By Andrew Amelinckx
Appeared in The Register-Star, October 27, 2007
The screams of whistles welcoming the grand new ship could be heard in both Catskill and Hudson. The Hendrick Hudson, the newest and fastest of the Hudson River Day Line's ships, chugged up river and slowly docked. Huge crowds stood on Promenade Hill and anywhere else they could find room and cheered heartily, according to the reporter from the Columbia Register. It was the summer of 1906 and the company which owned the ship, along with several others, all known as “white flyers,” was near the top of its game, before its decline in the 1930s and eventual end in 1948.
In 1863, two men, Alfred Van Santvoord and his partner, John McB. Davidson, along with other investors, purchased the steam boat The Daniel Drew at auction, as well as the steamer Armenia, shortly there after for use as day liners traveling from New York City to Albany and back. The formation of the Hudson River Day Line Company ushered in a new era in Hudson River travel. According to the late Donald C. Ringwald, in his book Hudson River Dayline: The Story of a Great American Steamboat Company, the Day Line was the first company to offer first class service specifically for pleasure travel, offering “good food, wine, and liquor” available in “comfortable dining rooms.”
“Families on vacation and tourists found the only way to properly see the scenery of the Hudson River was from a Day Line steamboat. The Day Line was formed with the intent of giving the traveling public the best possible day steamer travel anywhere, and no one ever seriously tried to compete with them,” said Ringwald. In the 1880s and 1890s, the Day Line promoted their steamboats as “strictly firstclass — no freight” and it had become de rigueur for traveling dignitaries to take a trip up river on one of the ships soon after their arrival in New York City. The company heavily promoted tourism in the region and invested in the Catskill Mountain Railroad and the Otis Elevating Railroad, which provided easy access to the Catskill Mountain House, a grand hotel that was in operation from 1824 to 1941, and other Catskill resorts. According David Seamon, writing for the exhibit Gateway Between River and Mountains: Historic Catskill Point featured at the Catskill Point Visitor Center in 2002, the dock for the day liners was on Catskill Point. F.A. Gallt, writing in Dear Old Greene County in 1915, said of the Day Line that “the enterprise of this company and its extensive advertising of the Catskill district has had much to do with the growth and prosperity of Catskill and the entire county.” Across the river, the City of Hudson was an important day boat landing for passengers going to Lebanon Springs and other vacation spots.
In the 1860s the trip from New York City to Albany could be made in nine hours and as one steamboat traveled upriver the other traveled downriver. Trips were offered six days a week, Monday through Saturday. By the end of the first full season in 1864 the company had created a buzz up and down the river. According to Ringwald the trip from New York City to Albany was referred to as “the most charming inland water trip on the American continent.” “With rare exceptions, the passengers are nice people. The peanut and sausage eaters; the beer drinkers; the pipe smokers; the expectorators; the loud talkers; the life long enemies of soap and water, are never seen here,” said a contemporary news report. Another stated that “the Albany day boats are doing an unusually large business . . . The excursionists are of the better class – people who take more interest in the beauties of nature than they do in whisky.” Ringwald stated that Hudson River travelers were very proud of their steamboats, "the most elegant in the world," and thought of them as social assets. The Hendrick Hudson, according to the company, was constructed for a million dollars and was 400 feet in length and could carry 5,500 passengers. The interior was decorated with murals depicting “Henry Hudson’s Halve Maene, Washington Irving’s home, the senate house at Kingston, and the capital at Albany,” according to Ringwald. The fare from Albany to New York was $1.50 by day line, and according to Gallt, competition had brought the night trip to one dollar by 1915.
Gallt, in a flight of fancy wondered what Henry Hudson would have thought of the ship that carried his name.
“But imagine Hendrick Hudson, navigator, on a velvet settee on the Hendrick Hudson, of 1915, listening to the daily concert of the Metropolitan Orchestra, under the direction of Martin Van Pragg. Imagine him, if you will, in the midst of such scenes as today press the entire shore of the Hudson. After having aeroplaned to New York and then taken the boat at Debrosses street...dining sumptuously, and at 3 p. m. stepping off the boat at Catskill Point, where the Indians in canoes once met him,” he mused. In the 1910 promotional pamphlet for the company the Day Liner’s ships are referred to as “new and splendid specimens of shipcraft” and go on to call them “the finest boats ever constructed for the business.” “The spacious cabins are finished in highly polished woods, handsomely paneled, and are furnished luxuriously and adorned with statuary and paintings by celebrated artists. The dining rooms are on the main deck, where the traveler can enjoy an excellent dinner, which is served on the European plan, and lose nothing of the view of this most charming of American rivers,” the brochure goes on to say of the ships. In 1912 the largest of all the Day Line steamers was launched. The Washington Irving,a 414 plus foot 6200 horsepower steamer named for the New York writer, was, according to Kenneth S. Panza, writing for The Hudson Maritime Museum Web site, meant to be the “greatest of the Day Line’s floating art galleries.” The well known maritime artist Samuel Ward Stanton was commissioned by the Day Line to do a series of Spanish views for the Washington Irving.
“Stanton went to Spain to prepare for his commission, but unfortunately, he decided to return on the Titanic. Another artist was appointed to complete the commission,” said Panza.
In 1926 the Washington Irving, leaving its dock in New York City, was struck by a tugboat with two loaded oil barges, ripping a twenty foot gash in her side. She sank and took three people with her.
In the years between 1918 and 1920 the Day Liners carried nearly 1.5 million people. The 1920’s saw the pinnacle of success for the company, but less than two decades later they were out of business.
The company bought several smaller steam ships for charter business and by 1924 was carrying nearly two million passengers according to Panza. With the onset of train and car travel, river traffic to the Catskills, the east side of the river and further north began to decline, but the company made up that loss of passengers with shorter day trips to Bear Mountain and Poughkeepsie. “The number of passengers using the Day Line steamers remained almost constant from 1926 until the beginning of the Great Depression in 1930,” said Panza. The Great Depression almost finished the Hudson River Day Line Company. In 1933 it couldn’t pay its bills and went into receivership, a form of bankruptcy. World War II helped the company for a brief time, but by 1948 the end had come.
“On September 13, 1948, the Day Line steamboat Robert Fulton made its last run from Albany to New York City bringing to an end the era of gracious steamboat travel on the Hudson River,” said Panza. A vote by the director’s of the company decided “. . . to discontinue further operations and to proceed with the liquidation of the company and the sale of its assets” and on December 31, 1948, the Day Line ceased to exist. ***
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