The workship Ariadne in Newburgh Bay October 2024.

Newburgh neighbors looked out at the Hudson River last week and started calling each other to discover what on earth was happening on the water.

Folks who live in sight of the river are used to seeing watercraft of all sizes from one-person kayaks to big transport steamers and long barges but this looked different. Jumbo red and white ships were not passing by but were anchored in Newburgh Bay. They were surrounded by a fleet of small workboats that moved in circles around them and sometimes stretched out in a straight line flashing their lights. It was fun to imagine what was going on and social media lit up with funny and bizarre guesses as to what was happening.

Thanks to the advice of a kind neighbor who loved to watch the river, I have the “Marine Traffic” app loaded on my phone. That app allows you to point your phone at a location and find out what is sailing or motoring by on that waterway. Marine Traffic told me I was looking at the Ariadne, a 130-meter-long supply ship registered in Greece. Just upriver, beyond the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, was the Astrea, its sister ship just 72 meters long and also moored and also looking busy and engaged with nearby workboats.

What were the crews on this fleet doing? They were seemingly working around the clock since the Ariadne was brightly lit up all night as were the six small workboats.

An online search turned up several reports to explain the circus we were watching. Transmission cable is being run from Canada to New York City. The cable will run underwater along the length of Lake Champlain and then down the length of the Hudson River. The big work ships, Ariadne and Astrea, are carrying and unspooling that cable into a trench in the channel far below the Hudson where the cable will lay. The fleet of helper boats keep the cable running out correctly as it settles into its deep channel.

These links with maps and timelines will explain more: hvny.info/news/2024/chpe and wrrv.com/big-ship-cable-laying-hudson-river-ny.

How many generations of Newburghers have watched electric infrastructure develop in this part of the valley? Of course, a major bragging right for our city is the early establishment of an Edison electric plant on Montgomery Street in 1883. That generating station transformed what was possible for Newburgh homes, businesses and industries. By 1900, the growing Newburgh Light Heat and Power Company (run with electric generators) merged with the earlier Consolidated Gas, Light, Heat and Power Company of Newburgh (run on manufactured gas – gas created from coal - stored in tanks along the South Colden Street neighborhood). In that 1900 year, the Hudson Valley had sixty small isolated electric plants from Newburgh and Beacon up into the Catskill Mountains and the upper Wallkill River and they started to merge into what became the Central Hudson Company. Water provided the power to some of those member utility companies from dams built in places like High Falls, Honk Falls, Dashville and Sturgeon Pool.

A century later, hydro power is being tapped again from a big plant in Quebec and that electric current is being carried all the way to New York City in underwater cables that will run deep below our bay and all along a lake and river route including 90 miles of the Hudson River bottom. It is unlikely to transform life in New York the way power plants did for us a century ago but it will fill a need for electricity. It is also causing less outcry than plans did a half-century ago when the Consolidated Energy Company of New York unveiled plans to build a hydroelectric plant in Cornwall New York by digging into the iconic Storm King Mountain and creating a giant riverside generating station facing Newburgh Bay.