More About Hudson 150 Years Ago

There is one more item from the Hudson Weekly Star that merits sharing. It is this one, which reports on the whereabouts of passenger steamboats during the winter months of 1874. 

I was unable to find any images of the vessels mentioned in the article--the Boardman, the Sedgwick, the New Champion, and the City of Hudson--but here are images of contemporary steamers: the Mary Powell and the Armenia. 

Some research discovered that the Armenia and the Sedgwick had a rare amenity in common. Each had a calliope to entertain passengers as they traveled on the river.

The article speaks of the day line from Brooklyn to Troy, which would leave Brooklyn at 7:30 a.m. and 23rd Street in Manhattan at 8:00 a.m. and, "making the usual landings," would arrive in Albany and Troy "in time to connect with the afternoon trains for Saratoga, Lake George, Niagara Falls, &c." It is not indicated when the trains departed, but this chart, found in the book Old Steamboat Days of the Hudson River: Tales and Reminiscences of the Stirring Times that Followed the Introduction of Steam Navigation by David Lear Buckman (1907), indicates that by 1862 and 1864 there were steamboats making the trip from New York to Albany in under seven hours.

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