Mary McTamaney

This autumn, Mother Nature has given us days too beautiful to miss. Clear sunny vistas call us to come out and play and savor the change of season. So, I set out on a brief road trip with my husband to drink in the present and learn about the past. We drove north up the river to Columbia County. Our destination was the Columbia County Historical Society headquarters in the center of the Village of Kinderhook. That Society’s newsletters are often filled with interesting stories of times past but their current exhibit had caught my particular attention. It is called “The Rise and Fall of the Port of Hudson” and I was sure I would find parallels to the timeline of Newburgh.

The heart of the exhibit was a detailed story of the economic engine that powered the Village of Hudson in the 19th century – the whaling industry. Whales! What were those giant sea creatures doing 125 miles north of New York Harbor so far from their homes in the sea? Well, only their dead carcasses were transported up to Hudson by an industry that found a convenient base of operations along this commercial river.

Whaling was a long-standing industry, especially along the Atlantic Ocean in colonial times. Whale oil was a major source of lantern light. Whale bone was cut and carved into a myriad of household items and particularly prized for its strength but flexibility such that it formed the shape of women worldwide being sewn into the stays of the essential 19th century wardrobe item, the corset. Candles made from the boiled down blubber of whales burned the longest, brightest and with the least smoke so they were always in demand.

But whaling was a dangerous, bloody and malodorous enterprise. The whales were hunted and killed on the open sea and their bodies cut up, rendered and carried home in barrels and tubs.

In colonial times, the industry was centered along the New England Coast in places like the island of Nantucket. But the Revolutionary War disrupted the colonial economy and many whaling families fled inland away from British fleets -- a few into the Hudson River Valley where some discovered the little Village of Hudson could be an accommodating new port.

The story of that economic shift and the wealth it brought to an upstate community is what the 2025 exhibit at the Columbia County Historical Society tells in amazing detail. Their large exhibit hall is full of illustrated panels explaining an era nearly forgotten among New Yorkers. The story is important to local history because Newburgh was also once a whaling port. From 1832 to 1839, the Newburgh Whaling Company operated a small fleet of ships setting sail for the high seas from a dock and storehouse at the foot of First Street.

Newburghers had seen the Hudson whalers returning from voyages in ships weighed down by whale oil cargo and decided to try for a piece of that action.

Curators at Columbia County Historical Society have gathered a vast amount of history on the many aspects of the whaling industry including tales of Barbary Coast pirates, shipwrecks, marooned sailors, and the ethnic diversity of the whale ship crews. Indeed, there was a small maritime underground railroad operating among the whaleships as they plied the coasts.

Larger museums in New England shared records for the current exhibit in Kinderhook and it is surprising to read through the databases of names of local sailors who went to sea. Those whale ships based in Hudson employed men from Newburgh each year even when our village didn’t have its own whaling company. Sadly, a fire on Newburgh’s waterfront in 1846 burned up the ledgers of the Newburgh Whaling Company so its story must be pieced together from varied sources.

The Columbia County Historical Society has done a fine job of setting the scene for us to understand a chapter in our history that nearly faded into obscurity.

Check out details of their 2025 exhibit at: cchsny.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-port-of-hudson.

It’s a lovely month for a ride upriver. Then come home and stand at the little fishing pier where First Street meets our shore and imagine the whale ships and the local mariners that once set sail from that spot.