The Hudson
The Rivers of America Series
by: Carl Carmer   Illustrated by: Stow Wengenroth

CHAPTER 25

The Fatal Hudson River Steamboat Race

Prim, maidenly Maria Hawthorne, sister of the distinguished novelist, much improved from taking the waters at Saratoga Spa, stepped in dignity up the gangplank of the Henry Clay on the arm of her uncle, old John Dike of Salem. She was returning home by way of New York so that she might see the scenic grandeur of the Hudson; even Europe was said to have nothing that surpassed it. Joseph Speed--genial Baltimore bachelor and boon companion of young Jerome Bonaparte in the days when Betsy Patterson, his shapely mother, was still trying to marry him off to someone suitable for the son of a king--tripped aboard more swiftly. He was glad to be on his way home after a visit with his York State relatives in Tompkins County.

It was seven o’clock and more than three hundred other passengers had come aboard when the Henry Clay moved out into the river, her white-coated black stewards in a knot at her bow, waving and cheering. Two hundred and six feet long, built less than two years before, she looked every inch the "new and swift steamer" she was advertised to be. She had cost $38,000 to construct and was designed to beat even the champion racer of the river, the great Reindeer. Thomas Collyer, proud builder and part owner of the big boat, was himself aboard. Collyer and his employees had built the Armenia too, in his East River shipyard at the foot of Twenty-first Street, New York, and had sold her to Captain Isaac Smith only a few years before.

Prostrated by food poisoning, Captain John Tallman of the Henry Clay lay ill in his cabin, confident that Mr. Collyer with all his river-boat experience would be able to command the crew expertly on the daylong trip. Collyer and his partners had recently made a contract with Captain Smith not to race their boats, and agreed that the Henry Clay was to sail in advance of her rival.

The Armenia did not sail until the Henry Clay had cast off but she was under way a moment afterward. Thick ribbons of smoke trailed out behind the two steamers and live sparks flew from the tall stacks. The horizontal beams above the steeple engines moved up and down with swift regularity and the big side wheels thrashed through the water leaving tong white wakes. It was evident that the Armenia was striving desperately to catch up with her rival. The run to Hudson seemed short and the Henry Clay was well out ahead as she swung toward the landing. Sudden cries of consternation rose from her decks as the Armenia, failing to follow, steamed straight ahead down the Athens channel.

There was a great bustle on the Hudson wharf. Passengers who had bought tickets on the Armenia vociferously demanded their money back and more vociferously objected when the price of a passage on the Henry Clay rose immediately to a dollar, twice the advertised fare for the entire voyage from Albany to New York. The landing was desperately hurried. Baggage was thrown aboard and distinguished elderly Stephen Allen, once mayor of New York City, was rushed up the gangplank with less respect than his white hairs, wealth, and public achievement bespoke.

The Armenia was over a mile ahead when the Henry Clay once more hove into the channel. Lady passengers and some of the more timorous gentlemen felt relieved, assuming that the boat would not attempt to overcome so great a handicap. Too many lives had been lost already, they said, through accidents caused by the racing of steamers on the Hudson, and they spoke of the tragic fate of the Swallow, wrecked in her race with the Rochester and the Express on the rocks of Noah’s Brig in the Athens channel one April night in 1845 with the loss of scores of passengers.

Their previous fears were doubled when the shaking of the boat, under the increasing pressure, and a loud humming noise, given off by the blowers, plainly showed that Mr. Collyer and his crew had no intention of giving up the contest. A continuous blast of intolerably hot air came from the boilers amidships, making passage between fore and after decks practically impossible. Frantically some of the ladies pleaded with their escorts to ask the captain to stop the race. The indignant gentlemen were told by the crew that the captain was ill in his cabin and could see no one. A lady fainted and the gentleman with her appealed to John Germaine, the chief engineer.

"Are you afraid?" asked that officer.
"No, but the ladies are."
"The lives of my fellow officers and of the men are as valuable as those of the ladies. There is nothing to be afraid of," said Mr. Germaine.

Slowly the Henry Clay began to overtake the Armenia. The mile dwindled to a half mile, a quarter. As the Armenia swung in to the Catskill landing, the triumphant yells of her agents and runners on the wharf drowned the noise of her engines but she was only three lengths ahead. Quickly she took on passengers and baggage and was away again but not before the Henry Clay had landed and the two crews had cursed each other with loud and hearty sincerity. The Armenia had gained three-quarters of a mile before her rival was once more moving downriver. Again the Henry Clay began the long pursuit. Soot and fragments of unburned anthracite drifted down on her decks; the shaking was more violent and the humming noise grew louder.

"If there is a single gentleman aboard," said a lady loudly, "he will go and compel the captain to stop racing."

Isaac MacDaniel of Rutland, Vermont, traveling with his wife and daughter, proposed to two gentlemen, one from Canada and one from Missouri, that they find the captain and threaten to throw him overboard if he did not order the racing stopped. Mr. MacDaniel appealed to James Jessup, clerk of the boat.

"There is no danger," said Mr. Jessup.

In the Henry Clay’s barroom exhausted firemen, smutty with coal and sweating streams, lifted foam-crowned glasses to eager mouths pledging success to the officers who drank with them and excitedly urged them to go back to their fires and keep them blazing high.

Now the Henry Clay was gaining again. In deep channel she was faster, and the Armenia seemed sluggish as her swift enemy approached. The distance that separated the two became a matter of lengths and the Armenia moved over toward the west bank as the Henry Clay bore down on her. Pilot Jim Elmendorf nosed her in close to the Armenia as she moved alongside. An officer called for fenders and a man stood on the paddle box ready to throw them out along the starboard rails as the distance between the boats narrowed. Now the two prows, only a few feet apart, were even and the long white boats swept on like giant twins straining to the utmost as they passed Turkey Point, about five miles above Kingston. Then the Henry Clay shot out ahead a yard, two yards, and Jim Elmendorf in the pilothouse suddenly spun the wheel. There was a grinding roar and the Armenia’s woodwork just forward of the larboard wheelhouse splintered as the Henry Clay cut across her bow.

Above the shrieks of the ladies sounded the cries of the Henry Clay’s crew: "All passengers to larboard." There was a rush away from the interlocked prows. The maneuver lifted her starboard guard above the larboard guard of the Armenia and there it rested for more than five minutes as the Henry Clay relentlessly drove her helpless opponent toward the western bank, now within a stone’s throw. The officers of the Armenia had to choose between throwing off her steam and being run aground. There were quick sharp orders, and she drifted clear as the Henry Clay steamed down the center of the channel, her crew shouting derisively.

The Henry Clay was not headed again but she kept on trembling and humming. She had cleared Kingston before the Armenia landed and, since she still pressed on with the apparent intent of defeating her rival by as great a margin as possible, twenty indignant passengers trooped down the gangplank at Poughkeepsie protesting that they would not continue to endanger their lives in a racing steamer. At Newburgh the Armenia was just a small blurred white spot to the north and her runners were asking only sixpence for passage to New York while the exuberant agents for the winning boat, cheering "Harry of the West," charged a shilling and shouted, "Take the Henry Clay--the Armenia won’t get here till night." A large number of passengers followed this advice, among them Andrew Jackson Downing, with his wife, his motherin-law--Mrs. John Peter De Windt--two of Mrs. De Windt’s children, Frank and Mary, and the romantically beautiful Mrs. Matilda Wadsworth of New Orleans, a widow at twenty-six. The long white-covered tables in the dining salon were crowded and there were people waiting at the door for places as the hot July afternoon began. Miss Hawthorne might now gaze at the blue mist-shrouded Highlands to her heart’s content. The grini walls of Sing Sing Prison, rising sheer from the green waters, could not fail to remind aged Stephen Allen that it was his report on the conditions of the old New York City prison that had caused them to be built. And Mr. Speed knew that with every turning of the big side wheels he was nearer to his beloved Baltimore home, to his prized portrait of the Duke of Wellington, strange present for a Bonaparte to give, and to all the amusing associations of his youth.

Steadily the Henry Clay clove to the middle of the channel, still at her top speed. The Palisades lifted above her now, dwarfing her and dulling the high, gilded eagle perched on her foremast. She had passed the town of Yonkers, lying in sunlight and making the shadowed west bank look lonely and cool. Still the rain of anthracite dust drifted down on the gay awnings of her top deck, still yellow sparks darted upward in the black smoke from her stacks. The ebb tide was running against a strong south wind and the river was choppy, filled with curling white-capped waves. It was three o’clock, the midday dinner was over, the journey was almost ended. A few of the passengers were laughing at a frightened man, Harry Lawrence, who had stationed himself far forward on the bow and had piled his baggage up as a barricade between himself and the boilers.

When they later recalled the events of that afternoon, no one seemed to remember who first noticed the wisp of smoke drifting from the midship hatchway. Beneath the deck a fireman was desperately throwing buckets of water on the flaring canvas cover of the larboard boiler. Almost overcome with smoke, his clothes ablaze, he staggered from the boiler room and made for the deck. As he reached it and jumped overboard, the whole midship section of the Henry Clay burst into flames. Jim Elmendorf, standing with his wife in the pilothouse, took one look at the leaping yellow streaks and spun the wheel over. Without diminishing her speed the Henry Clay swung sharply and started for the east bank. White-faced Jake Zimmerman in the engine room already filled with smoke, put on full steam and fastened the control so that the engine would work at top speed until the boat was beached, before he leaped for the deck. Screaming passengers started forward, those on the afterdecks dashing through the flames. The bartender, suddenly’ assuming the duties of a ship’s officer, urged them back, shouting orders for all passengers to go aft, possibly with the idea of lifting the prow as the boat ran ashore. Many returned. Helplessly they lined the rails as the Henry Clay raced for the bank. A gardener, working among the flower beds along the river edge of Assemblyman Russel Smith’s Riverdale estate, looked up to see a blazing steamboat bearing down on him.

It was only a few minutes before the Henry Clay struck with terrific force, her bow sliding up the shelving bank twenty-five feet and nosing eight feet into the earth of a high railroad embankment. The shock knocked over one of the smokestacks and threw benches and tables about. Many passengers on the promenade deck were hurled to the deck below or into the water. A few far forward, including Pilot Elmendorf and his wife and the foresighted Harry Lawrence, were thrown to safety on land. The jolt seemed to have stirred the fires and the flames united into a solid sheet that began slowly moving aft, blown by the south wind. Now the fatal stupidity of the bartender’s order was obvious. There was no going forward and the stern was over deep water. It was burn or drown for the passengers who could not swim. A white boat with a green line about its gunwale suddenly appeared, its occupant rowing about aimlessly and picking up no one of the dozens already struggling in the water. A gentleman named Dunning seized upon a large wooden sign, a milliner’s advertisement which stood on the deck, and leaped overboard with it. A gallant Mr. Edwards standing upon the taffrail saw a panic-stricken young lady in great danger of being burned and exclaimed (according to the report of the New York Herald for July 31, 7852), "Will you go with me into the water and run the risk of being drowned or will you be burned to death?" The report concludes, "The female accepted the noble offer and both were saved."

The flames were working aft swiftly now and the frantic passengers began to drop into the deep water by scores. A large black boat with a red streak arrived from upriver, picked up seven, and made for shore though it could easily have held fifteen. Mr. Downing, a strong swimmer, was very calm. He gave minute directions to all his charges, then went up on the promenade deck and threw many wooden chairs into the water. On two of these his tiny wife was able to float to shore. His children also escaped but Mrs. Dc Windt was drowned. A Newburgh passenger, struggling in the water, saw that Mr. Downing was trying to keep Mrs. Wadsworth afloat and that the task was difficult. Neither of them was seen alive after that.

Mr. Collyer, already ashore, had begun breaking up a rail fence and shoving the pieces out into the water to struggling people. Captain Tallman, at last aroused from his sickbed, and already so exhausted that he could not speak, was in the water, helping passenger after passenger to shore. Mr. Thompson, of Perry Street in New York City, let down from the deck a wooden settee, jumped after it, and had just climbed upon it when someone grabbed him by the leg and pulled him off. At that moment he saw his wife, who could not swim, jump into the water. He succeeded in working along the side of the boat with her to the paddle wheel, which they grabbed. The weight caused the wheel to revolve, throwing them off and emptying flaming fragments on them. They finally floated to safety on fence boards.

The gardener, who had been the first to see the burning boat from shore, and Mr. Smith’s coachman had just launched a small boat when they saw a sloop, occupied by four men who did not help with the rescue but were picking up floating valuables, robbing helpless, drowning victims. Bravely the two servants boarded the river pirates, threw them overboard, and used the sioop to save as many as it would hold. One gentleman, said to be from Newark, New Jersey, methodically saved his wife and each of his nine children. One at a time they jumped and were rushed ashore by the valiant father, who was hurried away "entirely senseless" by his grateful brood and their mother. A train puffed along the embankment and stopped, its men passengers scurrying from the coaches down to the river to help in the rescue work.

"A noble Newfoundland dog named Neptune [to quote again from the New York Herald of July 31] rushed into the water and seized a young child that was drowning by the dress near the shoulders and bore it safely to shore. He returned and approached a woman to assist in the same way, but she was so frightened that the dog had to be called off and he was thus deprived of the opportunity of extending that relief to the sufferers to which his noble nature prompted him."

All was over in about twenty minutes. The watch found in dead old Stephen Allen’s pocket, along with a slip of paper reading "Keep good company or none," had stopped at 3:26. Along the shore for over a mile lay hats, shawls, dresses, an occasional body. The Armenia loitered out in the channel, its two small boats searching the waters for any sign of a living being, but the Henry Clay had raced on too far ahead of her. The train moved on bearing a distressing load of the burned and drowned. Another train came down from the north and stopped. In the hot sunlight on the river men worked, slowly dragging for corpses, while the Henry Clay burned to the water. Isaac MacDaniel, searching among the bodies on the shore for his dead wife, came upon James Jessup, the clerk who had so smugly reassured him a few hours before.

"Is there any danger here?" said Isaac.

By five o’clock nothing was left except a fragment of the bow, some ten or twelve feet high, which burned slowly "like a warning beacon to light up the shapeless wreck of charred timbers and iron below." William Lawrence, coroner of Westchester County, wrote in his tent beside the water that night: "The last scenes of the day were singularly impressive and solemn. The night was remarkably clear, the full moon dimly lighting up the river and the hills; at one side of a gloomy arch over the railroad was the wreck, the bow still slowly burning; half revealed in its lurid light lay the bodies of two men; above the arch a group of some twenty persons were busy with newly discovered corpses, trying to identify them. . . . The surface of the stream, placid and silent as the grave, was broken only by the oars of a few men who were still dredging for bodies."

They covered the dead that moonlit evening with green boughs. The coroner and his jury had to draw guns and threaten a dark craft filled with plunderers, "sacrilegious harpies who hover about." All night long cannon boomed out over the Hudson as the workers ashore tried to dislodge bodies and bring them to the surface of the river.

And in the morning the details of the disaster reached New York. Stephen Allen was dead. Andrew Jackson Downing was dead, and so were his mother-in-law and the lovely, tragic Mrs. Wadsworth. Miss Hawthorne had been lost, and genial Mr. Speed. The number of dead was reported as eighty and Captain Tallman was already regretting his early statement to a passenger, "There were only ten or fifteen persons drowned and they were common people." In the Astor House Gentlemen’s Parlor an excited crowd of men, some of them with tear-stained faces, denounced Mr. Collyer, Captain Tallman and his crew, the officers and crew of the Armenia, for racing their steamers in complete disregard of the safety of passengers. Answering these accusations on the next day, the owners of the two boats made public announcement of their agreement that there would be no racing, and pilot Isaac Polhemus of the Armenia wrote a letter, which was immediately published, stating that the latter steamer had not attempted to beat the Henry Clay because racing had been forbidden by her captain and owner, Isaac P. Smith (who was not aboard on the day of the disaster). Charges of criminal murder against the owners and officers of the Henry Clay were set aside by Judge Edmonds in Westchester County but he held the accused to bail for manslaughter in the jurisdiction of the United States District Court.

In the meantime James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, waged an editorial war against steamboat racing on the Hudson, a campaign made more bitter by complaining letters from passengers of the steamers Frances Skiddy and Alida which frequently entered into competitions, and by the boiler explosion of the racing Reindeer at Bristol Landing in September of the same year. Mr. Bennett wrote: "How long are human hetacombs [sic] to be thus offered upon the altar of an avaricious speculation which sacrifices all things to itself?"

The trial of the defendants in the Henry Clay case ended in their acquittal on November 2, 1852. A few months later the New York State legislature passed a rigid Steamboat Inspection Act which finally put an end to the racing of steamers on the Hudson.