Monday, April 09, 2012

Railroad Pioneers, 2: The West Point Foundry Locomotives

LOWER HUDSON VALLEY

It may come as a surprise, but the earliest steam locomotives built in the United States were assembled in the lower Hudson Valley.
Between 1830 and 1832, a half-dozen railroad engines were constructed by the West Point Foundry at Cold Spring, N.Y., located about seven miles north of the Bear Mountain Bridge, and shipped to various parts of the country.
The presence of this industrial enterprise in Putnam County was one consequence of the War of 1812. During that conflict, sources of heavy weapons were in short supply. Two foundries, one in Georgetown in the District of Columbia and the other in Pittsburgh, were major suppliers of cannons to the military and naval forces of the young republic.
The British seizure of Washington shut down the Georgetown foundry. No large foundry existed anywhere in the northeastern portion of the new nation. Unhappy with the imbalanced weapons procurement system and the limited number of reliable foundries, after the peace treaty of Ghent was signed in 1815 Congress passed the Army Reorganization Act.
This legislation changed the method of buying arms and ammunition. Hereafter, the government would work more closely with suppliers of heavy weapons, even advancing funds for equipment and prepayment of orders. It was the beginning of a close relationship that would eventually grow into the military-industrial complex President Dwight Eisenhower would later warn about.
The West Point Foundry was the brainchild of Gouverneur Kemble, eldest son of prosperous attorney and merchant Peter Kemble and scion of a wealthy New York family with roots going back to Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant.
A Columbia College graduate, he started in the business world as a mercantile agent. In 1811 and 1812, he served as U.S. Consul at Cádiz in Spain, where he had the opportunity to study the Spanish government's technologically advanced processes for casting cannon. During the Barbary Wars, he was assistant naval agent to Commodore Stephen Decatur. negotiating the release of captured American seamen. While abroad, he studied the best European iron technology for manufacturing cannons in existence at that time. His expertise in this field no doubt contributed to his decision to establish the West Point Foundry.
In 1817, along with partners--mostly friends and relations from other wealthy New York families with names like Gouverneur, Brevoort and Renwick--Kemble assembled a consortium of ten investors to be called the West Point Foundry Association to produce artillery pieces and other items.
Incorporated on April 15, 1818, in Albany and capitalized at $100,000, among the initial investors in the foundry was U.S. Army Gen. Joseph G. Swift, the first graduate of West Point in the class of 1802, which numbered only two cadets. The second cadet in the class was Simon M. Levy, a Jew from Baltimore.
Gouverneur Kemble’s brother William would be the Association’s sales agent, headquartered in New York City. Another partner, William Young, an ironmaster from Belfast, Ireland, was named the Association’s first foundry superintendent.
The site for the foundry near the hamlet of  Cold Spring, N.Y., was selected because of its proximity to sources of iron ore in what is today’s Clarence Fahnestock State Park in Putnam County and in Orange County across the river. Nearby were ample hardwood forests from which the charcoal needed in the smelting process could be made. A swift-flowing stream, Margaret’s Brook, running through the site was an added advantage.
Despite the lack of local ironworkers and skilled craftsmen, the West Point Foundry’s business grew, thanks to immigration. Soon the foundry was manufacturing steam engines for steamboats, gears, water pipes, and other cast iron products, in addition to heavy artillery. 

The Best Friend of Charleston
Railroad and canal fever was infecting the country. In Charleston, South Carolina, the South Carolina Canal and Railroad was chartered to tap burgeoning upcountry cotton plantations. The new line would link the port city of Charleston with Hamburg, S.C., 136 miles to the northwest. 
After devising a wind-propelled railcar and a locomotive powered by a horse on a treadmill, both of which were unsuccessful, the railroad company decided to order a locomotive from the West Point Foundry in New York at a cost of $4,000. The transaction was a first for both parties.
The foundry had inspected and tested the British Stourbridge Lion upon its arrival in New York in 1829 and had built several steamboat engines.
Featuring a vertical boiler, the locomotive, named the Best Friend of Charleston, was shipped to Charleston. On Christmas Day in 1830, with cannons firing salutes from the first car, the four-ton locomotive pulled five coaches carrying 141 festive local citizens. 
Eschewing the comfort of one of the carriages, a third person shared the open operating deck of the locomotive with the engineer and fireman. He was the line’s new chief engineer, Horatio Allen--the same Horatio Allen who had so bravely driven the Stourbridge Lion a year earlier in its first run in Pennsylvania.
According to an account in the Charleston Courier, the passengers "flew on the wings of wind" and the engine "darted forth like a live rocket, scattering sparks and flames on either side." It marked the first commercial use of a locomotive built in North America.
Six months later in the evening of June 17, 1831, the Best Friend of Charleston was making her way through the lush South Carolina countryside outside of Charleston pushing a flat car covered with a thick bed of sand. On it was a cast-iron brazier in which pine knots burned brightly. This primitive “track illuminator” marked the first use anywhere of a railroad engine headlight. 
Annoyed by the high-pitched whistle of the safety valve, the fireman tied down the valve lever. After a few minutes of quiet, the locomotive set another record. The resulting tremendous explosion made it the first locomotive to blow up in North America, and left a badly scalded engineer and wood passer. 
A South Carolina Railroad mechanic named Julius Petsch took the mangled remains of the Best Friend and put them together so ingeniously the railroad named him its "Master of Machinery," the first American to bear this title. 
The rebuilt locomotive was appropriately renamed Phoenix. The railroad announced that hereafter a "barrier car" would be placed between the engine and passenger cars. "Loaded with six bales of cotton," the railroad's advertisement said, "it will protect travelers when the locomotive explodes," a sentiment that could have hardly offered much reassurance to passengers. 
In the meantime, another locomotive, the West Point, the second railroad engine built by the foundry for which it was named, had been delivered and was put into service.
The West Point was a significant improvement over the Best Friend. It had a horizontal boiler that gave it greater clearance in passing under bridges and overpasses.The line to Hamburg was completed in 1833 and would become the first link of the future Southern Railway, which built a replica of the Best Friend of Charleston train in 1928 and exhibited it throughout the South. 
The replica Best Friend of Charleston train is temporarily on loan to the Norfolk Southern Railway and  displayed in their office building in Atlanta. Its permanent home is Charleston in the Best Friend of Charleston Museum at The Citadel Mall. 


The DeWitt Clinton
The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 brought prosperity to the entire Mohawk Valley and soon attracted the attention of bankers and Wall Street. By 1831, the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad Company, with Stephen Van Rensselaer as its titular head and John Jacob Astor as a director and major stockholder, completed the 16-mile rail line linking Albany and Schenectady. Among its officers and investors were names well known in the world of finance, including Jay, Fish, King, Stuyvesant and Schuyler.
One obvious reason for building the Mohawk and Hudson line was the series of more than a dozen locks in the Erie Canal between Schenectady and Cohoes, the canal's eastern terminus. These caused interminable delays for canal travelers between the two cities.
The DeWitt Clinton of the Mohawk and Hudson was the first steam locomotive to operate in New York and the third locomotive built by the West Point Foundry. It was named in honor of the governor of New York responsible for the Erie Canal and who had died in 1828. 
      Designed by Adam Hall, a West Point Foundry mechanic, and John B. Jervis, legendary engineer from the Delaware and Hudson Canal, the 3-1/2-ton locomotive lacked a few needed refinements, most notably a spark catcher in the smokestack. 
      On August 9, 1831, a distinguished group of New Yorkers, including New York governor Enos Throop, members of the legislature, and the mayors of Albany and Schenectady, found seats within or on top of three bright yellow stagecoach bodies that had been converted into railroad coaches. 
      Fortunately, the long strips of leather riveted together that served as springs on stagecoaches had been retained and gave railroad passengers a gently rocking ride. Unfortunately, the coaches were loosely coupled by heavy chains. Following a stagecoach custom that would become an early railroad custom, conductor John T. Clark sounded a loud blast on a tin horn to signal departure.
      Engine driver David Matthew, also from the West Point Foundry, opened the throttle. The locomotive started with a jerk that threw the front seat passengers in the coaches into the laps of the passengers across from them. Some hastily installed pieces of fence rail were added to stiffen the link between the coaches.
      Passengers who elected to ride atop the coaches had an even rougher ride. As the locomotive gathered speed, sparks and embers from the smokestack showered down on them. 
      A stop at a water tank to take on water mercifully gave the rooftop passengers the opportunity to wet down their smoldering hats and garments. It was a maiden trip everyone would remember. Upon its return to the capital, the De Witt Clinton was shipped to back to the West Point Foundry for reworking.
       On April 19, 1847, the Mohawk and  Hudson’s name was changed to the Albany and Schenectady Railroad and folded into the New York Central Railroad. 
      The New York Central built an operational reproduction of the DeWitt Clinton, complete with three carriages, for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. This replica is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

Labels: ,

Posted by Notorc @ 4/09/2012 09:00:00 AM 0 comments
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Monday, April 02, 2012

Railroad Pioneers, 1: The Hudson Valley

LOWER HUDSON VALLEY

So much attention is paid historically to the Hudson as an artery of commerce and travel we often forget the Hudson Valley was the birthplace of the American railroad.
The thriving sloop and steamboat traffic on the river had one significant disadvantage: It came to a halt in the winter when the river froze.
The power of steam was first demonstrated in England, where steam-driven pumps had long kept British coal mines free of water. And in 1803 Richard Trevithick had built and demonstrated the first locomotive on the tracks of a tramway in southern Wales.
Several railroad pioneers played key roles in bringing steam locomotives to the Hudson Valley early in the nineteenth century. The first was Col. John Stevens, a visionary engineer and inventor, and a distinguished veteran of the Revolutionary War.

Colonel Stevens’s “Steam Wagon”
In 1812, Stevens published a pamphlet with a ponderous title, Documents Tending to Prove the Superior Advantages of Railways and Steam Carriages over Canal Navigation.
This first-published American work on railroads predicted locomotives could be built that would reach speeds of 50 miles per hour and perhaps even twice that speed. According to Stevens, rail transportation costs would one day be cheaper than those of canals.
Stevens was no stranger to steam propulsion. He had already built two successful steamboats: the Phoenix in 1809  successfully ventured out on the open ocean, and the Juliana in 1811, a steam ferry for the New York to Hoboken run.
In 1815, Stevens obtained from the New Jersey legislature a charter to build a steam railroad from New Brunswick to Trenton. Unfortunately, he was a better engineer than salesman. At a time when U.S. policy was to invest a growing government surplus in canal-building projects, Stevens could not raise the necessary capital for a rail line.
When Stevens learned in 1825 that a 26-mile-long railroad had been built between Stockton and Darlington in England, he became convinced of the soundness of his idea. On his estate in Hoboken--now the site of the prestigious Stevens Institute of Technology--he constructed a 630-foot circular track. Over this he ran an experimental one-cylinder steam engine that powered a cog wheel meshing with a centered toothed rail. The two wooden running rails were covered with strap-iron.
Stevens's engine, called by him a "Steam Wagon," traveled over the track at speeds of up to 12 miles per hour. Its vertical boiler's pressure reached an astonishing 500 pounds per square inch.
His railroad idea was a case of bad timing. At that moment some 500 cannon, spaced within earshot of one another, were poised to relay news from Buffalo to New York City that the Erie Canal had been completed.

The Delaware and Hudson Canal
During the country's canal-building mania, promoters conceived the Delaware and Hudson Canal to link the Hudson with the Delaware River.
The impetus for this venture was New York City's desire to replace wood as a source of fuel with anthracite coal from northeastern Pennsylvania. Anthracite burned cleaner and cost half as much as wood. The problem lay in getting the shiny black chunks over the Catskills to the Hudson River.
The company was set up on March 8, 1825, with Philip Hone as president, Benjamin Wright, builder of the Erie Canal, as chief engineer, and John B. Jervis as his assistant. Jervis had begun his career as an axman clearing brush for surveying parties on the Erie Canal but quickly assumed more responsibility. He would succeed Wright as chief engineer of the Delaware and Hudson two years later.
On July 13, 1825, citizens of Ulster, Orange and Sullivan counties met at the summit of the watershed along what is today Route 209, between Ellenville and Wurtsboro. With enthusiastic songs, prayers and speeches, canal digging began. Canal company president Hone was the featured speaker. Later that year, after being appointed Mayor of New York City, he resigned as president under the pressure of mayoral duties.
After some three years of labor by 2,500 workmen, the canal was completed. To conserve scarce capital, it terminated at Dyberry Forks in Pennsylvania, seven miles short of the originally planned terminus. The mines still lay 16 miles to the west, behind the formidable barrier called Mt. Moosic. Jervis devised an ingenious system of inclined planes to bring the loaded coal cars over the mountain.
The community that sprang up at the canal terminus took its name, Honesdale, from Philip Hone, who in April of 1823, with several investors from Orange and Sullivan counties, had formed the Delaware and Hudson Canal Co.
When novelist Washington Irving visited the burgeoning settlement, he suggested that it be named Honesdale to honor his friend. In return, Hone playfully gave the name Irving Cliff to a steep ledge of rocks overlooking the town.
. By the time the canal was completed, the company's funds were nearly exhausted. The directors sought aid from New York State. Its canal-friendly legislature granted the Delaware and Hudson a loan of a half million dollars, taking a mortgage on the canal right of way and voting the company the privilege of borrowing $300,000 elsewhere.
A rail line was surveyed from Carbondale, the town that had sprung up around the mines, to the canal terminus. Like other industrial "railroads," the initial plan called for the use of horses as motive power on level sections of the line.
Coal from mines near Carbondale moved by rail to Honesdale, where it was transferred to barges for the 108-mile journey to the Hudson. In October 1828, the first barge, carrying only ten tons of coal--the channel still needed deepening--began its trip to Kingston. Here it was loaded aboard sloops and transported to New York City.
A New York newspaper reported on December 10, "The sloop Toleration arrived this day from Kingston with a cargo of coal, the first fruits of the Delaware and Hudson Canal." The D and H was a financial success from the start.

The Stourbridge Lion
Farsighted John Jervis was convinced that a locomotive would be better than horses or mules for hauling coal to the canal. In the fall of 1828 he persuaded the directors to send 26-year-old Horatio Allen, a company engineer, to England to inspect and purchase locomotives.
Allen visited Robert Stephenson and Co., in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England and found a four-coupled locomotive, The Pride of Newcastle. Allen purchased it on the spot, asking only that its name be changed to America before being shipped.
At Foster, Rastrick and Co., engine builders in Stourbridge, Allen ordered three locomotives: The Stourbridge Lion and two others to be named Delaware and Hudson.
Shipped from London in November, the America arrived in New York on January 15, 1829. Perplexingly, its name then disappears from company records.
The Stourbridge Lion arrived in New York City on May 13, 1829, aboard the ship John Jay. It had cost the canal company $3,663.30.
A nine-horsepower machine capable of hauling 60 tons at a speed of five miles per hour, it ran on four flanged wheels of oak fitted with heavy wrought iron rims. A picture of a lion’s head had been painted on the front of the boiler.
The Stourbridge Lion was offloaded at the West Point Foundry’s wharf on the Hudson River at the foot of Beach Street in New York City. According to the Morning Courier and New York Inquirer of June 12, 1829, it was set up on blocks and tested by Horatio Allen.
The newspaper reported that it had a horizontal boiler 16-1/2 feet long and two cylinders of three-foot stroke, with the power applied to the wheels about 12 inches from the center.
Having passed Allen’s tests, the locomotive was lashed to the deck of the packet Congress on July 16, and brought up the Hudson to Rondout Creek and then through the canal to Honesdale, arriving on August 5.
The big worry was that the warped and cracked hemlock stringers topped by strap-iron rails would not hold up, nor would a 30-foot trestle support the seven-ton locomotive.
"The impression was very general,” Horatio Allen would later recall, "that the iron monster would either break down the road or that it would leave the track at the curve and plunge into the creek."
"Preferring, if we did go down, to go down handsomely and without any evidence of timidity," Allen opened the throttle. On August 8, 1829, history was made. The Stourbridge Lion became the first full-sized locomotive to successfully run on rails in the U.S. Although he didn't know it, Allen had inadvertently become the first American locomotive engineer.
The fact that all mention of the America, the first locomotive purchased from the Stephensons, had disappeared from company records long puzzled railroad historians. Only recently the truth was discovered. After having been brought to Honesdale, the America blew up while being tested on July 26, 1829. Then as now, stock companies like the Delaware and Hudson tended to conceal unfavorable news that might cause a plunge in stock prices.
Despite Allen’s successful demonstration, the directors of the canal company were afraid to use the new contraption. If the test run had showed anything, it was that the sharper curves and rougher roadbeds in the U.S. were too much for the rigid frames of British locomotives. Horses and mules would pull the heavily laden coal cars from the mines to Honesdale until the canal closed 70 years later.
 The historic engine was allowed to rust away in a shed alongside the track. Parts of the original, including the boiler, were acquired by the Smithsonian Institution and are now on display at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Ohio.
       A century after Horatio Allen's short-lived demonstration of steam power, the Delaware and  Hudson Railroad, the canal’s successor, constructed an exact replica of the Stourbridge Lion in its Colonie, N.Y., shops and exhibited it at the Chicago Century of Progress Exposition in 1933.
Today that same Stourbridge Lion is on display at the Wayne County Historical Society's museum in the D and H’s former office building in Honesdale. Quite properly, this attractive little Pennsylvania town calls itself "the birthplace of the American railroad."

Labels: ,

Posted by Notorc @ 4/02/2012 09:00:00 AM 0 comments
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Monday, March 19, 2012

The Short, Tragic Life of Robert Fulton, 2: Gone Too Soon

LOWER HUDSON VALLEY

Robert Fulton was truly a renaissance man. Artist, inventor, entrepreneur and dreamer of ambitious dreams--he was all of these and more. Each aspect of his genius merits a full-scale biography.
Born on a farm near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 14, 1765,  he became an apprentice to a jeweler in Philadelphia at the age of 17, making miniature paintings for lockets.
By 1787, he had saved enough money to buy passage to England, where he intended to study painting. Four years later, Fulton’s skill attracted the attention of Viscount William Courtenay, who invited him to come to his Powderham Castle in Devonshire to paint his portrait.
Courtenay, 23, was more than just a wealthy young aristocrat anxious to have his portrait painted. He was one of Britain's most notorious homosexuals. Fulton remained in residence at Powderham for a year and a half, during which time he painted a portrait of Courtenay and a few historical subjects, all of which have disappeared. Whether Fulton partook in the way of life around him is unknown, but he could hardly have been unaware of it.
At about that time, Britain was undergoing a canal-building boom. Fulton decided to concentrate on engineering instead of art. Attracted by France’s offer of subsidies for technological development, he moved to Paris in 1797, but was unsuccessful in selling Napoleon the design of an underwater torpedo with which to blow up the English fleet.
Fulton became acquainted with Robert R. Livingston, who was in Paris to negotiate the Louisiana Purchase. The two formed a partnership to create a steam vessel. Fulton would supply the know-how; Livingston, who had already obtained a monopoly for steamboat use on the Hudson, would furnish the financing.

An American in Paris
Fulton had lodged at the Left Bank pension of Madame Hillaire, a favorite stopping place of Americans. Among guests there was 41-year-old Ruth Baldwin Barlow. A sister of Abraham Baldwin, a U.S. senator from Georgia, she was waiting for her husband, Joel Barlow, to return from Algiers, where he had been negotiating for the release of American sailors captured by Barbary pirates.
Ruth was a woman of remarkable charm and wit. When her husband returned from Algiers, he was overjoyed to find that handsome bachelor Fulton, tall and broad-shouldered, had become her close companion. The relationship soon became even more intimate. The trio left Madame Hillaire’s for other quarters on the Left Bank.
Joel Barlow, 43, eleven years Fulton's senior, had a number of careers: ambassador, lawyer preacher and poet. His best-known poem, a long and tedious patriotic epic titled The Vision of Columbus, is virtually unreadable. The Barlows had been married since 1782. Joel’s work required frequent absences, and Ruth’s extramarital amours were always with her husband’s encouragement.
We know intimate details of the relationship that evolved because Barlow, an inveterate keeper of every piece of paper and correspondence, recorded them in an easily decipherable “baby talk.”
Fulton quickly recognized that Barlow was a man of the world who could help him. For his part, the childless Barlow was happy to instruct the younger man, introduce him to important people, lend him money and engage a tutor to teach him French.
Barlow’s fondness for Fulton included encouraging the tender sympathies of his “precious wife.” The practical French saw nothing unusual in this. In fact, they had coined an expression to describe it: ménage à trois.
Following the successful operation of the North River steamboat in 1807, recounted in last week’s article, Fulton decided to rebuild his vessel at Red Hook on the Hudson. He arrived at the nearby Livingston estate after New Year's.

A Surprise Marriage
To the surprise of friends and relatives, Harriet Livingston, the Chancellor's young cousin, and Robert Fulton were married on January 7, 1808. No evidence exists to show how he found time to court Harriet. Their honeymoon was shared with the rebuilding of his steamboat.
The Barlows were back in the U.S. by then and living near Washington, the new national capital. Letters written to them by Fulton indicate that he was anxious for the two families to meet and know one another.
After a weeklong journey by stagecoach, the Fultons reached Washington in July and stayed with the Barlows until the next February. It quickly became apparent to Harriet Fulton that she was an intruder on an already established pattern of living.
She was pregnant and in October gave birth to a son. Fulton named the baby Robert Barlow Fulton and called him Barlow. Pregnant or not, Harriet had no intention of taking part in the unconventional marital relationship her husband had in mind--in effect, a ménage à quatre.
Fulton had been unable to patent his design (because it consisted of elements not sufficiently original), so he spent much of his time back in New York defending the monopoly against usurpers operating steamboats in and near the Hudson. Nevertheless, he was able to design and operate a fleet of larger and heavier boats, including one to ply the rougher waters of Long Island Sound.
Harriet soon became discontented with the "pin money" her husband doled out. He had originally intended to give her a share of the profits from the new catamaran ferry running between Manhattan and Jersey City, but his partner, Livingston, vetoed that arrangement.
Harriet had every reason to be unhappy. Women’s rights were virtually nonexistent in the early 19th century. A married woman essentially was her husband's property.
Her body was legally regarded as owned by him. She could not have a bank account, invest money, sign a contract, carry life insurance, or own or inherit property independently of her husband.
Without property, she could not take vote or take part in politics as a candidate. In the event of the death of her husband, she could not become the legal guardian of her children.
Joel Barlow died in Poland of fatigue and fever in 1812 futilely trying to obtain payment from Napoleon for American ships illegally seized by the French. Following his defeat at Moscow, the Emperor had abandoned his army and was already back in Paris. Robert R. Livingston, who was important to the legal actions brought to protect the monopoly, suffered a fatal stroke in 1813.
The two deaths devastated Fulton. He died of pneumonia in New York City on Thursday, Feb. 23, 1815. He had been soaked to the skin a few days before trying to cross the ice-clogged Hudson after inspecting the giant steam-powered frigate being built for the Navy in Jersey City.

A Hero's Funeral
Newspapers announced his death the next day in obituaries bordered by thick black lines. He left a grieving young widow and their four children, the eldest only six years old.
His funeral on Saturday afternoon resembled the burial of a national hero. Pallbearers carried his simple mahogany coffin down the steps of his handsome mansion across from what is now Battery Park. To the west, the setting sun's rosy glow over the Jersey salt marshes provided a colorful backdrop for the solemn occasion.
At the Battery, a single cannon boomed at one-minute intervals. The cortège, led by officials of the federal, state and city governments, moved slowly up Broadway to Trinity Church. After a brief service, Fulton's body was interred in the Livingston family vault.
In November of the following year, Fulton’s widow married a smooth-talking, avaricious Briton named Charles Dale. If Harriet's rapid remarriage suggests unusual casualness toward her husband's death, Ruth Barlow's reaction reveals genuine affection.
Responding to news of Fulton's passing, she wrote to the executor of his estate, "Most feelingly my heart reciprocates every sentiment of sorrow and deep regret you express . . . . Except for the family no one can so sensibly feel this loss as myself. . . . I must dismiss this mournful subject, it affects me too much my tears blot my paper."
Later, in a letter to a friend, she wrote that she could “recall the image of Fulton I wish to be ever present to my still bleeding heart.” With neither Barlow nor Fulton to comfort her, Ruth Barlow died in 1818.
In 1820, the Dales mortgaged her country property. Saddling a widowed Livingston sister-in-law with Harriet's four children, the Dales headed for England. The Dales were back in America by 1825. Harriet died the following year and was buried in a lonely grave in the cemetery of the Claverack Dutch Reformed Church in upstate New York.

Fulton’s Legacy
In 1816, a year after his death, Fulton Street was created to honor him by widening two existing streets. Specializing in fish, the Fulton Market opened in 1822 and remained at its original location until 2005, when it moved to Hunts Point in the Bronx. Other honors were scant.
In 1901, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers erected a squat stone column and small bronze plaque at the south edge of Trinity churchyard.  Visitors seeking Fulton’s gravesite often make the mistake of thinking Fulton is buried beneath this rather unattractive memorial.
A Robert Fulton Monument Association was created in New York in 1906. With Cornelius Vanderbilt as president and Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) as vice-president, the association planned to erect a monument on Riverside Drive at 110th Street, overlooking the river of his history-making voyage. Overshadowed by preparations for the 1909 celebration that would honor both Fulton and Hudson, the Fulton monument was never built.
Nearly 200 years after his death, no headstone marks Robert Fulton’s grave. Fulton, of course, needs no monument. At the cutting edge of the Industrial Revolution, the steamboat and the steamship expanded international commerce to unimaginable heights. Steam-powered vessels, as part of vast naval fleets bristling with arms and armor, became participants in epic naval battles in two catastrophic wars. They remain awesome projections of national power to this very day.

Labels: ,

Posted by Notorc @ 3/19/2012 09:04:00 AM 0 comments
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Monday, March 12, 2012

The Short, Tragic Life of Robert Fulton, 1: The North River Steamboat

LOWER HUSON VALLEY


Monday, August 17, 1807, dawned hot and humid in the bustling little city at the lower tip of Manhattan Island. It promised to be another sweltering dog day for which the lower Hudson Valley is famous in summer.  
Gentlemen uncomfortable in their swallow-tailed coats and their ladies twirling pastel parasols to protect them from the sun made their way by carriage or brougham two miles north to the village called Greenwich.
Their destination was the Christopher Street pier jutting into the Hudson River, in an area still largely given over to fields and orchards. Nearby loomed the massive walls of Newgate, the new state prison at the foot of Amos Street (now West Tenth Street).
 The occasion was the demonstration of inventor Robert Fulton’s new--and as yet unnamed--steamboat. Only the day before the vessel had been moved to the Hudson from a shipyard at Corlear’s Hook on the East River, causing excited comment from strollers near the Battery. Word of the vessel’s impending maiden voyage up the Hudson the next day spread rapidly through the city.

An Odd-looking Craft
Riding gently on the Hudson swells alongside the pier was an ungainly 79-ton cigar-shaped wooden boat measuring 142 feet long and a ridiculously narrow 14 feet wide.  With one tall mast and an awkward 15-foot smokestack extending high in the air, the flat-bottomed, straight-sided ship riding low in the water was a far cry from the sleek sailing sloops that busily plied New York’s vast harbor.
Powering this unusual craft was a large upright single-cylinder engine with an assortment of cogs, rods and wheels to drive two giant wooden paddlewheels, 15-feet in diameter. The latter lacked protective housings, making any passengers standing near them on deck likely to be doused with water. A supply of coal, Fulton's fuel of choice, was stored below deck, assuring 192 hours of running time.
Robert Fulton had spent more than twenty years in England and France, working first as a portrait painter and then as an inventor, unsuccessfully peddling inventions designed to sink ships with underwater mines.
Derisively called “Fulton’s Folly” as it was being built, the vessel owed much to British craftsmen who had flocked to the vibrant former colony. Charles Brownne, a skilled London shipwright, built its hull. Apparently, he avoided British restrictions on the emigration of skilled workers by changing the spelling of his given name, Brown.
Scottish millwright Robert McQueen built the ironwork of the paddle mechanism to Fulton’s design. The boiler Fulton had ordered from England was never shipped, so the vessel’s boiler was made by a local coppersmith named Marshall. The British firm of Boulton and Watt built the 24-horsepower engine to Fulton's specifications.
An initial unsuccessful attempt to get the new-fangled steamboat under way at about one o'clock drew taunts and smirking remarks from spectators on the shore. The few passengers stood ill at ease on the vessel’s open deck. Undaunted, Fulton and his British-born engineer, George Jackson, tinkered with the engine. Finally, Davis Hunt, the vessel’s captain, was given the signal to begin the voyage. 
Its engine hissing steam and its ungainly smokestack belching black smoke and sparks, Fulton’s North River Steamboat moved into the river and headed north past  Spuyten Duyvil and Westchester. At a speed of about four miles an hour, the slim vessel cut smoothly through the water, steadily overtaking and passing sloops and schooners beating their way northwards under full sail.
Fulton's ultimate destination was Albany but the first stop would be at Chancellor Robert R Livingston’s estate, Clermont, 110 miles north of the city. Prosperous and politically connected, he had been a member of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and negotiator of the Louisiana Purchase.
Livingston, a lawyer and Fulton’s partner, bankrolled the steamboat venture. Fearful of competition, he obtained a monopoly on steamboat travel on the Hudson from the New York legislature. The Chancellor would join Fulton on board for the final 40-mile leg of the journey to the state capital.
Despite the hoopla about the first Albany-bound voyage of his steamboat, Fulton left no written record of the passengers, nor was there any local press coverage. Later accounts place eminent New Yorker and U.S. senator Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill, aboard. Mitchill was chairman of the senate defense committee. Representing the Chancellor were his younger brother and a distant cousin, both named John Livingston.

Arrival at Clermont
Under a full moon, Fulton's steamboat chugged north through the night and reached the Livingston estate early in the afternoon of the next day. It had covered the distance at an average speed of 4-1/2 miles per hour. Livingston came aboard for the remainder of the journey to the state capital.
Arriving at Albany the following day, Fulton decided to turn the experimental voyage into a commercial venture and posted a sign on his steamboat’s railing announcing a return fare of seven dollars, more than twice what sailing sloops were charging. So great was the locals’ fear of a boiler explosion, only two French travelers booked passage on the return trip.
Although widely described as its inventor, Robert Fulton did not invent the steamboat. He was, however, the first to successfully operate a steamboat commercially in regular passenger service.

A Steamboat Business Is Born
Back in New York by Friday, August 21 with the successful round-trip voyage behind him, Fulton immediately registered his vessel officially at the port of New York office as the North River Steamboat--the only name by which it was known during its existence.
North River was the more common name for the Hudson River during the Dutch colonial period of the 17th century. The practical Dutch called the Delaware, the south boundary of New Netherland, the South River. Near the colony’s northern boundary, was the North River, or Hudson.
In his correspondence, Fulton referred to the river as the North River and the Hudson River, but in his advertisements, as in his registration of the craft, he called it the North River Steamboat. Confusion over the name of Fulton’s vessel began with biographer Cadwallader Colden, whose 1817 Life of Robert Fulton mistakenly called it the Clermont. This error, repeated by subsequent biographers and writers, continues to this day.
Fulton began regularly scheduled trips to Albany and back two weeks later on Sept.4, starting from the Jersey City ferry dock at the foot of Cortlandt Street
(near the site at which the World Trade Center would be erected. His boat arrived in Albany the following day after a record-setting trip of 28 hours and 45 minutes.
Accidents deliberately caused by jealous sloop captains were a constant worry. Blaming these on Capt. Hunt’s carelessness, Fulton replaced him with Andrew Brinck of Esopus (Kingston). Hunt was later said to have been bribed by sloop captains.
“You must insist on each one doing his duty or turn him on shore and another put in his place,” Fulton told Brinck. But Brinck turned out to be no more satisfactory than Hunt, and within a few weeks his place was taken by Samuel Wiswall of Hudson, who proved to be faithful and energetic.
Nevertheless, Fulton continued to complain to partner Livingston, “Our Hands are too numerous, their Wages too high, our fuel more than half too dear and the quantity may be economized.”
Service continued until November 19, ending with the freezing of the Hudson south of Albany. The following April, Livingston induced the New York legislature to extend the time period of the partnership’s monopoly on the Hudson.
During the winter, Fulton moved the North River to Red Hook, a protected cove south of the Clermont estate, where he set up a workshop and spent much of his time improving the vessel. He built a new hull, making it longer and wider, installed a new deck and windows, and created cabins holding 54 berths. The paddle wheels were enclosed in wooden housings to prevent them from splashing water on the deck. Coal was abandoned in favor of less expensive and more easily available resinous pine logs.
Fulton also found the time to court Harriet Livingston, the Chancellor's second cousin. They were married by a Dutch Reformed minister on January 7, 1808, in her family’s parlor her family’s estate at Teviotdale, eight miles northeast of Clermont. Fulton was 42; his bride was 24.
By the end of the 1808 sailing season, the two partners had cleared a profit of $16,000. They contracted with boat builder Charles Brownne for another steamboat, the fancifully named Car of Neptune. Three years would elapse before Fulton had another steamboat built for Hudson River service. At 331 tons--more than four times the displacement of the original North River--the 170-foot-long Paragon was huge, a veritable floating palace.
An illustrated account of the Paragon published in the new monthly magazine Port Folio described a dining room capable of serving dinner on fine china for 150 passengers and 104 berths “so wide as to conveniently admit two persons, when the boat is crowded.” Fulton added, almost with a wink, “and it is agreeable to the parties.”
Two smaller boats also were built, the 81-foot Firefly, which served the New York to Poughkeepsie run and the Jersey, an ingenious 78-foot catamaran ferry running between Manhattan and Jersey City. The new steamboat mogul was on his way.

Labels: ,

Posted by Notorc @ 3/12/2012 09:00:00 AM 0 comments
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Monday, March 05, 2012

The Golden Age of Hudson Valley Brickmaking, 2: The Brickmaking Process

LOWER HUDSON VALLEY

      As a business venture, brickmaking was financially extremely risky. Partnerships were formed easily and dissolved quickly. Fortunes were made and lost.
Brickmaking was also a seasonal business that shut down for the winter when the ground became frozen. Wages were low, and the physical labor involved was arduous.
Many brickyard workers found winter employment cutting ice in the area’s many lakes and ponds, and hauling it to ice houses for storage and later use.
A brickyard was labor intensive, and dependent on immigrants and itinerants for its workers. Owners of brickyards supplied housing to many of their laborers. 
So isolated was the brickmaking community on Croton Point that the Underhill brickyard built a school for the children of its brickyard workers.
Clay and sand banks could suddenly peter out. Warm, dry weather was necessary for the initial drying of bricks--but the weather could be unpredictable and capricious.
Overproduction in this highly competitive industry was common. The price of bricks was dictated by the state of the economy, the amount of new construction and the annual production of bricks.

Extracting the Clay
Bricks were made by what was called the "soft mud process." Early brickmakers laboriously dug the clay for bricks by hand. (The steam shovel was not invented until 1879.) Fortune smiled on any brickyard whose clay deposit was overlain by sand, another necessary brick ingredient.
Clay and sand were transported in wheelbarrows or horse-drawn carts to the tempering pit and mixed with water. The mixture was then kneaded by being trod upon by oxen until it reached the proper consistency. Later, tempering was done in horse-driven or steam-powered pug mills.
To achieve more thorough burning of the heavy Hudson River clays, powdered anthracite coal dust (called "culm") was added. This also saved fuel by reducing the burning time.
After being properly tempered, the clay mixture was removed from the pit or pug mill and delivered to the molding table.

Molding the Bricks
The assistant brick molder, also called a "clot molder," would prepare a lump of clay and pass it to the brick molder. The latter, the key worker in the brickmaking process, was the star of the team. Highly skilled, the brick molder would take the clay and "dash" it into the already-sanded mold, making sure that the corners were filled.
Any excess clay mixture was removed from the top of the mold with a "strike"--a flat board kept soaking in water--and reused.
Molds could make one, two, four or six bricks at a time. Smaller capacity molds had the advantage that a child could carry them. Child labor was common in brickyards.
Hardwoods--cherry, beech or maple--were used in making the open-topped rectangular molds that were often reinforced with iron straps to prevent excessive wear.
The next worker in the team would take the mold from the molding table and move it by flatbed wheelbarrow to a leveled and carefully swept "hacking" (drying) area.
Bricks slid easily from molds because their sides had been coated with fine sand. The empty molds were then returned to the molding table to be refilled.

Drying the Bricks
At the roofed-over hacking area, the bricks were laid out to dry. After two days, they were turned over. At this stage, rough handling could easily damage a brick.
While the bricks were still moist, young boys used special tools called "edgers" to straighten the edges of the bricks. After four days of drying in warm weather, the bricks were sufficiently hard to allow them to be stood on one side with a finger's width between them to continue drying. After another two weeks of drying, the bricks were ready to be moved to the kiln shed.

Building and Firing the Kiln
A temporary kiln was constructed of "green" (raw) bricks, stacked 54 bricks high, with "arches"--apertures in which fuel was placed--at the base. Wood was used until the supply of local trees was exhausted, and then coal was substituted. Several hundred thousand to a million bricks could make up a kiln.
Even with the drying that had taken place, the unburned bricks still contained about 15 percent water, so fires were kept low at first to complete the drying process. Too much heat applied too soon could cause bricks to explode.
Steam would issue from the top of the kiln. Old-time brickmakers called this "water smoke." After the water had been driven off and it was safe to increase the heat, the temperature of the kiln was raised slowly until it reached 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.
It took a knowledgeable and experienced brickmaker to know when the fire holes should be bricked over and the heat allowed to dissipate slowly. Burning the bricks took about a week. Another week was needed to allow them to cool before the kiln could be taken apart.

Sorting the Bricks
Bricks closest to the fires received an unwanted glaze deposited on their surfaces from wood ash or vaporized sand that dropped in the fires and was vaporized. Such bricks could still be sold for use in the interior courses of walls.
Bricks that were overburned or cracked or warped were designated as "lammies" or "clinkers" and sold for use in garden walls or footpaths.
Bricks making up the outer walls of the kiln were always less properly cured. Called "light-hards," these were put aside to be used to cover the outer walls of the next kiln and then daubed with mud to seal it.
Marketable bricks were transported to docks at the river's edge. In the early days they were loaded on sloops, but barges holding from 300,000 to 500,000 bricks later supplanted sloops for the trip to New York City’s docks. Twelfth Avenue and 52nd Street became the site of an informal brick market, a gathering place for the city's building materials dealers.

Decline and Fall
By the turn of the 20th century, some 120 brickyards, employing between eight and ten thousand workers, were producing over a billion bricks a year in the Hudson Valley--more than any other part of the world.
A quarter-century later most of the brickyards in Westchester and Rockland counties closed, having depleted the banks of clay and sand along the river. Moreover, these brickyards had not modernized or mechanized their brickmaking. Except for machines to mix the clay and pack the molds, much of the work had still involved manual labor.
Brickyards upriver around Beacon, Newburgh and Kingston managed to hang on longer, thanks to abundant reserves of clay and the introduction of machine methods. Despite modernization, many of these brickyards succumbed during the Depression, and only a few survived the Second World War.
Other brickmaking methods had supplanted the soft mud process. A steam-driven machine that forced a stiffer mixture through a rectangular aperture could make 100,000 bricks a day. The extruded column was then cut into bricks by a wire cutter similar to a hard-boiled egg slicer. Tunnel-type dryers and kilns were also introduced.
After the building boom that followed the war, builders in the 1960's decided that Hudson Valley brick was too porous. The cost of added ingredients to overcome the porosity problem made it impossible for Hudson Valley brickmakers to compete.
Today, shale is the preferred raw material, and most of the country's bricks come from the South and the Midwest. Only one brickyard making molded bricks survived in the Hudson Valley--the Powell & Minnock Brick Works at Coeymans, about a dozen miles south of Albany. This company ceased operations in 2001.
The visitor to the sites of previous riverside brickmaking operations between Croton and Peekskill will find little to show that this chapter in Westchester’s industrial history was once written here. The harsh outlines of gouged-out clay and sand pits have softened and merged with the landscape. Never intended to be permanent, brickyard buildings have long since disappeared. A diligent searcher may scuff up a few discarded imperfect bricks. With luck, their brands may be identifiable.
Tangible proof of the area's prodigality with its natural resources, however, can be found miles to the south in New York City. From humble tenements and millionaires' mansions to soaring skyscrapers, thousands of sturdy brick buildings still stand, their bricks mute testimony to the golden age of brickmaking in the Hudson Valley.



Labels: ,

Posted by Notorc @ 3/05/2012 09:00:00 AM 0 comments
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?