Hudson River Maritime Museum

Approximate paths of Roundout Creek and the Delaware and Hudson Canal.

Hudson River Maritime Museum
50 Rondout Landing
Kingston NY 12401

Rondout Creek rises in the eastern Catskills, flows south into Rondout Reservoir (part of New York City’s water supply network), and finally reaches the Hudson River at Kingston, NY. Kingston started as the village of Rondout, whose name comes from the fort, or redoubt, erected by Dutch settlers who established a trading post there in the early 17th century.

The settlement didn’t start to become important until the 1830s, when the newly-constructed Delaware and Hudson Canal followed Rondout Creek to its Hudson River terminus. The canal was established to bring high-quality anthracite coal from undeveloped Northeastern Pennsylvania to the lucrative markets of New York City via the Hudson River. Coal was transferred from canal barges to river ships at Rondout, which quickly became a boom town.

In those years of growth and construction, there was plenty of business for Hudson River steamboats. New York City´s thriving metropolitan area needed ice harvested in winter from the frozen river, brick, lumber, stone and cement produced in the Mid-Hudson Valley, and grain, livestock, dairy, fruit and hay which came from near and far.

Neighboring Kingston and Rondout were quite dependent upon each other, and grew together. Kingston possessed banks and professional services, while Rondout had industrial facilities and port connections. In 1899, however, growth came to an abrupt halt with the closing of the Delaware and Hudson Canal. Finding it more economical to ship coal by rail, and witnessing increasing demand for dependable, year-round supplies, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company was transformed into the Delaware and Hudson Company, which replaced the canal with a network of railroad lines. By 1932, only 30 years after Rondout had been the primary port of the Mid-Hudson River Valley, only a few small industrial companies remained.

Situated on the Historic Rondout Waterfront at Kingston, NY, the Hudson River Maritime Museum preserves the maritime history of the Hudson River and the industries that thrived on river transportation. The East Gallery was formerly a working boat shop, and now features a collection of small craft, artifacts from larger Hudson River vessels, and a number of excellent scale models.

This is a model of a schooner, of the type used from 1830 to 1920. A Schooner has two or more masts that are fore-and-aft rigged, meaning that the sails hang along the keel line at rest. The forward mast is shorter than or the same height as the rear masts. The result of this construction was a very swift vessel. Schooners were popular in North America, and were used to carry cargo on ocean voyages, coastal runs and on large inland bodies of water such as the Great Lakes.

On the Hudson River schooners were used to transport both passengers and freight. Ice, farm products, lumber and furs were brought downstream to New York City, while furniture, dried goods and manufactured items were transported upstream.

This is part of an illustration hanging on the wall called “Ice Yachts on the Hudson River, U.S.A.”. Do you see how there’s one guy in the back, steering, while another one is handling the sails? Traditionally used for transporting goods, racing ice yachts was already in vogue on the Hudson in 1790 with its headquarters at Poughkeepsie, and reached its peak years in 1870 – 1885.

Stretching from the floor in front of you to where the wall meets the ceiling is an ice yacht. Towards the lower right is where the “driver” would sit, and a wooden plank is fastened cross-wise, with a fixed runner at each end of that cross-wise plank. The ice boat would glide over the fixed runners – which are not visible in this photo.

Built in 1898, the steam tug Mathilda remained in service through 1969, working the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes. Originally a gift to the South Street Seaport Museum, the tug sank at her pier in January 1976, where she was salvaged and stored on a West Side pier. Mathilda was installed at the Hudson River Maritime Museum in the 1980s, where she remains permanently dry docked.