides a delightful, exceptionally user-friendly overview. Additional creative resourcefulness is expressed in a waist-high model of the second lighthouse that existed at the confluence of the Hudson and Rondout Creek (the current structure is the third). This stone model with distinctive quoins and small gables was constructed by volunteer Ron Searl, who worked for 20 years at the American Museum of Natural History as an exhibit carpenter. (Searl has contributed his talent and skill to several diorama-like exhibits at the HRMM.) The round granite base of that earlier lighthouse, which in turn replaced the original wooden structure, still can be seen, though the location is overgrown with bushes and trees. Built in 1867, the bluestone lighthouse was very similar to the preserved brick lighthouse from the same period at Saugerties (which also replaced an earlier lighthouse). It was probably designed by the same architect. Allyne Lange noted that the U.S. Lighthouse Service, which administered all the nation’s lighthouses, would have assigned one architect to design and maintain all the buildings in a particular district. “He was in charge of repairs, and he used the same plans for all the
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DONALD RINGWALD COLLECTION, HRMM.
Last Rondout Lighthouse keeper Robert Howard and daughter Esther headed for town in1943. lighthouses in that district,” she explained. The bluestone Rondout Lighthouse was replaced by the 1915 brick building after the creek had been dredged. esides the Rondout and Saugerties lighthouses, two other survivors are Esopus Meadows and Hudson-Athens, whose Second Empire-style mansard roofs attest to their construction in the 1870s. The Esopus Meadows Lighthouse, which was saved by a citizens’ group after it was slated for demolition in 1965. Its lantern was replaced by a steel tower. The structure has the distinction of being the only wood lighthouse on the Hudson. (Both Esopus Meadows and Hudson-Athens are open in the summer and can be visited by boat.) Known as the Stuyvesant Lighthouse, the northernmost Hudson River lighthouse stood on its granite base 17 miles south of Albany for nearly a century, until 1933. The next one to its south was the 1830 brick-and-stone Coxsackie Lighthouse. Torn down in the 1940s, it had been maintained by two spinsters and was known as “Old Maid’s Light.” Women played a prominent role in maintaining
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the lighthouses, assisting their husbands and, in the case of the Rondout Lighthouse, taking over after the man died. Mr. Murdock drowned after only a year on the job, and his wife, Catherine Murdock, subsequently maintained the Kingston lighthouse for 50 years, raising two children, who commuted to school by rowboat. Her son acted as assistant keeper and eventually took over. Photographs of the three Murdock lighthouse keepers, along with an image of their cozy living room, are on display. A sample of Catherine’s Almanac-sized scrapbook is also on display, pasted with newspaper clippings telling of her various fascinating adventures — including the rescue by her son of a man who fell off a towed barge, steamboats that sunk or floated by spectacularly on fire, and the disastrous flood of 1878. Also on display is a log that was kept by the keeper of the lighthouse at Danskammer Point, opened to the pages for September 1897. In graceful, spidery script, it records a detailed, day-by-day description of the weather (“white frost at sunrise” is an example), which is certainly of interest today, in this era of extreme weather and climate change. The exhibit also displays a Fresnel lens, a technological improvement that used a series of prisms to intensify and focus the radiating light, and a collection of brassware, including an oil can and several lanterns, that constituted the keeper’s equipment. A colored lithograph depicts the small hexagonal wooden tower that graced the stony point at West Point. It was accompanied by a wooden fogbell tower, destroyed by a schooner crashing onshore in 1921. Other lighthouses that have been preserved include the small stone tower at Stony Point, built in 1821 and the oldest survivor; the “spark-plug”style Tarrytown Light, which still stands onshore just north of the Tappan Zee Bridge; and the Jeffrey’s Hook Red, at the foot of the George Washington Bridge, known to generations of children as the Little Red Lighthouse, thanks to Hildegarde Swift’s book The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridgeand the memorable illustrations of Lynd Ward. “Hudson River Lighthouses, Then and Now,” underwritten by Rondout Savings Bank, will be display throughout the summer and fall. Lighthouse-related activities, including boat tours of the Rondout Lighthouse, will be scheduled for River Day (June 27) and other museum events. For a fascinating glimpse of this iconic linchpin of maritime safety and lore, don’t miss it.
7, 2015 8 | May Explore Hudson Valley
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