Day on the Cruise: 76
From: Kingston City Marina, Kingston, NY
To: Kingston City Marina, Kingston, NY
Statute Miles: 0.0 SM
Time: 0.0 Hrs
Cumulative Miles: 1,874.5 SM
On Board: Susan, Chuck, Maggie, Trooper, Peanut
It was mostly cloudy this morning. We planned to walk around town this afternoon, but at 1:30, it started raining hard and continued the rest of the day. Thunderstorm after thunderstorm rumbled through the Kingston area.
We ran through the raindrops several hundred yards up the harbor walk to the Hudson River Maritime Museum. What a very interesting place! One of the better museums we have seen on the trip. We learned a lot about the area and about the Hudson River.
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| Susan in front of the Museum |
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| At the rear of the Museum, along Rondout Creek is a Museum Dock. Here are several Looper boats tied up including The Tug "Adagio" and "Spiritus". Ron and Jan are aboard "Adagio", and Ron is an avid reader of our Blog! Thanks Ron!!! Linda and Eddie are on "Spiritus" and Linda is an Auburn Grad!! |
Kingston used to be called Rondout, and at some point, Kingston was formed and absorbed Rondout. Rondout is now the portion of Kingston along Rondout Creek. This is where we are docked. There are two other historic areas of Kingston called Mid Town and Up Town. We hope to see these before we leave.
In the 19th century a canal was built from the coal fields in Pennsylvania over to the Hudson River. It was called the Delaware and Hudson Canal, and it joined the Hudson at Rondout Creek where we are. So, coal was shipped from Pennsylvania to Rondout on small canal boats, then transferred to large barges that were pulled to New York City by steam boats.
Steam boats were used for many things on the River. Big steam boats carried passengers from Albany, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, and Newburgh down to New York City and back. These were usually overnight trips. Some of these boats made 24 mph! Wow!
Steam tugs were also very numerous on the River. A man by the name of Thomas Cornell formed the Cornell Towing Company in the late 1800's. At one time, this Rondout, NY towing company had 60 tugs that plied the River between NYC and the upper Hudson. Each tug had a wooden golden eagle statute mounted on top of its pilot house-a distinctive feature of the Cornell Company.
Another interesting fact about this area of the upper Hudson is that in the 1800's, this area was known for producing ice in the wintertime that was stored in insulated warehouses along the water, then shipped to NYC in the warm months in insulated barges. It was sold to restaurants, packing houses, homes, etc off the street before refrigeration was invented.
When the Hudson froze over up here in the winter, the ice would be monitored for thickness and quality. When the ice got to be 11" or 12" thick, lines would be scored on the ice by machines pulled by horses, and it would be cut into rectangles using horse pulled and hand saws. The cut rectangles would be floated to the insulated store houses and run up into the houses by horse powered conveyors. Some of these ice houses were as big as football fields. The walls were insulated with clay and hay.
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| How the ice was harvested and stored |
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| Ice harvesting equipment |
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| Ice harvesting equipment |
In warm weather, ice was loaded onto insulated barges and taken to NYC. The same horses that were used up here in the winter were taken to NYC to pull ice wagons from the barge docks to the streets.
Brick manufacturing was also big up here in the 1800's and early 1900's. Clay is very abundant here, and brick plants were located along the River. Bricks were hand formed in wooden molds, fired, cured, then shipped to NYC on barges to be used in building construction.
Outside of the museum is a huge steam tug on display up on the hard. This tug is named "Matilda" and was operated by McAllister Towing Co. McAllister is still around today and is a big player in East coast ports, just like Moran Towing Co. We passed two McAllister tugs coming down the Hudson on our trip to Kingston on Friday.
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| Tug "Matilda" |
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| Tug "Matilda" |
Rondout and Kingston are two very important river towns. We never realized the history and importance of this area. The Maritime Museum is very well done and is a must see for visitors to the area.
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| Rain in the park at the Kingston Wall, "Blue Moon" can be seen in the background. |
Tomorrow we get a rental car for a few days. We will probably go to West Point tomorrow. This should be fun.
The Erie Canal is still closed. With the rain this afternoon, I hope this did not exacerbate the flooding up on the canal. Radar looked like most of the heavy stuff was at Albany and East of Albany. Hopefully we will get more info from the Canal Corporation tomorrow. This flooding could be ruining a lot of Loopers plans, which is a shame. We are still OK, I think. If we can get into the Canal early next week, we should be able to make it. We will have to maybe eliminate a few stops that we had planned to make.
We did Face Time tonight with our son and daughter - in - law and got to see them and their new baby in Mobile, AL. Amanda's Mom and sister are visiting for the 4th and we got to see them also. Very neat! Happy 4th!
Thanks for Reading!
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