Th e classic Hudson River sloop, Victorine, displays her saucy sheer and giant mainsail in a portrait shot just off the railroad tracks that are taking away her livelihood. She's stowed her jib and come to anchor at Cold Spring , while her crew pose in the rigging f or the camera. A giant American flag flaps lazily at the peak, completing this turn-of-th ecentury, uniquely American river scene. Courtesy Charles A. Keppel.
an increasing hazard to the sloops. During the nearly fifty years of the Victorine sailing for the West Point Foundry , the growing use of steam power cut into the need for sloop transport and reduced the need for many of the other sloops in the so-called Cold Spring Navy : Kitty Van Tassell, Wa ve, Mary Kemble, Putnam and Norma. Steamboats, faster and more comfortable than the old passenger carrying sailing vessels , soon claimed most of the business. In time, competition between steamboat companies became so great that some serious accidents occurred . Beyond some collisions with sailing craft and other vessels , there were also fires, boiler explosions and even shipwrecks on the shore . In the mid-nineteenth century , the cargo-carrying river steamers competed more and more with the sloops , and the building of new sloops disappeared entirely soon after the Civil War. Also railroad development on both sides of the Hudson River continued to cut seriously into the need for sloops. The changes brought on by steam technology created another, though less glamorous use of the old , well built sloops - conversion into lighters . Such was the fate of the Victorine shortly before 1900 when she was acquired by a shipping SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1987
company that used barges and sloops , sometimes in large groups, lashed together and towed behind a steam tug. Usually the former sloops ' rigging had to be removed to facilitate loading and to reduce the weight the hull had to carry. As a barge the Victorine was still in use for probably another ten years , between Albany and New York. Although there is some indication that she was used in New York Harbor to transport what was then called case oil (kerosene in large tin containers) from local refiners to larger ships used in transatlantic trade, no definite date has been found to indicate when the Victorine ceased to be used. But she must have come to the end of her days within a few years of the death of her long-time captain , David A. Lyons , who died September 1909 at the age of 86. Separately and together, both the sloop and the Captain left records to be remembered in Hudson River history .
.t Mr. Keppel has long been a student of the Hudson River and aided in the establishment of the Hudson River Maritime Center at Kingston, New York. Mr. Lyons is a grandson of the Victorine' s master, Capt. David Lyons. 23