Europe’s first exposure to the New York Bay was during the voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano (1485–1528). An Italian from Florence sailing for Francois I, the king of France, he left European waters in January 1524 to find a route to China.
His vessel, La Dauphine, named after the French heir to the throne, measured 100 tons and was manned by a crew of 50. In early March, after a tempest-tossed crossing, he came close to Cape Fear, North Carolina. By mid-April Verrazano had coasted far enough north and east to enter New York Bay, passing Sandy Hook en route.
After some brief reconnaissance he continued on his voyage and returned to France in July. Being a competent seaman and navigator, Verrazano was able to conclude that he did not reach China, but rather a new world. However, the French did not follow up on Verrazano’s discovery of the best harbor in the Americas.
Henry Hudson (ca. 1565 – disappeared 1611), an Englishman in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, investigated portions of the American east coast in 1609. Hudson was the next European to enter New York Harbor; he then sailed 150 miles up the river that was to bear his name.
The Dutch were a bit more industrious and inaugurated European control of the region. Headquartered at Manhattan, private trading operations were established on the Hudson River in 1613. Numerous exploratory ventures occurred after the founding of the trading post, and by the mid- 1610s much of the area was well known.
The Dutch named this region the Nieuw Nederland (New Netherland) in 1614, with private fur-trading operations expanding into the surrounding country. In 1623 the Dutch West India Company took over trading operations of the region, and the town of New Amsterdam was founded in 1625.
The Dutch expansion caused conflict with the English by extending east toward New England. To the south, the Dutch absorbed the Swedish settlement of New Sweden at present-day Wilmington, Delaware. Trade connections were established with the Chesapeake Bay colonists, South America, and Europe.
New Amsterdam was growing, and rivaled Boston as a center for maritime trade, with furs, fish, beef, and flour being exported, tobacco, slaves, and sugar being trans-shipped, and European goods imported.
The community appeared to be the rising star of American colonial ports. However, with the restoration of Charles II in England and a more aggressive colonial policy, the English took the colony in 1664.
Soon after the beginning of English rule, New Amsterdam was renamed New York and flour replaced furs as the port’s main export, shipped mainly to the West Indies. In the eighteenth century exports included whale oil, beaver pelts, and some tobacco to England, and flour, pork, bread, peas, and horses to the West Indies.
Imports from England and the West Indies included manufactured goods and rum, molasses, and sugar respectively.
Shipping increased considerably by the mid-1700s. Imports included “fish oil, blubber, whale fins, turpentine, seal skins, hops, cider, bricks, coal, lamp black, wrought iron, tin, brasury [sic], joinery, carriages and chairs. Exports included chocolate, lumber,” and import goods from both the West Indies and Europe.
New York did not confine her shipping activities to trade; her vessels were also heavily involved in privateering. Preying on enemy commerce led to the inevitability that some would tum to the often-glamorized activity of pirating.
The infamous William Captain Kidd (ca. 1645–1701) and various lesser-known pirates made New York a rendezvous around 1700. Not only was New York a rendezvous, her merchants supported trade and reaped a profit by supplying pirates inhabiting such far-off places as Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.
Frederick Philipse (1626-1702), a merchant of New York and first Lord of the Manor of Philipsburg Manor (Philipse Manor), loaded ships with clothing, liquor, naval stores, guns, and ammunition, and had his local agent Adam Baldridge sell them to the pirates in return for their ill-gotten gain. Commerce, with varying levels of ethics, was driving the growth of the port.
By the second decade of the eighteenth century, the interior settlements surrounding New York were sufficiently established to allow for the production of significant amounts of export goods.
As a result of the increased trade, the port expanded accordingly, as did its need for larger, more economical vessels with which to ship goods. Port records indicate that prior to 1720, few vessels entering the port registered over 100 tons.
Larger vessels became more common within the next few years. In 1770, New York stood fourth after Philadelphia, Boston, and Charleston among the American ports in total tonnage arriving and clearing.
With inter-colonial trade well established and foreign imports and exports on the increase, the port of New York continued to grow. By the last decade of the eighteenth century, the port of New York had surpassed Boston in importance; by the first decade of the nineteenth century, the port was larger than Philadelphia.
Two-thirds of all the nation’s imports and one-third of its exports went through the port by 1860, with only London and Liverpool exceeding the port in the volume of shipping and value of imports and exports in the Atlantic World.
Population growth mirrored the increase in shipping activities, declining only through war and epidemics. Associated reductions in maritime commerce occurred while the British occupied the port during the Revolutionary War, the yellow fever epidemics of 1795 and 1798, the Embargo Act of 1807, and the British closure of the port during the War of 1812 (1812-1815).
During the nineteenth century, sailing vessels of varying sizes and shapes entered and exited the port of New York. These vessels included sloops, coastal schooners, merchantmen, and packet ships, which increased in size as time and technology progressed.
The late 1840s and 1850s saw the famous clipper ships entering the port, to be followed in the 1890s by the last of the American square-rigged, deep-water sailing ships (the “down easters”).
These were followed by large, multi-masted schooners-the largest sailing vessels ever constructed. In addition to these major vessel categories, other vessel types present in the area included schooner barges, pilot boats, lighters, fishing boats, and other types of small craft.
The invention of the steam engine in the late eighteenth century and its application on vessels at the tum of the century played a profound role in the history of the port, and cut into the trades previously controlled by sailing vessels.
After Robert Fulton’s North River Steam Boat completed its successful voyage from New York to Albany in 1807, steam power became the dominant method of vessel propulsion and would form the catalyst for the evolution of not only vessel shape and type, but trade and economics as well.
The advent of steam heralded the creation of the famous river and coastal sidewheel steamers, several of which are listed as having wrecked near the approaches to New York. Huge transatlantic liners followed in the wake of the sidewheel steamers, making New York the center for passenger travel to and from foreign ports.
Steam also allowed the ever-important “tug boat” to evolve. After 1860 the tug boat industry expanded rapidly, with steam being employed on the tugs until just after World War I.
With the port of New York immediately to the north, some of the many vessels transiting the waters were wrecked by storm, accident, or poor seamanship. It is known that numerous vessels wrecked while approaching or leaving New York.
Long Island to the east and the shores of New Jersey to the south act as a funnel through which vessels enter New York Harbor. During the age of sail, vessels were dependent on the capricious winds for motive force-many were reported lost due to contrary winds.
However, early steam vessels, without modern navigation aids such as radar, loran, or GPS, have had accidents in the ever-confining waters that mark the approaches to New York. In the modem era, technology has yet to abolish accidents caused by human error.
To ameliorate the affects of maritime disasters, numerous organizations were incorporated around the coasts. Local organizations took the responsibility of aiding the victims of shipwrecks.
In an era of a small Federal government, each locality took responsibility for situations occurring within its immediate jurisdiction. However, during the mid-nineteenth century the port of New York rose to such prominence in commercial and emigration activities that the local resources could not sustain a full service for wrecked mariners and passengers.
A Congressman from New Jersey, William Newell (1817-1901), once witnessed a shipwreck where no effective rescue was possible. In 1847 he persuaded Congress to appropriate money to provide lighthouses with lifeboats in the Newell Act. However, the money was not spent for that purpose.
The next year he obtained more funds for life saving equipment to be used between Sandy Hook and Little Egg Inlet, New Jersey, under the direction of the Revenue Marine (later the United States Revenue Cutter Service, and the U.S. Coast Guard).
The following year Congress extended the network of stations to include the rest of the New Jersey shore and to the coast of Long Island, New York. Thus, the Federal government took its first tentative steps toward a remedy for mariners in distress.
This essay is excerpted with minor editing for clarification from Target Investigations in Connection with the New York and New Jersey harbor Navigation Project, May 2004, prepared for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District, by Andrew D.W. Lydecker and Stephen R. James, Jr. of Panamerican Consultants, Inc.
Illustrations, from above: Illustration of Henry Hudson’ ship Haelve Maen (Half Moon) at in Hoorn, Netherlands (Hoorn Museum); Redrawn 1916 version of the Cortelyous Castello Plan (1660) by John Wolcott Adams and Isaac Newton; New York Harbor in 1793; New York’s harbor as seen from Williamsburg, 1848 by Eliphalet M Brown, lithograph by Edgar W Foreman; Currier and Ives, “The City of New York,” 1870, (Library of Congress); and Thomas Nast’s 1877 political cartoon “Death on economy” with a caption reading “I suppose I must spend a little on life-saving service, life-boat stations, life-boats, surf-boats, etc.; but it is too bad to be obliged to waste so much money.”
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