Brinckerhoff's Last Trip

On New Year's Eve, a little group of men gathered on the river bank at Poughkeepsie. Some of them were oldtime rivermen. Others were just old inhabitants of Poughkeepsie or from Highland, across the river--men who had ridden the Poughkeepsie ferry countless times, like their grandfathers and great-grandfathers before them.

The side-wheeler Brinckerhoff, veteran of 41 years on the Hudson River, carried the quiet group through the river-damp darkness, across the stream and back. Its searchlight picked out Poughkeepsie's Main Street. Its steel-hooped sides girded against the groaning wooden racks. The Poughkeepsie ferry, tarnation old, almost as old as the nation (it had crisscrossed the Hudson since 1798), had made its last run.

All over the land ferries had stopped or were slowing to a stop. In the old days, in big river towns, the ferryboat captain was a man of dignity and wealth. Along narrow streams deep in the country there were leisurely men in overalls who pulled a flatboat across by wires for an occasional farmer's wagon or a model-T Ford.

But concrete highways and concrete-and-steel bridges made the ferry obsolescent. When the Mid-Hudson Bridge was opened in 1930, the Poughkeepsie ferry, which once had three boats in constant service, hit its fatal snag. By undercutting the bridge toll (25-c- to 50-c-), it managed to keep one boat going. Last week, when the bridge toll came down to 35-c-, the line gave up. On the old Brinckerhoff, lashed to the landing, the fires went dead.

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