Thomas Cornell and the Cornell Steamboat Company
Hudson River Maritime Museum Exhibit
May 5 through October 8, 2001

Exhibit Panel 3

CORNELL-COYKENDALL ENTERPRISES

By 1900, the steamboat company had given up the passenger business and turned completely to towing. There were more than sixty steam-powered towing vessels and tugboats in the Cornell fleet, their boilers fired by burning coal. Cornell vessels were well-known on the river, with their familiar black and yellow smokestacks clearly recognizable from the northern canals to New York harbor.

Many Hudson River boatmen came from the Kingston-Rondout-Port Ewen area. Generation after generation of local families worked in Cornell workshops and offices and on the tugboats, which operated from early spring to late autumn.

By the start of the Twentieth Century, the diverse Cornell-Coykendall business empire faced rapid changes, including the coming of the automobile and the increased use of oil instead of coal as fuel. Further, new construction methods in the cities no longer required the bricks, stone, and cement of the Hudson River valley. So, there was less cargo on the river, and less work for Cornell tugboats.