http://timestraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/fleet-parades-up-the-hudson/
Fleet Parades Up the Hudson
WILLIAM S. NIEDERKORNThe Hudson-Fulton Celebration steamed 60 miles up the Hudson yesterday to Newburg in “a long parade of cruisers, torpedo boats, submarines and merchant and pleasure craft…. Before the steamers had got well under way the Roosevelt, Peary’s arctic ship, came slowly up the river in full view of the excursionists, who cheered her warmly, waving flags and handkerchiefs. She dropped anchor to wait for Commander Peary and was soon left astern, the paraders seeing no more of her until in the middle of the afternoon when she reached Newburg. Her progress up the river had been a parade and triumph of her own. After going slowly past the warships the procession put on speed for the long stretch which ended only at Newburgh. In the next two hours the Hudson saw one of the prettiest races its waters have known in a long time. The Fulton, long, trim, and sitting lower in the water than most of the other steamers of her class, crept by her competitors one by one, only — when she had taken the lead at last — to be washed by the swell of four sinister-looking torpedo boats, which cut the water as with a razor blade. The Fulton must have been making close to twenty miles an hour, if not more, but the slate-covered war greyhounds went past her almost as if she had been standing still…. Gov. Hughes in his address called attention to the fact that in the parades in New York and in Newburg there were marching troops from many of the great nations under arms, something which, he said, had never before happened in this country. ‘In the piping times of peace,’ the Governor said, ‘we meet together with all the panoply of war.’ ” Is nostalgia for war infecting the West, and the United States in particular as the old soldiers of the Civil War are fading away? Your comments, readers, on this subject will be most welcome. Upper Hudson Joins in the Celebration; Cruisers and Submarines Seen at Newburg as Escort to Historic Craft; Roosevelt Behind Parade; 25,000 Make the Trip on Excursion Boats, the Hills Resounding to Salutes as They Pass
Comments