Lecture & Book Signing
Hudson’s Merchants and Whalers:
The Rise and Fall of a River Port, 1783 - 1850
by Margaret B. Schram

1 pm, April 30, 2005
Hudson River Maritime Museum
Kingston, NY

A lecture and book signing by Margaret B. Schram, author of Hudson’s Merchants and Whalers: The Rise and Fall of a River Port, 1783-1850, will be held at the Hudson River Maritime Museum, Kingston, NY at 1 pm on April 30, 2005.

Admission $4.00, museum members, free.
For reservations, call 845-338-0071, extension 13.

When visiting Hudson, NY, today, it’s hard to believe that it was once the state’s second busiest city after New York City and only one vote away from being named the capital of New York. Although the ocean was 120 miles away, Hudson’s waterfront was crowded with ships from the late 18th to mid 19th century.

During the American Revolution, several wealthy Nantucket families fearing marauding privateers and the British Navy, sold all they had and searched to find a safe harbor as suitable, but less vulnerable, than Nantucket for their whaling fleet. They found it along the Hudson River, at spot then known as Claverack Landing.

It didn’t take long for the waterfront, which started with a wharf and a single store, to become a mass of warehouses, shipyards, caulkers, blacksmith shops, sailmakers, and riggers. In 1785, the City of Hudson was Chartered — it was the third City in the State. In 1790, the city became an official seaport with customs officers and government seals

How a seaport sprouted in such an unlikely spot is the subject of a new book by Hudson historian Margaret B. Schram. But as its title - Hudson’s Merchants and Whalers: The Rise and Fall of a River Port 1783-1850 - implies, the book recounts both the city’s glorious past and, perhaps even more intriguing, why its fortunes disappeared.

The Hudson River Whale Fleet
From the Hudson River Maritime Museum

A new book chronicles City of Hudson's rise and fall
Review by Richard Buttler, Hudson Valley Magazine, November 2003

Directions to the Hudson River Maritime Museum

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