USA > New York > New York City > The story of the city of New York > Part 24
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her way up the Hudson in August, 1807, frightening half out of their wits the simple countrymen, who thought her some visitant from the infernal regions. Her maker was Robert Fulton, one of the greatest men of his age ; of humble parentage, -as most great men are,-born on a farm in Fulton township, Penn-
ROBERT FULTON.
sylvania in the year 1763. A painter of ability, but chiefly distinguished for his inventions and discoveries in mechanical science. Steamboats, torpedo boats. canals and canal boats, the ferry-boats that we now use, and the floating docks into which they run with- out shock were his most useful inventions. It would be more proper to say that he invented a steamboat,
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THE "CLERMONT."
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for boats propelled by steam had been invented as early as 1543, and John Fitch in 1787 had construct- ed a steamboat, which made regular trips on the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Burling- ton. Fulton's design, however, was the first success- ful steamboat, and in its essential principles is still in use. In making his experiments he was greatly aided in both money and advice by two other emi- nent Americans, Joel Barlow and Robert R. Living- ston, the latter becoming his partner, and advancing money for the building of the Clermont, and securing for her the exclusive privilege of navigating the waters of New York when she should be finished. After many trials and discouragements, the Clerinont was launched.
The engraving gives a good idea of her general appearance. She was 130 feet long, 163 feet wide, and 4 feet deep. Her steam cylinder was 24 inches in diameter, with a four-foot stroke, and her paddle- wheels 15 feet in diameter, with paddles, or floats, 2 feet wide. While the Clermont was being built, many witticisms were indulged in at her builder's expense. Few believed that heavy boats could be propelled against wind and tide by the power of steam ; and when it was advertised that the Cler- mont would sail for Albany on her trial trip, on the morning of August 11, 1807, a great crowd gathered on the dock, eager to witness the inventor's discom- fiture. They had nothing but sarcastic remarks for the man with an idea.
" This is the way," wrote Fulton to his friend Mr. Barlow, " that ignorant men compliment what they
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call philosophers and projectors." But the voyage of the Clermont proved a complete success. She ar- rived at Clermont, the country-seat of Mr. Living- ston, in twenty-four hours, a distance of 110 miles, and at Albany in eight hours more, making the en- tire distance of 150 miles against both wind and tide in thirty-two hours, or nearly five miles an hour. The return trip was made in thirty hours. "The power of propelling boats by steam is now fully proved," wrote Fulton in the letter above quoted. And so it was; for, although between the skeleton steamboat of Fulton, and the palatial steamers which now ply on the Hudson and the Sound, a great gap exists, yet their principle was the same ; while the splendid ocean steamers, which have utterly changed commercial methods, sprang from the same germ.
The Clermont at once began running regularly as a passenger boat, and, as she made the passage to Albany in thirty-two hours, while the packet sloop required from four to seven days, she had no lack of patronage. Some rival boats were built and put on the river, in defiance of the exclusive right to navi- gate boats by steam given to Fulton and Livingston. By 1809, there was a regular line of steam packets to Albany. In 1813, there was a tri-weekly line, leaving New York every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday afternoon. Improvements continued to be made, so that, by the year 1817, the time of passage had been reduced to eighteen hours. In 1818, the present steamboat service on the Sound was begun-the Fulton, under Fulton and Livingston's patent, run- ning between New York and New Haven, and the
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Connecticut, making regular trips to New London. In 1822, the New York and Providence Line was organized. By 1830, there were eighty-six steam- boats running on New York waters.
The year before, in 1829, a man came to New York who was destined to give a great. impetus to the business of steamboating. His name was Cornelius Vanderbilt, and he had been born at Port Richmond, on Staten Island, thirty-five years before ; a poor boy, but strong of body and mind, ambitious, intent on making his fortune. At six- teen, he was master of a sail-boat plying as a ferry between Staten Island and New York. At eigh- teen, he owned two ferry-boats, and had saved $1,000. The possibilities of the steamboat early attracted his attention, and in 1817, at the age of twenty- three, with $9,000 to his credit, he joined Thomas Gibbons, of New Jersey, in building a small steamer, The-Mouse-of-the-Mountain, to run from New Bruns- wick, New Jersey, to New York ; of this boat he was captain, at a salary of $1,000 per year. He was con- nected with the Gibbons line for twelve years, and when he left it, in 1829, it was paying $40,000 a year. But the monopoly of the Hudson and the Sound, granted Fulton and Livingston, was now broken. and he had a keen ambition to enter that field. He removed to New York in 1829, as has been said, and soon made his presence felt. The steamboat service of the day was wretched. The boats were small and slow, the cabins dirty and ill ventilated. Mr. Van- derbilt built new boats-larger, faster, with many im- provements, and lowered the fares ; and although he
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had such competitors as Colonel John Stevens, Dean Richmond, and Daniel Drew, soon distanced them all. In a few years he had boats running to Albany,
COMMODORE VANDERBILT,
and to all the important Sound ports. His receipts for the first five years were $30,000 per year, and later double that. Between IS29 and IS48, he owned , and operated nearly fifty steamboats, most of which
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he built himself. The breaking out of the California gold excitement drew him into ocean steamship ven- tures, and he began a famous contest with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company for the passenger traffic to California, across the Isthmus of Darien, which ended in his being bought off, as there was not trade enough for two. In 1855, he established a line of steamers to Havre, France-larger, swifter, and more elegant than those of the Collins line, then running to Eng- land, and which soon became the favorite of travel- lers. This line he continued until the breaking out of the war in 1860. While engaged in ocean naviga- tion, he is said to have owned twenty-one steamships. ten of which he built. In his later days, Mr. Van- derbilt withdrew from shipping, and turned his at- tention entirely to railways. He died in New York, in 1877 .* .
We have wandered somewhat from our subject. Let us return to the second great factor in the city's progress -- the Erie Canal. The fact that boats could be towed by steam-power from Albany to New York. no doubt turned men's thoughts to a canal from Al- bany west to Buffalo, which should connect the At- lantic and the Great Lakes, and give to New York the commerce of half a continent.
Judge Jonas Platt first brought the project to the attention of the Legislature, in 1810, though it had
* Readers desiring to study further the genesis of steam navigation are referred to Colonel Thomas W. Knox's excellent work, " The Life of Robert Fulton and a History of Steam Navigation," from which many of the above facts are derived.
Delvitt Cleiton
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been before agitated in the public prints. The plan was generally regarded as chimerical, or, if practica- ble, as being beyond the resources of the State of New York. In the autumn of 1815, however, the ยท war being over, the project was revived, the leading spirit being De Witt Clinton, nephew of the War Governor, Mayor of New York City at the time, and subsequently Governor of the State. A meeting of merchants and others was held at the City Hall, in the autumn of 1815, and a committee, headed by Mayor Clinton, was chosen to prepare a memorial to the Legislature on the subject. This memorial was written by Mayor Clinton, and was one of the ablest and most effective of State papers. In glowing terms it depicted the benefits to State and City of the stu- pendous plan. It would make tributary the Great Lakes and the entire Northwest. Boats laden with the crude products of that vast region would pass through it in endless procession ; great man- ufacturing establishments would spring up; agri- culture would establish its granaries, and com- merce its warehouses in all directions ; villages, towns, and hamlets would line the banks of the canal and the shores of the Hudson. In addition to these prophecies-which soon became facts,-plans and careful estimates of the cost of the proposed work were given, and methods for raising the money were suggested. Monster mass-meetings in its favor were held along the line of the proposed canal. A bill for building it was introduced in the Legislature of 1816, and, after a stormy debate, was passed on April 17th. On July 4th, of the next year, ground
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was broken for the canal at Rome, midway between the two termini. The work was so magnificent that it awakened intense enthusiasm throughout the State. Subscriptions poured in ; most of the right of way was given. The sturdy yeomen along the line worked with willing hands and patriotic hearts, each feeling that every shovelful thrown out brought the bridal of the lakes and ocean nearer, and ad- vanced the power and glory of his State. In 1820, . the middle section, from Utica to Rome, ninety-six miles, was opened. October 1, 1823, the eastern section to Albany was completed, and two years later the entire canal was declared ready for traffic. The herculean task, that its opponents-and they were many-declared would tax the resources of the nation, had been completed by New York alone in a little more than eight years.
There was more poetry and originality in men's natures then, I think; at least, the celebration of the opening of the canal was one of the most unique and poetic incidents in the history of peoples. There was then no telegraph, so they proceeded to invent one. They stationed cannon-thirty-two pounders, survivors of the Revolution and of the War of 1812 as far as they could be had-at intervals of eight or ten miles along the line of the canal, from Buffalo to Albany, and thence along the banks of the Hudson to New York and Sandy Hook. And they appointed veterans of the wars to man them, too, as far as they could obtain them ; the object Being to announce to New York and the country between, the precise mo- ment when the waters of Lake Erie were let into the
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canal, and the little fleet of pioneer boats started on their journey to the Atlantic.
The opening day of the grand celebration was ap- pointed for October 26, 1825, and, the night before, these cannon were loaded with powder and blank cartridges, carefully primed, and put in charge of the veterans, with strict orders to each to fire as soon as he saw the flash, or heard the roar of the westward gun. At ten o'clock precisely, on the morning of the 26th, the water was let into the canal, and the boats began their journey. Simultaneously the signal gun was fired. Its report, taken up by the relays of cannon, swept on over the broad reaches of the lake basin to Rochester, across the flats of the Genesee to Syracuse, over the sixty-seven-mile level to Utica, and down the beautiful valley of the Mo- hawk to Albany. At II A.M. precisely, the grim old veteran standing to his piece at Castleton caught the signal gun from Albany, and sent it thundering on to Baltimore. It reached Coxsackie at 11.03 : Hudson, one minute later ; Catskill, Upper Red Hook, Rhinebeck, and Hyde Park at moment inter- vals. At 11.09 it was at Poughkeepsie, and the eagles on Storm King flapped their wings joyously. thinking war had come again. Hamburgh, New- burgh, West Point, Fort Montgomery, Stony Point. Sing Sing, Closter's Landing, Fort Washington, Fort Gansevoort, the Battery, Fort Lafayette, took it up in succession, and passed it on, the last station- Sandy Hook-receiving it at 11.21 A.M., twenty-one minutes after it left Albany, and one hour and twenty-one minutes from Buffalo. At twenty-two
Ch. Darrell of carrollton
Atiker
John Agnew
Mr a. Davis
John Adams
Lafayetan
Inteferson James Monroe
John Quincy Adams.
James Madison
AUTOGRAPHS OF INVITED GUESTS, ERIE CANAL CELEBRATION.
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minutes past eleven, Fort Lafayette began the re- turn fire with a national salute; this the Battery took up at 11.31, and so the line of fire sped back as it had come to the Great Lakes, reaching Buffalo at 12.50 P.M., having passed over 1,100 miles in less than three hours. Much more poetic and impressive seems this roar of cannon than the click of the tele- graphic needle.
The Commercial Advertiser, in its issue of that day, thus announced the event :
"The work is done. At twenty minutes past eleven this morning the joyful intelligence was proclaimed to our citizens, by roar of artillery, that the great, the gigan- tic work of uniting the upper lakes with the ocean was completed, and that exactly an hour and twenty minutes before, the first boat from Erie had entered the canal and commenced its voyage to New York."
Let us return to this boat and to Buffalo. At the moment of the in-rushing of the lake water, a pro- cession of four boats began their journey to New York. First came the Seneca Chief, drawn by four gray horses elegantly caparisoned, and following her the Superior, the Commodore Perry, a freight boat, and the Buffalo of Erie. On board was a distin- guished company : De Witt Clinton, now Governor of the State; Lieutenant-Governor Tallmadge, the New York delegation which had come on to extend to the party the hospitalities of the city, and a great company of fair women and brave men,-the invited guests. As they progressed, it seemed as if the entire State of New York had gathered along the
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line to greet them. At Rochester the canal was carried across the Genesee River by a stone aque- duct of nine arches, each of fifty feet span. Here sentinels, stationed in a small boat to defend the entrance, hailed the flotilla, "Who comes there?" "Your brothers from the West on the waters of the Great Lakes," was the swift reply, and the dialogue continued. " By what means have they been diverted so far from their natural course?"-" Through the channel of the Grand Erie Canal."-" By whose au- thority and by whom was a work of such magnitude accomplished ?" and a chorus of voices from the Sen- eca Chief answered : "By the authority and by the enterprise of the people of the State of New York." . The sentinel boat then gave way, and the fleet proudly entered the spacious basin at the end of the aqueduct amid welcoming salutes of artillery and the acclamations of thousands.
Similar demonstrations awaited the procession all along the line. At Albany there was a congratu- latory address, a public dinner, and a grand illumina- tion in the evening. All the steam craft on the Hudson had been gathered there to tow the fleet down the river. It left Albany on November 2d, the brilliant company increased by the addition of the corporation of Albany as the invited guests of New York. On the morning of the 4th, the flotilla came abreast of the Palisades, with the city in the distance half concealed by the mel- low Indian-summer haze. Before sunrise it anchored off the city, and was soon approached by the steamer Washington, having the committee of the Common
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Council and officers of the Governor's Guards on board, and flying the broad pennant of the Corpora- tion. "Where are you from and whither bound?" asked the corporation steamer, as she approached. " From Lake Erie and bound to Sandy Hook," was the reply. The Washington then moved alongside the Seneca Chief, and the committee boarding her, Alderman Coudrey in a graceful speech welcomed the visitors to the city. Some hours later the aqua- 'tic procession was formed, and after proceeding to the Navy Yard, and taking on board officers and other guests, moved out to sea. The spectacle, as the vessels were getting into line, is said to have been a brilliant and animated one. Hundreds of ships, frigates, sloops, steamboats, barges, and other craft covered the bay, each bedecked from trucks to keel- son with flags and banners, and swarming with human- ity, while both shores, the Heights, and the islands in the harbor were lined with applauding spectators.
There were twenty-nine steam vessels of all sorts in the line. Occupying the first place was the Washington, with the mayor, corporation, and dis- tinguished guests on board. The ship Hamlet, char- tered by the marine and nautical societies and towed by the Oliver Ellsworth, was noticeable for her dis- play of the flags of all nations. Another feature, described by the old chronicler with fulness of com- pliment, was the "safety barges" Lady Clinton and Lady Van Rensselaer, towed by the Commerce and filled with the fairest daughters of a city renowned for fair women ; the former bore Mrs. Clinton, the governor's lady, and was hung from stem to stern
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with festoons of evergreen, among which were inter- twined roses, china-asters, and other bright-hued flowers. The fleet moved down the bay saluted with guns from the forts on shore, and from the British frigates at anchor, and when nearing the Narrows was met by a pilot-boat, which hailed and announced that it had been sent by Neptune to conduct the fleet to his dominions. The throne of Neptune at this moment was the United States schooner Porpoise, moored just within Sandy Hook, and around which the fleet formed a circle some three miles in circumference. A colloquy ensued between Neptune on his schooner and the visitors, as to the place whence they came and the ob- ject of their coming, and when this had been ex- plained to his satisfaction the last act in the pretty drama was performed. Governor Clinton, manly in frame, handsome of face, gallant of spirit, standing on the Sencca Chief, took a keg of lake water, which had been brought from Buffalo, and holding it aloft in full view of all, poured its contents into the briny sea, saying :
"This solemnity, at this place, on the first arrival of vessels from Lake Erie is intended to indicate and com- memorate the navigable communication which has been accomplished between our mediterranean seas and the Atlantic Ocean in about eight years, to the extent of more than four hundred and twenty-five miles, by the wisdom, public spirit, and energy of the people of the State of New York ; and may the God of the heavens and the earth smile most propitiously on this work and render it subservient to the best interests of the human race."
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BUTLER'S
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REFRESHM
BROADWAY, PARK THEATRE, AND CITY HALL.
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Dr. Mitchell then poured into the ocean water from the Ganges, Indus, Nile, Thames, and other rivers of the world, and the ceremony was complete. The fleet then returned to the Battery, where the guests disembarked and took part in the land pro- cession, which was a splendid and successful affair, but so much like the great Federal pageant of 1788, that a detailed description is unnecessary. The cor- poration further commemorated the day by issuing a great number of medals in gold, silver, and white metal. There were fifty-one of the gold medals, which were enclosed in elegant red morocco cases and sent to various monarchs of Europe and to the eminent men of our own country. Among the latter were the three surviving signers of the Declaration, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton.
Thus, the great Erie Canal was opened. Its ben- efit to New York has been incalculable. In fact, it has been the greatest factor in the city's mar- vellous commercial growth, pouring into her lap the crude products of a constantly widening area, which form the bulk of her exports, and distributing to this same region the multitudinous articles com- prised in her imports. In 1831, however, a competi- tor appeared, which in a few years completely dis- tanced the canal as a means of locomotion, and, to a great extent, of transportation. In that year the first railroad in New York, and one of the first in the country, was opened between Albany and Sche- nectady.
A year later, April 24, 1832, the great Erie Rail-
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way-the first trunk line,-designed to open com- munication between New York and the Great Lakes, was chartered. It was completed to Dunkirk, on Lake Erie, in 1851. Meantime, the Mohawk and Hudson (later known as the Albany and Schenec- tady) had been pushing westward under various names until, by completion of the Buffalo and Lock- port Railway in 1854, it formed a continuous line of rail from Albany to Buffalo. These various roads had been merged into one line in 1853, by the name of the New York Central, and that line, by its union, in 1869, with the Hudson River Railroad, formed the second great trunk line between New York and the West. Two years later, in 1871, the Pennsyl- vania Railroad, which had been opened from Phila- delphia to Pittsburg in 1854, leased the United Railways of New Jersey, and formed the third great trunk line. The Baltimore and Ohio, the Delaware and Lackawanna, and the. West Shore systems have since been added. These seven great arteries, joined to her position and unexcelled harbor, appear to assure to New York City the commercial supremacy of the world, provided her merchants have the cour- age and genius to take advantage of them. To a recital of some of their triumphs in the past we can well devote another chapter.
XXI.
SHIPS AND SAILORS.
THE first shipping enterprise of moment to New York merchants was the founding, in 1816, of the famous packet service. between New York and Liverpool, and which contributed not a little to the glory of American shipbuilders and merchants. The merchantmen of that day were also passenger ships. They were clumsy, slow sailers, dingy and shabby in their passenger appointments, and without stated time of sailing, leaving at hap-hazard, whenever their cargoes were complete. By and by, it occurred to certain shrewd merchants of New York-Isaac Wright and Son, Francis Thompson, Benjamin Mar- shall, and Jeremiah Thompson-that a line of ships unrivalled for strength, speed, and beauty, and with a regular schedule of sailings, would soon drive the old merchantmen from the trade. They therefore founded the famous " Black Ball Line," still a foun- tain of happy memories to the old merchants and sea-captains, who haunt the shipping-offices about Burling Slip and South Street, and talk of past glories. There were four packets of this line at first, subsequently increased to twelve, each a thing of beauty, and a joy to the American heart; one of
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them sailed regularly on the Ist of every month. They were so successful that, in 1821, a rival Liver- pool line-the Red Star-was established by Byrnes, Grimble, & Co., with four ships-Manhattan, Hercules, Panther and Meteor, and sailing on the 24th of every month. Stimulated by this competition, the pro- prietors of the Black Ball Line added four new ves- sels, and advertised a sailing on the Ist and 16th of every month. Then began an era of shipbuilding : Fish, Grinnell, & Co., and Thaddeus Phelps, & Co., founded the Swallow-Tail Line-so called from its forked pennant,-with departures on the 8th of every month, and the city papers proudly announced that New York had the exclusive and distinguished priv- ilege of a fast weekly service to Liverpool. These packets were noble ships, of from 600 to 1,500 tons each, and made the run from New York to Liver- pool in twenty-three days, and the return trip in forty. Once the Canada, of the Black Ball Line, beat the record by making the outward voyage in fifteen days and eighteen hours.
In 1823 a London Line was established by Grin- nell, Minturn, & Co., with sailings every month. A line of packets to Havre, France, was also estab- lished, about 1822, by Francis Depau, with four ships. These various lines of packets aided greatly in building up the city. They shortened and cheapened communication between her and Europe, and they drove the clumsy French and English traders from the seas, thus throwing the carrying trade into American bottoms. They also proved mines of wealth to their captains, agents, and build-
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ers,-for each owned a share ; the captain usually an eighth, the builder another eighth, the agent an eighth, the rigger another fraction-that all might have an interest in the success of the voyage. Gradually larger and finer vessels were built, the Palestine and Amason of 1,800 tons each being the largest as well as the last of their race. It is a tra- dition of South Street that the latter had once made the voyage to Portsmouth, England, in fourteen days-a great feat for. a sailing vessel, although the Independence, the Montezuma, the Patrick Henry, and the Southampton had performed the voyage to Liverpool in the same period. The packets remained in commission until the war of 1860 drove American ships from the ocean. Some were utilized as trans- ports, some were sunk in Southern harbors to block- ade them, a few may still be seen at our wharves.
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