Last Sunday (July 2), the Shawangunk Journal took a 90-minute cruise on the Solaris, the only fully solar-powered commercial boat operating on the Hudson River.

The cruise, themed “D&H Canal History — A Conversation with Bill Merchant,” took Merchant, 10 passengers, Captain Jim McCann, and a crew member up Rondout Creek to the D&H Canal’s Lock No. 1 at Eddyville. Along the way Merchant — deputy director for Collections, historian and curator of the D&H Canal Museum and a board member of the Century House Historical Society — provided captivating insights into the historical relics that line the banks of the legendary river.

The D&H Canal History cruise was one of only dozens being offered several times a week this summer aboard the Solaris by its owner, the Hudson River Maritime Museum, located in the Rondout-West Strand Historic District. (See link below.)

The Solaris

The 44-foot Solaris is a remarkable vessel crafted entirely from wood at the Hudson River Maritime Museum's Wooden Boat School in 2017 under the direction of Jim Kricker. Its unique design incorporates 18 solar panels on the roof, allowing the vessel to operate without using any fossil fuels.

The Solaris houses 32 standard 12-volt cellular car batteries to store its solar-generated energy. These act as the boat’s bilge.

The boat’s engine, fully enclosed at the rear, resembles a small outboard motor. The engine is extremely quiet, which can be unnerving to one accustomed to the roar and vibrations customarily felt in a boat of this size.

The boat’s range depends on the battery charge, the current sun condition, along with tides and river conditions. But the Solaris can run all night on a full battery bank, and that could be 40 to 60 miles. Even on cloudy days, the solar panels continually charge its batteries.

The vessel can carry at least a dozen passengers, plus the captain and crew. Safety is a top priority and the Solaris is fully equipped with life jackets and life rafts to ensure a secure and enjoyable experience. The boat complies with all U.S. Coast Guard regulations for commercial passenger-carrying vessels.

History on the Rondout

As the Solaris navigated through the picturesque and still bustling Rondout Creek, making its way to Lock No. 1 at Eddyville, Bill Merchant shared captivating stories of the area’s heydays, highlighting the canal’s importance as a key transportation route.

“From the canal’s opening in 1828 through its closing in 1898 — and even through 1917, when the section from Rosendale to Rondout finally stopped carrying cement — the Delaware and Hudson Canal was responsible for vast amounts of traffic on the Hudson River,” Merchant said.

Anthracite coal from Carbondale, Pennsylvania, mines was transported in canal boats, Merchant explained, to the Rondout Creek via the 108-mile-long D&W canal, that wound its way through the Lackawaxen, Delaware, Neversink, Bashakill, Sandburgh, and Rondout valleys before arriving at the canal’s Lock No. 1 in Eddysville.

Lock No. 1, said Merchant, was alongside a weigh station where boats and their cargoes were weighed and compared with their empty weights recorded at the start of the season. At first the canal was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Later this dropped to being open six days a week from 4 a.m. until 10 p.m.

In the three-month off-season when the canal was frozen, canal barges were stored on the Upper Rondout near Lock No. 1 and at Kingston Point. In the canal’s peak year of 1872, there were around 1,000 coal canal boats operating along with 300 others carrying different goods.

Ten-Day Round Trip

Canal boats took around 10 days to make the round trip from the Pennsylvania coal mine to Lock No. 1 at the Rondout and then back to the mine. For every day over 10 the canal boat took, the canal operator, who also ran the mine, took 5 cents off the $1 per ton of coal paid for the round trip. At that time an average canal boat carried 130 tons.

In the mid-19th century, a regular canal boat cost $1,200 and a "full river" boat was $1,400; $20 a trip was deducted to pay for them. Non-child canawlers, as the canal boat crews, largely families, were known, were paid around $10 a month; child workers were free.

“Although the canal owners denied it, side hustles along the way were numerous,” Merchant told an entranced Solaris audience.

Lockkeepers, under the direction of the canal owners, ran grocery stores to provide the canawlers with provisions on credit to be paid at the end of the season from the boat owner’s canal account. On their way along the canal, canawlers would exchange coal with farmers in exchange for fresh produce. From Lock No. 1 the canal boats and their canawlers were towed to the man-made Island Dock on the Rondout near Kingston.

The island was built over Rondout Creek mud flats by driving pilings into the bedrock. The Dodge Yarding system, an assemblage of unloading elevators installed in 1890, was able to handle an impressive 1,000 tons of coal a day while automatically weighing and screening the cargo. Island Dock was covered in mountains of coal and surrounded by swarming coal canal boats.

The arrival of the canal helped create a port city that dwarfed nearby Kingston. The bustling dock area — passengers, bricks, cement, coal and bluestone to NYC and Albany — transformed Rondout into the third-largest port on the Hudson River. Rondout merged with Kingston in 1872 to bring their population to 22,000 at a time when New York City's population neared 1,443,000.

At Island Dock some coal would be transferred to larger boats and then towed south in flocks of 100 boats or more on the Hudson for 80 miles to supply the primary market in New York City. Some of the smaller canal boats would also be towed to the city along with their crews, who never left their craft.

From Coal to Electricity

The decline of the D&H Canal came with the advent of electricity, which led to the switch from coal to other sources of power. Although the canal's lifespan ended between 1880 and 1930, its legacy remains etched in the region's history.

Given the Canadian smoke that was drifting around the day of the cruise, Merchant was asked how the air was in those coal-burning 19th century days.

“Not as bad as in England!” he responded. “The anthracite coal from Pennsylvania wasn’t as polluting as the bituminous coal the Brits burned. Our local air at that time couldn't have been all that good, but I have no data.”

A Solaris boat tour not only provides a memorable and eco-friendly experience, but also offers a deep appreciation of our area’s historical significance and its impact on the development of the Hudson River region.

Other Solaris cruises being offered this summer by the Hudson River Maritime Museum include Lighthouse Tours (explore a lighthouse!), History Tours, Evening Cruises with music (bring your own alcohol), Ecology Tours, Tasting Cruises (providing local foods), and Evening Sunset Cruises. Prices are $30 for adults, $28 for seniors, and $26 for children. The Solaris is available for private charter as well. The museum also has boat building, sailing, and rowing schools. For more information, visit hrmm.org/all-boat-tours.html.