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Chronology

Transportation Milestones Around the CRR of NJ Jersey City Terminal (now Liberty State Park) and the NJ / NY Port Area Capt. Bill McKelvey, Editor Introduction: Included are milestones, events, and things of mostly transportation importance within the entire NJ / NY Port area. Our goal is to limit items to an approximately 25 mile radius of the Statue of Liberty, which is the commonly accepted Port District of Jurisdiction of the Port Authority of NY & NJ. The Chronology is primarily devoted to transportation, but some other related and relevant items, important to the overall context have been posted as well. Due to the unavailability of month and / or day of some events / items, the listings of them under each year may not be in exact chronological order. Kindly forward suggested additions, edits and corrections to the editor: wjmckelvey@hotmail.com or 103 Dogwood Lane, Berkeley Heights, NJ 07922. Please note: For your convenience, the Chronology is now electronically searchable. Updated August 2011 4.6 billion years ago Planet Earth was formed in the Pre-Cambrian Era. 3.8 billion years ago Simple cells (prokaryotes) began to appear. 3 billion years ago Evidence of photosynthesis begins to appear. 2 billion years ago Complex cells (eukaryotes) begin to appear. 1 billion years ago Multicellular life begins to appear. 600 million years ago Simple animals begin to appear. 570 million years ago Arthropods (ancestors of insects, arachnids and crustaceans) begin to appear. 550 million years ago Complex animals begin to appear. 500 million years ago Fish and proto–amphibians begin to appear. 475 million years ago Land plants begin to appear. 400 million years ago Insects and seeds begin to appear. 360 million years ago Amphibians begin to appear. 300 million years ago Reptiles begin to appear. 230 million years ago The earliest evidence of Dinosaurs appears in the Mesozoic Era, Triassic Period rocks of New Jersey. 200 million years ago Mammals begin to appear. 150 to 140 million years ago Evidence of evolution of a wide variety of types of large Dinosaurs (as many as 100 species) appears in the late Jurassic Period rocks of New Jersey and many other areas of the US. Birds also begin to appear. 130 million years ago Flowers begin to appear. 70 million years ago The age of Dinosaurs fades and the last evidence appears in the Mesozoic Era, late Cretaceous Period rocks of New Jersey. 65 million years ago Non-avian dinosaurs died out. 2.5 million years ago The genus Homo appeared. 200,000 B.C.E. Humans started looking like they do today. 35,000 to 40,000 B.C.E. The first men to discover the New World or America are believed to have walked across a “land bridge” from Siberia to Alaska. 25,000 B.C.E. Neanderthals died out. 20,000 B.C.E. The New York - New Jersey Metropolitan area, including NY Harbor, was covered by the Wisconsin Ice Sheet, which was up to 1,000 feet thick. The leading edge or terminal moraine of the sheet stretches from the southern end of Staten Island, across the Narrows and through Brooklyn and Queens. Without the terminal moraine, most of Long Island, including Brooklyn and Queens, would lie beneath the Atlantic Ocean. As the Laurentide Ice Sheet retreated northward a huge volume of meltwater accumulated and was blocked from reaching the ocean via the St. Lawrence River by the portion of the ice sheet which still covered the Thousand Islands area. This large body of water was Glacial Lake Iroquois - a prehistoric proglacial lake which was essentially an enlargement of the present Lake Ontario. It was three times as large and approximately 100 feet deeper than the present lake. 13,350 B.C.E. Geologists, Oceanographers and Paleontologists concur that about this time Glacial Lake Iroquois broke through a dam and flooded east through the Mohawk River Valley, down the Hudson River Valley past NYC, through a spot of land where the Verrazano Narrows Bridge now stands, and into the Atlantic Ocean. The event formed NY Harbor. This massive rush of flood water is thought to be responsible for large rocks, the size of an automobile, being deposited on the outer continental shelf off the mouth of the Hudson River. The discharge of this fresh water into the Atlantic Ocean is thought to have triggered climatic changes caused by the altering of the Gulf Stream. In any event a cold climate period lasting 1,200 years followed. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 10,000 B.C.E. Civilization began - the first cities were established. The Leni Lenape (which means “original people”) were hunting and raising crops, such as corn, beans and squash, in the area which has become New Jersey. 6,000 B.C.E. Geologists believe that at this time the lower Raritan River provided the course for the mouth of the Hudson River. Following the end of the last ice age, the Narrows had not yet been formed and the Hudson River flowed along the Watchung Mountains to present day Bound Brook, then followed the course of the Raritan River eastward into Raritan and Lower New York Bays. 1,000 Norsemen (Norwegian Vikings sailing out of Iceland and Greenland) are credited by most scholars with being the first Europeans to discover America. 1492 Christopher Columbus, most famous of the explorers of the Western Hemisphere, was born at Genoa, Italy but made his discoveries sailing for Spanish rulers. His first landings were at what we now know as San Salvador, Bahamas, Cuba, Haiti and Dominican Republic. 1524 Giovanni da Verrazano (1485-1528) was the first European to explore the New Jersey coast and sail into what became New York Harbor. The suspension bridge spanning the narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island is named in his honor. 1607 Capt. John Smith and 105 cavaliers in three ships landed on the Virginia coast and started the first permanent English settlement in the New World at Jamestown. 1609 Henry Hudson, seeking an alternative route to East Asia, sailed into the mouth of what became known as the Delaware River and anchored for the night. He then continued on to the New York Bay region where he is credited with discovering the Hudson River. He anchored his 85-foot-long, 80 ton, Half Moon in Weehawken cove and claimed the river for his employer, The Dutch East India Co. Shortly after, the Swedes and British claimed settlements in New Jersey along the coast. 1623 New Amsterdam (Manhattan, later NYC) which became a Dutch province, was founded as a commercial trading post by the Dutch West India Company. 1624 In May, Noten Eyelandt (“Island of Nuts,” officially renamed Governors Island in 1784) was the landing place of the first settlers in New Netherland. They had arrived from the Dutch Republic with the ship New Netherland and thirty families in order to take legal possession of the New Netherland territory. The NY State Senate and Assembly have recognized Governor’s Island as the birthplace, in 1624, of the state of NY. In 1633 a 104-man regiment arrived on Governor’s Island – its first use as a military base. New Netherland was conditionally ceded to the English in 1664, and renamed New York the following year. Defensive works were raised on the island in 1776 by Continental Army troops during the American Revolutionary War, and fired upon British ships before falling into enemy hands. In 1784 the island’s current name was made official. From 1783 to 1966 the island was a US Army post, and from 1966 to 1996 served as a major US Coast Guard installation. On 19 January 2001, Fort Jay and Castle Williams, two of the island’s three historical fortifications were proclaimed a National Monument. On 31 January 2003, most of the island was transferred to the state of NY, but 22 acres became a National Park. Governors Island is a 172-acre island in Upper NY Bay, approximately ½ mile from the southern tip of Manhattan and is separated from Brooklyn by Buttermilk Channel. The original, smaller island was expanded by approximately 82 acres of landfill on its southern side when the Lexington Avenue subway was excavated in the early 1900s. 1626 Peter Minuit, the first Director-General of New Amsterdam, bought Manhattan Island from the Indians for an estimated $24 of trinkets. Permanent Dutch colonists began to arrive. In the next three decades several Dutch families built farms in what is now Jersey City and Hoboken. 1630 Michael R. Pauw received the first Dutch West India Co. land grant on the west bank of the Hudson River, known as Pavonia on 22 November. This is the earliest known property conveyance for what are now known as Jersey City and Hoboken. A condition of the sale was that Pauw establish a settlement of no less than fifty persons within four years. He failed to do that and had to sell his land back to the Company. Harsimus, Pavonia, and Communipaw developed into present day Jersey City. 1633 The first houses were built in the Dutch settlement at Communipaw, now called Jersey City. 1636 The Dutch established the village of Red Hook in what is now Brooklyn. 1642 Cornelis Dircksen inaugurated the first ferry service between Peck Slip at what is now Manhattan and the foot of the present Fulton Street in Brooklyn. Passengers would summon him by blowing a conch shell horn hung on a tree and Dircksen would row them across. 1643 One Dutch Governor, Willem Kieft, provoked a disastrous war with an Indian tribe living near the village of Pavonia by insisting that the Indians pay taxes for repairs to Fort Amsterdam. The war, marked by bloody massacres of whole Indian villages, cost a total of more than 1,000 lives before a treaty was signed in 1645. 1647 Peter Stuyvesant arrived in the city of New Amsterdam, at the southern tip of Manhattan, as the fourth and last of the Dutch Director-Generals of New Netherlands. He built the city’s first schools and fortified Manhattan against hostile natives and New England Yankees. 1660 The first village (located inside a palisaded garrison) was established on what is now Bergen Square, and is considered to be the oldest town in what would become the state of New Jersey. 1661 Jensen’s Ferry service was begun between Communipaw and Manhattan. 1663 What is known as Fort Tompkins on Staten Island was first established when fortified with a blockhouse in this year. During the Revolutionary War it was known as Flagstaff Fort. It was taken by the British in 1776, enlarged, and used until 1783. NY State started a masonry fort in 1807. The site reverted to federal control during the War of 1812. It was divided into several smaller units, including Fort Tompkins and Fort Richmond. Cpt. Robert E. Lee from Fort Hamilton proposed rebuilding the Staten Island works, which was done in 1860. It controlled Forts Morton, Hudson, and Richmond and was later included as part of Fort Wadsworth which was established in 1864. By 1924 Fort Wadsworth had become an infantry post, and from 1955 until 1974 it was the headquarters of the 52nd AAA Brigade. It then became the site of the US Army Chaplain school before being turned over to the US Navy in 1979. The property became part of Gateway National Recreation Area when the Navy left in 1995. Shortly after that, the US Coast Guard became a tenant in some of the buildings. Historic structures include Battery Weed, directly on the harbor and Fort Tompkins on the bluff above. The National Park Service maintains a visitor’s center on the site and offers ranger-led tours of the facilities. 1664 Four British warships entered New York Harbor and without firing a shot convinced Peter Stuyvesant, the peg-legged governor of New Netherland, to surrender. Control passed to James, Duke of York, brother of Charles II, King of England. He quickly transferred ownership of the land between the Hudson and the Delaware to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. They named it “New Jersey” after the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel. Berkeley and Carteret sold off portions of their interest to different individuals, who established the separate but related provinces of East Jersey and West Jersey. The Old York Road was completed and opened across New Jersey from Elizabethtown Point to Coryell’s Ferry (Lambertville). It connected with the Pennsylvania segment, which was already completed to Philadelphia. 1665 Carteret and Berkeley issued the “Concessions and Agreements” by which they set the terms of settlement for people who would locate to the province. As the proprietors could profit only by selling lands to settlers, these concessions were designed to make New Jersey an attractive place in which to settle. 1667 William Penn signed a document authorizing surveyors to examine the possibility of constructing a canal across the Jerseys from the Delaware River to New York Bay. 1672 During the war between England and Holland, Dutch warships sailed into New York Harbor and demanded the city’s surrender. The city fell without a fight and the name was changed back to New Amsterdam. 1676 William Penn signed a document authorizing surveyors to examine the possibility of constructing a canal across the Jerseys from the Delaware River to New York Bay. 1694 The Colonial Assembly commissioned local seamen as pilots to assist ship captains in NY Harbor. Sandy Hook Pilots continues that service to the present. They utilize more than a dozen vessels to transport pilots to and from ocean ships. 1700 Federal Hall, was built at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets as New York’s City Hall. It was the meeting place for the first US Congress; was where George Washington took his oath of office as the first President of the US; and was where the Bill of Rights was introduced in the First Congress. The building was demolished in 1812. On the site the Federal Hall National Memorial was built in 1842 as the NY Customs House. It is now operated by the National Park Service as a museum commemorating the historic events that happened there. A charter was granted to Samuel Bayard for a ferry from New York to Weehawken. New Jersey had a population of 15,000 and two-thirds lived in East Jersey. 1702 East and West Jersey were rejoined when they came under royal rule. 1725 Young Benjamin Franklin, wanting to escape a troubled family life in Boston, arranged for passage to New York City (NYC) on sailing ship in September. There he tried to get a job in book store, but there were no stores. He tried the only printing shop, but there were no openings. The owner suggested that he try in Philadelphia, where his son had a printing shop. The journey was difficult and he was running out of money, so Ben decided to walk the 50 miles across the colony of New Jersey. At Burlington he got on a sailboat (which the passengers had to row due to lack of wind) for Philadelphia. Franklin remained in Philadelphia the rest of his life and became that city’s most famous man. 1733 A charter was granted by King George II of England to Albert Kennedy, Esquire for a ferry between Manhattan and Pavonia (Jersey City). 1737 An earthquake of 7 intensity near New York City on 18 December threw down a number of chimneys. The shock was felt as far as Boston and Philadelphia. 1750 Douwes Ferry Road, from Harrison to Jersey City was completed. The population of New Jersey grew to 60,000. 1753 The first steam engine in America was imported from England to pump water from Col. John Schuyler’s copper mine in North Arlington, which had to be shut down in 1748 due to flooding. Schuyler paid English engine-maker Jonathan Hornblower ₤1,000 to ship him a “fire engine” and a crew of mechanics to set it up. It was repaired after two separate fires and it kept on pumping well into the 19th century. 1755 Joseph Borden, Jr. and partners started a stage line which became the first regular service between New York and Philadelphia. Only the Bordentown to Perth Amboy segment was by land. Boats were used at either end of the trip. 1756 John Butler established a coach service between Philadelphia and New York. The one hundred mile journey included six ferryboat rides and took three days. 1764 America’s oldest lighthouse (103' tall) was built on New Jersey’s Sandy Hook, at the entrance to New York Harbor. It is the oldest standing and longest continuously operating lighthouse in the United States. A stage route from Paulus (or Powles) Hook to Philadelphia was begun. 1765 Colonel John Schuyler built the Belleville Turnpike from Jersey City to his copper mine in North Arlington. It was primarily constructed of cedar planks harvested from the Meadowlands. 1766 The new Newark to Bergen (Jersey City) Plank Road was opened. It provided the connection with other roads to complete the first all-land route between the Hudson and Philadelphia. John Mercerau and John Barnhill introduced their Flying Machine. Their "wagons set on springs" cut the travel time between Paulus Hook, and Philadelphia to two days. 1767 Cornelius Van Voorst established a ferry from Manhattan to Powles Hook in Jersey City. 1769 A new stage route was established over the Old York Road, by way of Lambertville, Somerville, Plainfield, Elizabeth, Newark and Powles Hook. The outstanding stage coaches on the Old York Road were those of the Swift-Sure Stage Line. Their advertisements appearing in the New York Gazette or Weekly Post Boy announced: “ A new stage line is to be erected to go from New York to Philadelphia by way of Powles Hook from thence through Newark and Elizabethtown to Bound Brook and the North Branch of the Raritan to Coryell’s Ferry, the only ferry between Newark and Philadelphia noted for its shortness and convenience over the river Delaware.” 1771 Abraham Skillman advertised his "year round" coach traveling between NY, Elizabeth & Philadelphia in two days. 1772 The first stage coach was used in New Jersey for public transportation by Joseph Hart's Philadelphia Coach Line. His route was from Powles Hook via Newark, Elizabeth and Trenton. It provided the most comfortable means of travel as well as the most expensive. 1774 A charter for a sail / manpower ferry from Manhattan to Hoboken was granted. It connected with a line of stages run by Andrew Van Buskirk to New Bridge, near Hackensack. 1775 The "Continental Post" established mail service between New York and Philadelphia with exchange of mail bags at Princeton. 1776 New York appealed to New Jersey in June for 3,000 men to head off a grand attack expected from the British during the summer. More than 100 British transports were reported off Sandy Hook. The Declaration of American Independence from Britain was signed on 4 July. This date is written on the tablet of law held by the left hand of the Statue of Liberty. On 12 July, Richard, Lord Howe, Admiral of the British fleet arrived in NY Harbor. The Lower Bay was immediately held by the British Navy. Staten Island had been abandoned by the Americans without resistance, thus surrendering the strong position of the Narrows. Governor’s Island and Brooklyn Heights were still held by American troops. The Hudson River was under siege by two British Frigates and their tenders in July and August. The newly independent Americans drove the British back down the River from Peekskill to New York Harbor. By 12 August, nearly 250 British warships were in NY Harbor. On 22 August, after the British had crossed from Staten Island to Gravesend Bay, Washington withdrew from Governor’s Island. Two days later the Americans lost the battle of Long Island. On 14 September the British captured NY and for the duration fo the war occupied all of Long Island. George Washington’s ‘Flying Camp’ was located at Paulus Hook, Jersey City. However, the fort was held by the British during the remainder of the Revolutionary War. New Bridge was strategically placed at the narrows of the Hackensack River; was used throughout the American Revolution; and has been termed “the bridge that saved a nation.” The area was a hotly contested battleground and the adjacent Zabriskie-Steuben house repeatedly served as a fort to defend the bridge and is the only surviving dwelling along the route of the 1776 American retreat from Fort Lee through Bergen county. General George Washington made his headquarters there during the Steenrapie Encampment of September 1780. Portions of the site are currently in the municipalities of New Milford, River Edge and Teaneck and the nearby NJ Transit rail station has recently been renamed “New Bridge.” The first great fire of NYC occurred. On 11 September, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams rowed across the Arthur Kill from New Jersey to Staten Island for a peace conference with Lord Admiral Richard Howe. Their journey was a final, although unsuccessful, bid for reconciliation between the American colonists and representatives of King George III. Decommissioned, dismasted British ships were anchored during the Revolution in Wallabout Bay. These rotting hulks were jammed with American prisoners. On 20 October, the Whitby, the first of many prison ships arrived at Wallabout Bay, the future site of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Other early arrivals were: the Stromboli, Scorpion, Hunter, Falmouth, Scheldt, and Clyde. After two of the ships burned in 1777 and 1778, the infamous ship Jersey, the largest of them all, was brought in and all except sick prisoners were transferred to her. About 11,000 Americans – citizens and soldiers – who died on these floating prisons were buried near the Bay. 1777 Daily stagecoaches began to operate from NYC to Philadelphia. On 26 December, the British frigate Mercury was wrecked in the Hudson River off NYC. An attempt to raise her was made in 1823. According to tradition, she was carrying considerable specie for paying troops. 1779 During the Revolutionary War, Major Henry (Lighthouse) Lee attacked the British fort at Paulus Hook, Jersey City, and captured 150 British troops. 1780 There was a great freeze in the Revolutionary War winter of 1779-1780, when the British were occupying NY. The Narrows and Upper Bay were frozen solid. In one day eighty wagons of provisions for British troops on Staten Island were sent across the harbor on sledges. The British twice tried unsuccessfully to get to Washington at Morristown. British troops, based at Manhattan and Staten Island came in boats via Paulus Hook. These were the last British attempts to invade New Jersey. The British ship Lexington sank in the East River off 138th Street in 66 feet of water; the loss was reported to be $1,800,000. The beautiful, shining new, three-masted British frigate of 28 guns, the HMS Hussar, tried to negotiate the treacherous Hell Gate on 3 November. The 114 foot-long ship, with a 40-foot beam, got caught in a strong current and she fetched up broadside on Pot Rock, sinking in sixteen fathoms of water. She was said to have carried gold and silver worth $2 to $4 million. Spectacular attempts were made for years to salvage her, but the Hussar now lies completely buried at the bottom of the East River. 1784 On 15 January a NJ ferryboat got into floating ice and was damaged so badly that it sank. The eight passengers were thrown into the water. They climbed onto a cake of ice carried by the North River eddy around into the East River. All the slips there were so choked with ice that it was difficult for a small boat to go to the relief of the marooned men. Finally a boatload of soldiers did manage to rescue all but one, a Negro who had frozen to death. A ferry from Brooklyn to NY suddenly upset. One of the horses on board had shifted, which startled the others so that they all moved to one side and the boat filled. The three passengers and two ferrymen saved themselves by swimming until they were picked up, exhausted, by boats from shore. Independent Journal The 55 acres of land now occupied by the Stevens Institute of Technology, encompassing Castle Point, the highest point in Hoboken, was purchased by Col. John Stevens. Upon this land Stevens built a 40-room Victorian mansion, “Castle Stevens.” It was demolished in 1959 to make way for the 14-story Stevens Administration Building. The senior Stevens was a pioneer in ferry, steamboat, and railway developments. He also redesigned the British steam locomotive for use and manufacture in the US. His sons, Robert Stevens and Edward A. Stevens, created America’s first commercially successful railroad - the Camden & Amboy. They were also involved with the Delaware & Raritan Canal Co. and the “Joint Companies,” when the two were merged. Robert designed the “T” rail which became the standard shape of rail used throughout the world. When E. A. Stevens died in 1868, he left a bequest in his will for the establishment of an “institution of learning,” providing his trustees with land and funds. The Stevens Institute of Technology opened in 1870 and initially was dedicated to mechanical engineering. 1785 Congress authorized contracts with stage owners for carrying the mail between New Hampshire and Georgia via New Jersey. On 17 December a Brooklyn ferryboat turned over while crossing the East River, drowning one man and seven fat oxen. 1787 The United States Constitution was signed. New Jersey was the third state admitted to the Union on 18 December.. 1789 The first real legislation of the First Congress of the US, when they met at NYC, was to encourage shipping, and they passed laws strongly protective of shipbuilding, and went so far as to practically exclude foreign tonnage from our domestic trade. The Americanism of their action has never been exceeded in the legislative history of our country, and the attendant growth of our merchant fleet, from 123,893 tons of shipping in deep-water commerce at the time to 576,733 tons seven years later, is without parallel in the annals of commerce. 1790 The census showed 184,000 people living in New Jersey, of which nearly 70% traced their origin to the British Isles, another 20% were of Dutch ancestry, and 10% came from Germany and surrounding countries. 1791 Peter Cooper was born in NYC on 12 February and became an American industrialist, inventor, philanthropist, and a candidate for US President. He designed and built the first commercial steam locomotive in the US (the Tom Thumb for the B&O RR); set up an iron mill in NYC; then moved it to Trenton where it grew into a giant complex employing 2,000 people. He was one of five men who formed American Telegraph Co.; co-founded Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in Manhattan (with Abram Hewitt); developed an endless chain intended to be used to pull boats on the Erie Canal, which DeWitt Clinton approved of, but which Cooper was unable to sell; and became one of the richest men in NYC. Revolutionary War Colonel John Stevens obtained a patent for running a steamboat with paddle wheels. 1797 In this year there sailed from New York a little ship-of-war of about 90 tons, named the Betsy, and she was the first vessel to carry the stars and stripes around the world. The voyage, lasting two years, was a commercial success. 1798 The United Insurance Co., the first marine insurance company organized in NYC was chartered on 20 March. On 2 April the large ferryboat which plied between the ferry stairs at Fly Market, NY and Brooklyn across the East River, unhappily sank in a gust of wind. Eight men were in the boat, five of them boatmen and three passengers. All were drowned but one boatman. Wealthy and influential Robert Livingston convinced the state of New York to grant him a monopoly for Hudson River steamboat travel. Col. John Stevens, Robert R. Livingston and others participated in the construction of a small steamboat, the Polacca, on the Passaic River at Belleville and it made a trip to NYC the next year. The Associates of the New York & Elizabethport Ferry Co. began operating about this time. It is considered the oldest corporate entity of the Central Railroad of New Jersey and was officially incorporated as the Elizabethport & New York Ferry Co. on March 6, 1839. 1800 On 24 April a 38 or 44?-gun frigate, President, built on voluntary public subscription by the merchants of the city, was launched on the East River, NYC and presented to the US Navy. The shipbuilding era had begun, and this was the first major naval vessel built in NYC. Fire pumpers and hand engines were first placed on “floats” or small boats by New York volunteer firefighters. America’s first fireboat, The Floating Engine, was built by New York City volunteer firemen. 1801 In May a gust of wind caught the sails and upset the ferry from Fly Market. One woman and six men were drowned. Five were saved after spending an hour and a half in the water. Three horses and a two-wheeled carriage were also lost. Federal authorities purchased the old docks and 40 acres in Wallabout Basin on the East River and the property became an active US Navy shipyard five years later. The location was greatly expanded over the years and became known as New York Naval Shipyard or Brooklyn Navy Yard. The Sailors’ Snug Harbor was founded in this year upon the death of Capt. Robert Richard Randall. His will specified that he Manhattan estate be used to start a marine hospital for “aged, decrepit and worn out seamen.” The name was chosen by Randall himself. In 1831 the trustees sold the Manhattan estate, and with the proceeds purchased property in northern Staten Island, two miles west of St. George, overlooking Kill Van Kull and the Constable Hook section of Bayonne. 1802 The Bergen Turnpike Co. was chartered. It was later taken over by the Jersey City, Hoboken & Paterson Street Railway Co. to build their line along the route. When Public Service took over the trolley line they operated the turnpike as well. It became a public road in 1915. 1804 Colonel John Stevens, a brother-in-law of Robert Livingston, built an 86-foot steamboat Little Juliana, driven by twin screw propellers – an idea decades ahead of its time – and crossed the Hudson from Hoboken to New York. The Dey Group Associates sold a block of land with favorable terms to Robert Fulton to induce him to locate his shipbuilding yard in Jersey City. The "Associates of the Jersey Company" was established and leased the New York - Paulus Hook ferry which was originally worked with sail and rowboats. 1805 The Fulton Foundry and works were built on the corner of Green and Morgan Streets with the first ship dry-dock in Jersey City in front of the foundry. 1806 The first shot of the War of 1812 is said to have been fired six years before war was declared. On 6 April, the British frigate Leander wantonly fired a cannon ball into a small, unarmed American trading vessel as it stood off Sandy Hook Lighthouse, coming out of the Port of NY. One seaman was killed. 1807 Unfortunately for Stevens, Livingston chose to support Robert Fulton’s 130-foot steamboat North River, which was propelled by two side-mounted paddle wheels. On 17 August, Fulton steamed up the Hudson from Manhattan to Albany and was soon running scheduled trips. He renamed his boat Claremont after the name of Livingston’s estate. This is considered the first commercially successful steamboat service in America. Hoboken landowner, Col. John Stevens, built the Phenix, a paddle wheel vessel for the Hoboken to New Brunswick run. Phenix is acknowledged as America's second steamboat and the first built entirely in the US - completed only a few weeks prior to the Clermont. Phenix was also the first steamboat built in New Jersey. War seemed imminent when a fort called the Southwest Battery, equipped with 28 cannons and thirty two pounders was built on what was then a small island off the lower tip of Manhattan, connected with the main island by a bridge. Later it was called Fort Clinton or Castle Clinton, it was intended to protect New York from possible foreign naval attack. In 1822 Congress ceded the fort to New York and landfill made it a part of the Battery itself. In 1824 it became Castle Garden, a place of public entertainment. From 1855 to 1892 it was used as an immigrant reception center and from 1896 to 1941 it was the site of the NY Aquarium. The Fulton Fish Market initially opened on South Street at Fulton Street, Manhattan. “Old Ironsides,” the USS Constitution, launched in Boston on 21 October 1797, was under repair in the Port of New York from this year to 1809 and again in 1811. 1808 Stage lines began to use the Trenton and New Brunswick Turnpike in crossing New Jersey, marking a new era in overland transportation. James Allaire provided brass fittings for Fulton's early steamboats. He later took over Fulton's boat works (in Jersey City) and moved it several times on the New York side of the Hudson. Allaire is now famous for his bog iron village which carries his name in Monmouth County, NJ (Allaire State Park). Christopher Colles devised a plan for the construction of a unique all-timber canal across New Jersey from Bordentown on the Delaware River to Middletown Point on Raritan Bay. 1809 The steamboat Phenix, built by John Stevens was advertised as running between New York and New Brunswick. The third commercially successful steamboat in America, Raritan, replaced the Phenix in New Brunswick to New York service. John Stevens steamboat Phenix ran into trouble with the Fulton-Livingston monopoly, and she was brought around to operate on the Delaware River. This June trip was the first ocean voyage by any steamboat. 1810 An all-turnpike route from Powles Hook (Paulus Hook, Jersey City) to Philadelphia, for stage coaches and wagons, using the Trenton Bridge was in place. Cornelius Vanderbilt began ferrying passengers and freight between Manhattan and Staten Island and by 1834 competed on the Hudson River against a steamboat monopoly between NYC and Albany with his “The Peoples Line.” He became an American entrepreneur who built his wealth on shipping and railroads, becoming one of the richest Americans in history. 1811 A franchised ferry route was begun with the steamboat New Juliana between Hoboken and Manhattan by Col. John Stevens. The service operated continuously until 22 November 1967 - 156 years. Governor of New Jersey, Aaron Ogden, introduced the first beam engine steamboat, called Sea Horse, in New Brunswick - Elizabethtown - New York service. 1812 Fortifications were built on Governor’s Island as an integral part of the former New York harbor defense system during the War of 1812. Self-taught engineer, Col. John Stevens penned his vital pamphlet: Documents Tending to Prove the Superior Advantages of Railway and Steam Carriages over Canal Navigation. It was the first American railroad book ever written. In it he states: “I can see nothing to hinder a steam carriage moving on its ways with a velocity of 100 miles an hour.” Stevens was America's pioneer advocate for steam railroads and is regarded as the father of American railroads. During the War of 1812 much commercial traffic was diverted from sea routes to roads between coastal cities. Sixteen-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt ran a ferry service between Staten Island and the Battery, NY. This earned him his title of “Commodore” as the ferryboat captain. Robert Fulton built his first ferryboat, Jersey, at Jersey City. It was the very first steam powered, double ended ferryboat to operate in NY Harbor - or the world. It was propelled by a center (paddle) wheel. Paulus Hook (Exchange Place) ferry service to Cortland St., NY opened on 18 July by the Jersey Association with which Robert Fulton was connected. 1813 Oliver Evans proposed building a railroad between Philadelphia and New York, guaranteeing a train speed of 12 mph. The New Jersey Legislature ordered carriages on public roads and turnpikes to keep to the right. 1814 On 24 January, Robert Fulton and William Cutting were given authority to establish a steam ferry between Beckman’s Slip, NY and the old ferry slip in Brooklyn. The Nassau went into commission on that run on 10 May. In one day it carried 549 passengers, one wagon, two chairs with horses, and one saddle horse. One evening that summer the Nassau took a shipload on a pleasure excursion up the Hudson. There was music and dancing, the press reported. The first railway survey in America was conducted by Col. John Stevens between Trenton and Raritan Bay. To satisfy the Fulton-Livingston monopoly, Col. Stevens replaced his steamboat on the Hoboken ferry with a horse powered ferry. The horse-boat or team-boat had been invented by Moses Rodgers and was first used on the East River. It had a paddlewheel in its center, powered by eight horses. His second vessel was used on the Hoboken run. The first steamboat excursion ran from Manhattan to Sandy Hook on 25 May using the Fulton. The war with Great Britain prevented her use in coastal waters. (Morrison) Thomas Gibbons and Aaron Ogden were originally partners in a steam ferry between Elizabethtown Point and NYC. In this year a dispute arose over a lease renewal. Soon other arguments ensued, and Gibbons established a rival ferry. The two became bitter antagonists. 1815 On 14 January, the US frigate President went aground on Sandy Hook bar while trying to escape to the sea; she was crippled and captured by the British. Captain E. S. Bunker of Nantucket took his 134-foot, 327 ton, wood-burning steamboat Fulton through Hell Gate, being the first steam vessel ever to attempt it. Regular steamboat service between New York and New Haven was soon established. A railroad between the Delaware and the Raritan, later known as the Camden & Amboy, was chartered. This was the first intercity railroad chartered in the New World. 1816 The Allaire Iron Works was a leading 19th-century American marine engineering company based in NYC was founded by James P. Allaire. They were one of the world’s first companies dedicated to the construction of marine steam engines, supplying the engines for more than 50% of all the early steamships built in the US. Allaire supplied the engine cylinder for the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, Savannah, pioneered the use of the compound engine in steamships, built the engines for two winners of the coveted Blue Riband, and supplied engines for at least 17 US Navy warships during the American Civil War. James Allaire retired from the company in 1850 when it was taken over by Cornelius Vanderbilt. The firm went out of business in 1869. Captain E.S. Bunker took his new, strongly built passenger steamer, the 150-foot Connecticut, through Hell Gate against the full force of the tide, although it took him three tries. 1817 On 4 February, a steam ferry that had been running for two years was wedged in a field of ice between Peck Slip, Manhattan, and the NY Steamboat Wharf. The East River was so full of ice a few days later that a solid bridge of ice had formed and thousands crossed the river on it. On 19 February NY Harbor was closed by ice at the Narrows and a Hell Gate. For two weeks horse-drawn sleighs could travel from Long Island to Governor’s Island. Cornelius Vanderbilt began the first steam ferry service to operate between Staten Island and Manhattan with the Nautilus. Prior to this time ferry service was provided by private individuals using small twin mast sailboats. Jeremiah Thompson and others established the Black Ball Line, the first fleet of packet ships to ply between New York and Liverpool on a regular schedule, which brought New York a great deal of import business that had previously gone elsewhere. At about the same time, the city’s merchants persuaded many Southern planters to allow New York firms to handle the details of shipping and selling their cotton. 1818 On 26 January the new, 146-ton, Staten Island steam ferryboat Nautilus came to the aid of the sailing ship Corsair in difficulty a mile below the Narrows and towed her into Quarantine dock.. In February, no vessels could get in or out of NY Harbor for six days, and floating ice from the Hudson was a great menace. Hoboken to Barclay St., NY ferry service opened on 1 September. 1819 The Savannah, was originally built as a sailing packet at the NY shipyard of Fickett & Crocker. Scarborough & Isaacs, a wealthy shipping firm from Savannah, GA was persuaded to buy the ship and convert it to a hybrid ship with the addition of a boiler, steam engine and sidewheels and gain the prestige of inaugurating the world’s first transatlantic steamship service. Allaire Iron Works supplied Savannah’s engine cylinder, while the rest of the engine components and running gear were manufactured by the Speedwell Ironworks of Morristown, NJ. The paddle wheels could be folded up and stored on deck when not in use to reduce drag and avoid damage. SS Savannah conducted a successful trial in NY Harbor on 22 March and soon departed from New York on her maiden voyage to her operating port of Savannah, GA. She reached her destination in 207 hours, having deployed her engines for 41½ hours. During May and June, Savannah was the first vessel to cross the Atlantic partly under her own steam, supplied by 75 tons of coal and 25 cords of wood. In spite of her historic voyage, she was not a commercial success as a steamship and was converted back to a sailing ship shortly after returning from Europe. Savannah was wrecked off Long Island in 1821. On 30 June, the new steamboat Franklin was advertised as commencing service between Whitehall Slip, Manhattan and Shrewsbury, NJ. Carriage connections were available to and from Long Branch, NJ. Louis Charles Guille leaped from a balloon over Jersey City and safely landed with a parachute, the first jump in this country. 1820 The City of Jersey City was incorporated on 28 January. 1821 The steamboat United States provided the first service between Newark and New York. On 3 September a major hurricane slammed into the New York area flooding everything below Canal Street even though it hit at low tide. The East and Hudson Rivers converged over lower Manhattan, but that part of the island had not yet been built up. New York’s first experience with anthracite fuel on a successful commercial basis was provided by the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Co. in this year and the following. The company shipped coal through Philadelphia directly to individual consumers in NYC via the ocean route. 1822 George P. Macculloch, while fishing at Lake Hopatcong, got the idea of using the lake as a water supply for a canal across northern New Jersey from New York Bay to Phillipsburg. He vigorously promoted the idea of the canal and was the first to suggest the use of inclined planes for it. An act was passed to investigate the feasibility of the Morris Canal. A new Fulton Fish Market building was opened on South Street, Manhattan, between Fulton and Beekman Streets. It was the destination of fishing boats from across the Atlantic Ocean. 1823 Ephraim Beach surveyed the route of the Morris Canal. The Delaware & Passaic Canal Commission was appointed by the Legislature of the State of NJ for the purpose of exploring a route of a canal to unite the Delaware, near Easton, with the Passaic, near Newark, produced a report and map of the route which was to become the Morris Canal. The Champlain Canal, connecting the Hudson River with Lake Champlain and thus New York City, was completed and opened. New York convened in the prior year to obtain a floating light off the harbor, resulting in the Sandy Hook Lightship being stationed off the Port of New York. She was the first vessel ever placed in the open sea to guide ships to a port in the US. 1824 The United States Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall struck down the Fulton-Livingston steamboat monopoly (Gibbons vs. Ogden) thus opening steamboat services to competition except in the case of railroad owned ferry services. The preemption of the interstate commerce clause of the constitution was affirmed as one of the Federal powers. Col. John Stevens of Hoboken obtained a patent for his method of constructing a railroad. The Morris Canal and Banking Co. was chartered by the State of New Jersey to build a canal from Phillipsburg to Jersey City. On 15 May the steamboat Aetna of the Citizens Line had just come abreast of Gibbet Island (now Ellis Island) when there was a tremendous explosion. Of the thirty-seven on board, thirteen were killed instantly and only a few escaped unscathed. A ferryboat had just arrived at Jersey City from Courtland Street, NYC, and the passengers landed when the boiler burst with an explosion which was heard in NYC and at Bergen and Hoboken in July. The boiler was seen to rise forty feet from the deck when it exploded, and the fragments which flew from 10 to 30 feet from the boat destroyed all the wood work with which they came in contact. One passenger was killed and two other people were scalded. The boiler was nearly new; and the furnace of 3/8" copper was supposed to be one of the best in the Port of NY. The Torch Light and Public Advertiser, Hagerstown, MD, 20 July 1824 A small quantity of anthracite coal, which had been rafted to Philadelphia from the upper reaches of the Delaware River was transferred to the sloop Toleration, which reached New York City on 10 December. A grate in which the hard coal could be burned was set up in a fireplace at the Tontine Coffee House and the public was invited to come and see the “fine burning qualities of the Lackawaxen Coal.” A month later, the subscription books for purchase of stock in the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company were opened and by 2 pm on the same day all of the stock was sold out. The D&H was to become an important supplier of anthracite coal to NYC. Two shipbuilders, Henry Steers and John Thomas, came to New York and built at the foot of Tenth Street, on the East River, the first ship-railway ever seen in the US. It consisted of rails laid on an inclined plane, upon which a cradle was run for the purpose of drawing vessels up out of the water in order to repair them. The first trial of this slipway was made in March 1826 and was a total success. 1825 Col. John Stevens made the first known American application of steam locomotion to railway track on a circular track at his Hoboken estate with his "steam wagon." It is considered the first steam locomotive in America. Construction of the Morris Canal was begun. The Wurtz brothers, Maurice and William, successfully demonstrated the burning qualities of stone, or anthracite coal, to potential investors at Manhattan’s Tontine Coffee House, home at the time of the New York Stock Exchange. It enticed businessmen to invest in the Wurtz plan to build a canal from their Carbondale, PA mines to the New York market, launching the first million-dollar private enterprise in the US. The Erie Canal was completed between Lake Erie and the Hudson River, with the latter providing a connection for canalboats to the NY / NJ Harbor. It was opened on 26 October with a “Wedding of the Waters” ceremony in New York Harbor. The Erie was a smashing success and gave NY an edge over other commercial port cities along the Atlantic coast. Towing with steamboats began on the North (Hudson) River with the opening of the Erie Canal and the steamboat Henry Eckford, built in the same year, was the first steam craft to make a special business of towing canalboats on the river. The few steamboats running on the Hudson River in this year under the Fulton-Livingston monopoly increased to 45 in the late 1830's. Steamboat Days by Fred Erving Dayton 1827 Abraham Brower began operating a horse-drawn omnibus - a multi-seated non rail vehicle on NYC’s Broadway, with great success, which was duplicated by hundreds of others. While en-route from Hartford to NY the boiler of the steamboat Oliver Ellsworth; exploded and three were scalded. In this year, James Bard, born in New York in the year of Waterloo, made his first steamboat painting, of the Bellona, the first steamer ever owned by Commodore Vanderbilt. Young Bard was a mere twelve or thirteen when he selected his highly specialized career, which focused on the smaller boats – river steamers, excursion craft, and towboats, the small fry of Long Island Sound. Although some estimate the total number of Bard paintings in the thousands, only about 350 have been tracked down. American Heritage, Vol. XII, No. 5, August 1961 1828 By late November, the first ten boats traveled the length of the newly completed Delaware & Hudson Canal with ten tons of coal each. Five days later, ten tons of this anthracite coal reached NYC via the sloop Toleration. A part of this cargo was sent without delay to the Western Hotel on Cortlandt Street where a grate had been prepared to demonstrate the great advantages of coal over wood for heating. Soon another grate was set up in the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company’s offices on Wall Street. Anthracite coal helped spur the industrial revolution in America. The first regular towboat engaged in harbor service was the Rufus W. King, built by the New York Dock Co. She was legislated into existence, as the company could get no charter for their scheme to repair vessels on marine railways unless they provided a steamboat to tow all ships that might need repairing to their place. In those days they burned pine wood, which when piled up on the deck fore and aft made the craft look like a floating wood yard. 1829 In 1828 Horatio Allen went to England and ordered four steam locomotives for the Delaware & Hudson Canal Co. to be used to connect their canal with their coal mines. The first locomotive, Pride of Newcastle, was built by Stephenson at Newcastle-upon-Tyne and was sent to London, where it departed on the sailing vessel Columbia and arrived in NYC on 15 January 1829. Upon its arrival it was taken to the Abeel and Dunscomb Foundry, 375 Water Street, NYC where it was set up on blocks and demonstrated under steam on 27 May. Stourbridge Lion, also ordered by Horatio Allen for the D&H Canal Co. was completed in Stourbridge, England by Foster, Rastrick and Co. On 13 May the Lion arrived in NY from Liverpool on the sailing vessel John Jay. Stourbridge Lion was soon taken to the West Point Foundry on Beach Street, where it was also set up on blocks; steam was raised; and the public in considerable numbers came to see the mechanism of the locomotive in operation. After arrival from England the last two locomotives were sent from NYC to Rondout, NY (the Hudson River terminus of the D&H Canal) and were apparently put in storage. On 2 July the Pride of Newcastle and the Stourbridge Lion were both sent up the Hudson on the steamboat Congress and arrived at Rondout the next day. On 16 July both locomotives were loaded onto D&H Canal boats sent for them. The Stourbridge Lion arrived in Honesdale, PA by 24 July, but the Pride of Newcastle mysteriously disappears from mention. By 5 August the Lion was on the D&H Co. Gravity Railroad track, ready for its trial run on 8 August. A crowd far in excess of the population of the village was on hand to witness the event. It did make short trial runs, but it was discovered that the 7 to 10 ton weight of the 9 hp locomotive was too heavy for the track bed. The locomotive was removed from the track, enclosed by a shed, and stayed there for 14 or 15 years during which time many parts were removed. Finally the boiler of the Lion was removed to Carbondale, where it was used in the D&H shops. The Stourbridge Lion was one of the first locomotives to be run in a country other than England and became the first to move on a commercial track in America. Honesdale and the Stourbridge Lion by Vernon Leslie. Reduced traveling rates (of $2) between NYC and Easton / Phillipsburg were advertised by the NY & Easton Line of Mail Coaches in combination with the "New and Elegant" steamboat Bellona between Elizabethtown and NYC. The coach left Easton at 4am and the boat arrived at NYC at 6pm. The first US naval steamship, Demologes, was launched in NY in 1914 but since there were no skilled mechanics to handle her engines properly she was kept at the Brooklyn Navy Yard to receive and train sailors. She was renamed Fulton the First soon after launching. There were barrels of gunpowder on board, used to fire the morning and evening gun. On 4 June she blew up due to either carelessness or revenge on the part of a gunners mate, who had been flogged that morning. Thirty-three were killed and an estimated twenty-nine were wounded. The Coney Island hotel was built and vacationers were soon attracted to the western-most of the Long Island barrier islands, which was later made into a peninsula. Railroads, streetcars, steamboats, and the subways made the island accessible to the masses. Amusement parks attracted even more visitors and it became the largest amusement area in the US with three major parks: Luna Park, Dreamland, and Steeplechase Park. Coney Island went into a severe decline after WW II, but has experienced a resurgence in recent years and is still served by subway lines. 1830 Robert L. Stevens designed the forerunner of modern "T" rail. Charters for the Delaware & Raritan Canal and the Camden & Amboy RR were granted. Ground was broken and construction was started on both. On 9 September, Charles F. Durant became the first native-born American to fly. He flew a hydrogen-filled balloon from Manhattan to South Amboy. The brig Vineyard with a cargo of cotton, sugar, and Mexican cash was scuttled and burned off Coney Island by pirates. Immigration to the US from Europe began on a large scale after this year. The initial waves came almost entirely from Ireland, Germany and Great Britain. 1831 The Elizabethtown and Somerville (E&S) Rail Road Co. was incorporated. This was the beginning of the Central Railroad of New Jersey (CRR of NJ). An act was passed permitting the Delaware & Raritan Canal Co. and the Camden & Amboy RR Co. to consolidate their stock and use their joint funds for the completion of both railroad and canal. The New Jersey Legislature gave the "Joint Companies" certain protection against competition in the carrying of passengers and freight across New Jersey between New York and Philadelphia. The Camden & Amboy RR, the first in New Jersey, began operation between Bordentown and Hightstown with horse power. The locomotive John Bull, manufactured in England and assembled at Bordentown, hauled the first passengers with a steam locomotive on a regular railroad (the Camden & Amboy) in New Jersey. Madame Murat, niece of Napoleon, was the first woman to ride a steam railroad in the United States. The Paterson & Hudson River RR was incorporated and began construction. The first (British made) iron "T" rails were installed on the Camden & Amboy RR. The rail was mostly fastened to square stone sleepers, but since the sleepers could not be supplied quickly enough, some was laid with rails spiked directly to wooden cross ties - believed to be the first such use in the world. The Morris Canal was opened between Phillipsburg and Newark. Its inclined planes which overcame great elevation changes were an engineering marvel. In fact, the Morris Canal overcame a greater change of elevation than any other transportation canal ever built. Its brownstone Little Falls aqueduct was at the time the highest (at 52') stone arch in the United States. The first Morris Canal boats which were loaded with Lehigh coal at Mauch Chunk arrived in NJ. The first railroad car in New Jersey was built for the Camden & Amboy RR by M.P. and M.E. Green of Hoboken. One of Colonel James Reeside's "elegant" coaches, carrying seven passengers, baggage, and mail made a record run, with steamboat connections, from Powles Hook to Philadelphia in eight hours and forty-two minutes. On the night of 4 December the Charleston Line packet President went on Romer Shoals in a violent northwest wind. She pulled two anchors, drifted, then struck hard and water burst into he bottom. Fortunately her passengers were rescued, hours later, by the schooner Major Howard of Staten Island and they were taken to NYC by the steamboat Bellona. In December a great ice floe from the Hudson drifted down and into the East River. It cut a brig, that was loading at the end of a dock, from stem to stern. She sank so quickly that the stevedors barely escaped with their lives. John Stephenson began building carriages in New York City and a year later, produced the world’s first streetcar. It was the famous John Mason, built for the pioneer New York & Harlem Railroad. 1832 The new steamboat Hercules, was the first New York Harbor vessel to attempt a profit solely by towing other vessels. The Paterson and Hudson River RR Co. began operation. The New Jersey RR and Transportation Co. was the third railroad in New Jersey to be chartered. Within a few years it connected Jersey City with Newark and New Brunswick. On 26 November the very first street car in the US appeared in Manhattan, on the NY and Harlem RR. It was hauled by horses along 4th Avenue between 23rd Street and the Harlem River. 1833 On 8 November, Cornelius Vanderbilt was nearly killed in the Heightstown, NJ accident on the Camden & Amboy Railroad. Also on the same train was former US president, John Quincy Adams. 1834 A pact between New Jersey and New York, ratified by Congress, declared that the Statue of Liberty is located within the territorial jurisdiction of the state of New York. The Delaware and Raritan Canal was completed across the “waist” of New Jersey. It provided an important link in the inland waterway route between Lake Champlain and the Chesapeake Bay. The Long Island Railroad was incorporated on 24 April and is the oldest railroad in the US still operating under its original name. It is also the busiest commuter railroad in North America, carrying over 80 million riders every year. Whitehall Boatmen, from New York rowed through the D&R Canal in one of their beautiful barges, on their way to Philadelphia and back in late summer. The first rail artery between Jersey City and Newark was inaugurated on 15 September. At first it was horse-drawn, but within 15 months it was powered by a steam locomotive. The Seamen’s Church Institute of NY & NJ was founded. Affiliated with the Episcopal Church, it serves mariners through education, pastoral care, and legal advocacy. SCI is the largest, most comprehensive mariners’ agency in North America. Headquartered in NYC, the institute operates a Seafarers’ Center in Port Newark, Hospitality Centers in Manhattan and Brooklyn Passenger Ship Terminal, and maritime educational facilities in Paducah, KY and Houston, TX. Annually, its chaplains visit 3,400 vessels in the Port of NY & NJ and along American inland waterways. 1835 The New Jersey RR was completed from the Hudson River at Jersey City, over Bergen Hill to Newark, Elizabeth and Rahway. The first known New Jersey railroad holiday excursion was to the Paterson Falls via the Paterson and Hudson River RR on the Fourth of July. Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor, a new Paterson firm led by Thomas Rogers, was hired to assemble an English-built locomotive which had been delivered from New York in 12 crates of parts via the Morris Canal. Coenties Slip was originally an artificial inlet in the East River for the loading and unloading of ships that was land-filled in this year. Today it is an historic pedestrian walkway in Lower Manhattan, in the heart of the Financial District. New York’s first City Hall once stood at Coenties Alley and Pearl Street, just north of Coenties Slip. The second great fire of NYC occurred. 1836 The Morris Canal was extended to the Hudson River at what is now the northern border of Liberty State Park The Elizabeth & Somerville Rail Road opened from the ferry dock, foot of Broadway, Elizabethport, to the Union Hotel at Water Street (now Elizabeth Ave.) and Broad Street, Elizabethtown, by the horse-drawn Town Car. Passengers were transported to and from NYC via ferryboat. The Hoboken to Christopher Street, NY ferry opened. The Norwich (#18578) was a passenger steamboat built in this year at NYC by Lawrence and Sneeden for the New London and Norwich Steamboat Company. Her superstructure was later removed and she towed canalboats on the Hudson River for eighty years. Her original 250 hp engine was used until she was broken up in 1923. On 23 August, the seven-year-old, 174 ton, ferryboat General Jackson, was crossing the East River from Long Island to the foot of Walnut Street, NY when the steamboat Boston, passing down the river, struck her near the bow. The General Jackson sank in less than three minutes. Eight or ten persons leaped from the ferryboat’s deck onto the deck of the Boston. The rest were swept off as the Jackson went down. The Boston lowered her lifeboats immediately, but of the twenty-five passengers on the ferry, six were missing. Fourteen horses and wagons also went to the bottom. On 21 November the American bark Bristol, carrying 100 passengers and a crew of 16 arrived at Sandy Hook. No pilot responded and then a wind came up - the ship went aground on the shoals at Far Rockaway, and the seas began to break over her in thick fog. Some were rescued, but 84 perished. 1837 On 2 January the 300 ton American bark Mexico with 112 passengers - steerage immigrants from England and Ireland - and a crew of 12 came arrived at Sandy Hook after a stormy 67-day crossing. Again no pilot responded and then a snow storm with high wind followed. Mexico came ashore at Point Lookout, Hempstead Beach and soon broke up. One hundred and sixteen perished. On 2 July, Thomas Rogers filed the first locomotive patent in the US Patent Office. The first steam locomotive built by the Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor Locomotive Works of Paterson was intended for the New Jersey RR. It was test operated between Paterson, Jersey City, and New Brunswick on 6 October, but was acquired instead by the Mad River & Lake Erie RR in Ohio and named the Sandusky. It is thought to have had the first steam whistle in America. Over the years Paterson was home to six steam locomotive manufacturers which built approximately 23% of all 19th century American steam locomotives. Before the industry left Paterson in 1923, over 12,000 locomotives had been built there. A new, 198-foot-long steamship, the Home, built in NY for the NY - Charleston route, struck a buoy and grounded on Romer Shoal as she departed NY Harbor. Four hours later she floated off and did not appear to be damaged. Two nights later, she began to leak and went to pieces north of Hatteras and sank with the loss of all 80 hands. 1838 The cut through Bergen Hill was completed by a joint effort of the New Jersey RR and the Paterson and Hudson River RR to the Hudson River. It is now used by Port Authority Trans Hudson (PATH) rapid transit trains through Journal Square, Jersey City and Conrail Shared Assets. First to cross the Atlantic under steam power only, the British ship Sirius reached NY City in 18 days. The US Congress officially designated all railroads as official postal routes on 7 July. The first US patent for a railway brake was issued to E. Morris of Bloomfield, NJ. The NY Harbor Pilot boat Franklin was driven ashore in a gale in this year and all aboard perished. From this year to 1895, fifty-five other Pilot boats were wrecked, sunk in collisions, or otherwise hurt, and almost 100 pilots met violent deaths in that time. 1839 The Camden and Amboy and New Jersey Railroads linked at New Brunswick to complete the first all-rail route from Philadelphia to the Hudson River (Jersey City), opposite New York. Thirteen miles of this track were laid along the east bank of the Delaware & Raritan Canal. The strengthened covered wood bridge at Trenton provided the link to Pennsylvania. The Elizabethport & New York Ferry Co. was officially incorporated on 6 March. It is considered the oldest corporate entity of the Central Railroad of New Jersey. The Elizabeth & Somerville Railroad was opened from Elizabethport to Plainfield with steam operated locomotive Eagle and train. The small steam tugboat, Robert F. Stockton was built in England for the Delaware and Raritan Canal Co. and was sailed across the Atlantic because it could not carry enough coal to steam that distance. After 49 days at sea she arrived at the Battery in New York, becoming the first iron hull vessel to cross the Atlantic and the first commercially successful screw propelled vessel in America. She was renamed the New Jersey and worked for the canal company for 30 years. Philip Hone, erstwhile mayor of NYC and celebrated diarist, committed the following lines to his journal on May 30, 1839: Among the maritime exploits with which these adventurous times abound, the arrival, on Wednesday last, of a little schooner, called the Robert F. Stockton, from England, was one of the most remarkable. She sailed from Gravesend (UK) on April 13. She is only ten feet wide and seventy feet long, and her burthen is thirty tons. She is built entirely of wrought sheet-iron, and is intended as a towing vessel on the New Jersey Canal (the D&R). The commander is Captain Crane. She performed her voyage in forty-six days, with no serious disaster except the loss of one seaman, who was washed off this little cockle-shell by one of the seas which were constantly sweeping her decks. Never, I presume was the western ocean crossed in so small a craft. There was not room enough to lie straight nor to stand erect. This little vessel lies near the Battery, and is visited by hundreds of curious persons, anxious to realize the possible truth of the nursery story about the “three men of Gotham” who “went to sea in a bowl.” The Robert F. Stockton was the first iron-hull vessel to cross the Atlantic and the first commercially successful vessel utilizing the screw propeller. The Robert F. Stockton and the Introduction of Screw Propulsion, by Alexander Crosby Brown, in Steamboat Bill of Facts, Journal of the Steamship Historical Society of America, No. 40, December, 1951. On 4 July the ferryboat Samson was wrecked between NYC and Staten Island with 2 killed. John Ericcson (1803 - 1889) was the Swedish designer / inventor of the screw propellor who Robert Stockton engaged to apply to the small tugboat he had built at Birkenhead, England for the D&R Canal Co. Ericcson followed the tugboat Robert F. Stockton and came to New York in November, 1839. By the close of 1841 he had built six more propellor vessels. The next year he launched nine and in the following year sent 26 down the ways. His contractors were the young and enterprising firm of Hogg & Delamater, who took over Cunningham’s old Phoenix Foundry in New York soon after he came to New York. One of the most immediate results of Ericcson’s activities was the establishment of the Swiftsure Steam Transportation Line between New York and Philadelphia, via the D&R Canal. In 1842, four iron propellors designed by Ericcson were laid down in New York for the purpose of carrying coal on the D&R Canal. Queens of the Western Ocean, by Cutler. William Harnden, generally recognized as the founder of the express business in America, began his First Express Co. which was, in fact, the first of its kind. He made arrangements to transport small parcels between NYC and Boston via steamboat and rail connections. First Express operated on a schedule, taking financial liability for loss, and using alternate routes and carriers when necessary. 1840 Swiftsure Steam Transportation Line was established in April, 1840 to operate a line of barges between New York and Philadelphia via the D&R Canal. The agents were J.& N. Briggs, 34 Old Slip, New York, and Armer Patton, 46 & 47 South Wharves, Philadelphia. Queens of the Western Ocean, by Cutler. In every subsequent year, New Jersey has been one of the states with the highest proportion of residents born outside the country. The primary reason is that the Port of New York has been the most important immigrant entry point. Most of these new arrivals crowded into Hudson, Essex and Passaic counties, and especially into Jersey City, Newark and Paterson. Hudson County was founded. Erie Basin, at the time the largest man-made harbor and storage depot complex on the eastern seaboard, was completed. It is now home to the Erie Basin Barge-Port, co-owned by the Hughes - Reinauer partnership. William H. Webb inherited his fathers shipyard (Webb & Allen, established 1831) on the East River between 5th & 7th Streets. He renamed the yard for himself and turned it into America’s most prolific shipyard - turning out more than 150 of the finest vessels ever constructed in New York. Webb designed some of the fastest and most successful sailing packets and clipper ships ever built, and also built some of the largest and most celebrated steamboats, steamships and warships of his era, including the giant ironclad warship, Dunderberg, for France. The latter was the world’s longest wooden-hulled ship. Following the post Civil War slump Webb closed his shipyard and turned his energies toward philanthropic goals. He became a founding member of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers and established what is known today as Webb Institute. 1841 The 153 ton steamer Henry Eckford, employed to tow grain-laden Erie canalboats down the Hudson to NYC, exploded in NY on 27 April. Martin Van Buren, the first presidential candidate to campaign by rail, traveled across New Jersey. After several years of shadowy financial dealings, the Morris Canal and Banking Co. went bankrupt. George L. Schuyler, a Jersey City shipbuilder, worked on the construction of a luxurious, armed, anthracite coal fired, frigate for the Russian Czar. 1842 Iron Steamboats: The D&R Canal Co. are now building six iron steamboats, with Ericson’s propellor, in New York, two of which will be employed in towing boats through the canal from Philadelphia to New York and back; two to Albany; and two to Hartford, CT. Four of them are now in an advanced stage to completion and will soon be put in operation. These iron boats will be capable of carrying 230 tons coal each and the directors expect to divert a vast quantity of the eastern trade from the Schuylkill to their conveyance through this channel. Burlington Gazette, April 1, 1842. The first American, twin screw, steam propelled vessels – Anthracite, Black Diamond, Ironsides, and Vulcan were built in NYC by Hogg & Delamater of the Phoenix Foundry to designs furnished by John Ericcson for the Delaware and Raritan Canal Co. These iron hull canalboats carried coal from the Philadelphia area through the Delaware & Raritan Canal north and east of New York Harbor and helped promote its use. The Jersey City Floating (Theater or Show) Barge was said to have seated 1,000 and the troupe for the season was comprised mostly of local artists from nearby communities. The presentations included: “The Rent Day,” “Three Brothers,” “Bombastics Furioso” (a comic rendition of an opera) and ended with three members singing popular and comic songs. The Show Barge was moored in the Morris Canal Basin at Jersey City after the 1842 season, and did not tour again until 1845. Winfield, Charles A., History of Hudson County, NJ, 1874 The bell-cord for use by conductors to signal locomotive engineers was invented on the Erie RR; they carried the first shipments of milk to NYC. Samuel Morse submerged a wire, insulated with tarred hemp and India rubber in the water of NY Harbor and telegraphed through it. Submarine cables now link all continents except Antarctica. 1843 The USS Princeton (named for Princeton, NJ) became the first steam, screw propelled, warship in the US Navy. She was designed by John Ericcson, who also was her main supervisor of construction, along with Capt. Robert F. Stockton. She proceeded to New York where she engaged in a speed contest with the British steamer SS Great Western, besting her handily. Hughes Marine Firms: The roots of Hughes Marine Firms go back to Michael Hughes, a “boatman,” who arrived in New York from Ireland in 1843, and relocated to New Brunswick, NJ in 1862. His sons, James Hughes, Sr. and John Hughes, were also boatmen and worked in their father’s boatyard. When Michael died around 1900, he owned a New Brunswick boatyard along with a fleet of tugs and canalboats which moved Pennsylvania coal to New York, via the D&R Canal. In 1908, with the tug and vessel fleet growing, and business on the canal declining, James Hughes, Sr. opened an office in NYC and began to operate coastwise hopper barges from New England to the mid-Atlantic. John operated the boatyard until it closed in 1914. James Jr. joined the business in 1894. He had a talent for bringing together buyers and sellers of marine equipment. He began a chartering and sales brokerage operation under the slogan “Clearing House for Marine Difficulties”. That slogan continues to be the motto of the company today. James Hughes, Inc. was incorporated in 1934 as the transportation arm of the firm. Deck and hopper barges were used to move bulk, and oversized cargoes on inland and coastwise routes (and still are!). James Jr.’s three sons, Bob, Bill, and Jim, joined the firm in the 1930's. During WW II they supervised the loading of numerous boilers, tanks, and other cargoes for transfer between naval bases all along the East Coast of the US. The end of WW II brought with it a need for new bridges, roads, piers, and tunnels. Specialized vessels were needed to support the construction boom. The Hughes boys saw, and met, this need by incorporating Hughes Bros., Inc. in 1945 to provide deck barges to the aggregate and marine construction industries. The Hughes organization continued to expand, operating and renting their fleet of barges, transporting oversize objects by tug and barge, and selling, as brokers, all types of floating equipment through their sales department. The family formed a new entity, Hughes Maritime, in 1992, to purchase, with Reinauer Transportation, an 86-acre pier and warehouse facility, in Brooklyn, NY, known as Erie Basin. The Hughes family manages this marine industrial park on behalf of the partnership. The following year, Hughes relocated its corporate office to Edison, New Jersey, after almost a century at 17 Battery Place, NYC. Bob Hughes was widely known throughout the industry, having served as Chairman of the national tug and barge trade association, the American Waterways Operators. Bill Hughes was long active in the Moles and the Whitehall Club, of which he was President. The fifth generation family members, Bill Hughes, Jr., Bob Hughes, Jr., and Joe Hughes, came aboard in the 1970's and now collectively manage the business. They rotate the presidency of the corporations in a tradition which they inherited from their fathers. Through their efforts, Hughes commenced a barge building program and acquired a number of smaller barge companies, which doubled the size of their fleet. Today, Hughes owns one of the largest deck and hopper barge fleets on the East Coast. After almost 100 years, they have recently re-entered the shipyard business with the purchase of a floating drydock, and the addition of a skilled shipyard staff at their Erie Basin facility. (The basin was the largest man-made harbor and storage depot on the eastern seaboard. It primarily served canalboats from the Erie Canal.) Hughes Marine Firms has excelled in many aspects of the marine business over the decades. The current owners stand on the shoulders of the generations before them, whose strength has been their ability to embrace change. www.hughesmarine.com On Saturday 11 November, the Liverpool packet Sheffield with 130 passengers (mostly immigrants in steerage) and crew aboard was entering NY Harbor in a gale with a pilot when she struck on Romer Shoal. Fortunately, the keeper of the Staten Island Light had seen the Sheffield and he sent word to Captain Oliver Vanderbilt (brother of Cornelius) of the Coast Wrecking Co., later to become a great salvage organization. Vanderbilt fired up the boiler of his little steamer, Wave, and towed an empty lighter out to where he thought Sheffield was. Finally, just as he was ready to turn back he found her and succeeded in rescuing all who were aboard. 1844 A hot water heating system was adopted for warming the passenger cars of the Camden & Amboy RR. The USS Constitution departed New York City on a global journey that included visits to numerous international ports as a goodwill agent of the United States. “Old Ironsides” is the world’s oldest commissioned warship afloat. The Morris Canal Co. was reorganized and "Banking" was dropped from their name. The NY Yacht Club is a private yacht club based in NYC and Newport, RI. Founded in 1844, it is one of the world’s most distinguished and influential yachting institutions. Membership is by invitation only and they have over 3,000 members. Their first clubhouse was established in a modest Gothic-revival building in Hoboken, NJ, on land donated by Commodore Stevens. The current primary NYYC clubhouse is a six-storied Beaux-Arts landmark with a nautical-themed limestone facade in midtown Manhattan. Opened in 1901, it was designed by Warren and Wetmore, architects of the exterior of Grand Central Terminal. www.en.wikipedia.org The Altantic Avenue tunnel was constructed in what is now Brooklyn, and is considered the world’s oldest subway tunnel. It is on the National Register of Historic Places. 1845 The Transport, a large side-wheel steamer was launched in Hoboken. She was a very early railroad car ferry and was used to interchange freight cars between the Morris & Essex Railroad at Hoboken and the Camden & Amboy Railroad at South Amboy. The North River Opera House was planning a floating theater to start in early summer... to tour area rivers and canals ‘and perhaps the Great Lakes.” Spirit of the Times (NY), February 1845 Palmo’s Burlesque Opera Company gave performances on an unnamed show barge at the Fulton Street Wharf in October. Thirteen more shows were given at Brooklyn. Showboat Centennials, No. 17, March 1986 Opening night of the Temple of the Muses floating theater was 2 April at the foot of Canal Street (about where the Manhattan end of the Holland Tunnel is now situated) with admission ranging from 25¢ to $3. There was an opening address, followed by the vaudeville skit “The Alpine Maid.” The main feature was a play, “Our Flag, or Nailed to the Mast,” followed by a male trio singing several comic and popular songs, and concluded with a farce entitled “A Lady and a Gentleman in a Peculiarly Perplexing Predicament.” Throughout April and into early May, the Temple toured along the lower end of Manhattan, then up the East and Harlem Rivers. A variety of popular plays were presented, but the biggest crowd pleaser was reported to be “The Floating Beacon,” or the “Wild Woman of the Wreck.” NY Evening Mirror; Showboat Centennials, No. 17, March 1986 On 30 October the NY Herald reported that the new 245-foot, iron steamboat (John Stevens) “slid off the ways into the Hudson River.” She was designed by Robert Livingston Stevens and built at their family shipyard in Hoboken. Construction commenced shortly after the launch of the Camden & Amboy freighter Transport. The Stevens was a side-wheel passenger boat, one of the first and largest to be constructed with an iron hull, which was fabricated and supplied by Jesse W. Starr & Co. of Camden. She was towed to NY for installation of her ‘steeple’ engine which had a diameter of 75 inches and an 8-foot stroke; two boilers; and wheels which were 31 feet 8 inches in diameter and 12 feet wide. Her passenger accommodations were luxurious. Following speed trials off Port Richmond, Staten Island she traveled the outside route to operate on the Delaware River for the C&A RR between Philadelphia and Bordentown. The John Stevens was able to attain 19 mph and was the fastest boat on the river at the time. On 17 July 1855 she was destroyed by fire at the company’s shops at White Hill, below Bordentown. The hull survived and languished at Bordentown for ten years before being rebuilt into a freight boat for service between NYC and South Amboy. The enlargement of the Morris Canal was completed. 1846 The Morris Canal Co. announced prizes of $200 for the fastest boaters. The Cavanaugh brothers of Phillipsburg took their boats from Port Delaware, in Phillipsburg, to Jersey City in four days. A series of excursions were operated by the Camden & Amboy RR from Philadelphia. Passengers took a steamboat to Bordentown, the railroad to (South) Amboy and another steamboat to cruise around Staten Island. Return was again via the C&A RR and a Delaware River steamboat. The West Side Freight Line became the only freight railroad operating directly into Manhattan. It stretched north from a waterfront depot at Chambers Street on 10th, 11th, and 12th Avenues. Alex Mackay described a trip to the New Jersey RR: “My destination on leaving New York was Philadelphia. On arriving at the ferry the passengers jumped in crowds upon the floating ship. We were conveyed across the Hudson to Jersey City, where we landed and fled. I followed the breathless and panting crowd into a large unfinished building which I found to be the railroad station (terminal). Once within the station, the hurry-scurry if possible increased; men jostling each other and rushing in at every available aperture into the cars like so many maniacs. On venturing inside one of the cars I discovered the cause of the tumult. It appears that in Winter there is a choice of seats, the preferable ones being such as are not too near or too far from the stove and the race was for these seats...” The first dry dock at the Brooklyn Navy yard was under construction. A unique, very early daguerreotype photo of the work survives. 1847 The Old Colony Railroad express train began operating from Boston to Fall River, MA with a connection there on a Fall River Line night steamboat for NYC. Their palatial steamboats, originally owned by the Bay State Steamboat Co., docked at piers on the North River in NYC. The boats left in the evenings, traveling around the Battery, up the East River, and east on Long Island Sound toward Newport and Fall River. The Fall River Line steamers offered staterooms, dorm berths and salon chairs for the comfort of their overnight guests. The boats arrived in the early morning hours in Fall River. Passengers disembarked from the steamers there and boarded the Old Colony Railroad trains. They arrived in Boston in time for their morning appointments. Their boats were called “floating palaces” as well as “America’s most luxurious steamship line” and became the standard route for travel between Boston and NYC. During the Civil War, the line suspended service to Fall River, traveling between NY and Newport for six years. Service to Fall River resumed in 1869. After passing through several hands, the line came to rest in 1912 with the New England Steamship, where it remained until the line’s service ended in 1937. The Cunard (Steamship Co.) Line began serving New York in this year, but its ships at first had to dock at Jersey City. Later they were able to land their passengers on the Hudson River side of Manhattan. The Colgate Palmolive Co. established its first factory on the Jersey City waterfront. The Atlantic Basin in Brooklyn was completed. 1848 John Taylor Johnston, a lawyer, at age 28, became the second president of the Elizabeth and Somerville RR, reorganizing it as the Central RR of New Jersey (C RR of NJ) and began the push toward the Delaware River. He is credited with building the railroad from a 25-mile local passenger carrier to a 400-mile Anthracite coal carrier and one of the principal terminal railroads on New Jersey / New York Harbor. In the process, he must be given credit for creating much of the land which now makes up Liberty State Park. Johnston was the first to introduce uniforms for railroad employees and remained president until 1876. He later became the first president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Belgian block paved Johnston Avenue which was named for him has been more recently renamed Zapp Drive. Perhaps it should revert to Johnston Avenue... Through cars of the C RR of NJ began running from Somerville to Elizabethtown and thence over the NJ RR to Jersey City. Litigation arose over the desire of Jersey City to extend Hudson Street to tidewater through or over the Morris Canal Basin. On appeal, it was found that Jersey City did not have the authority to do so. The first government-operated lifesaving station, a small building now preserved as a Coast Guard museum, was built in this year at Sandy Hook, NJ. 1849 Freight containers were first used in this country on the Camden & Amboy RR. The Newark Plank Road and Ferry Co., the first plank road organization, was incorporated to construct a highway from Newark to the Hudson River. In 1849 the first 125 ton experimental canalboat was built on the Delaware & Hudson Canal at Honesdale, PA, but that canal enlargement had not progressed enough to move it by their canal to tidewater. The risky decision was therefore made to take advantage of the spring freshet and float it down the Lackawaxen and Delaware Rivers to Bulls Island, NJ where it entered the D&R Canal and was delivered to NY Harbor. Wayne County Herald, 5 February 1880. As the local population grew and the 19th century industrial revolution reached Brooklyn, the need for larger navigational and docking facilities grew. In this year the NY Legislature authorized the construction of the Gowanus Canal by deepening Gowanus Creek, to transform it into a mile and a half long commercial waterway connected to Upper New York Bay. The full dredging of the Creek could not begin until a further act of the legislature in 1867. The Gowanus Canal became a hub for Brooklyn’s maritime and commercial shipping activity. It fostered the development of factories; warehouses; tanneries; coal yards; manufactured gas (from coal) plants; flour mills; cement works; lumber, stone and brick yards; factories for paint, ink and soap; machine shops; chemical plants; sulfur producers; and the first site where chemical fertilizers were manufactured - all of which emitted substantial water and airborne pollutants. By the 1900s the combination of industrial pollutants, runoff from storm water, and untreated sewage produced rank odors. After WW I, with six million annual tons of cargo produced and trafficked through the waterway, the Gowanus Canal became the nation’s busiest commercial canal, and arguably the most polluted. The sediment accumulations from industrial as well as sewage out-falls required regular dredging to keep the waterway navigable. With the decline in waterway activity, the US Army Corps of Engineers completed their last regular dredging of the Canal. NYC has an ongoing cleanup and renewal program for the Canal and surrounding area. Of the 116 clipper ships which were owned in New York, 53 of them had been built in the port. They carried the gold rush pioneers to California and made roaring runs to the Far East for costly cargoes of tea and spices. It was not unusual for a clipper to pay for the entire cost of its construction with the profits from its maiden voyage on the lucrative California or Orient runs. The West Side Line in NYC was built by the Hudson River Railroad and reached Peekskill on 29 September and reached Albany in 1851. The NYC terminus was at the junction of Chambers and Hudson Streets. The track was laid northward along Hudson, Canal, and West Streets, to Tenth Avenue, which it followed to the upper city station at 34th Street. Over this lower part of the right-of-way the rails were laid at grade along the streets. Locomotives were not permitted on this route so the cars were drawn by a dummy engine. While passing along the streets the trains were preceded by a man on horseback, known as a “West Side Cowboy” or “Tenth Avenue Cowboy” who gave notice of the approach of the train by blowing a horn. A sloop load of hogs passed through the Delaware & Raritan Canal on 15 November on a one-way excursion to the butchers of New York. They appeared to be quite musically disposed and made a noise that would have done honor to a political meeting. Daily Trentonian, 16 November 1849. 1850 On the morning of 28 January, three steam vessels with an aggregate cost of more than $1,000,000 were launched in succession, within an hour and a half, from the Manhattan shipyard of William H. Brown, at the foot of 12th Street, East River. They were: the New World, intended for navigating the rivers of California; the Arctic, belonging to the Collins Line of NY and Liverpool steam packets; and the Boston, intended to run on Sanford’s Line between Boston and Bangor. It was the first time more than one vessel had been launched from one yard in a day, and furthermore, their boilers were fired while they were still on the ways and as soon as they hit the water they propelled themselves. Some 20,000 people came to see the well advertised event. On 4 March the steamer Charter Oak burned at NYC. At this time more than 150 mostly steam vessels were traveling up and down the Hudson River ferrying as many as two million passengers annually. Several consolidations of express companies led to the formation of American Express Co. Their first president was Henry Wells; V.P. was John Butterfield (of the Butterfield-Wasson Express Co.) and William G. Fargo was secretary. American Express organized a new company, Wells Fargo & Co. in order to gain entrance to the lucrative California trade. 1851 The Erie RR was first to use the telegraph for directing train operations. (This occurred across the New Jersey border in the state of New York, but the Erie became a major freight and passenger carrier in New Jersey with an extensive marine fleet as well.) The Cummings Car Works built railroad cars in Jersey City beginning in this year for 25 years. The steamer Trojan burned at NY with 4 lost. The New York & Hudson River RR opened from NYC to Albany in October. USS Constitution was laid up in the Port of New York this year and into the next. 1852 The C RR of NJ was completed to the Delaware River at Phillipsburg. On 18 March, in NYC, Henry Wells and William Fargo and others began Wells, Fargo & Co. to do banking and express business in distant California. By 1888 they became the nation’s first nationwide express company, offering “Ocean to Ocean” service. On 28 July the steamer Henry Clay, on its way from Albany to New York River was racing the steamer Armenia. All day long they were neck and neck, but as they reached the lower Hudson River the Henry Clay forged ahead. Suddenly fire was discovered - the excessive heat of the boilers or the stacks had ignited the woodwork of the vessel. The captain headed the Henry Clay for shore at Riverdale (Bronx) and ran her hard aground. But the passengers were mostly huddled at the stern, where the water was deep. Imprisoned there by the flames amidships, they panicked and fought for life preservers. Sixty died, including many prominent New Yorkers. Seven men were indicted for manslaughter in connection with that disaster. The subsequent widespread indignation sparked legislation for more stringent inspections and rules for steam vessels. 1853 The 1853 / 1854 New York World’s Fair, called the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations, was located on the site of Bryant Park in Manhattan. On 29 March the British ship Clyde was reduced to a total loss at Sandy Hook. The North River Iron Works was established in NYC by brothers William and Andrew Fletcher to design and manufacture high-quality steam engines. The Steam Ferryboat William Wray which for many years plied between Camden and Philadelphia, passed through the D&R Canal on 6 September en-route to New York where it is to run between that city and Hoboken. The guards and paddle wheels of the boat were removed to admit of its passage through the locks of the canal. Daily True American (Trenton) 7 September 1853. On 4 November the steamer James Rumsey burned at NYC. She was named for the American mechanical engineer of the same name, 1743-1792, chiefly known for exhibiting a boat propelled by machinery in 1787 on the Potomac River and for improving navigation on the river. Also see entry under 20 February 1891. On December 27 three noble ships were destroyed on the East River waterfront by a fire that started from overheated ovens in a bakery a block away. The flames were fanned by a northwest wind and were not quenched until four days later. The most famous of the three ships was the largest and fastest of all clipper ships, the sidewheeler Great Republic, 325 feet long, of 53-foot beam, 38-foot depth, and 4,555 tons burden. She had been christened less that three months earlier and was nearly a total loss, but was rebuilt and sailed on for 17 years. The clipper Joseph Walker, 1,326 tons, built in NY in 1850, was almost ready to sail for Liverpool, but burned on the spot. The clipper White Squall burned to the water’s edge. The ships Whirlwind and Red Rover were towed aflame into the open river and were saved. 1854 In January, the caloric engine steamer Ericsson, built by John Ericsson (builder of the Monitor, the famous ironclad of the Civil War) capsized in a squall in North River; $50,000 insurance was paid. Breese, Kneeland & Co. of Jersey City began building steam locomotives. The firm built about 300 locomotives up to 1873, when they went out of business. The only known survivor built by this firm is on display in El Paso, Texas. Steamboat service from NYC to the Long Branch Pier, via the outside route, began in this year. The State of NJ prohibited transportation of freight on Sunday, by road, railroad, or canal. 1855 Castle Garden, located at the southern tip of Manhattan Island was an immigration station administered by the state of New York until the Federal government took charge of receiving New York’s immigrants. Wm. and Jos. Holmes announced that they had commenced running two Schooners, Parallax & President Jackson to carry Freight to and from Princeton, NJ and New York beginning 16 March. Princeton Paper. On 8 September the upper tier of the double deck bridge over the Delaware River between Phillipsburg and Easton was opened for traffic. This allowed the C RR of NJ to connect with the Lehigh Valley RR (LV) thus opening for the first time an all rail route from the Pennsylvania coal fields to tidewater (at Elizabethport) which provided access to New York Harbor. 1856 In January, the Columbus, one of five Vanderbilt steam ferryboats operating between Manhattan and Staten Island, had its hull crushed by ice, just off the Battery. Passengers walked off on the ice to Governor’s Island. A third rail was installed on the C RR of NJ from Junction (New Hampton) to Elizabethport to facilitate movement of 6 foot gauge Delaware Lackawanna & Western Railroad (DL&W) coal trains from Scranton to tidewater. The DL&W built and opened their Warren RR from Delaware, NJ to Junction to complete the route. The Allaire Iron Works supplied the twin 90-inch cylinder beam steam engines for the 3,360-ton SS Vanderbilt, believed to make her the fastest oceangoing ship operating from NYC. The DL&W RR built coal chutes at Washington, NJ to facilitate the transfer of their coal, mined in the Lackawanna and Wyoming Valleys of Pennsylvania, into Morris Canal boats for delivery to Jersey City. In this first year only 25,375 tons of Scranton coal entered the Morris Canal, but by 1860 127,517 tons flowed via this route annually. The Railroad Gazette was founded. In the following year it merged with the newly founded Railway Age. Today Railway Age is under the Simmons-Boardman umbrella and they are the world’s largest publisher of rail industry information under the guiding hand of the McGinnis family. www.railwayage.com On 22 December the steamer Knoxville burned at her wharf in NYC and was a total loss. 1857 Long Island Sound was entirely closed to navigation due to ice. No vessels passed through Hell Gate from 17 January to 24 February. Breese, Kneeland & Co. of Jersey City built a 26-ton 4-4-0 steam locomotive for the Milwaukee & Mississippi RR. It later became the El Paso & Southwestern No. 1 an has been on display in El Paso since 1909. On 21 August the steamer Splendid burned at Jersey City. In this year Daniel Drew became a member of the board of directors of the Erie Railroad and used his position to manipulate the firm’s stock price. 1858 William M. Tweed, a professional politician, became the “Grand Sachem” or “boss” of Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in the politics of the 19th century New York City and State. At the height of his influence, Tweed was the third- largest landowner in NYC, a director of the Erie Railway, the Tenth National Bank, and the New York Printing Co. His power came from being an appointed member of a number of boards and commissions, his control over political patronage in NYC, and his ability to ensure the loyalty of voters through jobs he could create and dispense on city-related projects. Boss Tweed was convicted for stealing an amount estimated by an aldermen’s committee in 1877 at between $25 and $45 from NYC taxpayers through political corruption, although later estimates ranged as high as $200 million. He died in the Ludlow St., NYC jail. On 14 May the steam towboat Hercules burned at Sandy Hook dock. On 6 November the steam propeller Petrel exploded in the North River opposite the foot of Jay Street. 1859 Jersey City again tried to extend Hudson Street over the Canal Basin, this time on a bridge. Although the litigation was valid, the street was not extended. A.D. Hope had started Hope’s Express between Jersey City and Phillipsburg on the C RR of NJ and in April he sold the business to Adams Express Co. Adams expanded their service to cover all the main lines of the C RR of NJ. Excursions to the Coal Fields of PA were offered by the C RR of NJ from NY via steamboat to Elizabethport, by rail to Hampton Junction, the Delaware Water Gap, over Pocono Mountain, Scranton, to Wilkes-Barre, Mauch Chunk and return. Side trips over the Switchback Gravity RR to the top of Mount Pisgah from Mauch Chunk were also offered. Abram Stevens Hewitt is best known for his work with the Cooper Union which he aided Peter Cooper in founding in this year and for planning the financing and construction of the New York City subway system, for which he is considered the “Father of the NYC Subway System.” He was the son-in-law of industrialist, inventor and philanthropist, Peter Cooper. Hewitt was a teacher, lawyer, an iron manufacturer, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, US Congressman, and a mayor of NYC. The Jersey City &Bergen RR Co., Jersey City's first street car company, began operating with horse power to the Court House and was soon extended south to Bayonne. The Hoboken & Hudson City Horse Car RR Co. was organized. Fort Hancock, a coastal artillery base, was built in this year on Sand Hook. It played an important part in the defense of NY Harbor. Between 1874 and 1919, Fort Hancock was operated in conjunction with the Army’s Sandy Hook Proving Ground. In 1893, Fort Hancock installed Battery Potter, the nation’s first disappearing gun battery. It also was important for the defense of the vital NY Harbor throughout WW II, preventing the entrance of German submarines into the harbor. In the late 1950's Project Nike antiaircraft missiles were based there. Fort Hancock was decommissioned in 1974 and the fort and its small museum are now managed as part of the Sandy Hook Unit of Gateway National Parks Recreation area, and is part of National Parks of NY Harbor unit of the National Park System. 1860 On 28 January the Tapscott Line clipper ship, Liverpool packet, John J. Boyd burned at Pier 8, North River and was a $60,000 loss. The New Jersey legislature granted permission to the C RR of NJ to extend its line over Newark Bay to the Hudson River at Communipaw Cove, Jersey City, and construction began. The C RR of NJ purchased the American Dock & Improvement Co., the owner of rights to the shore of the South Cove (Communipaw Bay) along the Hudson River. At the time this was a shallow fishing ground off the old section of Jersey City known as Communipaw, south of the Morris Canal Big Basin. A vast section of this wetland was filled in over a period of decades, partly with NYC ashes and garbage. The C RR of NJ’s Terminal yards were built on this fill. In terms of acreage, it was the largest waterfront terminal possessed by any of the railroads at the New Jersey / New York Harbor. C RR of NJ predecessor, Raritan & Delaware Bay RR began steamboat service between NYC and the south shore of Raritan Bay. The service became to be known as the Sandy Hook Route or Sandy Hook Steamers - ‘The swift way across the bay.’ On 28 June the enormous British iron steamer, SS Great Eastern, first arrived at the foot of Hammond Street, NY, where she was visited by thousands of onlookers. At 693' in length,120' in width, and 58' depth of hull, she was the largest vessel ever built and kept that title for 31 years. She was designed by the celebrated railroad and marine architect and engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and had three means of propulsion: two 58' paddles, powered by four steam engines; a 24' propellor, powered by a James Watt engine; and, 6,500 square yards of sail on six masts. Her 30,000 iron plates and 3,000,000 rivets totaled about 10,000 tons. With a double bottom and water-tight compartments, she was one of the strongest ships ever built. Great Eastern carried twenty anchors and was the first vessel fitted with a steam-powered steering gear. She had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers around the world without refueling, but never did. Great Eastern plied for several years as a passenger liner between Britain and America before being converted to a cable-laying ship and laying the first lasting transatlantic telegraph cable in 1866. The last pirate ever hanged in New York – and probably in the US – was Albert Hicks of Rhode Island, who met his death on Gibbet Island on 13 July. Nearly four months earlier an oyster sloop, the E.A. Johnson, had been found abandoned between Sandy Hook and Coney Island, under circumstances which left no doubt that murder was involved. The oyster boat had earlier departed Catherine Market Slip, NY to head south. Hicks had murdered the entire crew to get $1,000 which the captain had to purchase his cargo. The handsome, popular, Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, disembarked from the cutter Harriet Lane, at the water gate of Castle Garden, was welcomed by Mayor Fernando Wood and visited NYC. The Morris Canal Directors took an excursion on their canal from Easton to Jersey City in one of their own boats which was comfortably fitted for the purpose. They were most favorably impressed with the importance of the canal and the trip was a success. The first section of what became the Staten Island Railway, connecting Tompkinsville and Tottenville opened. Michael Moran, an Irish immigrant, who began working on the Erie Canal in 1855, moved to NYC in 1860 where he set himself up as a tugboat agent. The family business grew to become the prosperous Moran Towing Corporation. The population of Jersey City expanded from 3,000 in 1840 to 30,000. 1861 The Abraham Lincoln inaugural train started from Springfield, IL and traveled through seven states in thirteen days en route to Washington in February. Intermediate cities passed through included: Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany, NYC, then by ferryª to Jersey City, and train to New Brunswick, Princeton, Trenton, Philadelphia and Baltimore. The portion of the journey between Kingston and Trenton was along the bank of the D&R Canal. Trains Magazine, February, 2009. ªOn 21 February the ferryboat John P. Jackson carried president-elect Abraham Lincoln across the Hudson River en-route to his inauguration in Washington. Following threats to safety at the outbreak of the Civil War, the Navy ordered the USS Constitution towed to New York. As preparations were being made for departure, a regiment of Massachusetts volunteers arrived in Boston Harbor aboard the steamer Maryland. Three companies of soldiers, including many from Marblehead, were placed on board her to help get under way. Unfortunately, both the Constitution and the Maryland, which was acting as a tow ship, ran aground in bad weather. In the darkness, and after some difficulty, the Constitution was towed by a third ship, the steamer Boston, to safety in deep water. On 26 April she left on the three-day trip to New York under tow by the steamer R.R. Cuyler. A flotilla of fourteen Delaware & Raritan Canal steam transports were employed to carry 3,000 New Jersey troops and equipment south to the defense of the Capital at Washington, during May, early in the Civil War. The canal propellors which transported the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Regiments of the NJ Militia southward were: W. Woodward, Fannie Cadwalader, Delaware, Raritan, Trenton, Patroon, F. W. Brune, Elizabeth, Farmer, Franklin, J. B. Mollison, Eureka, Fanny Garner, and Octorara. Most of these vessels were employed in the freighting business through the D & R Canal to and from NY Harbor. Of the hundreds of vessels which aided the Civil War effort the following are some more which have been identified as being from the NY Harbor area: M. W. Chapin, of the CT, NY & PA Transportation Co. / U.S.S. Anacostia; New York, of the Philadelphia & NY Express Steamboat Co.; Utica, a steamboat built in NYC in 1836; Argo, a side-wheel steamboat built in NYC in 1844; Naugatuck; John T. Jenkins /USS Saffron / Clifton and the steam canalboats New Jersey & Parthenia. During the Civil War the government called on the railroads to carry troops between New York and Washington via an alternate inland route due to the pressure of war demands. The route was via Phillipsburg, Allentown, Reading and Harrisburg to Baltimore utilizing the C RR of NJ, (LV), East Pennsylvania, Northern Central and Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) railroads. In this year over 26,000 troops plus a large amount of freight was carried south over this route. The New Jersey RR and Transportation Co. reported that they had transported as many as 3,000 soldiers, with baggage, in one day and claimed they had the resources to carry 10,000 men in one day. In November arrangements were made to run through trains between NY and Washington via the Camden and Amboy RR. The necessity of changing cars at the Susquehanna River was eliminated by running the cars themselves onto the ferry. This cut total travel times to 12 hours or less. The C RR of NJ had more double-track railroad than any other New Jersey railroad at this time. It had taken the Erie RR five years to blast their tunnel through Bergen Hill, using up to 700 workers, 57 of whom were killed by accidents, and the railroad was forced into receivership. Their 8,000 foot long tunnel blasted under Bergen Hill was the first in New Jersey. The Pavonia Ferry Co. (Erie RR) opened their Jersey City to Chambers Street, Manhattan ferry. John Ericcson designed and supervised the construction of the Union ironclad warship Monitor. The C RR of NJ established its first office in NYC at 69 Wall Street, later moved to 103 Liberty Street, then 119 Liberty Street, and lastly into their own building at143 Liberty Street. 1862 Congress authorized President Lincoln to take possession of any or all RR lines in the US. A small ironclad steamer (and the first), the Naugatuck, was presented to the national government for the war effort by E.A.Stevens. She was rebuilt at Bordentown, received her armament at Hoboken, and traveled through the Delaware & Raritan Canal en route to Fort Monroe. Paterson built locomotives, General (Rogers - 1855) and Texas (Danforth Cooke - 1856), were both involved in "the great locomotive chase" of the Civil War. The first federal tax, to help pay for the Civil War, was imposed on railroads. The C RR of NJ was advertised as a link in the shortest route to Chicago and the west (898 miles in 36 hours, via connecting railroads). The Exchange Place, Jersey City, ferry to Desbrosses St., Manhattan, opened on 1 August. The SS Great Eastern departed Liverpool with 1,530 passengers and a substantial amount of freight, which increased her draft to 30 feet. Upon arrival off Montauk Point, NY, on 27 August, the captain decided not to try to enter NY Bay over Sandy Hook bar with the ship’s deep draft. He took on a pilot and began moving into Long Island Sound to moor at Flushing Bay. About a mile east of Montauk a rumble was heard and the ship heeled slightly but they steamed on. At Flushing Bay it was discovered that their encounter with “Northeast Ripps” (later renamed “Great Eastern Rock”) had opened a gash in the outer double hull over 9 feet wide and 83 feet long - estimated to be 60 times the area of the RMS Titanic’s damage. Since there was no drydock in the US at the time which could handle the Great Eastern, temporary repairs were made in NY to get her back to Liverpool. However, the demands of the American Civil War caused delays in getting the iron plates required and the repairs took three months. The steamer Union Star burned in NY on 16 October. The C RR of NJ became the first railroad to use creosote to preserve ties and timber. An apparatus to creosote wood with oil of tar or "Burnetizing" it with chloride of zink, was built at Elizabethport. It was first used to preserve the timbers of the Newark Bay Bridge. The first Hoboken (DL&W RR) rail / ferry terminal was built. The Raritan and Delaware Bay RR opened their route from New York to Philadelphia. Steamboats departed from NYC for Port Monmouth where a transfer was made to their railroad. The route was via Red Bank, and Manchester to Atsion where a connection was made with the Camden and Atlantic RR for Camden and a ferry connection to Philadelphia. Early traffic was mostly Union soldiers and Army freight. Their route competed with the Camden & Amboy and was challenged by the latter. The pilot boat James Funck was sunk in the Narrows by SS Union, but was raised. Two years later she was seized by Rebel privateer Tallahasee and used as a tender and a decoy, and finally destroyed. 1863 The Union Transportation Co. began operating through freight service from the Midwest via the Raritan & Delaware Bay RR to New York. The impetus for the service came from the Pittsburgh, Ft. Wayne & Chicago RR which demanded direct access to New York. Extensive and complicated litigation occurred when the C RR of NJ attempted to build their new Communipaw terminal south of the Morris Canal Co. basin. The canal company fought valiantly, but in the end, the C RR won out. Draft riots in NYC killed an estimated 1,000. A Mr. Lugar took a load of ship's knees to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in a Durham boat and sold them to the government. He cut them in the Blue Mountains and along the Delaware River as far North as Columbia. Lugar's boat floated down the river and at Lambertville he entered the Delaware & Raritan Canal Feeder and was towed by mules to Trenton and New Brunswick. From there he was towed down the Raritan River, through Arthur Kill & Kill Van Kull, across NY Harbor and up the East River to the Navy Yard by steam tug. In the 1850's, Cornelius Vanderbilt served on the boards of the Erie Railway, the C RR of NJ, the New Haven and Hartford, and the NY and Harlem. In 1863 he took control of the NY and Harlem in a famous stockmarket corner, and was elected its president. In the next year the Commodore sold his last ships, concentrating on railroads. An old seafarer named Christopher Moss is said to have started the Penny Ferry service to carry workers from Washington Street, Jersey City across the Morris Canal basin to the new C RR of NJ “island” rail terminal then under construction. It was involved in the 1879 Jersey City Ferry War and was still running as late as 1928. Michael Moran set himself up as a tugboat agent and bought a half interest in the Ida Miller, a stream-driven New York Harbor towboat. He had earned the money by working on the Erie Canal as a mule driver and then acquiring canalboats. His business became Moran Towing. The first direct or through trains began operating from the Hudson River (Jersey City) opposite NYC to Washington, DC. They utilized the United Railroads of New Jersey to Philadelphia, the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore to Baltimore, and the Baltimore & Ohio RR to Washington. The USS Saffron, on her way from Norfolk to New York, passed through the D&R Canal and stopped at Trenton. She was under the command of Ensign Daniel Merrill and had a crew of two engineers - Samuel D. Edwards and James Boyd - and sixteen men. She had been engaged in clearing the James River of torpedoes and carries a twelve pound howitzer. This tug was the first that went up the Dutch Gap Canal and returned. Daily True American, June 8, 1865. Note: Saffron was built on the D&R Canal at New Brunswick in 1863 as the John T. Jenkins, a wood hull, steam powered, screw propelled, vessel of 73 gross tons. After her Civil War service she was re-documented as the Clifton and worked around New York Harbor until she was lost in 1885. On 22 October the steamer Oregon collided with the City of Boston and sank in NY Harbor. On 29 October the brand-new luxury side-wheel steamboat, St. John, on the night run from NY to Albany, had a boiler explosion in which fifteen persons died. Known as a “floating palace” she continued on the Hudson for fifteen years as a after that, until she was finally destroyed by fire at her winter quarters at the foot of Canal Street in NYC. The St. John was 420 feet long and 51 feet at beam, the largest steamboat in the world at the time except the Great Eastern. On 5 December the Isaac Newton, bound up-river, exploded and burned to the waters edge opposite Fort Lee, NJ. Nine died and seventeen were scalded. She was a fine steamboat: 405 feet long; 48 feet at beam; 1,540 tons; and splendidly furnished. 1864 The American Submarine Co. was formed in April and Intelligent Whale, an experimental iron-hulled submarine, was built at Newark, NJ to the design of Scovel S. Merriam (per another report the designer was Oliver Halstead). However, they apparently encountered great difficulty in getting a crew to man her for her first test in Newark Bay. The Whale could be submerged by filling compartments with water, and then expelling the water by pomps and compressed air. It was estimated that the supply of compressed air inside could allow the boat to stay submerged for about 10 hours. Thirteen crewmen could be accommodated, but only six were needed to make her operational, motive power being furnished by a part of the crew cranking, attaining a speed of about four knots. The whale shape of the hull was very efficient. General Thomas William Sweeny, a colorful, decorated, veteran of the Mexican and Civil Wars, and two other men, tested the boat in April 1866. They submerged her in 16 feet of water, and Sweeny, clad in a diver’s suit, emerged from a hole in the bottom, placed a charge under a scow, and reentered the submarine. When Intelligent Whale was a safe distance away, Sweeny exploded the charge, blowing the scow to pieces. After litigation the boat became owned by an “Abe” Halstead and it was sold to the Navy Department on 29 October 1869. A trial of the Whale occurred at the NY Navy Yard, Brooklyn, NY, three years later. After sinking, it was found that the opening on top was leaking badly and she was quickly raised. She was displayed for a time at the NY Navy Yard and then the Washington Navy Yard, and is currently on display at the National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey in Sea Girt. Some credit Intelligent Whale with inspiring John Holland to pursue submarine design. Robert J. Cressman, 10 October 2006, www.americanmilitaryhistorymsw.com The C RR of NJ bridge over Newark Bay and extension of line from Elizabethport to Communipaw (Jersey City) was opened for passenger traffic. The C RR of NJ was extended nearly a mile across Communipaw Cove tidal flats on a wood piling trestle to the new Terminal building also supported by piles. The C RR of NJ opened America's first prefabricated railroad station (terminal). It was built in sections in Bound Brook and transported by train to Jersey City where it was assembled. Communipaw ferry connection to New York was re-established for steam operation with the ferryboats Central and Communipaw, terminating at Liberty Street. Shipping magnate “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt acquired the Hudson River RR and soon added the New York Central RR, which at the time was only a link between Albany and Buffalo. Daniel Drew struggled with Cornelius Vanderbilt, speculating on the stock of the New York and Harlem Railroad. Drew was selling the stock short, but Vanderbilt and his associates bought every share he sold, ultimately causing the stock price to rise from 90 to 285 in five months. Drew lost $500,000. James Fisk, Jr. became a stock broker and financier in NYC and was employed by Daniel Drew as a buyer. He later aided Drew in the Erie War against Cornelius Vanderbilt for control of the Erie Railroad. This resulted in Fisk and Jay Gould becoming members of the Erie directorate, and subsequently, a well-planned raid netted Fisk and Gould Control of the railroad. Fisk became known variously as “Big Jim,” “Diamond Jim,” and “Jubilee Jim.” The first US Railway Post Office east of the Alleghenies was inaugurated between NYC and Washington. It was also the last such route to be operated. The operation of street cars by steam dummies was tried by the Jersey City & Bergen RR but was abandoned after six years. The C RR of NJ began filling the tidal flats at Communipaw Cove to provide acreage for rail yards. C RR of NJ began operating sleeping cars between Jersey City and points west of the Delaware River, the first in NJ in regular service. The C RR of NJ was the primary artery of westward travel for immigrants entering the US at Ellis Island. They ran one or two trains daily until the 1940's to convey recent immigrants westward. The LV RR merged the Lehigh & Mahanoy RR into its system providing, in conjunction with the C RR of NJ, "the shortest and best route from Lake Erie to NYC." McAllister Towing and Transportation Co., Inc,. one of the oldest and largest family-owned marine towing and transportation companies in the US was founded by Capt. James McAllister with a single sail lighter. The company has served the maritime community continuously, earning a reputation for unsurpassed excellence. Today the company operates a balanced and extensive fleet of tugs, barges, and ferries in the major ports on the US East Coast and in Puerto Rico. Capt. Brian A. McAllister is the President and great-grandson of the founder, representing the fourth generation of McAllisters at the helm. Four McAllisters of the fifth generation are also employed by the company. Capt. James McAllister started the first McAllister enterprise shortly after he arrived from Cushendall, County Antrim, Ireland. Together with his brothers and in-laws, McAllister formed Greenpoint Lighterage Co. They augmented the lighterage business with towing, with the acquisition of their first steam tug, the R.W. Burke, in the 1880's. In the early 20th Century, Capt. James was one of the first to convert a sail lighter into a bulk oil carrier, for the transport of oil around NY Harbor. The company also became known nationally for its salvage work, which extended from the West Indies, along the Atlantic Coast as far north as Maine. In 1909, the company acquired the Starin Fleet of steamboat excursion vessels, forming the McAllister Steamboat Co., which was one of the largest excursion boat operators in New York, with regular runs to the Statue of Liberty, Bear Mountain, Coney Island, and Long Island. After the death of Capt. James in 1916, his four sons, the second generation of McAllisters, assumed control of the company via a partnership. By 1918, the company had moved into the ocean towing business. McAllister inaugurated one of the first deep-sea tug-barge combinations with the 156-foot tugboat, C.W. Morse, carrying molasses from Cuba to New Orleans. Always an innovator, in 1927 McAllister installed a 375 hp diesel engine in the Daniel McAllister, making it the first diesel powered tug in NY Harbor. During WW I, Capt. James P. (Capt. Jim) McAllister served with honor on the Board of Embarkation for the US Government. He also held the post of Acting Director for the Army’s floating equipment. Between the Wars, a fleet of 27 ocean-going tankers was operated by McAllister to all parts of the world for the US Shipping Board. With the death of Capt. Jim in 1936, the third generation of McAllisters took the helm and are credited with not only pulling the company through the difficult Depression years, but also bringing the company to its present-day prominence. During the 1940's and 50's, the company expanded to include operations in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Canada. Ca. the 1970's McAllister Tug and Barge Drydocks took over the former C RR of NJ marine repair yard in what became Liberty State Park. Today McAllister operations have expanded to include offices in Portland ME, Baltimore MD, Wilmington NC, Georgetown SC, Charleston SC, Jacksonville FL, Port Everglades FL, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, in addition to NYC, where their office is located at 17 Battery Place, the traditional location of maritime businesses. McAllister’s current fleet consists of over 70 tugboats, including 13 tractor tugs, and 12 barges. They also own and operate the Bridgeport (CT) & Port Jefferson (LI, NY) Steamboat Co. (ferry). www.mcallistertowing.com On 8 December the schooner William Penn, on a run from New Haven, CT to NY capsized at Hell Gate. The first modern longshoremen’s union was formed in the Port of NY. It was called the Longshoremen’s Union Protective Association. Sam Sloan became a director of the DL&W RR in this year; was president from 1867 to 1899; and was chairman until his death in 1907. During his administration, no trains were run on Sundays. His impressive bronze statue is at the ferry plaza, now facing Hoboken. 1865 The Camden & Amboy Railroad & Transportation Co. occupied Pier No. 1, North River primarily for freight, which was received at all hours, and they advertised connections with various railroads for movement south and west. The steamboat William Cook made two round trips daily between Pier 1 and South Amboy where the freight was transferred to rail cars. On 2 April the sloop Report was hit near Blackwell’s Island, East River by a lumber schooner which carried away her bulwarks and bowsprit. The funeral train of Abraham Lincoln traveled across New Jersey to Jersey City on April 24th where his coffin was placed on a ferryboat to be carried to NYC. However, by this time the new Camden and Amboy straight main line between Trenton and New Brunswick was in service and the train went under the D&R at Trenton and over it at New Brunswick. Trains Magazine February, 2009. Lincoln’s final journey was our nation’s first national funeral. His casket as well as the remains of his son - little Willie Lincoln were carried in the elegant presidential car United States, also known as the Lincoln car, which had four 4-wheel trucks. Interestingly, it was never used by Lincoln when he was alive, but was used to carry his remains in the funeral train. “Last Sight of the Presidential Remains,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 22, 1865; reprinted in Civil War Railroads & Models, by Edwin P. Alexander (1989). On 10 May the NY to Philadelphia canal steamer E. L. Clark burned at the foot of Fifth Street, East River. The Jersey City and Fort Lee RR was proposed to be built from the C RR of NJ’s new Communipaw depot to York Street, to Greene, to Pavonia Ave. to Hudson Street to the northern boundary of the city. The requirement of expensive, inconvenient, and dangerous drawbridges over the Morris Canal Basin helped to kill it. On 31 July, the Long Branch and Sea Shore RR began service with steamboats to the Battery, connecting with their trains at Sandy Hook. Initially the service was offered only during the summer months. On 4 August the steamer Arrow, a ferry between Haverstraw, Nyack, and NY, exploded off 30th Street, NYC, killing several persons. On 13 August the sloop Planter of Sag Harbor with a cargo of bone dust, was a total loss on Hallett’s Point at Hell Gate, but the crew escaped. The iron hull of the Camden & Amboy RR steamboat John Stevens which survived the fire of 17 July 1855 at Bordentwn was finally rebuilt and converted into a twin propeller freight boat with one deck and three masts. She entered freight service between NYC and South Amboy late in September. In 1871 she was conveyed to the Pennsylvania RR as part of their lease of the NJ RR & Transportation Co., and continued in the NY - South Amboy service until it was discontinued in 1874. In 1877 the P RR sold John Stevens to the Central Stock Yard and Transit Co. at Harsimus Cove, Jersey City. On 3 November the schooner Chief from Rondout for Nantucket was run into at Hell Gate and sunk. On 16 December the bark Nifadelos collided with the steamer Alabama and sank in NY Harbor. By the end of this year the C RR of NJ passenger and ferry Terminal buildings, a freight house, and coal pockets in Jersey City had been completed. At Communipaw the engine house and machine shops were enlarged and a block of dwelling houses were erected. 1866 The East River froze solid and the Hudson was also blocked. No boats could get across either river. There was a great uproar that winter for a bridge across the East River. C RR of NJ began freight service at the Jersey City Terminal. The first C RR of NJ ferryboat named Elizabeth was launched. Johnston Avenue (it was named after C RR of NJ President, John Taylor Johnston and renamed Audrey Zapp Drive by Liberty State Park officials in the 1980's) was built with Belgian block from the former shore line to the C RR of NJ Terminal. The Central Stockyard Transfer Co. built a huge facility, commonly called ‘the abattoir’ at the foot of Sixth Street in Jersey City. Jersey City's rail and water connections, especially from the western plains, made it one of the country's great meat centers after the Central Stockyard and Transit Co. built its "Abattoir" on the waterfront. On 3 July 1866, the schooner Exchange, en-route from Rondout, NY to Providence, RI with a load of D&H coal was wrecked at Hell Gate. Between this year and 1868, Daniel Drew engaged in the Erie (Railroad) War, in which Drew conspired with fellow directors James Fisk, Jr. (financier) and Jay Gould to issue more and more new stock to keep Cornelius Vanderbilt from gaining control of the Erie Railroad. Vanderbilt, unaware of the increase in outstanding shares, kept buying Erie stock and sustained heavy losses, eventually conceding control of the railroad to the trio. With his profits, Drew contributed to the founding of Drew Theological Seminary in Madison, NJ, which is now part of Drew University. The steamer Tempest burned at NY on 1 October. On 17 October, Ashbel Welch, Chief Engineer of the United New Jersey RR and Canal Co. read his “Report on Safety Signals” to the attendees at the railroad convention at the St. Nicholas Hotel in NYC. He had invented the banner box signal and installed it in the prior year on the main line of his railroad between Philadelphia and New Brunswick. The Port Johnston Coal Docks were completed on Constable Hook in Bayonne by the C RR of NJ. The 2,750 foot-long coal dock was named after the president of the railroad, John Taylor Johnston. At the time it was the largest coal dock in the world and employed 200 men, mostly Irish immigrants. Their job was to empty coal from railroad cars onto barges for shipment across Upper New York Bay primarily to New York City. On 12 November, the steamer T. A. Nickerbocker exploded at NY. NY Yacht Club schooners Henrietta, Fleetwing, and Vesta raced from Sandy Hook, NJ to Needles, Isle of Wight for a $90,000 winner-take-all prize in a legendary “Transatlantic Race” in December. The Henrietta won the race in 13 days, 21 hours, and 55 minutes. The American brig Flying Scud, bound from Malaga, Spain, to NY with a cargo of fruit, went ashore on Rockaway Beach on 17 November with the loss of only one life. For days the beach was strewn with oranges, almonds and other unusual delicacies. Flying Scud was a clipper ship which once made the passage from NY to Melbourne in a record seventy-five days. The British steamship Scotland, bound for NY from Liverpool, collided with an American sailing vessel, Kate Dyer, off Fire Island on 1 December. The 1,278 ton Dyer sank. The badly damaged Scotland tried to reach Sandy Hook, where the captain hoped to beach her, but he failed to make it and she sank also. Two years later, the Scotland Lightship, sister vessel of the Sandy Hook, was placed over the wreck, but later moved much farther out to sea. The steamer J. D. Secor burned at Blackwell’s Island, NY on 7 December. On 27 December, the 285-ton Danish bark Christiane coming to NY from Rio de Janeiro, was rammed by the outbound steamer North America and sunk. The latter rescued four members of the Christiane’s crew, and kept going. It was months before news of the disaster reached New York or Denmark. 1867 C RR of NJ Directors decided to operate their railroad on Sundays. In protest, director William E. Dodge sold his stock and resigned. On 22 January, the boiler on steam tug Enterprise exploded in the North River with three hurt. The ship Dashing Wave from San Francisco to NY, sank at southwest split, NY Harbor. She was raised and finally arrived at the city on 13 September. The first NJ / NY harbor RR floatbridge and carfloat operation was commenced by the C RR of NJ, but it did not initially involve interchange with other railroads. At first it was used as a way to deliver merchandise freight to NYC without first unloading it from boxcars. The cars were placed on carfloats which were then floated to pier stations around Manhattan. The freight was unloaded via the center platforms on the float and then into the pier-sheds. On 2 April the schooner H.A. Barnes was run down and sunk off Riker’s Island, NY. A battle erupted between the Morris Canal Co. and Jersey City over the plan of the city to extend Hudson Street across the canal basin. The Sugar House proprietors (Matthiessen and Wiechers) disputed the canal company’s title to the shipping basin constructed on M&W’s submerged lands. With the help of a powerful steam derrick, M&W tore up and destroyed by force steamboats and other boats in the canal basin, and probably tore into a few piers while they were about it. The steamship Hibernian, bound for Liverpool, burned at Fulton Ferry on 2 May. The schooner Reaper sank in the East River on 21 June. The steamboat Blanche Page agreed to tow two Schuylkill canalboats, Cornelius Haggerty and John Hays loaded with anthracite coal, from New Brunswick to NYC on the morning of 5 July, by way of the Raritan River and the Kills. On reaching the mouth of the river, inside of which there was good anchorage and a safe harbor, there was found outside a high wind and a heavy sea. The steamer, however, went out, and, not being able to cross the flats, the tide being ebb, took a circuitous route by the channel, going by South Amboy and down around the buoy at the tail of the flats, and so around to Perth Amboy. While making this passage, two of the canalboats were sunk by the violence of the sea and the dashing of the boats against each other. Held, that it showed a want of ordinary care for the steamboat to venture out with such a tow when she did. Note: the Haggerty was never raised. Federal Cases Nos. 1,523 & 4, The BLANCHE PAGE, District Court, S.D. New York, May Term, 1870. The sloop Vienna en-route from Elizabethport, NJ to Norwich, CT, sank at Hell Gate on 23 July. National Storage Co. was organized and bought land north of Caven Point from the C RR of NJ’s American Dock & Improvement Co. to construct crude oil storage tanks. The oil came from Pennsylvania in railroad tank cars and was accumulated in the tanks and then loaded into barges that took it to the refinery which, at the time, was located in Queens. This activity produced much rail traffic for the C RR. The Delaware & Raritan Canal Co., the Camden & Amboy RR & Transportation Co. and the New Jersey RR & Transportation Co. were authorized to consolidate their interests with each company retaining its separate organization. The new parent conglomerate was known as the United New Jersey RR and Canal Co. The steamer King Philip burned at Jersey City on 16 November. A track connection was made with the Lehigh and Susquehanna (L&S) RR at Easton on 25 November, making a through route to Wilkes-Barre, PA. The L&S became a principal supplier of coal to the C RR of NJ and later became a part of the C RR. On 20 December the C RR of NJ issued General Order #2 prohibiting the operation of trains on Sundays except through express passenger trains, stock trains or those carrying perishables. 1868 The C RR of NJ became the first railroad in America to introduce uniforms for employees. They consisted of a blue coat, pants, vest, cap with "C RR" and gilt buttons. The Pavonia Ferry Co. opened W. 23rd Street service from Jersey City on 6 May. The C RR of NJ advertised three daily express trains for the west beginning 11 May. Their route would require but one change of cars to Chicago or Cincinnati and but two changes to St. Louis. However, their route would save 60 to 130 miles and three hours travel time. The schooner E. C. Knight, bound from Elizabethport to Boston sank at Hell Gate on 15 May. The Stonington Steamship Co. steamer burned at NYC on 24 May after arrival from Providence, RI. Cornelius Vanderbilt fell into a dispute with Daniel Drew, now treasurer of the Erie Railway. To get revenge Vanderbilt tried to corner Erie stock, which led to the so-called Erie War. This brought him into direct conflict with Jay Gould and James Fisk, Jr., who had just joined Drew on the Erie board. The latter defeated the corner by issuing “watered stock” in defiance of state law, which restricted the number of shares a company could issue. But Gould bribed the legislature to legalize the new stock. Vanderbilt used the leverage of a lawsuit to get his losses back, but he and Gould became public enemies. On 5 September the schooner Washington, bound from South Amboy, NJ to New Bedford, MA, sunk in Hell Gate. The sloop Ethan Allen, was sunk off Blackwell’s Island, NY on 20 September. Two vessels burned at the Standard Oil Company yard at Hunter’s Point on Long Island on 25 October: the brig Lord Hartington, 170 tons, and the 467-ton steamer Kings County. The Hoboken RR Terminal was replaced by a larger building. 1869 A demonstration for an underground (subway) transit system in NYC was built by Alfred Ely Beach. His Beach Pneumatic Transit only extended 312 feet under Broadway in Lower Manhattan, but exhibited his idea for a subway propelled by pneumatic tube technology. It was never extended and was demolished when the BMT Broadway Line was built. John A. Roebling had been appointed as engineer for the proposed Brooklyn Bridge in 1867. In this year, while engaged in determining the location of the Brooklyn tower, a ferryboat entering the slip thrust the timbers on which the great engineer stood, in such a was as to catch and crush his foot. He died of lockjaw sixteen days later. He was killed by the ferry which his bridge and later ones would eventually put out of business. His son, Washington A. Roebling, finished the bridge, which opened to great fanfare on 24 May 1883. The Transcontinental RR was completed with a golden spike driven at Promontory, Utah on 10 May. In mid-July the Newark and New York RR (a C RR of NJ project) opened between Newark and the Communipaw Ferry. They had tried to buy the Morris Canal bed in eastern Newark for the railroad, but were rebuffed. The C RR of NJ was hard at work filling in more of Communipaw Bay (South Cove), destroying local fisheries and oyster beds and creating air and water pollution in the process. In summer months in order to minimize the smell of garbage, the dumping was done near Black Tom Island until that island grew to 20 acres. NY Times, 22 July 1869 The monopolistic provisions of the "Joint Companies" (United New Jersey RR and Canal Co.) eventually aroused so much public indignation that they were terminated. Without the special privileges conferred by the State the "Joint Companies" were no longer immune from competing transportation systems. The Philadelphia and Reading Railroad put their first steam colliers in operation to move coal from Philadelphia to New England by the outside route. This allowed them to bypass the Delaware & Raritan Canal but some continued to go through NY Harbor and Long Island Sound. Financial ‘Black Friday’ in NYC on 24 September was caused by an attempt to “corner” gold. “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt purchased properties between 42nd and 48th Streets, Lexington and Madison Avenues for construction of a new railroad depot which became the Grand Central Depot when finished in 1871. It was replaced by Grand Central Terminal in 1913. The steam tug Quickstep, which was contracted to tow the canalboat Citizen from NY Harbor to New Brunswick did so through carelessness and mismanagement which caused the canalboat to be damaged and sink near the lighthouse on Robbins’ Reef. In the course of the difficulty, two other of the boats in the tow got loose. One of them cast anchor and was saved on the spot. The other, loaded with iron, drifted about all night and was picked up uninjured on the next morning. NY Supreme Court, December 1869, The Quickstep The British steamship Russia, rammed and sank an Austrian ship at anchor off the Battery, NYC. The ferryboats James Fisk, Jr. and the Jay Gould were built to carry passengers from the Erie RR waterfront terminal in Jersey City to West 23rd Street in NY. From his ferry Fisk ran a line of free omnibuses on the NY side. They ran past the Grand Opera House, which he had bought, to the old Fifth Avenue Hotel, which he had built. 1870 On 30 January an oceangoing tug crashed into the side of the Hoboken to Manhattan ferry Union cutting a deep gash below the waterline, but she was salvaged. The first regular elevated railway service in NYC was begun on 14 February along Greenwich Street and 9th Avenue. This was the very first rapid transit installation on the North American continent. Initial passenger service consisted of three cable-drawn cars powered by a stationary steam engine. Operations were suspended in nine months. “El’s” proliferated and were later built along 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 9th Avenues in Manhattan. C RR of NJ Main Line tracks were relaid with steel rails replacing the former iron. By this year through C RR of NJ sleeping car service was established in cooperation with the LV to the west. James Fisk, Jr. and Jay Gould betrayed Daniel Drew by manipulating the stock price of the Erie Railroad and causing him to lose $1.5 million. Drew was also later swindled out of $1,000,000 worth of Erie Railroad stock and the Panic of 1873 cost him still more. By 1876 he was bankrupt and died in 1879, dependent on his son for support. In this year, Cornelius Vanderbilt consolidated his Hudson River Railroad, which he had acquired in 1864, and his New York Central Railroad, which he had acquired in 1867, into the NY Central and Hudson River Railroad, one of the first giant corporations in American history. The Raritan & Delaware Bay RR became the NJ Southern RR and eventually a part of the C RR of NJ. On Wednesday evening, 9 September, the tugboat Red Jacket took in tow two coal-barges at New Brunswick, and during the night proceeded toward New York. At 2 o’clock, while opposite Perth Amboy, the boiler of the tug exploded, tearing the boat to pieces and killing three men. Robert Brown, the pilot, was hurled into the air, and his body torn to pieces. The engineer, Daniel Thomas, of South Amboy, and a fireman named Strong, were almost instantly killed by flying fragments of the iron and woodwork. Three of the deck hands, though not known to have been killed, have not been seen, and it is supposed that they also are lost. The cause assigned for th accident is that the boiler was almost entirely empty, and upon its being filled with water exploded. The loss to the owners of the boat (tug) will probably be about $25,000 or $30,000. New York Times, 9 September 1870. At the end of the eighteenth century the port of New York handled only 6 % of the value of all US foreign trade; by 1870 her share had risen to over one-half. The C RR of NJ made attempts to bridge the “Water Gap” owned by the Morris Canal to allow the railroad a connection with the main section of Jersey City. 1871 The properties of the United New Jersey RR and Canal Co. were leased to the Pennsylvania RR (P RR) for 999 years. The P RR grew to become the largest railroad in the world at its peak. It operated 28,000 miles of track, directly served half of the US, and hauled more freight and passengers than any other railroad in the world. The C RR of NJ leased the Lehigh &Susquehanna RR from the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Co., giving the C RR a continuous line from Jersey City to Wilkes-Barre, PA. Manhattan’s original elevated line was reorganized as the West Side Patented Elevated Railway Company. Service was resumed on 20 April using diminutive steam-powered “dummy” engines hauling the prior passenger cars. The schooner M. A. Longbery bound from Elizabethport, NJ to Bridgeport, CT sank at Hell Gate on 8 July. On 12 July the schooner Ella bound from Rondout, NY to Boston was struck by lightning in North River and damaged. The schooner Oscar C. Acken was run into and sunk at Hell Gate by the steamer Elm City on 18 July. On 23 July cargo in the hold of the schooner Jenny exploded and she burned to the water’s edge in NY Harbor off the NJ flats. Th sloop Thomas Ransen bound from Elizabethport to New Haven with a cargo of coal went ashore on Holmes Rock, Hell Gate, on 29 July. The most appalling and spectacular explosion of a vessel in the NY area occurred on 30 July, at the foot of Whitehall Street in Manhattan. One hundred and four lives were lost and scores of injured were hospitalized. Just as the Staten Island ferry Westfield was about to depart her huge boiler exploded, scalded passengers or threw them into the water and wrecked the boat. The cause was later determined to be low water and boiler not in fit condition to run. The LV RR leased the Morris Canal properties for 99 years. The schooner Juno of Rockland, ME, with a cargo of lime, ran on Gridiron, Hell Gate on 21 August, caught fire and was a total loss. On 21 August the steam tug Bordentown departed New Brunswick for New York towing fourteen canalboats, including the Christian Thaurman from the Delaware & Raritan Canal. At about 1am on the Tuesday the 22nd as the tow was at a place in the Raritan River called Point-no-Point, Middle Ground, some distance below New Brunswick, a collision occurred. The steam canal propeller Annie, Captain Steen, of the Wilmington and New York Freight Line, heading south, collided with one of the canalboats, Christian Thaurman, sinking her almost instantly. Aboard, and apparently sleeping, were Captain Thaurman, his sons, George and Henry, and his daughter Annie, who were all drowned. After the disaster, the steam canaller Annie, apparently unaware, kept on her course, passing New Brunswick without giving notice of the calamity. She came back from Wilmington on Friday, passing through New Brunswick at 10pm. She started back from NYC on a second trip and reached New Brunswick on Tuesday morning. An inquest over the four dead bodies took place before Coroner Paradin of New Brunswick and following testimony a verdict was reached. The verdict judged the collision to be accidental and no negligence was involved. NY Herald, NY, NY, 31 August 1871 The schooner Sarah of New Bedford, bound from Philadelphia to Portsmouth, NH, with a cargo of coal, went ashore on Romer Shoal off Sandy Hook on 14 September and went to pieces, but all hands were saved. The steam tug Delaware was struck by Astoria ferry Williamsburg on 28 September and sank in Pot Cove. On 29 September the schooner D.C. Hulse from Brookhaven, LI sank at Astoria. The schooner pilot boat Moses H. Grinnell was run into by the Norwegian bark Ursa Minor off Governor’s Island on 4 October. Grand Central Depot was opened in midtown Manhattan in October. It served the New York Central and Hudson River RR; the New York and Harlem RR; and the New York, New Haven, and Hartford RR. On 1 November the 373-foot-long steamboat Bristol of the Fall River Line went ashore on the Gridiron, near Hell Gate carrying 842 passengers, but got off. The bark J.H. McLaren, with a cargo of coal for Aspinwall, sank in Lower Bay off Staten Island on 25 November. Not a good day: On 8 December the following occurred: The sloop J. Duryea, under tow in the East River, was run into by the steamer Elm City and was cut through amidships but the crew was rescued; The Fall River liner Providence grounded on a reef off Delancey St., NYC; and the steam tug Wilson D. Reed was run into off Pier 8, East River by an unknown steamer and sank.. P.T. Barnum purchased the older NY & Harlem RR station between 26th and 27th Streets, Manhattan, and converted it into Madison Square Garden – the first of several structures to bear that historic name. This was the peak traffic year for the Delaware and Raritan Canal. Nearly 3 million tons of cargo passed through the canal in 13,215 canalboats, 1,545 steamboats, 668 sailing vessels, and 434 rafts. The D&R was a most important connection for water traffic between New York Harbor, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Albany, and Hartford. 1872 The Easton & Amboy RR was chartered to build a double track line east from the Delaware River to link the LV with tidewater at Perth Amboy. The parent LV RR viewed the Morris Canal, which they leased, as a second-best option to reach NY Harbor. It is not surprising that when they were finally granted permission to construct the E&A they immediately requested permission to cease maintenance of the Morris Canal as a navigable waterway. On 15 January the sloop G.J. Demorest bound from Oyster Bay to NYC with a cargo of bricks sank at Hell Gate. The schooner Matthew Kinney inbound for NYC on 5 February had her bow stove in by ice in the Narrows and the vessel filled. The C RR of NJ Newark and Elizabeth Branch was completed from Elizabethport to Brills (Jct.) on the Newark and New York RR. This provided a by-pass route during outages of the Newark Bay Bridge. The schooner Belle inbound to NYC went ashore at Gridiron, Hell Gate, and filled on 1 April. On 15 April the schooner Abby Morton bound from Elizabethport to Plymouth, MA with a cargo of coal, went ashore at Hell Gate and filled. The schooner Henry Cole, bound from South Amboy to Providence, RI on 1 May with a cargo of coal, went ashore at Hog’s Back, Hell Gate. On 2 May the schooner William R. Knapp of NY was rammed by the steamer City of Hartford between Hell Gate and Astoria. The whole of her stern was carried away and she sank immediately. The schooner Trimmer bound from Albany, NY to Hartford, CT with a cargo of lumber struck a rock at Hell Gate on 6 May and filled, but was beached at Astoria by the steam tug Joe. On 10 May the schooner William Butman, bound from Elizabethport to Boston struck a reef at Hell Gate and sank. The steamer Harry Bumm exploded at NY on 27 May with a loss of 3 lives. C RR of NJ stockholders voted to dissolve the merger with the DL&W made only six months prior. On 9 June the steam tug N.S. Starbuck was badly damaged when it collided with the British SS City of London off the Battery. On 20 July, the schooner Diadem of Sayville, Long Island, bound from Newburgh, NY, to Fall River, MA, with a cargo of coal, was run into in Hell Gate by the steamer Galenta. The Diadem sank within five minutes, off Ward’s Island Bluff, directly in the track of vessels passing through the Gate. Shortly afterward, the wreck of the Diadem was struck by the schooner Flagg of Greenwich, CT, which capsized. Four vessels burned at the Standard Oil Company yard at Hunter’s Point on Long Island on 30 July: the Norwegian ship Eplis, 517 tons, bound for the Baltic, lay in the yard loaded with 4,200 barrels of oil when she was lost in a fire that started from a burning canal boat alongside. The American brig Roslyn, 382 tons, bound for Trieste; the British bark Edward, 575 tons, of Halifax, Nova Scotia; and the brig Max were also total losses. On 18 August the schooner Black Diamond bound from Elizabethport to Providence with a cargo of coal, struck on North Brother Island, Hell Gate and sank. The canal steamer Cathcart with a cargo of coal, collided with a government scow on 21 August at Hallett’s Point, Hell Gate and went ashore at College Point. On 28 August the schooner C.L. Hulse bound from Rondout, with a cargo of D&H coal, to Providence collided and sank at Hell Gate. The steamer City of Lawrence, the first Long Island Sound steamer with an iron hull, collided in the East River on 3 September with the schooner Empire State. On 20 September the schooner Flagg struck the wreck of the schooner Diadem at Hell Gate and capsized. The schooner Justice collided with the yacht Emily at Hell Gate on 21 September. On 15 October Commodore Jim Fisk’s famous 373-foot-long Providence, a Fall River steamer, was going through Hell Gate when she collided with a drilling machine and was badly injured. Her passengers were transferred to the steamboat Stonington. A little later the Providence went aground after a week of fog. These two incidents followed two which occurred in the latter half of the prior year: On 3 August 1871 she collided with two schooners in Long Island Sound, and on 8 December she grounded on a reef off Delancey Street, NYC. General George B. McClellan began his campaign for standardization of railroad gauges. He is credited with being the father of standard gauge, which placed the United States years ahead of Europe in transportation. For a time he was Chief Engineer for the Morris & Essex RR and lived in West Orange. He was later Governor of New Jersey. Aboard the Honesty in 1872 is a delightful descriptive account of the experiences of George H. Weller (son of Hiram Weller) of Trenton and the week-long trip he took on an Erie Canalboat, the Honesty. At the time Coalport in Trenton was the largest coal trans-shipping port in the east. It was here that they took on a 250-ton load for Troy, NY, and went in a tow of 43 boats up the Hudson. After they unloaded the coal they took on a load of corn for Brooklyn, and finally returned to Trenton. Published in the “Trenton in Bygone Days” column of the Sunday Times Advertiser, May, 16, 1943. The steamer Andrew Fletcher burned to the water’s edge at Quarantine landing, Staten Island on 20 December. 1873 On 25 January the schooner Charles A. Grainer, Port Johnston, NJ, for Providence, sank at Hell Gate. The New Jersey Legislature passed a bill which opened the state to railroads competing with the old Camden & Amboy (later P RR) monopoly between Jersey City and Philadelphia. The Reading, in concert with the C RR of NJ, LV, DL&W, and Delaware & Hudson Railroads established the first American cartel in an attempt to fix the price of anthracite shipment and to limit volumes. On 13 May, the steamer Hope, bound from Blackwell’s Island to Hart’s Island, was run down at Hell Gate by the steamer Americus. The Hope was cut in two and four men were lost. The Morris & Essex RR Terminal at Hoboken was destroyed by fire in June. Jason “Jay” Gould , a leading American railroad developer and speculator attempted to take control of the Erie Railroad by getting foreign investments from Lord Gordon-Gordon by offering $1 million in stock. However, Gordon-Gordon turned out to be a fraud, cashing the stock immediately. The convoluted incident resulted in Gould losing any possibility of his taking control of the Erie. A canalboat was hired to carry a cargo of coal from Port Johnston, NJ to East Chester, CT. She was detained in loading, and, after loading proceeded to NY, where her consignees determined not to send her to East Chester, but to sell her cargo in the port of NY, which, after some delay, was done. It was decided that the owner of the canalboat was entitled to recover freight at the usual rate from Port Johnston to NY, and demurrage for the detention of the boat at Port Johnston, and also for the detention at NY, over and above the usual time for unloading a cargo of coal in that port. Federal Case No.14,298, Two Hundred and Thirteen Tons of Coal [7 Benedict 15], July 1873 A tornado struck and heavily damaged the pier being constructed for the New Hamburg Steamship Line at Hoboken on 6 July. The Hudson Tunnel RR Co. (predecessor to the Hudson & Manhattan RR) was incorporated. On 5 August the Australian brig Oscar, 402 tons, loading oil for Queenstown, New Zealand, was set afire at the Standard Oil Company yard at Hunter’s Point on Long Island and wrecked by a burning barge nearby. The schooner Briton Cook, with a cargo of bricks was run into and sunk by the steamer Cornelius Vanderbilt in North River off Hoboken on 14 August. On 7 September the steam tug Vixen was run into by the steamship Granite State near Hell Gate and was cut in half. Banks failed and panic began in NYC on 20 September. The Central Stock Yard and Transit Company of NJ began operating at Harsimus Cove, Jersey City under a contract and lease of property from the P RR. They constructed a large stock yard and abattoir (slaughter house) there. In 1877 the CSY & TC purchased from the P RR the John Stevens, a former C&A RR passenger steamboat, rebuilt into a freighter after burning. She now found herself a floating cattle barn servicing the ocean steamers exporting or importing cattle, and transporting cattle from the stockyards to Manhattan’s slaughterhouses. On 4 August 1904 the Nautical Gazette reported that the Stevens was being scrapped at Gregory’s yard in Perth Amboy. After 58 years of faithful service, it hardly seemed a fitting end for a steamboat once described as the “most elegant and fastest on the Delaware.” The John Bull-etin, Vol. V, No. II, Summer 2011 On 11 October the German bark A.J. Pope was run into by SS San Salvador in North River. The schooner Shepard A. Mount, bound for Elizabethport was run into and badly damaged off City Island on 22 October by the steamer Isaac Bell. On 25 October the schooner Leon of Derby, CT, struck Gridiron, Hell Gate and sank. The sloop Gold Leaf was run into by the Houston Street ferry in the East River on 14 November and sank on Ravenswood Reef, Astoria. On 23 November the steam tug Rescue burned on Sandy Hook bar; crew saved. During this year New York City shipyards built 427 canalboats with a combined tonnage of 38,281. The industry began during the period of Dutch settlement. A great shipbuilding industry developed, primarily along the East River on the east side of Manhattan. 1874 On 13 February the schooner Rodney Parker bound from Baltimore to NY with a cargo of coal went ashore on Romer Shoals, was bilged and abandoned. The barge Joseph E. Dow with a cargo of ice for Brooklyn went ashore on Gridiron, Hell Gate on 18 February. Dewitt Clinton Haskins raised sufficient funds to begin work on a trans-Hudson tunnel, which eventually became the Hudson & Manhattan RR. The DL&W RR obtained an injunction which halted construction for 5 years. The steam tug R.S. Carter was run into and sunk on 19 March in the East River by the ferry Baltic. On 20 March the schooner Elizabeth B. bound from Elizabethport to Providence with a cargo of coal went ashore at Hallett’s Point, Hell Gate and was filled. The brig A.R. Storer ran into the German bark Christel in North River on 22 March. The Jersey City Wagon Elevator, or inclined plane, was built to elevate horse cars, their teams, and a full compliment of passengers up to Jersey City Heights by steam power. It was considered one of the construction wonders of that age. In1886 North Hudson County Ry opened the elevator to public vehicles. This first effort to scale the ramparts of the Palisades had a 480' incline, a 102' rise, and was abandoned in 1928. The Central Stockyard Transfer Co. enlarged their huge facility, at the foot of Sixth Street in Jersey City, and by 1880 they were processing more than 1,500,000 animals – beef cattle, lambs and hogs annually. On 13 June the lighter Ohio, with a cargo of tobacco was run into in the East River by the ferry Winona and sank. The sloop Caroline, with a cargo of coal, was run into and sunk off the Battery by the steamer Providence on 24 June. Nathaniel Holmes Bishop journeyed 2,500 miles from Quebec via the St. Lawrence River, Richelieu River, Chambly Canal, Lake Champlain, Champlain Canal, Hudson River, Upper NY Bay, Kill Van Kull, Arthur Kill, Raritan River, Delaware & Raritan Canal, Delaware River, and other portions of inland waterway to the Gulf of Mexico in his “paper canoe.” Bishop. Nathaniel Homes, Voyage of the Paper Canoe, Boston: Lee and Shepard: 1878 On 13 July the schooner China, carrying a cargo of Oak timber was run into in the East River and sank off Williamsburg. The schooner Martha Jane struck a rock in Hell Gate on 22 August and filled. On 3 September the steamer River Belle of the NJ Southern RR & Steamboat Line burned and sank at Pier 8, North River; later raised and refloated. The British steamer Adriatic collided in NY Bay with the steamer Parthia on 24 October. Both were bound for Liverpool and both were damaged. The steam tug Lilly blew up and sank at Hell Gate on 17 November. The schooner Fanny Fern was sunk at Hell Gate in December. She was raised and taken to Hallett’s Cove. Later she was being towed through Hell Gate alongside the tug D. S. Stetson when she slewed onto Middle Ground, knocking a hole in her bottom. The tug cast off its towlines and refused to render assistance. The Fanny Fern sank in twenty minutes. On 11 December the steam tug L. Markle blew up and sank off Randall’s Island. The C RR of NJ presented each of their employees with a Christmas turkey. In this year 196 canalboats were built in NYC. 1875 On 1 January the DL&W RR moved their coal depot from Elizabethport on the C RR of NJ to their own property in Hoboken. The steam lighter Sentinel was crushed by ice and sank at Peck Slip on 16 January. On 18 January the British ship Roslin Castle, bound from Calcutta to NY, was struck by a field of ice in NY Harbor and carried to Brooklyn. The schooner Eliza Pharo bound from Port Johnston to Providence with a cargo of coal was forced ashore at Bedloe’s Island by ice and sunk on 7 February. For ten days in February even the big Long Island Sound steamboats could not get through the thick ice in Hell Gate. Four of the boats were locked in the ice. The forty-year-old schooner Oakwood, bound with coal from South Amboy, NJ to Narragansett, RI, was frozen in for two weeks at Whitestone on the East River. Captain Walter R. Hazard of the Sound steamer City of Lowell, who once commanded the Oakwood, tried to go to her aid. A sudden fissure in the ice opened up, causing the prow of the Lowell to cut into the side of the schooner. The crew jumped off onto the ice and the Oakwood sank. On 10 February the British ship Ambassador, outbound to London, was driven ashore by ice near Bedloe’s Island. The brand-new, 1,900-ton steamer Cornwall of the Great Western Steamship Line, from Bristol, England, was entering the East River on 14 February, with 450 passengers, when she was forced by the ice toward Governor’s Island. She struck bottom off Castle William, but was later hauled off. In March the brig Rapide, bound from NY to London, was cut into by ice while anchored off Robbins Reef. She was towed to Red Hook and sank, but was later raised by the Coast Wrecking Co. On 15 March the steam tug Mary collided with the Harlem passenger boat Shady Side; Mary sank; crew saved. NY Harbor still had ice on 14 April, when the German bark Aeolus from Antwerp was caught be ice floes off the Battery and was carried down the bay, where she collided with the British brig Annie Wharton and lost her mizzentopmast. On 30 April Swiftsure Line iron steamer Vulcan (built in NYC by Hogg & Delamater of the Phoenix Foundry to designs furnished by John Ericcson for the Delaware & Raritan Canal Co. in 1842), bound from Hartford to Philadelphia, via the D&R, with a cargo of machinery, struck a rock between Robbins Reef and Bedloe’s Island and sank. John H. Starin of NYC began supplying excursion vessels for groups wanting an outing. He bought or built a number of double-decked excursion barges to be towed by steamers. Next, his Starin Line acquired picnic grounds and groves: Alpine Grove; Hudson Grove; Alderny Park on Kill von Kull, Staten Island; Highland Park Grove at Bay View, NJ; and the 50 acre Starin’s Glen Island, New Rochelle, NY. By 1880 Starin was transporting 3,000,000 New Yorkers seasonally to his pleasure resorts. On 25 June, the C RR of NJ operated a special excursion train to tour the just completed NY & Long Branch RR. President Grant helped to inaugurate the new line. His private car was attached to a train which traveled from Jersey City to Long Branch. The bridge built for this line over the Raritan River was called a “mammoth triumph of civil engineering.” The steamer W.W. Coit, in Long Island RR service between eastern Long Island and NYC was run into by the Stonington Line steamer Rhode Island in Hell Gate on 30 June and damaged. The Erie RR inaugurated a through train service over its own and connecting lines between New York and Chicago. George Pullman offered the Erie exclusive use of his equipment. They jumped at the opportunity and immediately launched an advertising and publicity campaign with this announcement: “From the first of November, 1875, the Pullman hotel and drawing room coaches... ...with new and increased improvements will hereafter run exclusively on the Erie - forming the first and only Pullman hotel coach line between Chicago and New York.” The William F. Havemeyer became the first fireboat owned by NYC. 1876 The USS Trenton, a wooden-hull screw propelled steam warship launched at the New York Navy Yard on 1 January. Named for the capital city of New Jersey, she was the first ship wired for electrical lighting. Construction of the Statue of Liberty began with the assistance of Gustave Eiffel. Newspaper publisher, Joseph Pulitzer helped raise the final $100,000 for the statue’s foundation and base. The P RR attempted to halt the Delaware & Bound Brook RR (which became the Reading RR) from crossing their Mercer & Somerset RR at Hopewell. The resulting skirmish which became known as the "Frog War" was quelled by the New Jersey Militia. The D&BB RR was allowed to finish their line which connected with the C RR of NJ. The monopoly of the United Companies was finally broken. The large ferryboat Maryland commenced carrying trains of the New York and New England RR, with their passengers aboard, from their terminal at 130th Street and the Harlem River to the P RR at Jersey City. This permitted a journey from Boston to Philadelphia and beyond without change of cars. Later freight cars were also transported. At the peak of these operations there were dozens of carfloat routes crisscrossing the NJ / NY port area. The sole remaining NY Harbor carfloat is operated by NY NJ Rail, LLC between Jersey City (Greenville) and Brooklyn. After being rebuffed by the US Navy, NJ inventor John Holland constructed a thirty-inch model of an undersea boat propelled by a spring and a clockwork mechanism. A demonstration was arranged at Coney Island for American members of the Fenian Society, the Irish Republican Brotherhood. When the tiny model did all the things Holland claimed it would, they set aside $6,000 from their skirmishing fund to build Boat No. 1, John Holland’s first working submarine. The Bergen Point to Port Richmond, SI, NY ferry began service on 15 July. The P RR operated the longest non-stop run - from Jersey City to Pittsburgh. A baggage car was fitted to reinforce the coal and water supply carried in the tender. The DL&W RR completed their first two-track tunnel under Bergen Hill. The C RR of NJ, in cooperation with the Philadelphia and Reading RR (Delaware & Bound Brook RR, later the Reading), began operating through trains between Jersey City and Philadelphia via Bound Brook. An interesting speed run was that of the transcontinental special which originated on the P RR at Jersey City and ended triumphantly at San Francisco. The trip was made in a record eighty-three hours and thirty-four minutes. Following a big decline in the price of coal, John Taylor Johnston, president (an office he held for 28 years) of the C RR of NJ resigned on 5 October. Washington Roebling, the eldest son of John A. Roebling who took over supervision of Brooklyn Bridge construction after his father’s death in 1869, became physically and emotionally ill during the construction. His condition was so precarious that he was unable to make the trip to see the bridge by train, his nervous state being such that he could not endure that much speed or vibration or the crowds of people. So it was arranged for him to go the whole way by canalboat and tug from Trenton where he resided. As he came up the bay and into the East River, he saw the bridge in October, 1876 for the first time in three years. The Great Bridge, by David McCullough On 11 November a C RR of NJ train ran overboard at their Terminal at Communipaw and an engine and two cars went into the drink. On 16 December the Exchange was one of 36 canalboats forming a tow which was made up in New Brunswick, on the Raritan River for New York. The tow started with the tug Bordentown, a large and powerful side-wheel steamer, in advance, followed by two smaller tugs, Harry and Willie, which were connected to the tow by four hawser lines. The Exchange was the starboard boat on the hawser tier, which was formed of four large canalboats. The tow started out at seven in the morning. The day was fine, but cold. During the forenoon the wind increased, and at ten o’clock it blew a violent gale. About that time the Blue Bonnet, a powerful propeller tug also belonging to the Pennsylvania RR, which had arrived at New Brunswick from New York after the Bordentown’s tow started, and had been sent down river to assist it, overtook the tow, and took the place of the Bordentown, being better able to keep the tow in the channel, because she presented less surface to the wind. The tow proceeded without accident till about eleven o’clock, when in turning at a bend in the river at a place called “Middle Grounds” one of the port hawsers broke, the tow sheered to port, and four of the boats and the tug Harry got aground on the north bank of the river. The tow was completely broken up. The tug Willie got separated from the Harry, and lay helpless in the river for want of a rudder, which she had lost a few days before. The wind and the tide carried the boats, which were still afloat, down stream, and the Exchange broke away from the other boats in the hawser tier, and drifted down against Willie, and received an injury by the collision on her starboard side at and below the water line, the planks being broken and forced in. She was laden with coal. By the assistance of men from the tugs she was listed to port by shoveling the coal to that side, and the injury was temporarily repaired with oakum and tallow, and covered over. A board was afterwards nailed over the place, and in this condition, so far as that injury was concerned, she remained till her arrival at South Amboy. Meanwhile the Bordentown had gone down the river to a place called “Crow’s Mills.” The Blue Bonnet took hold of the boats afloat as they drifted down, and reformed the tow, the Exchange being still the starboard boat in the hawser tier; and the tow came down tail first to Crow’s Mills without further accident. There they tied up at a pier, and waited for the flood tide, not thinking it prudent to attempt to go through the bridge below Crow’s Mills till the change in the tide. Except near New Brunswick, where the new ice had formed, about an inch or two in thickness, the tow had met with no obstruction from the ice up to this point; but from a short distance below Crow’s Mills to the bridge drift ice had become packed in so as to make the navigation with the tow difficult and dangerous. It was after dark when the tow left Crow’s Mills. The Exchange was still the starboard boat of the hawser tier. They started out with the Blue Bonnet and Willie lashed together, ahead, followed by the Bordentown and the tow, now consisting of thirty-two boats. Most of the boats were what are called “chunkers,” smaller than ordinary canalboats, and less strongly built. They had only got a few hundred yards from Crow’s Mills when they got into the ice, and the Blue Bonnet found it impossible to push through encumbered with the Willie by her side and the tow behind. The Bordentown therefore was cast off. The Willie was put astern of the Blue Bonnet, and these two tugs made their way through the ice to South Amboy, where the Willie was left. The objective of this movement was to get Willie out of the way. The Bordentown then undertook to draw the tow through the ice alone, but had not proceeded far when the ice and the tide turned her around to starboard, and drove her against the starboard side of the tow. She struck violently against the starboard side of the Exchange, and inflicted a serious injury to her near the stern and three or four feet from the bottom, partly forcing in the planks, and causing her to leak. The testimony of those who examined the Exchange after she was raised shows clearly that this injury, which was the principal cause of the leaking of the Exchange, was not caused by the ice, but by some blunt point or projection violently pressed and moved along her side, and it cannot be accounted for except as having been caused by this collision; and the evidence I think shows that it was caused by this collision with the Bordentown. The tow was rescued from this immediate peril by the Bordentown’s coming to anchor, and waiting for the return of the Blue Bonnet. After a while the Blue Bonnet returned, and she and the Bordentown succeeded in drawing the tow through the ice, and they arrived at South Amboy between eleven and twelve o’clock that night, without other accident, except that one or more of the hawsers broke while going through the ice. During this passage the Exchange leaked, and the libelant was frequently pumping. At South Amboy the tow was brought around to be moored at a pier, and to be held there by the Bordentown, the Blue Bonnet having cast off; and the tow swung round, heading towards New Brunswick, with the tide. The Bordentown had just got her lines on the pier and made fast, when the captain of the Blue Bonnet called to the captain of the Bordentown to know if he was all right. The captain of the Bordentown replied that he was. The Blue Bonnet then started to go up river again to bring off the boats left aground, the intention being to leave the tow at South Amboy for the night, and proceed to New York in the morning. The Blue Bonnet left without any inquiry being made by anybody connected with the tugs as to the condition of the Exchange or the other boats. About the time the Blue Bonnet left, the libelant, finding that his boat was taking water, hailed the Bordentown and called for help. He continued to pump, but the water gained on him. He shouted again to the Bordentown that his boat was sinking. They answered that they could not help him, and ordered him to cast off the lines, which was done, and they were fastened to the other boats in the tow. In twenty minutes to half an hour the Exchange sank. Various acts of negligence are alleged and relied on by the libelant, – that the tow was too large; that the hawser lines were insufficient; that the Willie had no rudder; that the Exchange was not fit to leave Crow’s Mills that night, with so much ice in the river; that she was especially unfit, in her injured condition, to be put on the starboard side of the hawser tier, ths most exposed place in the tow; that the Bordentown improperly attempted alone to draw the tow through the ice; that the injuries to the Exchange, from the effect of which she was lost, were caused by these and other acts of negligence in the management of the tow, and not by the ice; and that the Blue Bonnet was allowed to leave, and no inquiry made as to the condition of the tow, nor any attempt made to save the Exchange by beaching her. The decree was for the libelant, with costs, and reference to compute damages. Federal Case Nos. 5,448a and 5,448b, Gilooley v. Pennsylvania Railroad Co., District Court, S.D. New York, March 26, 1879. (Federal Case No. 5,448b details the circumstances and conditions affecting the value of the claimed losses of the boat, contents of the cabin, and the cargo. As the saying goes, they made a Federal Case out of it!) In a later case in Admiralty, again involving the Bordentown, Judge J. Brown writes: The libel in this case was filed to recover damages for the loss of the canalboat J. H. Gillingham, with a cargo of 214 tons of coal. She was one of a fleet of 18 boats, in five tiers, in tow of the Bordentown, from New Brunswick to the Stakes, near Jersey City, by way of the Raritan River and Kill Van Kull. She was in the head tier, the second boat from the starboard side. The tow was considerably belated, and passed New Brighton, in leaving the Kills, about half-past 6, on March 27, 1877. On coming out into the bay she encountered an ebb tide, and shortly afterwards a high wind from the north-west, which made the water considerably rough, so as to break over the bows of the head tier, and shortly before arriving at Jersey City the Gillingham sank, bows first, from filling with water. Without entering into the details of the testimony the conclusions to which I have come are as follows: 1. The weight of evidence does not show that the time of passing New Brighton and coming out into the bay there was any such high wind of sign of rough weather as should charge the Bordentown with negligence of carelessness in proceeding on her way, but that the high wind arose suddenly, and increased rapidly some time after she had got out into the bay, being at 9pm 23 miles per hour. 2. The progress of the Bordentown was slow, –only about one mile an hour; and the evidence does not satisfy me that after the high north-west wind arose there was anything she could have done better than to keep her course as she did. 3. The Gillingham was an old boat; not stout or staunch, but weakened from age, and loaded within 15 to 18 inches of the water’s edge, –several inches deeper than the other boats. 4. Prior to reaching Perth Amboy, she had been in the second tier. Upon some other boats being there left behind she was placed by those having charge of the tow in the head tier, against the protest of the libelant, but without any express notice that he regarded her as unfit to encounter the hazards of a trip across the bay in the head tier, or any objection to going on in that position. 5. The captain of the Bordentown knew that she was an old and comparatively weak boat. 6. The immediate cause of her sinking was the chafing of the boats against each other in the rough water, starting and lifting her sheer-plank, causing her to leak and take in water, which came over her bows and on her decks faster than she could be kept clear by her pumps. 7. No other boat was injured among the 18 in tow of the Bordentown, and none of the 12 others that were in tow of the tug Cahill, which followed shortly behind, and arrived at the same station an hour later. From these principal facts, and others not necessary to be enumerated, I find that the defendants, knowing that she was an old and weak boat and more deeply laden than the others, in transferring the Gillingham from the second to the head tier of boats, did not act with that reasonable and ordinary care which a prudent man exercises for the preservation of his own property, and which they were bound to bestow upon the libelant’s boat, and were therefore chargeable with negligence in so doing. ...It is an ancient practice of admiralty to scrutinize closely claims resting on the loss of old or weak vessels. ...the owner of a barge, unfit for the trip or for the position assigned her on the tow, must be held required to show at least that he dissented to proceeding upon the voyage, in order to absolve him from his share of the responsibility in case of subsequent loss. Nor can it be suffered that old barges be run until they sink, and the whole loss be then charged upon the tug. Judgment may be entered for the libelant for one-half his damages, with costs with a reference to compute the amount. The BORDENTOWN, etc., District Court, S. D. New York, April 14, 1883. The C RR of NJ built the largest petroleum transfer and storage facilities in the United States at Jersey City. The all-rail “Air Line” route from NYC to Boston was completed. The DL&W RR completed conversion to standard gauge. The Lehigh and Wilkes Barre Coal Company purchased the Port Johnston Coal Docks from the C RR of NJ. Within months the new owner cut the wages of the workers in a effort to save money. The dock workers walked off the job and the first full scale strike occurred. The owner fired all the workers and brought in German immigrants from NYC. They quit after one day and the strike was settled in a little over a month. 1877 The C RR of NJ filed for receivership on 13 February. They were involved in bankruptcy reorganization for much of the next decade. On 17 March Belgian Red Star steamer Rusland was blown ashore south of Staten Island and plowed into the sunken wreck of the Dutch freighter Adonis (sunk in 1859). Rusland was a total loss, but all 204 aboard were saved by Life Savers and citizens ashore. After raising freight rates in the east, four major lines - the P RR, the New York Central & Hudson River RR, the Erie Railroad and the B&O RR - set up a rate control pool, and then, to increase profits, decided to cut their workers’ pay by ten percent. Other companies, representing over half of the total mileage in the country, agreed to take the same action. The stage was set for the first national strike. The Great National RR Strike grew into the largest mass labor action in American history and was accompanied by monumental violence. "The Great Upheaval" was also the worst in the history of the state of New Jersey. A new ferry service commenced between Exchange Place (formerly known as Paulus Hook), Jersey City and the foot of Fulton Street, Brooklyn. The P RR completed the laying of steel rail on their Jersey City to Pittsburgh main line. On 27 November the steamer C.H. Northam burned to the waters edge at her East River pier. 1878 The boiler of the steamer William E. Cheney exploded in North River on 28 January. On 31 January the schooner Nellie Bloomfield bound for Greenwich, CT with a cargo of brick was wrecked off City Island, NY. On 3 February a fire at the Communipaw Terminal of the C RR of NJ destroyed the Empire Express Co.’s building and several empty freight cars. The brig Carrie Winslow, inbound from Montevideo with a cargo of wool and hides was wrecked in NY Bay on 11 February. On 23 February, the ferryboat James Fisk, Jr. was crossing from the Erie RR Pavonia, NJ terminal, when off West 13th Street, North River, she collided with the Staten Island - NY ferryboat Castleton, both crossing without passengers. Each boat lost one man and each was partially wrecked. The Fisk survived to become the Passaic and later the Broadway. New Jersey engineer and inventor, John Holland, had his first working submarine called Boat No. 1 built in New York. The strange looking craft was only fourteen feet long and tapered to a point at both ends. Looking like a seagoing tank, it was hauled to the Passaic River on a wagon pulled by sixteen stallions borrowed from a locomotive works. (These would have been one of the teams used to haul completed steam locomotives through the streets of Paterson from the works to the nearest railhead.) The launching of Boat No. 1 into the river proved challenging and with no one aboard it sank slowly out of sight - the drain plugs had not been screwed in... Once raised, pumped out and refloated, however, the boat performed passably. Holland repeated his dive several times. The Fenians and onlookers were duly impressed. The experimental craft, having served her purpose, was carefully stripped of all usable equipment and the shell scuttled near Falls Bridge. This vessel was later raised and in now on display in the Paterson Museum, which, interestingly, is housed in the former Rogers Locomotive Works. On 1 June William Baxter’s steam canal boat (US Patent #154,978) arrived at Newark from Washington, Warren County and proceeded to Jersey City to discharge her cargo. Newark Daily Advertiser, 1 June 1878; US Patent Office, Improvement in Steam Canal-Boats, Patent #151978 The first sections of the Third Avenue El opened in Manhattan with small steam locomotives pulling the trains. The side-wheel summer excursion steamboat, Grand Republic, was built in Brooklyn for the Knockerbocker Steamboat Company. She was a sister ship to the ill-fated General Slocum and was normally used on the summer Rockaway run. 1879 On 14 January the Wall Street Annex ferry George T. Oliphant ran into the Grand Street ferry Warren off Broome Street; Oliphant’s bow was broken and she sank, but her 70 passengers were removed. The C RR of NJ gained control of both the NJ Southern and the NY & Long Branch RRs and with them the Sandy Hook Route steamboats from the south shore of Raritan Bay to NYC. The Sandy Hook Route became a popular excursion route. Meals were served on board – broiled sirloin steak for $1.25 and a lobster dinner for $1.50 – and a Sandy Hook or Blue Comet cocktail could be had for 35¢! A steamboat pier was built at Atlantic Highlands. Connecting C RR of NJ steamboats began using this pier in 1883. The Tidewater Oil Co. built a pipeline from their oil wells near Titusville, PA to Williamsport. The C RR of NJ then carried their oil in tank cars to the Tidewater refinery in Bayonne. The P RR became the first railroad at New Jersey / New York harbor to establish a marine department when it bought out National Storage, the firm which had been handling their lighterage. On 24 May the USS Constitution, the world’s oldest floating commissioned naval vessel, “Arrived home in New York.” She later sailed the Atlantic from West Indies to Nova Scotia as a training ship for apprentices until 1881 when her career on the high seas ended. Constitution was launched at Boston on 21 October 1797 and is truly a national ship. USS Constitution History Timeline The first recorded C RR of NJ sponsored employee outing utilized the C RR steamboat Kill von Kull to take railroad families from Jersey City Terminal to Coney Island for the day. The C RR of NJ and the B&O RR attempted to have Washington Street extended south on a bridge over the Morris Canal property. The maneuver was blocked by the combined efforts of the Canal Co., the Lehigh Valley RR and the Matthiessen & Weicher Sugar Refinery. Thomas Edison, one of the most prolific inventors in history, invented and demonstrated the first commercially practical incandescent light bulb in December. 1880 C RR of NJ locomotive #507 set a world speed record running the 89.4 miles between Jersey City and Philadelphia in 98 minutes. The Jersey City and Communipaw RR (and entity of the C RR of NJ) tried to get Morris Canal lands condemned to build a railway connection from the steel works at the foot of Warren Street to the C RR Depot in Communipaw and were thwarted. They next proposed to build a 2,150-foot-long tunnel under the canal basin, but did not. A blow-out during the construction of the Hudson & Manhattan rail tunnel in Jersey City killed 20 workers and delayed completion of the project for 26 years. On 23 June the steamship City of New York burned with her cargo and sank in the East River. The 612-ton, 230-foot long, side paddle-wheel steamer Sewanhaka, which plied between Peck Slip in NYC and Glen Cove and Sea Cliff, Long Island, burned to her keel on 28 June in the East River off Ward’s Island. Crowded with some 300 homeward bound commuters, Captain Charles D. Smith guided the stricken vessel and beached her broadside at Sunken Meadows so passengers could jump off in relative safety, in spite of being frightfully burned himself. The Staten Island Rapid Transit was incorporated and leased the Staten Island Railway in 1884. The NJ Southern RR came under the control of the C RR of NJ. The canalboat Mary McConkey made three round trips in this year between Steelton, PA and Rouse’s Point, NY, via five canals, and passing through NY Harbor. Steel rails were transported north and iron ore south on this nearly 1,000 mile round trip. The Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York was incorporated on 17 December, to develop and install a central generating station. The population of Jersey City reached 120,000, and immigrants represented most of the growth. 1881 Five out of a tow of six boats that left NY on 20 January for South Amboy, went down off Sandy Hook two days later. Only one boat in the tow reached Raritan Bay. Two men were missing from the towboat Heath and two each from the Gardner and the G. Brothers. On 17 February the British ship Star of India, bound for London, was damaged by ice in the East River and went ashore near Bedloe’s Island. On 1 March: the German bark Auguste, with a cargo of sugar went ashore on Romer Shoals, Lower Bay, NY; The schooner Carrie S. Webb inbound with a cargo of sugar and molasses sank alongside Auguste and was wrecked The steam tug G.H. Lapham collided with the steam tug Amos Barstow in the East River on 2 March. Lapham was cut in two and sank. On 3 March the Italian bark Ajace, inbound from Antwerp, was wrecked on Rockaway Shoals (Coney Island) and was a total loss, including 13 of 14 crew members. The British steamer Titania collided in the Narrows with the bark Hypatia on 19 April. The Standard Oil Co. constructed a 315 mile pipeline from Olean, NY to Bayonne, NJ to move crude oil to tidewater and refineries. It was 6" in diameter and was laid to a depth of 18 inches. After many delays, in May NJ inventor and engineer, John Holland, launched his second submarine, the Fenian Ram into the Hudson River. The Fenians - the Irish patriots - had come up with more money for a larger boat “suitable for use in war.” It had been built at the Delamater Iron Works in NYC. It was thirty-one feet long; powered by a two cylinder Brayton internal combustion engine; had a bow torpedo tube operated by compressed air; and could fire a projectile when submerged or on the surface. She underwent her first trials near Jersey City in June and dove to a depth of fourteen feet. Holland surfaced and returned to the dock to find a large cheering crowd. The next day, on a bet, he took the Ram down and kept her down for two and a half hours. She was later tested in the waters of New York Harbor, passing beneath ships and strings of barges, and at one point descending to a depth of forth feet. The air gun was successfully fired several times, using projectiles designed by Captain John Ericsson, who had built the Monitor. The P RR invented the "limited" train. The Pennsylvania Limited operated between Jersey City & Chicago on a schedule of 26 hours and 40 minutes. It was the world's first through deluxe express train. It was the first train to carry a diner and to introduce the vestibule. It later became the first train in the world to be illuminated by electricity. The Iron Steamboat Co. began offering frequent seasonal day trips from points in Manhattan to Coney Island with a fleet of brand new (mostly wooden) vessels. They also operated to Long Branch, NJ in some years. The Pennsylvania RR acquired the National Storage Co., an oil storage facility, in the Black Tom Island area of what is now the south east corner of Liberty State Park. The P RR also started the National Docks RR Co. to build a line from Bergen Cut (now called Journal Square), down to the National Storage plant. The C RR of NJ tried to oppose this as it would mean a loss of traffic for them, but they lost out. Two years later the National Docks RR opened and the P RR sold a half interest to the LV RR which wanted it to reach their Morris Canal Big Basin terminal. One pier on Black Tom Island had been completed; a double track trestle led over the tidal flats to the pier; and a warehouse was completed on the pier utilizing recycled portions of Machinery Hall which was at the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876. A new reinforced concrete grain elevator was built in 1913 and was used into the 1950s, primarily to deliver grain to Schaeffer’s Brewery in Williamsburg. The P RR apparently never did serve National Storage at Black Tom, but the LV RR did until retirement of its facilities in 1966. Today a remnant of the Black Tom track serves the Daily News printing plant at the south end of Liberty State Park. The schooner Commander, inbound from Baltimore with a cargo of coal, sank at Sandy Hook on 30 December. 1882 The West Side line of the Hudson River Railroad crossed Spuyten Duyvil Creek on a draw bridge. A fatal wreck occurred at this point on 13 January when the Atlantic Express stopped and was rear-ended by a local train, telescoping the last two Palace cars. Stoves and lamps were upset and started a fire. The schooner Thomas W.H. White, inbound from Virginia with a cargo of wood went ashore at Sandy Hook on 12 April. The first P RR passenger car to be illuminated by electricity was put into service and they also began lounge car service. USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” spent the better part of this year at the NY Navy Yard and was then towed to Portsmouth, NH Navy Yard to serve as a receiving ship. A barracks was built on top of the hull and she was towed to Boston. The barracks remained until she was extensively restored in 1907. Thomas A. Edison’s first electric power generating system, the Pearl Street Station in NYC, went into operation on 4 September. The schooner Ada Taylor, of Jersey City, on a pleasure trip, grounded on Sandy Hook Point on 15 October and was a total loss. On 21 October, the City of Worcester, a new iron steamboat of the Norwich and Worcester Line, bound to New London, was on her way up the East River in dense fog, at night, when she “struck on a reef that makes out from the New York shore called ‘Governor’s Table’ where she remained about three hours in a very perilous position, after which she was assisted to a vacant dock in a leaking condition.” Also, the sloop Hannah Ann, with a cargo of hickory wood, went on the rocks at Hell Gate and was a total loss. The inbound steamer Salier of Bremen, Germany, went ashore at Sandy Hook on 11 December, but all 341 on board were saved. An excellent, detailed description of the wood canalboat construction industry in the NY Harbor area was published by the US Census Bureau: Hall, Henry, Report on the Ship Building Industry of the US, Washington, DC, US Bureau of the Census, 1882. 1883 On 16 February, the steamer City of Richmond, inbound to NYC went ashore at Sandy Hook. All 425 aboard were saved. The C RR of NJ leased all of its railroads to the Reading. Shortly thereafter, the Reading itself became insolvent. The Daft Electric Light Co., located in Greenville (now a section of Jersey City), conducted experiments on the successful and commercial application of electricity to motors, including those powering street cars. He built the first successful standard gauge electric locomotive in the US, the Ampere, for the Saratoga and Mt. McGregor RR. Leo Daft is buried in a cemetery in North Arlington, NJ. The Tidewater Oil Co. pipeline was completed by this year from Corryville, PA through Warren County to Hampton, NJ and ultimately to Bayonne. The Brooklyn Bridge opened on 24 May. Six days later panic on the bridge caused 12 pedestrians to be trampled to death. Michael Moran, the head of Moran Towing was asked to serve as commodore of the tugboat division for the ship parade in NY Harbor celebrating the centennial of the British evacuation during the Revolutionary War. After the parade, Michael continued to use the title “Commodore.” On 30 August a special family excursion up the Hudson to West Point and Newburgh, NY was sponsored by the Neptune Steam (Fire) Engine Co., No. 2, of Asbury Park. Their special train, which began at 6:22 am at Point Pleasant, ran north making a dozen local stops on the NY & Long Branch RR, to Sandy Hook, where they transferred to either the Iron Steamboat Taurus or Cygnus. The all-day excursion fare was $1.75 for adults and $1 for children. On a dark night a group of disgruntled Fenians, using a pass forged with John Holland’s signature, stole the Fenian Ram from her New Jersey mooring place, along with a smaller, 16-foot experimental craft built in Jersey City the prior year, and towed them up Long Island Sound to New Haven, CT. The smaller boat sank in 110 feet of water during the passage, but the Ram finally reached New Haven. There the amateur submariner Fenians hauled the Ram out of the water and abandoned her. Holland and Fenians parted ways. Holland went to work for the Pneumatic Gun Company in New York and began talking about submarines - so persuasively that he managed to enlist the help of his employers in setting up the Nautilus Submarine Boat Company. The King of Italy sent four white camels for presentation to John W. Garratt, President of the B&O RR. They were transported south from NYC in 1883 on a Baltimore Line steam propeller and attracted considerable attention along the D&R Canal. Daily True American, October 1,1883. On 18 November the railroads of the US created four broad longitudinal zones across the US and adopted standard time. A great benefit was increased safety for railroad operations. The ferry Garden City caught fire on 13 December as she left her berth at James Slip for Long Island City. Thirty passengers and ferry hands were saved but four horses were burned. After this year the “new” immigration brought people to the US mostly from southern and eastern Europe, from Poland, Italy, Hungary, Greece and elsewhere. 1884 The West Shore RR Weehawken to 42nd Street ferry commenced operation on 1 January. Construction was begun on the first elevated cable road in the United States, to span the two miles from Hoboken Ferry to Jersey City Heights by the North Hudson Railway Co. Passenger service was begun in January 1886. By the end of 1892 electric trolleys were operating from the Hoboken Ferry to the Hudson County Courthouse. On 19 April the Guion Liner Oregon (which later became Cunard), went ashore on Sandy Hook – the 713 on board were saved. Thomas A. Edison introduced the central generation of electric power which soon propelled New Jersey into a major manufacturing state. The Elephant Hotel opened as Coney Island’s first amusement. The Fall River Line paddle steamer Pilgrim hit an uncharted rock off Blackwell’s (now Welfare) Island and cut a 125-foot gash in her bottom. She made the dock unaided, being the first American steamship to be double-hulled, with transverse bulkheads. The Baltimore & Ohio RR took control of the Staten Island Rapid Transit RR Co. and their ferry to Manhattan on 31 July. The railroad was quickly extended north from Clifton to Tompkinsville, and to Elm Park along the north shore in 1886. At St. George, the tip of the island closest to Manhattan, the SIRT built a combined railroad and ferry terminal consolidating all service there on 8 March 1886. The B&O took advantage of its control of the SIRT to bring the ferries of another of its subsidiaries, the C RR of NJ, into the Whitehall Street terminal. This arrangement, although it involved a longer voyage than the C RR’s direct crossing, had the advantage of direct access by covered passageway to the four Manhattan elevated lines which terminated there. Thus passengers from B&O trains arriving at the C RR’s Jersey City Terminal might have access to midtown Manhattan without exposure to the elements. The state of NJ imposed additional taxes on railroads, costing the C RR of NJ $200,000 more annually. An earthquake of 7 intensity on 10 August was centered around Jamaica, NY and was felt strongly in NYC. The view “Making up a tow at the Battery” appeared in the 27 September 1884 issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. The towboat Cayuga, pictured, was built in NYC in 1849. One Broadway, a neoclassical building, at Bowling Green, NYC was completed. George Washington’s even earlier revolutionary headquarters was an even earlier occupant of the site. It was purchased in 1920 by the International Mercantile Marine Company, known eventually as the United States Line. The new owners incorporated many marine symbols in a 1921 facade update. The grand entryway is surrounded by shells and sea icons, and the second floor windows alternate with colorful Venetian mosaic shields of great port cities. There are two side doors depicting “First Class” and “Cabin Class” entrances. Inside, two gigantic murals depict shipping lanes and a compass dominates the marble floor. The booking room is modeled after an 18th century ballroom. It is a regal setting with columns and fanciful iron mezzanine railings at either end and four impressive chandeliers. The current tenant, CitiBank, uses it as its banking floor. 1885 On 24 January the People’s Line side-wheel steamer St. John, the night boat to Albany, was destroyed by fire at her winter quarters at Canal Street. In this year both the fully rigged cargo ship Wavertree and the steel hull schooner, Pioneer, were launched. Both ships are now in the South Street Seaport, NYC, vessel collection, the largest privately owned fleet of historic ships in the country. Other vessels in their fleet are: Peking, a 1911 four masted barque; Lettie G. Howard, an 1893 schooner; Ambrose, a 1908 lightship; Helen McAllister, a 1900 tugboat; W.O. Decker, a 1930 tugboat; and Marion M., a 1932 chandelry lighter. On 7 September a flotilla of 400 vessels (carrying an estimated 50,000 people) assembled off Sandy Hook to witness the America’s Cup Race between the Genesta and the Puritan. In this magnificent marine spectacle were a number of steam vessels that often made the NY to NJ run. Included were the Cygnus, Columbia, Empire State, Grand Republic, Kill Von Kull, and Taurus. Newspapers on the following day reported: “The big excursion steamboat Columbia puffed up to the (West 23rd Street) wharf about half past seven A.M. and before the ropes were made fast to the posts, half a thousand young men and girls clambered on board. The steamer left the wharf a half an hour later than the time announced. Nevertheless there were 500 people (still) waiting to get on board, all of whom rushed down to the Tenth Street Wharf, the next and last landing place of the boat. When the Columbia got there, the amateur yachtsmen pushed each other on board in a reckless was, but fortunately no one was spilled overboard.” “...the excursion boats were black with people. On the Old Dominion steamer Richmond crowds even swarmed in the rigging; the steamboat Elm City brought a large contingent from New Haven, and the Empire City, which was in her prime ‘when the world was fresh and golden,’ had come to the tryst with a large gathering from Boston. Then the Sirius was there and so were her sister boats, the Cygnus and Cepheus, and the Columbia and the Grand Republic with their three decks laden, and the Eliza Hancox, and the Sylvan Grove, and the Kill Von Kull, and in fact everything with steam power that could float. And in what gay plumage they had decked themselves! From rail to masthead they were in bunting. Brilliant beyond description was the spectacle...” Moss, George H., Jr. Steamboat to the Shore: A Pictorial History of the Steamboat Era in Monmouth County, NJ The steamship Empire State went aground on Sandy Hook on 9 September with no loss of 560 passengers and little damage. On October 10th one of the worst hazards to navigation at Hell Gate, Flood Rock, was blown up. Four miles of tunnels were mined inside the rock and loaded with explosives. Nine acres of solid rock were demolished. The explosion was heard forty miles away at West Point. The channel width was doubled to 1,200 feet and the depth increased to 26 feet. Between 1852 and 1918 the Federal government spent over $6.5 million on the East River project, mostly blasting at the treacherous Hell Gate. The B&O RR acquired control of the Staten Island Rapid Transit in November. 1886 The Nautilus Submarine Boat Company was reinforced by additional backers brought in by Lieutenant Edward Zalinski, an artillery officer well known as an inventor of military devices and a friend of John Holland. In this year, at Fort Lafayette, near New York City, where Zalinski was stationed, Holland proceeded to build his third submarine. The Zalinski Boat as it came to be known was about 40 feet long, powered by a second hand Brayton engine, and armed with Zalinski’s new “dynamite gun,” which by compressed air hurled a heavy charge of dynamite a considerable distance. However, disaster struck: the ways collapsed just as the boat started toward the water. She was almost a complete loss. The accident set back the development of the submarine at least ten years because it was that long before Holland was able to secure backing to construct another boat. The completed Statue of Liberty was unveiled by President Grover Cleveland. It was the tallest structure in NYC at the time. Sculptor Fredric-Auguste Bartholdi modeled her after the goddess Libertus, but instead of a sword, she grasps the light of enlightenment in her right hand. For the interior framing Bartholdi consulted Gustave Eiffel, and in fact, it is very suggestive of the Eiffel Tower. The 151-foot statue was pre-assembled in Paris and then broken down into 300 pieces, packed into 214 crates, and shipped to NY Harbor, where it was re-erected atop the 10-story stone base on the site the sculptor chose - Bedloes Island. The original name of the statue given by the sculptor was “Liberty Enlightening the World.” It was America’s tallest lighthouse and was the first to be powered by electricity. The statue later became the outstanding logo for the C RR of NJ and Jersey Central Lines (and Liberty Historic Railway). B&O RR began service between Washington, DC and Jersey City utilizing the Reading into NJ and the C RR of NJ east of Bound Brook. The Hoboken Elevated, with its spectacular trestle, initially opened as a cable railway from the Hoboken Ferry to Jersey City Heights. A group of artists from Century Magazine chartered a canalboat in NY Harbor and fitted it out with luxurious furniture as it was to be their gallery and home for several weeks. They cruised the Hudson River, Lake Champlain and the Delaware & Raritan Canal. Smith, F. Hopkinson and J.B. Millet, “Snubbin’ Thro’ Jersey,” The Century Magazine. Part I: Vol. 34, No. 4, August 1887, and Part II, Vol. 34, No. 5, September 1887 1887 The Interstate Commerce Commission Act was signed into law on 4 February. It established the ICC as an independent agency of the US government to oversee increasingly fractious modes of transport including the motorcoach industry. Olympic (amusement) Park, on the border between Irvington and Maplewood, NJ opened to the public. It was heavily utilized by the urban residents of Newark and vicinity and was readily accessed by the streetcars operating on nearby Springfield Avenue via the 43rd Street loop. It gave the trolley company increased ridership on Summer weekends and in the evenings. Trolley service was converted to All-Service Vehicles on 27 June 1937. Olympic Park closed in 1965. The P RR began operating their Pennsylvania Limited, a Pullman train from Exchange Place, Jersey City to Chicago. The C RR of NJ broke their lease with the Reading RR and became independent. Through coal trains between Pennsylvania and Elizabethport or Jersey City began. A coal trans-shipping pier was built by North River Coal and Wharf Co. at the Jersey City waterfront on land leased to it by the C RR of NJ. The Erie RR was the first to transport California fresh fruit to the New York market. A Central Pacific carload of deciduous fruit from Vaccaville, CA arrived at the Erie’s Jersey City Terminal on 28 June. The Tidewater Pipe Co. completed their 6" crude oil pipeline from Titusville, PA to Bayonne, NJ. It was the longest pipeline built to date. C RR of NJ began using Woodruff Parlor Cars on trains. The South Brooklyn RR and Terminal Co. was incorporated on 30 September to build from the end of the Brooklyn, Bath, and West End RR (West End Line) at 38th Street and 9th Avenue northwest to the foot of 38th Street. It was leased to the BB&WE, allowing BB&WE trains to run to the 39th Street Ferry. The Prospect Park and South Brooklyn RR connected the Prospect Park and Coney Island Railroad (Culver Line) to the South Brooklyn RR in 1890. The company was reorganized as the South Brooklyn Railway on 13 January 1890. The South Brooklyn Ry (SBRy) was leased to the Brooklyn Heights RR on 1 July 1903, but on 28 February 1907 it began operating independently, and leased the Prospect Park and Coney Island RR, which included the Prospect Park and South Brooklyn RR, giving it a line to Coney Island. The SBRy, along with other non-rapid transit properties of the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corp. were transferred to the NYC Board of Transportation in 1940 and to NYC Transit Authority in 1953. The SBRy currently provides one of only two track connections between the NYC Subway system and the rest of the American rail network. During October the tug American Eagle was damaged when she collided with the steamer George W. Beale in NY Harbor. The fare for the Staten Island Ferry was established at 5¢ and lasted until 1972. One of the first battery-operated street car lines was developed by the Jersey City and Bergen Railway. Elevators and a viaduct to Eldorado Park were constructed by the North Hudson County Railway Co. at Weehawken to allow ferry passengers to access the railway. On 24 December the schooner George Temple of Mystic, CT went ashore on Romer Shoals; 8 saved. 1888 The legendary Blizzard of ‘88 struck on 11 March and especially victimized the railroads. The C RR of NJ fared better than rivals to the north or west of the Watchung Mountains, where 40 to 50 mile-per-hour winds piled snows to second floor windows and filled every cut. The trains arrived at Jersey City with passengers jammed in aisles like giant upright sardines. But the ferry ride was scary. The craft was buffeted by winds, waves and ice. It took an eternity, but she made it. The Pennsy’s Chicago Limited stalled in the Jersey meadows, and other trains derailed in the deep snow of the Bergen Cut. The worst situation was with the Lackawanna (a/k/a DL&W) with a dozen trains stalled between Orange and South Orange. In three separate tragedies multiple engined drift breaking trains on the LV, C RR of NJ and M&E (DL&W) railroads were wrecked, killing five and injuring several others. Without trains, mobs of passengers accumulated in stations and terminals. The Erie moved sleeping cars into their Jersey City Terminal for stranded women. During the blizzard of 11-12 March, “the colossus of storms,” not a vessel entered or left the Port of New York. Thirteen vessels were blown ashore along the NJ coast near Sandy Hook, sunk or damaged; twenty in NY Harbor and along the NY coast; six vessels were identified, abandoned at sea; seven nameless derelicts were sighted after the storm; nine Pilot boats were lost; and seventeen pilots perished. On 28 March the North German Lloyd steamer Saale bound fro Bremen, went ashore at Swash Channel, a mile and a half from Sandy Hook Station – all saved. A C RR of NJ promotion to get more customers in their suburban territory by advertising and reducing fares resulted in an increase of 796,814 riders annually. The B&O RR / Staten Island Rapid Transit opened their new bridge over Arthur Kill to give them a connection to the National RR system. At St. George they provided carfloat service to all points in the NJ / NY Harbor. The Hoboken Ferry was the first line to use screw propellers. The ferryboat Bergen, the first single shaft, double end, screw propelled ferry in the world, was delivered to the Hoboken Ferry Co., a subsidiary of the DL&W RR (it was scrapped in 1953). The US Navy held open design competitions for submarines in this year and in 1889. John Holland won both over some of the leading submarine designers of the day, but no contracts followed. The P RR Jersey City train shed, spanning 252 feet, was completed. It was the largest steel arch shed built in New Jersey. The New Depot (or terminal) of the C RR of NJ at Jersey City was described. in the 6 October issue of Engineering News, Vol. 20, p. 264-65 The Edgewater (Undercliff) to 125th Street, NYC ferry was opened by the Hudson River Ry and Ferry Co. on 13 December. The LV completed a new main line from So. Plainfield to Roselle. LV freight trains then used the C RR of NJ from Roselle to LV docks at the Big Morris Canal Basin in Jersey City. LV passenger trains continued to use the P RR Exchange Place Terminal in Jersey City via Metuchen. 1889 The 260-foot steamer, Sandy Hook, was built for the C RR of NJ for express passenger service between Cedar Street, Manhattan and Atlantic Highlands, NJ. The ferry Kill Van Kull burned at Elizabethport on 3 March. The current C RR of NJ terminal in Jersey City, designed by Peabody & Sterns, was completed and opened, and the four track main line was completed to Bound Brook. A great celebration was held at NY Harbor on 29 April marking the centennial of George Washington’s inauguration in the city. A large fleet of vessels, awaiting the arrival of President Benjamin Harrison, assembled on the East River south of the Brooklyn Bridge. With capital provided by the B&O RR, the Staten Island Rapid Transit opened its first connection with the mainland rail network on 13 June over the first bridge over the Arthur Kill waterway. The LV completed their own railroad line between Roselle and Jersey City withdrawing from use of the C RR of NJ. The C RR of NJ established a new ferry route between Bergen Point and Coney Island for the benefit of persons residing along their road. A new office building was being erected for the C RR of NJ on West Street, NYC. Ellis Island was designated an immigration station. On 26 December the schooner David Crowell capsized at Hell Gate. 1890 William and Andrew Fletcher acquired waterfront property in the northern part of Hoboken which had previously been known as Elysian Fields, a resort developed by the Stevens family for New Yorkers. The new site provided larger facilities for their North River Iron Works which designed and built high quality steam engines. It also allowed their W. & A. Fletcher Co. to take on more extensive contracts. Entire vessels – except for the hulls – were fabricated and constructed in their Hoboken yards, including wooden steamers, tugs, and ferries. Fletcher was best known for its production of river and coastal steamboats, including the elegant, 440-foot Priscilla, a side-wheeler created in 1893 for the Fall River Line, know as the Queen of Long Island Sound. She was decorated with ornate paneling and a grand staircase connected her five-deck superstructure. For 43 years Priscilla’s Indo-Moorish decor and working fireplaces signified luxurious passage for travelers between NY and Boston. The steamer Ann Jane Laughlin of NY caught fire; was adrift; and was a total loss (with six saved) in Sandy Hook Bay on 14 April. Royal Blue Line trains, a cooperative arrangement between the C RR of NJ, Reading and B&O Railroads inaugurated service between Jersey City and Washington. The C RR of NJ began the finest short Sunday excursions – from Jersey City to Nolan’s Point on Lake Hopatcong. As many as 60,000 people took the recreational trips every summer! Gustav Kobbe wrote a guidebook to the C RR of NJ. In it he described the amenities at Lake Hopatcong: “the railroad has laid out excursion grounds with dancing pavilions, flying horses and swings, steam launch tours of the lake are available for 25¢ and boat rentals at 25¢ an hour.” He also touted the Hurd (iron) Mine, whose shaft then ran 3,800 feet into the mountain, to a depth of 1,800 feet. C RR of NJ business car Atlas was the first railroad car in the United States to be fitted with electric lights, generator and regulator. Wells Fargo constructed a stable and storage facility for their horses and city carts at 299 Pavonia Avenue, Jersey City. In 1982 the building became a 31 unit condominium. The 384-foot World Building was completed in Manhattan and was the tallest structure in NYC until 1899. It was the first building to surpass the 284-foot spire of Trinity Church. On 6 October the schooner Scotia of New London was a total loss off Sandy Hook; 10 saved. 1891 The New Yorker, a fireboat commissioned on 1 February with a pumping capacity of 16,000 gpm, was the most powerful fireboat of her era and one of the first to be especially built for firefighting. The bark Mascotta was wrecked in a collision in NY Harbor on 18 February. On 20 February the steamer James Rumsey sank in NY Harbor. Also see entry under 4 November 1853. The City of Richmond of the NY & Hartford Steamship Co., burned at her NYC wharf on 5 March. Her remains were rebuilt and renamed William C. Edgerton, later renamed Glen Island. On 13 March the Italian bark Umberto I, inbound from Argentina with a cargo of wool and hides ran onto Romer Shoals; 12 saved; $112,000 loss. The new C RR of NJ office building at 143 Liberty Street at West Street, NYC opened. It was constructed of red granite and light colored brick. Additional stories were later added, with a restaurant on the top floor, giving it a total of ten stories. This building also served as the NYC office for several other anthracite railroads, including the Reading and the LV RR. It was removed for the construction of the World Trade Center complex. The first scheduled mile-a-minute passenger train in the US operated across New Jersey on the Philadelphia & Reading RR. Their locomotive #206 also pulled the first train to reach a certified speed of 90mph between Philadelphia and Jersey City. New Jersey established the Commission of Public Roads and became the first state to grant funds for the construction of public roads. The Pennsylvania RR ferryboat Cincinnati was built at Elizabethport, NJ and was the first double-decked, screw-propelled ferry in NY Harbor. On 14 April a LV RR locomotive crossed over the Morris Canal on a bridge near Pacific Avenue, Jersey City. Unfortunately the bridge had not been properly closed and the bridge and the locomotive were dumped into the canal together. The Evening Journal, Jersey City, 14 April 1891 Colonel Frank N. Barksdale, head of the P RR's advertising department invented the Limited booklet. His Pennsylvania Limited booklet documented the services of the P RR's fastest train beginning with the Hudson River ferry and ending with a view of the observation platform, with illustrations by Joseph Fleming, Charles Howard Johnson, and Charles Dana Gibson. It was referred to as "one of the cleverest little booklets devoted to advertising." For many years the C RR of NJ charged canalboat captains wharfage fees at Communipaw Bay. In this year the Jersey City Evening Journal published a story that the boatmen were under no obligation to pay the railroad as the waters and wharves belonged to Jersey City and the C RR of NJ was caught in an embarrassing situation.. The Terminal Warehouse - Central Stores Building was opened in Manhattan on 11th Avenue between 27th and 28th Streets. Freight was delivered by the NYC RR via surface tracks on 11th Avenue and a siding into the building. When the West Side Freight Line replaced the street trackage railcars were delivered into the west end of the building by the Erie and the Lehigh Valley Railroads from carfloats. Rail service ended in the early 1970s but the building has been adaptively reused. On 24 November, the schooner Adele Trudell from Cape May, NJ to NY with sand ran onto Romer Shoals and was a total loss; 8 saved. 1892 The Ellis Island Immigration Station opened as the principal immigration station in the US. It is estimated that 12 million immigrants entered the US through Ellis Island. Two thirds of the immigrants who boarded ferries for the mainland were taken to the CRR of NJ Jersey City Terminal where they were led to trains that would take them to their new homes. On 24 January the fireboat Zophar Mills collided with the fireboat New Yorker in a heavy fog. The crew of the New Yorker managed to keep the Mills pumped out until she could be berthed in a shipyard. C RR of NJ locomotive #385 rocketed from Jersey City to Philadelphia and back in four hours and 25 minutes. It set a world speed record of 105 miles per hour between Plainfield and Westfield. Current speed on that stretch of line, now operated by NJ Transit is 79 miles per hour. The C RR of NJ was leased to the Port Reading RR, a subsidiary of the Reading. The C RR of NJ completed a new 2,400-foot pier at Atlantic Highlands which gradually overshadowed all other Raritan Bay steamboat landings and was destined to play a major role in the economy of the Jersey Shore for the next 73 years. They moved their rail terminus from Sandy Hook to Atlantic Highlands. The Weehawken Ferry & Guttenberg RR was completed and opened on 20 April. It was built on top of the Palisades and an 873-foot-long steel viaduct was constructed from the Palisades eastward to and 148 feet above the West Shore RR (NY Central RR) Weehawken Terminal. Three hydraulic Otis elevators, each capable of carrying 120 passengers, ascended from the ferry terminal to the Guttenberg Ry terminal. There, passengers could either board the steam railroad north to Nungesser’s Guttenberg Race Track in North Bergen or walk to the El Dorado Amusement / Pleasure Park that had been built a year earlier. The line, which became known as the Palisades RR, was a little under two miles in length and was operated with four Porter steam locomotives and twenty Gilbert coaches. The steel viaduct and the elevator were abandoned on 30 June 1895, after Pershing (Hill) Road was built up the side of the Palisades. Service from Weehawken Ferry Terminal up to the Palisades was converted to electric trolley, then electric All-Service Vehicles (buses) and finally to motor bus. The widespread introduction of miniature steam locomotives and trains for pleasure resorts is credited to the Cagney brothers. They began business in Buffalo, NY, but moved to Jersey City and finally Leonardo, NJ. Their "Smallest steam railroad train in the world" won praises and gold medals. Scientific American considered it one of the greatest inventions of the 19th century. The Cagney Brothers went on to produce over 1,200 steam trains used around the world. Several of them survive and some are in operating condition. The Hoboken Elevated was extended west to the Hudson County Court House in Jersey City for electric trolley operation and the original section to the Hoboken ferry was converted from cable to trolley operation. Miss Elizabeth Alice Austin, a woman pioneer in American photography, began a journey with friends southward from Staten Island, entering the Delaware & Raritan Canal at New Brunswick on 18 October 1892. Her vessel for the trip was the Wabun, a two masted saliboat. The C RR of NJ terminal on Sandy Hook was moved to Atlantic Highlands. The C RR of NJ began changing the colors of its equipment. Passenger cars went from yellow to dark green; freight cars were changed from yellow to brown; and its Hudson River ferries were changed from white or cream to dark green. On 2 December, the bark Prince Frederick of Norway, bound for Antwerp with a cargo of petroleum went ashore at False Hook, Sandy Hook station; 19 saved. 1893 The wooden, double-ended ferry Shackamaxon, operating between Ellis Island and Whitehall Street was damaged in three collisions. On 19 February the schooner James Butler from Perth Amboy sank at Sandy Hook with a cargo of coal. The C RR of NJ attempted to put a new railroad bridge across the Morris Canal at the foot of Jersey Avenue. The LV RR decided not to permit the bridge to be built and sent out a crew to remove it. A LV RR locomotive was sent and chains attached to the bridge and pilings, removing them. Likewise the locomotive was attached to the flatboat which the C RR had used to bring the piling and beams to the site. In spite of its being frozen in by ice, the locomotive had no difficulty in towing it from the scene. The venerable John Bull, the first locomotive to operate in New Jersey and inoperative for 20 years, was taken out of the Smithsonian Institution and brought to Jersey City to be renovated for the longest trip of it’s life – to haul two vintage coaches a thousand miles from Jersey City to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Before departure the train was exhibited on Hudson Street, Jersey City. The special train, powered by the John Bull departed the Jersey City Terminal on 17 April and arrived in Chicago on 22 April. While at the exposition, visitors were offered rides on the train. The return trip brought the train through Baltimore to Washington D.C., on 13 December, where it was returned to the Smithsonian. The P RR began operation of The 20-Hour Special between Jersey City and Chicago to provide deluxe transportation for passengers going to the Columbian Exposition. During Summer months the P RR ran one daily round trip between Jersey City and Atlantic City with coaches and parlor cars. The Jersey City, Newark and Western Ry opened their new bridge across Newark Bay to Bayonne. It was soon absorbed by the Lehigh Valley Terminal Ry (LV RR) and was used by the P RR to reach their Greenville Yards and carfloat operations. Consolidated Traction Co. was incorporated and within a couple of years acquired most of the street railways of Essex, Union and Hudson Counties. 1894 Thomas A. Edison’s kinetoscope (movie predecessor) was given its first public viewing at 1155 Broadway, NYC. Simon Lake, a distinguished marine engineer, played a major part in the development of the submarine as a practical device. Inspired by Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Lake designed and submitted plans to the Navy in 1892, and two years later built his first experimental submarine, the Argonaut, Jr. She was successfully demonstrated at Atlantic Highlands, NJ, near Sandy Hook. This success led to the formation of the Lake Submarine Co. of NJ in 1895, which built the Argonaut, the first submarine to operate successfully in the open sea in 1898. In 1901, the Lake Torpedo Boat Co. was formed in NJ and became the main company that built numerous submarines for the US and foreign countries. Simon Lake is credited with the development of the basic submarine technologies which are essential for safe and successful operation of the submarine; such as, even-keel hydroplanes, ballast tanks, diver’s compartment, periscope, twin-hull design, and much more. No modern submarine could operate today without using the advancements made by Simon Lake, and which were adopted worldwide by the early 1900's. Lake, originally referred to as a “Pioneer Submarine Inventor, is today regarded as “The Father of the Modern Submarine.” www.simonlake.com The steamer City of Albany burned at NY on 9 October. On 22 November the schooner F. Greenville Russell bound from Portland to Philadelphia with a cargo of stone was a total loss on Romer Shoals; six saved. 1895 On 7 March the North German Lloyd steamer Havel inbound from Bremen went ashore on Sandy Hook; her 680 passengers were safe. The speedy Moran tug, F.W. Vosburgh, was bound from NY to Sandy Hook on 12 March when she struck Romer Shoals in a thick northeast snowstorm. Her captain and the six-man crew were rescued by men from the Sandy Hook Life Saving Station. The P RR began operating through trains from Jersey City to Atlantic City via Camden and the West Jersey & Seashore RR. John Holland won another submarine competition in 1893 and finally, in 1895 the US Navy signed its first submarine contract, for $150,000. The contractor was the John P. Holland Torpedo Boat Company, but Navy engineers took command and His fourth boat, the Plunger, was so over-engineered that it became a dismal failure which was eventually abandoned. The Harlem Ship Canal was completed and within a decade sightseeing boats began circumnavigation of Manhattan Island. The Hazard Manufacturing Co. of Wilkes-Barre, PA manufactured a 62-ton cable for the Metropolitan Street Railway of NYC. It was transported by the Lehigh Valley RR, in a specially constructed car and by carfloat to Manhattan. It was drawn to the cable railway powerhouse by 40 horses. On 18 September the steamer General A.E. Burnside burned at NYC. The steamer F.A. Sharp, aiding Irrawaddy wrecked off Asbury Park, ran aground on Sandy Hook; six saved. On 23 November the schooner Cornelia M. Kingsland of Greenport, LI, bound from Fire Island to NYC with fish ran onto Romer Shoals and was a total loss; 9 saved. 1896 The B&O RR, a C RR of NJ tenant at Jersey City Terminal, wanted ferry service to Whitehall Street, Manhattan, so its passengers could have a direct connection to Third Avenue Elevated trains. The C RR obliged and the new service was known as The Royal Blue Ferry. The LV RR Black Diamond Express began her long career as a luxury daylight train between Jersey City and Buffalo (with a link to Niagara Falls) on 16 or 18? May. This train enhanced the LV's reputation as a caterer to the matrimonial trade. The "Honeymoon Line's" Black Diamond became known as "The Handsomest Train in the World." By September, John Holland had completed plans for his fifth boat, the Holland and secured financing. 1897 On 19 January the British steamship Alvena, inbound from Haiti was run down and cut through by British freighter at entrance to Gedney Channel, off Sandy Hook. She was beached and passengers and crew were rescued by the pilot boat Walter Adams. A fire destroyed the main structures at Ellis Island. Steeplechase (amusement) Park opened in the Coney Island area of Brooklyn. It was one of the leading attractions of its day and one of the most influential amusement parks of all time. A fire destroyed most of the Park in 1907, but it was rebuilt. Less destructive fires occurred in 1936 and 1939, and each time it was rebuilt. It finally closed in 1964. John Holland’s fifth submarine, the Holland was launched at Lewis Nixon’s Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, NJ on 17 May. It took nine months to complete the installation of the 45 hp gasoline engine (which gave it a surface cruising range of about 1,000 miles); battery-operated electric motor for running underwater; a torpedo tube; and two inclined dynamite guns. She passed many successful tests. However, the US Navy dragged its feet and did nothing for another two years... The steam tug George L. Garlick (owned in 1883 by Michael Moran’s agency) was wrecked at Coney Island on 25 May; ten saved. On 3 June, the Postmaster General awarded the Starin Transportation Line of New York a four year, $29,740 contract for performing the newly instituted NY harbor mail service. This provides for a vessel to carry the mails from Quarantine station to the Government pier near the Battery, to the Pennsylvania RR station in Jersey City, and to a point adjacent to Grand Central Station in NYC. Ocean liner SS Bremen departed on 5 June on her maiden voyage from Bremen, Germany to Hoboken. Three years later she was badly damaged in a dockside fire at her pier in Hoboken. She was rebuilt and lengthened and reentered service in October 1901. The Hoboken Railroad Warehouse & Steamship Connecting Company, incorporated on 17 September 1895, began operation as an electric railway along the Hoboken waterfront with overhead trolley wire in this year. Initially only connecting with the Erie RR, they soon constructed a carfloat pier that could accept carfloats from the DL&W RR at the foot of Eleventh Street, Hoboken. The Hoboken Manufacturers Railroad was incorporated in 1902, and in 1954 they adopted their nickname and officially became the Hoboken Shore Railroad. The Philadelphia & Reading RR took delivery of the 158-foot Catawissa last of her class of large, ocean-going steam and auxiliary sail tugboats. She was built to tow coal laden schooner barges from Philadelphia primarily to New England. Some time after that service ended she was acquired by Standard Tank Cleaning Co. (the woman proprietor of STC was commonly referred to as the “Dragon Lady”) of Bayonne and converted to a mobile steam supply vessel for tank cleaning. Catawissa was last regularly used for that purpose at the Federal Shipyards at South Kearny when the US Navy reserve fleet was being scrapped. She was scrapped in 2006 at Staten Island. Wooden side-wheeler ferry Kings County, which ran from James Slip and East 34th Street to the Long Island RR Terminal, which was then at Long Island City, burned on 26 October at Hunter’s Point. The steamboat John E. Moore, on an excursion with 150 fishermen, went aground on Roamer Shoal in November and was filled. Passengers were rescued by the pilot boat Walter Adams. On Thanksgiving Day the steamboat John E. Moore took 150 men on a fishing excursion when the vessel ran aground in a fog on Romer Shoal and began to take on water. The Pilot boat Walter Adams came to their rescue and took them all off. The Moore was hauled off, repaired, and returned to its previous service of transferring immigrants from incoming steamers to Ellis Island. The P RR opened an Exchange Place, Jersey City to Fulton Street, Brooklyn (Annex) ferry route on 1 December. 1898 The second big California gold rush induced the B&O to begin the first transcontinental passenger trains from Jersey City to San Francisco without change of cars. Staten Island gained political strength by incorporation into the City of NY. John Stephenson Car Co. moved from NYC to Elizabeth (the location is now in Linden). They started business in NYC in 1831 and were one of the largest builders of omnibuses, horse cars and later electric street and interurban cars for many companies. A New Jersey picnic ground became one of the greatest amusement parks of the metropolitan area, with a view of Manhattan. It was located at the top of the Palisades in Cliffside Park and Fort Lee. Palisades Amusement Park began as an attraction for the local trolley company, Bergen Traction Co., designed to increase weekend ridership. The trolley company also owned and operated their own ferry from their trolley terminal at Edgewater across the Hudson to 130th Street which attracted NYC residents in droves. In 1910 the Schenck brothers purchased the park and soon added the world’s largest outdoor salt water pool. At its peak, under the Rosenthal brothers, the park had a carousel, tunnel of love, various rides, a roller coaster, dozens of other attractions and rides, and boasted legendary entertainers and performers. It closed at the end of the 1971 season to make way for condominiums. On 11 August, hundreds of Jersey City’s African-Americans cheered as an all-black regiment disembarked at the C RR of NJ Terminal for service in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. The North River Iron Works at Hoboken built several boilers for Old Dominion Line steamers constructed at Delaware River Ship and Engine Building Co’s yard at Chester, PA. The boilers were sent through the D&R in large open deck canalboats in 1898. Nautical Gazette / Seaboard, New York, August 25, 1898. The superstructure of Erie RR caboose #4259 was brought to Jersey City and hoisted onto and secured to the deck of explorer Capt. Robert E. Peary's steamship Windward in NY Harbor. It served as a deckhouse, his headquarters and a living room. The following year the caboose was hauled ashore at Etah, Greenland and dragged up to the top of a cliff. Following Peary's exploration of northern Greenland the caboose was placed back on the ship and returned to the Erie RR when they got back in the NY area in 1902. "The Book of the Royal Blue," a monthly publication for passengers and the general public began to be published by the B&O RR. Although created and oriented to stimulating business on the New York line, it also served as a general public relations medium for the railroad. The B&O's Royal Limited was advertised as the "Finest Daylight Train in the World." “A Canal-Boat Voyage on the Hudson,” by Clifton Johnson, with illustrations by the author, is a wonderful descriptive story of life aboard a tow of canalboats being towed from Albany to NYC. Outlook Magazine, Vol. 60, pg 309-318, 1 October 1898 Thwarted in their effort to gain passage to Liberia in Africa, a group of 104 African-Americans from Oklahoma spent nine days and nights in two C RR of NJ passenger cars at the Jersey City Terminal before a train took them to Matawan, NJ, where a brick company offered employment to the men and boys of the group. The Delaware & Hudson Canal ended its useful life as a coal carrier on 5 November when the last canalboat left Honesale, PA for Rondout on the Hudson River. 1899 On 13 February, the David A. Boody, second Brooklyn fireboat, was returning from a fire when she rammed ice and sank in the East River at the foot of Corlears Street. She was raised, reconditioned, and served until 1914. Professor John P. Holland’s fifth submarine, the Holland, was towed south through the Delaware & Raritan and Chesapeake & Delaware canals by the steam yacht Josephine for trials by the US Navy in the Washington area. Pontoons, secured to the sides of the submarine were required to raise her enough to clear the bottom of the canal. E. W. Deming made a round trip in his new gasoline yacht, Zeta (#28137), from New Orleans, up the Mississippi, across the Great Lakes, through the Erie Canal, down the Hudson, through NY Harbor, through the Delaware & Raritan Canal, and the inland waterway to Florida and return to New Orleans. The pleasure boat Dragoon, traveled from NY Harbor south to Savannah via the Delaware & Raritan Canal and other inland waterways. Davis, Charles G., Outing Magazine, Vol. XXXV, No. 5, February 1900 The Long Island RR established The Cannonball train, which runs from Long Island City to Montauk via Jamaica. The original Greenport section was discontinued in 1942. It is the only currently named LIRR passenger train and operates on Friday evenings – a twelve car train offering two all reserved parlor cars with full bar service. It runs express between Jamaica and Westhampton Beach. The USS Sandoval, and sister ship Alvarado, captured when Santiago, Cuba fell during the Spanish-American War both traveled north to Portsmouth, NH via the Delaware & Raritan Canal and NY Harbor. On 10 September, while in Gibraltar Admiral Dewey reported that he was allowing extra time for the Atlantic crossing, as one of USS Olympia’s screws was partially disabled. She arrived at Sandy Hook, NY on 26 September. A gala naval review, part of the Dewey Celebration, was held in NY Bay and the lower Hudson River. It honored the admiral who conquered the Spanish fleet at Manilla. The spectator fleet included the J.S. Warden a wooden-hulled side-wheeler with vertical-beam engines, built as the Eliza Hancock by M.S. Allison in Jersey City in 1863. The 400' armored cruiser Brooklyn, the flagship of Admiral Schley, headed the parade. Admiral Dewey received a hero’s welcome home celebration in NYC with a parade lasting two days. On 8 November, the USS Olympia was decommissioned for overhaul at New York. She was updated, her torpedo tubes removed, hawsepipes relocated, and her bow ornament was replaced with ornate gilt scroll-work and figurehead, among other changes. She was re-commissioned in 1902 and served as the flagship of the Caribbean. Olympia, built in 1895, is the sole surviving US Naval vessel of its era, and one of only four major warships in the world from the period from 1890 to 1914. Since 1957 the ex-USS Olympia has been moored at Philadelphia as a museum ship and is currently in great peril, facing a bill in excess of $10,000,000 to fully restore her. Her hull suffers from extensive corrosion and is in dire need of drydocking and repairs. The Plymouth of the Fall River Line grounded on the rocks at Riker’s Island in a fog, at very low tide. The 600 passengers were taken off, the vessel was a partial loss. Iron ore traffic between Port Henry on Lake Champlain and Wilmington, DE ceased. It had traveled in canalboats via the Champlain Canal, Hudson River, NY Harbor, Delaware & Raritan Canal and Delaware River. The DL&W RR began operating their Lackawanna Limited from Hoboken to Buffalo. 1900 Beginning in this year the C RR of NJ filled in the remainder of Communipaw Bay using old Morris Canal boats, filled with rock to form a bulkhead. This would expand its filling of tidal flats and shallow water southward as far as Black Tom Island in several stages. The main building at Ellis Island was completed, replacing structures destroyed in a fire three years earlier. On 2 March, C RR of NJ locomotive #457 pulled a train consisting of a baggage car and the private cars of the presidents of the C RR of NJ, Reading and B&O Railroads to take Garret A. Hobart from Jersey City to Washington, DC to be sworn in as Vice President of the United States. Work began on NYC’s subway system on 24 March. Following rigorous tests John Holland’s Holland submarine was purchased by the US Navy on 11 April and on 12 October was commissioned as the USS Holland. Six more of Holland’s submarines were ordered to be built at the Crescent Shipyard in Elizabeth, NJ by the Electric Boat Company which was founded on 7 February 1899. The Holland design was also adopted by others, including the Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. He also designed the Holland II and Holland III prototype submarines. John Holland died in Newark in 1914 and is interred at the Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Totowa, NJ. In May the C RR of NJ began to operate its Jersey City-Atlantic City Special via Winslow Junction. Fire on 30 June on Hoboken piers used by North German Lloyd steamships spread to four vessels: Kaiser Wilhelm was saved; Bremen crowded with visitors, drifted away from the burning docks and became a torch to all shipping and wharves with which she came in contact – carried to the NY shore, she imperiled docks on that side of the river – one lighter passed her, caught fire, and drifted alongside the B&O RR wharf, which promptly caught fire – Bremen was finally run aground in shallow water off Weehawken and was later rebuilt; Saale sank, and Main was damaged. Many smaller craft – coal barges, lighters and canalboats were also destroyed. The devastation killed 326 people and caused $5 million damage. The coal schooner Charles L. Davenport, bound for Bangor, ME, had a spontaneous combustion fire off Sandy Hook in July, but was saved. On 8 September, C RR of NJ side-wheel ferry Plainfield burned at Communipaw and was the first of their sidewheelers to be disposed of. The schooner Grover Cleveland, of Port Jefferson, LI, sank at Sandy Hook with a cargo of lumber on 9 November. On 14 November the schooner Margaretta sank off Riker’s Island. Expansion and renovations were completed and the Grand Central Station (Terminal) was reborn in Manhattan. In this year, as many as 30,000 electric cars took to the roads, including a fleet of NYC taxis. But, the electric car couldn’t compete with mass production of gasoline-powered autos, which cost half as much and could travel further at faster speeds. 1901 The Long Island Sound steamer Idlewild, which operated on the NYC - Glen Cove route, burned in her winter quarters at Brooklyn in January; with 8 lost. The C RR of NJ opened their two track bascule bridge across Newark Bay, replacing the prior wooden structure. On 14 June as the Staten Island Ferry Northfield was leaving Whitehall Street, she was struck by the inbound C RR of NJ ferry Mauch Chunk and sank immediately. Of the 995 passengers aboard the Northfield, only 5 were lost. On the same day, US Army transport Ingalls, toppled over in dry dock, Erie Basin, Brooklyn with 185 workers on board. One was killed and 32 badly injured. She was later raised and refloated. Work on the Hudson & Manhattan RR tunnel between NJ & NY was restarted by William Gibbs McAdoo. On 10 September a NY Times article announced “The largest grain elevator in the world with a capacity of 4,000,000 bushels is to be built at Weehawken for the West Shore Line of the New York Central RR.” Known as Pier 7, it was completed about a year later, but only had a capacity of 2,000,000 bushels. Joshua Lionel Cohen (later changed to Cowan) sold his first electric train to a store owner in Manhattan, intending to use the train to call attention to other merchandise. The store owner returned the next day to order six more trains, because customers wanted to buy the store display. Although he and a partner had founded the Lionel Manufacturing Company (after 1918, Lionel Corporation) in 1900 to manufacture various products, by 1902 Lionel was primarily a toy train producer. He established factories in Irvington and Hillside, NJ and by 1953 became the largest toy manufacturer in the world. The first C RR of NJ ferryboat named Elizabeth was destroyed in a spectacular fire at Jersey City on 22 October. The P RR and Southern Railway inaugurated a limited train, "the most magnificent and luxurious train in the world," between New York and Florida. When President McKinley was shot at Buffalo, a special DL&W RR train with a heart specialist made the 395 mile run from Hoboken in 405 minutes - a rail record which still stands. The NY Yacht Club opened their primary, but landlocked, clubhouse at 37 West 44th Street in midtown Manhattan, a six-storied Beaux-Arts landmark with a nautical-themed limestone facade. The centerpiece of the clubhouse is the “Model Room,” which contains the world’s largest collection of full and half hull models. After the club outgrew their original little building established in Hoboken in 1845, they moved to Staten Island and Glen Cove, NY; Mystic, CT; and now maintain a second clubhouse, “Harbour Court,” on the water in Newport, RI. 1902 The problematic steam locomotive operation to and from Grand Central Terminal was highlighted on 8 January when a collision occurred in the smoke-filled Park Avenue Tunnel killed 17 and injured 38. This caused a public outcry and increasing demand for conversion to electric train operation. One week later the NY Central and Hudson River RR announced plans to improve the tunnel and expand Grand Central. By the end of the year plans were in development to demolish the existing station and create a new double level terminal for electric trains. The C RR of NJ inaugurated the Queen of the Valley, an express passenger train between Jersey City and Harrisburg, PA. A speed record between the C RR of NJ Jersey City Terminal and Washington, DC of 226 miles in 4 hours and 7 minutes, including stops for locomotive changes and stations, was set during a heavy snow storm by the B&O. On 26 April the three-masted schooner Cornelia Soule, en-route from Maine to Philadelphia (via the D&R Canal) with a cargo of granite, sank off Rockaway Point - all 6 crewmen were rescued. Although they had begun running through trains from Jersey City to Atlantic City in the 1890's, by this year the C RR of NJ was operating two high-speed trips daily, all year round, with coaches and parlor cars. By this year more than 96% of all anthracite coal lands were controlled by the railroads, with 91% of deposits owned outright. Following the depression of 1893-7, the J.P. Morgan interests made a final drive to control the industry. The bankrupt Philadelphia & Reading RR, along with its mining operations, was reorganized as the Reading Co., a holding company. The Reading then purchased the C RR of NJ, giving them control of one-third of all anthracite mined in Pennsylvania. Another major anthracite shipper, the Erie RR, gained control over several carriers and mining enterprises. Then the five leading carriers jointly acquired the LV RR and organized interlocking directorates in order to coordinate their activities. As a result of the combination, the railroad companies were able to fix the price of coal, determine production levels, and establish tonnage quotas. The entire anthracite region became, in effect, an economic colony of the powerful financial interests located in New York and Philadelphia. Both coal and profits flowed out of the region to immensely wealthy absentee owners. The Queen of the Valley a joint C RR of NJ / RDG passenger train began operating between Jersey City and Harrisburg on 18 May. The P RR began operating their Broadway Limited train from Jersey City to Chicago on 15 June. The 20th Century Limited, an express passenger train began to be operated by the NY Central Railroad, between NYC and Chicago and ran until 1967. It became known as a “National Institution” and the “Most Famous Train in the World.” It was inaugurated as direct competition to the Pennsylvania Railroad. Beginning on 15 June 1938, with the inauguration of its first streamlined equipment, it made the 960-mile journey in 16 hours. United Railroad Historical Society of NJ owns and has restored the former 20th Century Limited observation-lounge car Hickory Creek for operation. The steamer Dutchess burned at NY on 26 August. The Lionel Manufacturing Co., issued one of their earliest known catalogs for its “Miniature Electric Cars.” At the time they were located at 24 & 26 Murray Street, NYC. Wales Hard Coal (about 1,200 tons) went through the D&R Canal bound for New York in November. The coal was brought to Philadelphia on a big ship and trans-loaded into canalboats. One of the boats, the George B. Roberts, when she arrived at Bordentown carried 275 tons, 35 of which had to be unloaded as the Roberts drew 8 feet of water and the canal admits only vessels of 7 feet draft. Bordentown Register, November 7, 1902. The Bush Company terminal business was started in Brooklyn, along Gowanus Bay in the 1890s by Irving T. Bush, but was incorporated in this year as the Bush Terminal Co. It was a massive, 200 acre, intermodal shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing center and rail-marine terminal – America’s first completely integrated manufacturing, cargo, and warehousing facility, served by both rail and water transportation, under a unified management – the largest of its kind in the NY Harbor area and the largest multi-tenant industrial property in the US. As of 1910, Bush Terminal handled 10% of all steamships arriving at New York. Eventually, Bush Terminal handled 50,000 rail freight cars per year and had eight piers that docked vessels from 25 steamship operators. The company also operated the Bush Terminal Railroad Co., which had about 20 miles of track within the terminal and two miles of track through Brooklyn to connect with the P RR. Their rail yard was six blocks long and could hold about 1,000 freight cars. The railway greatly declined after WW II, and Bush Terminal Railway went defunct in the 1970's, its operations continued by the NY Dock Railroad. The remaining rail yard and car floats are now operated by NY NJ Rail LLC, and used occasionally to deliver NYC subway cars via the South Brooklyn Railway. The Helmsley real estate group bought Bush Terminal in 1963. The complex maintained 95% occupancy through the middle of the 1970's, when 25,000 people were employed by the terminal company or tenants. Renamed Industrial City, by the mid-1980s the facility housed the largest concentration of garment manufacturers in NYC outside of Manhattan. The 16 buildings of up to 12 stories tall were still mostly occupied in the 1990s. 1903 By this year, the repeated consolidations throughout New Jersey had yielded 12 large, independent traction (trolley) companies. These dozen firms represented the amalgamation of 96 smaller, separate trolley companies, most of which were short of capital. On 19 February, due to lack of safety devices and equipment, a trolley car in Newark did not stop at a grade crossing in Newark and was broadsided by a Lackawanna Railroad train. Nine school children died and more than 20 were desperately injured. The investigation concluded that the North Jersey Street Railway Company was foundering financially. On 19 March, the outbound Fall River Line steamer, Plymouth, was struck in a fog by the westbound freighter City of Taunton The C RR of NJ Employees Association was founded - the first such organization in the nation. The first automobile trip across the US was made from San Francisco to NYC, 23 May to 1 August. Luna (amusement) Park opened at Coney Island on the site of the former Sea Lion Park. After a pair of fires in 1944 Luna Park closed. A reincarnation of Luna Park, on the former site of the nearby Astroland amusement park opened on 29 May 2010. On 2 June the Hamburg-American liner Deutschland, outbound to Hamburg and carrying gold for the Paris and Berlin markets, stranded at Gedney Channel, Sandy Hook. She was hauled off by the tug I. J. Merritt. A successful young lawyer, Thomas N. McCarter, recently named New Jersey’s attorney general, was right in the middle of the 19 February trolley accident probe. He saw the need for a revitalization of the shaky financial condition of the trolley companies, as well as a potential for profit. He resigned as attorney general; put together an initial $10-million capitalization program that was to continue for almost a decade; and took over the formation of a new trolley utility, Public Service Corporation of New Jersey, in June. It inherited two ferry companies and a pair of former horsecar inclined elevators in Hudson County used to haul horse-drawn wagons and trucks up the face of the Palisades. The Liberty Bell made its last trip away from Philadelphia when it traveled across New Jersey on 15 June on a special train on the Pennsylvania RR and was floated across NY Harbor on a carfloat to connect with the New Haven RR on its way to the Battle of Bunker Hill celebration at Boston. In June newspaper men and their wives enjoyed a trial trip on the C RR of NJ’s Asbury Park, the new boat of the Sandy Hook Route. The total number of guests on the trip up the Hudson River to Tarrytown was about 650. On 26 July, Dr. H. Nelson Jackson and Sewall Crocker departed San Francisco in Jackson’s open air Winton Touring car. Sixty-three days later they arrived in NYC. In 1903 Captain James Hughes owned a fleet of 49 vessels of varied descriptions, including several steam tugs and a number of ships and barges of many sizes; he had the largest ship building plant in the New Brunswick vicinity; his yard, with over 60 workers, was doing more work in 1903 than was done by everyone else in the business there in the last ten years; he also was doing an extensive towing business and had his main office in NYC. New Brunswick Daily Press, August 29, 1903. Middlesex Transportation Co. was a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson Co. and operated freight service between NY & New Brunswick beginning in 1903 and gradually growing with the steam freighters Trenton, Robert W. Johnson, James W. Johnson, Denny Brothers, and Frank M. Riley. “Get Your Goods by Boat: Steamer R.W. Johnson leaves New Pier No. 1, North River, 3:30P.M. daily, Sunday excepted, for New Brunswick. Freight received up to 5:30P.M.” All J&J boats carried a distinctive red cross on their white stacks and primarily served the manufacturing facilities of their parent company on the banks of the D&R Canal. Marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Swedish engineer John Ericcson, a memorial statue of him was installed at Battery Park in NYC. In 1829 he and John Braithwaite entered their steam locomotive Novelty in the famous Rainhill trials of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and although it was the fastest, it had boiler problems and did not win. He came to NYC in 1839 and revolutionized naval history with his invention of the screw propeller. Ericsson’s propeller was installed in the little steam tugboat, Robert F. Stockton, built in the UK for the Delaware & Raritan Canal Co. She was the first iron hull vessel to cross the Atlantic and the first commercially successful screw propelled vessel. He also designed the USS Monitor, the ship that ensured Union naval supremacy during the Civil War. Thomas N. McCarter became the first president of Public Service Corporation of New Jersey and its only one for the next 36 years. Under the leadership of McCarter, PS began taking delivery of 150 new trolley cars in November and ordered 150 more. They hired several of the nation’s most respected railway managers; purchased 1,200 tons of rail for renewals; undertook streamlining and coordination of the many different systems to form one company; began a remodeling of the electric power generation system; planned construction of a new Marion Generating Station; etc. The Williamsburg Bridge, connecting the Lower East Side of Manhattan with the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn was opened on 19 December. At the time it was the longest suspension bridge on Earth. The record fell in 1924 when the Bear Mountain Bridge was completed. In addition to the two tracks of the NYC Subway system it carries to this day, the bridge also once carried two sets of streetcar tracks. 1904 On 31 January the British steel steamship, Boston City, collided in Lower Bay, NY with Colorado of the Wilson Line. The second C RR of NJ ferryboat named Elizabeth was built. On 13 May, a brand new trolley car inaugurated regular through service between Exchange Place Terminal, Jersey City and Trenton. The 72 mile journey via Newark, Elizabeth, Bound Brook, and New Brunswick, took 5½ hours. The Public Service route could not begin to compete with that of the P RR, and ended two years later. Coincidentally, A Trolley Honeymoon From Delaware to Maine, by Clinton William Lucas and published in 1904, in part describes this route across New Jersey, as well as the journey from Exchange Place to 23rd Street, NYC via the P RR ferry. The Dreamland amusement park at Coney Island was about to open for business. During pre-opening preparations on 27 May 1911, a fire started which destroyed the entire park. It was not rebuilt and was abandoned. The Whitehall building, a 20-story skyscraper located at 17 Battery Place, next to Battery Park in lower Manhattan was completed. It received its name from Peter Stuyvesant’s 17th-century home, “White Hall,” which had been located nearby. For many years the Whitehall Building housed offices of many towing and marine companies active in NY harbor. It was converted into apartments in 1999. In response to the success of the speculative Whitehall Building, the larger annex, known as Greater Whitehall was completed in 1910 next door to it at 26 Washington Street. The latter, 31-story building, was the largest office building in NYC at the time. The LV RR opened their Bellewood Park, a 50 acre amusement park, complete with a dining pavilion, farm house restaurant (on top of the mountain with service by uniformed Pullman porters), dance pavilion, German beer garden, carousel (the largest in NJ) with a band organ, a steam-driven roller coaster, giant toboggan slide, Ferris wheel, miniature train ride (The Little Black Diamond), the Mystic Maze fun house, shooting gallery, bowling alley, Joe Horn's flying circus, spook house, Harvard "boat race," penny arcade, ring the bell, the spider lady, photo studio, seesaws, swings, tree-house, ball field, spring houses, picnic areas and a tunnel of love. Admission to the park was free, amusement rides were 5¢ and a good dinner could be bought for 40 to 50¢. It was located at the east end of Pattenburg Tunnel and was a popular destination for 10 to 15 daily excursion trains from NY (Jersey City), the populated areas of NJ to the east and the Lehigh Valley to the west. The SS General Slocum caught fire and burned in the East River on 15 June with a loss of over 1,000 lives, mostly children on a Sunday School outing. A trolley car bound from North Bergen to Hoboken had reached Clinton Avenue and Cortlandt Street, West Hoboken, when, with a flash, the controller box burned out. The car at that moment was traveling at full speed and the smoke and flames were carried back into the car. Instantly there was panic, and before the motorman, himself badly injured, could bring the car to a stop, thirty or more, fully half of those on the car, had jumped. Those who jumped first were the worst injured... New York Times, 6 July 1904 The New York and New Jersey RR, successor to the Hudson Tunnel RR Co., broke through to the tunnel constructed from the New York side. Chief engineer, Charles Jacobs, and workmen walked from NJ to NY through what became the “uptown” tunnel. The first NYC subway, the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) Ninth Avenue Line, opened on 27 October. The DL&W RR began to use Phoebe Snow, a fictitious lady traveler, dressed in white, to advertise the clean burning qualities of anthracite coal in their locomotives. The Hoboken Ferry Co. 14th Street, Hoboken to W. 23rd Street, Manhattan ferry was opened on 1 November. During November the ferry Columbia was rammed and sunk in the East River by the steamboat City of Lowell. The 340-foot long, 3,625 gross ton British tramp steamship, Drumelzier, was scheduled to depart Atlantic Docks, Brooklyn the day after Christmas and the 32 crew members had high hopes of intensive celebrating ashore before she departed. However, the captain decided to depart a day early with his entire and sober crew. This did not set well with the crew. That evening, proceeding at 12 knots in a heavy snowfall with fog, the Drumelzier, piled headlong onto a bar - only eight hours after leaving her Brooklyn berth. Four days later the last of her crew, and a parrot, two cats and a goat were removed and the nine year-old vessel was a total loss. 1905 The DL&W RR launched and put into service a new 231-foot, steam, ferryboat, Binghamton, which was retired in 1967. She was sold in 1969, converted into a restaurant / nightclub of the same name, and moved to Edgewater, NJ where she remains, but is now closed. The C RR of NJ purchased the lighterage company that had formerly delivered its freight to NYC and began to perform the maritime work itself. It was about the last railroad at the Port to do so. The joint Reading RR / C RR of NJ dining car department was organized in April. Six café cars were acquired, primarily for line service between Philadelphia and Jersey City (NYC) and service began on 12 June. The C RR of NJ Athletic Association was established and a large tract of land was set aside near the Jersey City Terminal for an athletic field. The Robert W. Johnson is the handsome new boat which is being built at Noank, CT to carry freight for the Middlesex Transportation Co. between New Brunswick and New York was launched July 10th and will be in service soon. The new 120-foot, 150-ton capacity boat has twin-screws powered by a 500 hp Sullivan engine, steam steering gear, a steam hoist, electric lights and a search light. New Brunswick Daily Times, July 12 and October 21, 1905. The Royal Blue Ferry service of the C RR of NJ ended following the purchase of the Staten Island Ferry from the B&O RR by the City of NY, and their order that the C RR vacate the Whitehall slips. Just before midnight on 7 August a fire began on the DL&W RR ferry Hopatcong and before it could be pulled from her slip, the ferry shed caught fire and eventually the entire transportation complex burned to the ground. Fortunately, the brand new Binghamton, which also caught fire was saved by her crew and rebuilt, and in the end is the last survivor of the DL&W fleet. The 1907 replacement terminal at Hoboken was the finest on New Jersey waterfront, and remains in use by NJ Transit. The P RR established their Pennsylvania Special train in June, running from New York (Jersey City) and Chicago in 18 hours and declaring it “The Fastest Long Distance Train in the World.” The Hoboken Ferry Co. opened a Hudson Place Terminal to W. 28th Street, Manhattan route on 2 September. The Binghamton class ferries (Binghamton, Elmira, Ithaca, Pocono and Scranton) began to be delivered to the DL&W RR. The W. & A. Fletcher Co. and their allied North River Iron Works, both of Hoboken manufactured the boilers and engines, and supervised construction of the Lake Champlain sidewheel passenger steamboat Ticonderoga in 1905. Since the 220-foot vessel was too large to get through the Champlain Canal, the boat was assembled on the lake with the sections and equipment brought north from Hoboken by canalboats. Ticonderoga was retired in the early 1950's and by 1955 had been winched over land (and a railroad) from the lake to her final resting place at the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VT. Construction began on a new mile square freight yard costing $1,500,000 adjoining the C RR of NJ’s holdings at Communipaw on 4 November. The yard extended south to a point opposite Phillip Street and was expected to take one and a half years to complete. NJ State Gazette After prolonged dickering, NYC assumed ownership of the Staten Island ferry on 25 October. The City took title to the terminal facilities and promptly ejected the B&O (C RR of NJ) ferries from the Whitehall Street Terminal. The City purchased the boats, paying the most ($320,000) for the Robert Garrett which was 236 feet long; built in 1888; and licensed for 4,000 passengers. Interestingly, John W. Garrett was president of the B&O RR from 1858 to 1884 and the ferry was obviously named for a family member. The City had made arrangements for the acquisition of a new fleet of ferryboats and the Robert Garrett was renamed Stapleton. Soon she was on a run to 39th Street, Brooklyn, along with Castleton and Westfield II. In 1909 the Stapleton and Castleton were assigned to a newly-established vehicular ferry from the Battery to the foot of Canal Street, Stapleton. This service proved ill-advised and was discontinued on 13 December 1913. Castleton was then sold at public auction, and the Stapleton became a floating tuberculosis sanitarium for the City. The City of NY, in preparation for operation of the Staten Island Ferry had ordered a fleet of five new boats named for the five boroughs. They were the Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, and Richmond and were 250' long, the biggest ferries on the east coast. Four were built at Sparrows Point, MD, but the Richmond was built at Staten Island. The “Five Boroughs” fleet were put into service at noon on 25 October, replacing all of the former railroad ferries. On 20 December, painters at the DL&W’s 23rd Street ferry terminal in Manhattan started a fire which, fanned by winds quickly spread to the adjoining C RR of NJ ferry terminal, destroying both. On 27 December, the schooner Bessie Whiting sunk two barges in Swash Channel, south of Romer Shoals, that had been in tow by the tugboat John Flemming. Later that day the incoming Clyde Line steamer, Comanche struck a submerged wreck in Swash Channel and listed, but little damage was found. It was believed that the barges had shifted position toward the center of the channel. Late in December, the coastwise steamer City of Atlanta, struck a submerged barge in Swash Channel, heeled far over to port, and had to put back to her North River Pier. 1906 The Electric Railway Journal stated in January: "The Public Service Corporation now controls... practically all of the electrical lighting, power, gas and street railway utilities of the larger portion of the State of New Jersey... The benefits to the public... resulted in lower rates for light and power, better street railway facilities and longer rides, and a far more reliable and dependable service in the supplying of electric light, power, gas, and electric railway transportation." The C RR of NJ published "In the New Jersey Foot-Hills: A Brief Summary of the Section of New Jersey where one Finds Health and Pleasure in Out Door Life." It focused on the Warren, Hunterdon and Morris County areas served by the RR with photos of the rural scenery and lists of hotels and their proprietors to entice the masses from NYC, Jersey City and eastern NJ. The C RR of NJ, having acquired newer propeller driven ferryboats, retired their last two sidewheelers, the Communipaw and the Fanwood. Both were burned in a Perth Amboy “bone yard” on 4 July. The RMS Mauretania was launched and was at the time the largest and fastest ocean liner in the world. She held the New York to England speed record for 22 years and was used as a troop ship during WW I. Her final NY to Southampton crossing was in 1934 and Cunard Line scrapped her soon thereafter. Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal was organized as a marine and navigation company independent of the railroad operations of the East River Terminal Railroad, incorporated the following year. Its predecessor was the Palmer’s Docks Company, the first apparent rail-marine terminal to operate in Brooklyn. In 1915 the railroad, marine operations and freight terminals were combined. BEDT only had a total of 11 miles of track, but had many locomotives and was 100% steam operated until 1963. At one time BEDT had a float bridge terminal operation on the north side of the Morris Canal Basin in Jersey City. It was the largest of the four independent rail-marine terminals in Brooklyn and operated until 1983. A full page advertisement in The Chicago Sunday Tribune of 8 July (complete with a coupon to order shares) announced the launch of the Chicago - New York Electric Air Line RR. The line was to be almost straight as an arrow, avoiding all major cities, electrified, and would cut across northern NJ to reach NYC. Some 15,000 people purchased shares during the first 6 months, but only 20 miles of track was ever built (in Indiana). On 19 August The Sunday Tribune published an advertisement for the NY, Boston & Chicago Electric RR. It was to be more practical, with stops at many cities including Paterson and Hackensack. It also claimed to make the trip from Chicago to NYC in ten hours or less. The first cars of the structurally unique Stillwell design were ordered for the Hudson & Manhattan RR. Lewis B. Stillwell made his home at Princeton, NJ. He was chief electrical engineer of Westinghouse Electric at 27, worked on a half-dozen important railway electrification projects, and designed some of the ruggedest passenger cars ever built. The Erie RR and the NY Westchester & Boston RR both also acquired passenger cars of the Stillwell design. Abraham Lincoln Bush designed and began building his first reinforced concrete train sheds for the DL&W RR at Hoboken Terminal. The SS Etruria collided with a canalboat on her way out of NY Harbor. A towing tug had left two canalboats adrift in mid-Hudson River opposite NYC in a fog while she was delivering a third canalboat. The Etruria could not see the boats before it was too late and the tug was held in fault for the collision. In December the inbound Italian liner Liguria collided in NY Bay with the outbound Peconic. On 15 December the pilot boat Hermit was cut in two and sunk by the Ward Line steamship Monterey off Sandy Hook Lightship. John Stephenson built in his shop, then located in Elizabeth, NJ, a small fleet of wooden bodied, double truck streetcars for export to Lisbon, Portugal. They operated there until 1996. One, No. 346 was acquired by the Friends of the NJ Transportation Heritage Center and returned to NJ. During this year an electric trolley bus was demonstrated in front of the Empire Theater on Newark’s Washington Street. It had a single trolley pole and the current return was through chains which dragged on the streetcar rails. 1907 In this year it was found that the Palisades near Fort Lee and Coytesville, NJ could be used for “Wild West” scenes and other outdoor scenes for movies. Ft. Lee is considered to be the birthplace of the film industry and was the movie capital of the world before Hollywood. Even Thomas Edison used the cliffs of the Palisades for the exterior of Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest. April 17th was the busiest day in the history of the Ellis Island immigration station – 11,747 immigrants passed through. By this year the C RR of NJ, in cooperation with the Reading RR, was offering “A Train On The Hour – Every Hour For Philadelphia From New York” (7am to 6pm). Seeking better rail service for immigrants, the US Immigration Commissioner filed accusations that the C RR of NJ and six other railroads had been charging immigrants nearly first-class fares but provided inferior service. The C RR of NJ opened their new Bronx freight terminal along the Harlem River on 16 August. Freight cars were moved between Jersey City and the terminal by carfloat. William Kissam Vanderbilt, Jr. with his wife and their guest William Barton, all of New York, visited Trenton while passing through on the D&R Canal in his famous steam yacht Tarantula. The 28-knot craft had a captain and a crew of eighteen. They were on their way to Jamestown and the Exposition. Trenton Times, May 17, 1907. Mr. Vanderbilt, the son of the famous millionaire, was vice president, a director, and chairman of the board of New York Central RR for many years. New York Yacht Club fleet numbering 200 vessels was reported to have traveled through the Delaware & Raritan Canal on Aug., 24, 1907, en-route to the Jamestown Exposition. Trenton in Bygone Days, Trenton Times Advertiser, Sept. 11, 1956. Several photos which recorded the journey exist. Cunard Line’s SS Lusitania, the first quadruple screw ocean liner arrived in NYC on her maiden voyage on 7 September 1907. Standard Oil Co. founder, John D. Rockefeller acquired several hundred acres between Linden and Elizabeth as the site for his latest refinery. Within two years the refinery was in operation. Now known as the Bayway Refinery, the facility processes about 240,000 barrels of crude oil per day into gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, and heating oil. It also produces 775 million pounds per year of polypropylene. Its products are delivered to East Coast customers via pipeline, barges, railcars and trucks. The P RR completed their Greenville Yard, Jersey City. At the time it was the largest rail-marine terminal in the US. Public Service Railway, the separate streetcar operating subsidiary of PS of NJ was formed. Their advertising motto was ‘Joining Jersey’s busy cities and thriving towns.’ The premiere 23 story office skyscraper building at 140 Barclay Street / 90 West Street, in lower Manhattan was completed for the shipping and railroad industries. For many years the DL&W RR leased the 17th floor for their executive offices. The architect, Cass Gilbert, used Gothic inspiration to create a granite and terra cotta-sheathed landmark with imposing gargoyles – one of which is now in the lobby – pointed arches and a distinguished mansard roof. The structure was heavily damaged in the 2001 WTC attacks. Nearly 1,000 people were evacuated, but two perished, trapped in an elevator. Fires on 14 floors raged for 2 days and large sections of one of the hijacked airplanes were found on the roof. It was fully restored and reopened in 2005 as a luxury residential apartment building. Freight steamer Bunker Hill, inbound from Boston, collided with the New Haven RR tug Transfer No. 3 in the East River; both vessels sank with one lost on each. On 10 December Commodore Jim Fisk’s famous 373-foot-long Providence, a Fall River steamer, crashed into the crowded East River ferryboat Baltic in a thick fog. One Brooklyn-bound passenger was drowned when the liner’s steel prow almost tore away the women’s cabin of the ferry. The first Hudson & Manhattan RR train operated between Hoboken and Morton St., NYC on 28 December. 1908 Matthias N. Forney died in NYC, NY on 14 January. He was an American steam locomotive designer and builder most well known for the design of the “Forney” type locomotive. Some 300 of his small 0-4-4T Forney locomotives served the elevated railroads of NYC for many years until the system was converted to electric power. President Theodore Roosevelt, sitting in the White House, sent a ceremonial telegram to the Hudson & Manhattan RR Power House in Jersey City to signal the start of the first direct rail service between New York and New Jersey (Hoboken) by tunnel under the Hudson River on Feb. 25th. This historical event connected the island of Manhattan with NJ by rail for the very first time. On 16 April the Ward Line steamship Monterey, bound for Havana and Mexico, rammed the Danish ship United States in the main NY ship channel. The latter was holed, flooded, and run aground to prevent sinking. George W. Johnson, a New Yorker, made a 1,200-mile trip via the inland canal route from St. Augustine, FL to the Nonpareil Boat Club on the Harlem River, NYC. His single scull rowboat was made entirely of paper in about twenty layers in thickness. He clipped headlines and pasted them along the outside. New York Times, June 16, 1908. Rear Admiral Robert Peary was an American explorer who claimed to have been the first person to reach the geographic North Pole. For his final assault on the pole, he and 23 men set off from New York City aboard the Roosevelt on 6 July 1908. Following several attempts over the years, Peary claimed to have reached the Pole on 7 April 1909. Although his claim was widely credited for most of the 20th century, though it was criticized even in its own day and is today widely doubted. Lightship Ambrose, was the name given to multiple lightships that served as the sentinel beacon marking Ambrose Channel, which is the main shipping channel for NY Harbor. LV-87 Ambrose was launched in this year and was retired in 1964. In 1968 she was given to South Street Seaport Museum and has been moored at Pier 16, East River ever since. A new electro-pneumatic interlocking plant was completed by the DL&W RR to control all train movements at their Hoboken Terminal. It was one of the largest railway signal and interlocking plants in the world. It had 99 working “armstrong” levers operating 36 switches; 23 double slips with moveable frogs; one single slip with moveable point frog; and 105 signals. The Signal Engineer, August 1908 The United Fruit Co. Steamship Admiral Dewey, inbound from Jamaica, West Indies, smashed into steamer Mount Desert off Coney Island on 22 November. There was a mad rush for safety. In thick fog one mile east of Sandy Hook Point, the stout steel White Star Line freighter, over 10,000 tons, Georgic, rammed and sank the Panama Railroad Company steamer Finance on 26 November. The outward bound Finance which had 85 passengers, went down within ten minutes, carrying three to their death. Also in November, the captain of the 271-foot-long Metropolitan Line steamer, H. M. Whitney, had to choose between sinking two barges in Hell Gate or striking hard on a menacing rock. He chose the rock, and Whitney foundered on the rocks at Sunken Meadow, just west of the Gate. She was raised months later. Two competing railway industry periodicals merged in this year to form Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corp., headquartered in NYC. The Railroad Gazette (founded in 1856) merged with The Railway Age (founded in 1857). Today, Simmons-Boardman remains the world’s largest publisher of rail industry information under the guiding hand of the McGinnis family. www.railwayage.com 1909 Hudson & Manhattan RR service was inaugurated between Hudson Terminal, New York and Exchange Place, Jersey City. Special ladies only cars were introduced on the Hudson & Manhattan RR. Munson Line freighter Cubana, at anchor at Quarantine with a cargo of sugar from Matanzas, was rammed by the inbound Ward liner Havana on 7 April. On 27 May the North German Lloyd steamship Prinzess Alice, outbound for Bremen, in fog with 1,720 on board, grounded on sand ledge off Fort Wadsworth, SI, but was refloated. The first automobile rides under the Hudson River were made on 21 June when two autos were lowered into one of the partially completed PRR tunnels at Weehawken and driven through to 10th Avenue in Manhattan. On the return trip to NJ a delegation of engineers and P RR officials, including Samuel Rea and Charles Jacobs were driven through. Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co. developed the largest electric locomotive at the time for the P RR electrification into NYC. It weighed 166 tons, developed 4,000hp and was powered by two of the largest electric railway motors ever constructed. The Hudson - Fulton Celebration was probably the greatest pageant ever staged in New York Harbor. The viewers saw 742 vessels steam into New York Harbor and up the Hudson River in the parade. The C RR of NJ operated 11 excursion trains to Mauch Chunk, Glen Onoka and the Switchback RR on one August day at a fare of $1.50, round trip. On 17 August the three-masted schooner Arlington of Boston left New York with 800 tons of (Anthracite) pea coal. She stranded in a heavy easterly gale off Long Beach, Long Island with the crew of nine hanging onto the above water bowsprit for dear life. The Long Beach Life Saving crew brought only eight ashore. The ninth man, the mate, had gone off on a floating hatch, with ropes tied in the hoisting rings to hold him erect. He drifted for two days, then was washed up on the beach at Asbury Park, NJ, drowned. A motor truck show was held in Madison Square Garden, NYC. The Jay Street Connecting Railroad, the smallest of the Brooklyn rail-marine terminals, was incorporated on 9 October. The Jay Street Extension Railroad was incorporated on 8 January 1916, and both firms were consolidated and reincorporated on 3 April 1916. They were located on both sides of, and ran under, the Manhattan Bridge. The Manhattan Bridge, a suspension structure connecting Lower Manhattan with Brooklyn, was opened on 31 December. The upper level which originally had streetcars, now has four vehicle lanes. The lower level has four subway tracks; three vehicle lanes; a walkway and a bikeway. 1910 Service through the Hudson River tunnels into their NYC station was begun by the P RR. The P RR New York extension, including the Greenville Yards was the largest engineering project undertaken by a private company to date. It has also been called the most complex engineering feat attempted by any railroad before or since. (Railroad History, Autumn 2000) The American Society of Civil Engineers devoted 800 pages to the project's technical aspects. Included was the electrification from Sunnyside, Long Island to Manhattan Transfer, just east of Newark. This was the first main line electrification for heavy-duty service. Public Service Railway opened their Hudson Place Terminal at Hoboken. It facilitated the connection of their street car lines with the Hudson & Manhattan tubes and the DL&W ferries. The Keansburg Steamboat Co. began service from the Battery in Manhattan to Keansburg, which became one of the most popular vacation spots on the Jersey Shore (actually Raritan Bay). The service ended when their Atlantic Highlands “Racetrack Pier” was destroyed by fire on 6 May 1966. Their vessel, City of Keansburg, then went into the ‘round Manhattan sightseeing cruise business. The Erie RR opened their Bergen Cut (a/k/a Bergen Arches) on 13 June. It had taken four years to remove 160,000 cubic yards of earth and 250,000 pounds of dynamite to blast through 800,000 cubic yards of trap rock to complete the cut. An estimated 400 men either perished or suffered crippling injuries during the four years of construction. The Great Adam Forpaugh and Sells Brothers Enormous Shows United railroad cars were transported by the C RR of NJ from Elizabeth to Jersey City and then moved by carfloat to the Bush Terminal Co. at New York on 13 June. Hundreds of other similar moves were made over the years. The retail coal pockets and trestle along Johnston Avenue, Jersey City, which were leased to Communipaw Coal Co., were destroyed by fire. Fort Wadsworth fired a 21-gun salute to former President Theodore Roosevelt as his ship passed through the Narrows on his return from a nearly year-long trip to Africa and Europe. By this year the C RR of NJ was offering Sunday and holiday excursions from Jersey City (New York), Elizabeth, Newark, and other stations to Lake Hopatcong, Mauch Chunk (Jim Thorpe), Glen Onoko, The Switchback Gravity RR, Lakewood, Atlantic City, as well as to Atlantic Highlands, Long Branch, Ocean Grove, Asbury Park, Belmar, Spring Lake, Point Pleasant, and numerous points along the North Jersey Shore. The Sandy Hook Route offered vacationers a “Half Sail – Half Rail” way to travel to the North Jersey Coast Resorts. The C RR of NJ’s steamboat service operated from the NY metropolitan area to their Atlantic Highlands Pier. The alternative routing was the C RR of NJ ferry from Manhattan and their train to Atlantic Highlands Pier with rail connections to many additional Jersey Shore resorts. The Sandy Hook Route was abandoned on 16 September 1941. A grand row of nine ocean liner piers was completed on the west side of Manhattan. They were a frequent port of call for the great ships that sailed during the heyday of transatlantic voyages. It also served as a base for warships during both WW I and WW II. Piers 59 to 62 remain and are now called Chelsea Piers. On 26 November the four-masted freighting schooner Emily Baxter was passing a dredge in Hell Gate at dark which had failed to put out a lantern. The Baxter ran into the chains and in three minutes was upside down with the captain and crew sitting on her keel. A new C RR of NJ covered lighterage Pier 11 was completed at Jersey City at a cost of $426,100. A new C RR of NJ Pier 12 at Jersey City opened. New C RR of NJ Pier 14 for handling cattle at Jersey City was completed at a cost of $12,284.25. Public Service Railway opened their Hudson Place Terminal at Hoboken. It facilitated the connection of their street car lines with the Hudson & Manhattan tubes and the DL&W ferries. The Hudson & Manhattan RR opened their Henderson Street Car Shop in Jersey City. The 50,000th steam locomotive constructed by the American Locomotive Co. was demonstrated on several roads and finally purchased by the Erie RR. It became their K-3 class #2509 and was used in Northern New Jersey commuter service. It represented the most advanced design of the 4-6-2 type ever seen in the US. The NY Central RR Weehawken to Courtland Street, Manhattan ferry opened on 1 December. New York Dock Railway, a firm closely related to the New York Dock Company, was incorporated. The latter was a rail-marine terminal identical in operation to that of Bush Terminal – being that both NYD & BT had carfloating operations, carload and less-than-carload contract terminals, direct bulk offloading of ships to railcars and had large storage warehouses. NYD owned Fulton, Baltic & Atlantic pier terminals (with rail access) and warehouses in Red Hook without rail access. NYD took over Bush Terminal in 1972 and merged with Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal in 1978. NYD Ry ceased operations on 17 August 1983, but Bush and Atlantic Terminal operations continued under NY Cross Harbor RR. Early 1900's The Caven Point Army Depot was a large US Army installation built on the former tidal flats of Jersey City. During both WW I and WW II, Caven Point’s proximity to key rail networks and the piers of New York and New Jersey made it invaluable for the marshaling of troops, munitions and materials heading for front lines in Europe. A long pier allowed for loading of deep-draft ships. 1911 By this year, Public Service Railway had purchased or itself constructed 948 new trolley cars, and had a fleet of 2,380 cars, including sprinkler, sand, and snow removal cars. The 30-odd miles of Manhattan Elevated lines had nearly 200 structures, including stations, towers and switch-houses, requiring heat supplied by coal stoves. About 200 tons of egg or stove coal was required per week in the heating season. Deliveries were made and ashes were collected by trains of small-12-ton coal cars. The coal was delivered and ashes were removed by boats at the upper Eighth Avenue waterfront terminal. Coal Trade Journal, 11 January 1911 The P RR inaugurated refrigerated barge service in NY harbor to facilitate the handling of dressed meats, provisions and other perishable freight. (Railroad Mans Magazine, Vol. XIV, No. 1, Feb. 1911) The P RR, in connection with the Missouri Pacific RR began a fast mail train (24 hours) between NYC and Kansas City. Railway Age, April 1911 A new 6,000-ton capacity concrete retail coal pocket and trestle facility was completed near the C RR of NJ Jersey City Terminal to replace the one destroyed in 1910. It was leased by C RR of NJ to Burns Brothers. Coal was delivered from the pockets to locations in NYC via horse-drawn wagons and later by trucks using the C RR of NJ ferries. The RMS Titanic, the largest passenger steamship in the world was launched on 31 May. Less than a year later on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York she hit an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic and sank in three hours with a loss of 1, 517 lives - one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. The steamship Carpathia arrived at Manhattan’s Pier 54 with 675 survivors from the sinking of the Titanic. In June the German steamship Imperator docked at Hoboken on her maiden voyage arrival in NY Harbor. Five steam tugboats assisted with her docking. The C RR of NJ completed new car shops at Elizabethport and a freight house and team tracks at Jersey Avenue in Jersey City by 30 June. The Lehigh Valley RR ordered Western Union telephone equipment in July to complete installation of a system to handle railroad traffic along its entire Jersey City to Buffalo line. The Hudson River (electric railway ) Line, built by A. Merritt Taylor of the New Jersey & Hudson River RR & Ferry Co., was sold to Public Service. The first transcontinental airplane flight (with numerous stops) was made by C.P. Rodgers from NY to Pasadena, California. Hudson & Manhattan RR began regular train service between Hudson Terminal and Newark on 28 November. 1912 On 13 May, pilot boat Ambrose Snow was rammed and sunk by Clyde Line SS Delaware in Lower Bay; all saved. The French Line’s Hudson, inbound from Bordeaux with 83 passengers was rammed in NY Harbor on 29 May by the freighter Berwind, of the NY-Puerto Rico Line. Hudson’s bow stove in and began to sink creating panic. The NY, Westchester and Boston Railway opened for business, connecting southern Bronx with Mt. Vernon, White Plains, and Port Chester, NY. It went bankrupt in 1935 and was abandoned. A four-mile section of the original line was taken over and began to be used by the IRT Dyre Avenue Line subway on 15 May 1941. The world's first battery train was assembled at Ralph H. Beach's Federal Storage Battery Car Co. at Silver Lake, NJ and powered with Thomas A. Edison storage batteries. Initial test runs of the three car train were made on the Erie RR between West Orange, Silver Lake and Jersey City. 1913 On 2 February, the NY Central RR completed and opened their extensively rebuilt Grand Central Terminal at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan. The new terminal was visited by more than 150,000 people on opening day. It became the busiest train station in the country. An explosion of real-estate development followed with many new office buildings, hotels, and apartment buildings built on RR property and air rights above their property, which covers an area of 48 acres. It is the largest train station in the world by number of platforms – 44, served by 67 tracks. Grand Central also contains many restaurants, non-chain fast food outlets, delis, bakeries, newstands, a gourmet and fresh food market, an annex of the New York Transit Museum and more than forty retail stores. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places, is a National Historic Landmark, and a NY City Landmark. The SS Wyckoff collided with the Heroine in NY Harbor; two were lost. LV RR passenger trains began using the C RR of NJ between Oak Island Junction, Newark and C RR of NJ Jersey City Terminal. The new C RR of NJ engine terminal at Communipaw was described as follows in the Newark Sunday Call on 13 June: The reinforced concrete coaling station had a capacity of 1,600 tons of coal which could be loaded into locomotive tenders on any of eight tracks; The building for drying and storage of sand for locomotives was 103 feet long and 16 feet wide; Two steel water tanks had a capacity of 100,000 gallons each; Two cinder pits were each 200 feet long and 33 feet wide; And ten miles of track were installed for the parking of locomotives and their movement to and from the roundhouses, which were apparently already in place.