Pattern Recognition

In mid-19th-century America, riverboats ranked high among modes of transport. Building and maintaining heads of steam by burning wood or coal, these vessels worked any river of any significant size. Hudson River steamboats burned anthracite coal. Stokers also kept handy “fat pine” logs that burned hot enough to push a paddle-wheeler to 22 mph, even carrying passengers and freight. A reputation for speed meant more business, although engine explosions and fires, as well as accidents, were as common as the practice of captains racing, usually surreptitiously, along their assigned routes, as was so on Wednesday, July 28, 1852, when the steamer Henry Clay, out of Albany, New York, docked 90 miles down the Hudson River at Newburgh to board passengers.

The Clay, a fixture on the Albany/New York City circuit, was a typical double-paddle wheeler, 198 feet long and powered by a walking beam engine, so called from the rhythmic motion of the pistons driving the paddles. The engine room was amidship. Captain Thomas Collyer had built the Clay and a similar vessel, the Armenia, the year before. This day he was commanding the Clay. The Armenia was also on the river, commanded by Captain Isaac Smith.

Among those waiting at Newburgh when the tied up early that afternoon was Andrew Jackson Downing. Accompanied by family and friends, Downing, 36, was bound for New York City, then Newport, Rhode Island, on business—specifically, a conference on designing the, Downing was a best-selling author. His architectural pattern books were popular resources from which the wealthy and folks further down the economic ladder took the designs for their residences. Unknown to Downing and fellow passengers, that day Captain Collyer was racing Captain Smith to Manhattan.