By Shannon Butler
If you read the title above and immediately thought of Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer blowing up into a million pieces with bits of antler flying everywhere, no one could blame you. Very few people today know that there was once a steamship called Reindeer and that it was considered one of the fastest steamers on the Hudson River during its short life. The title gives away the end of this story, but the ship actually exploded not once, but twice, which makes for an even more fascinating story. The tragedy of this shipwreck is not just the lives that were lost, but that it could have been prevented if man’s pride wasn’t involved.
The Hudson River was littered with steamer ships by the year 1850 and Thomas Collyer was one of the best known shipbuilders of his day. That same year, a group of investors commissioned Collyer to build them a new one. What he gave them was a 275-foot long beauty, christened the Reindeer, and the only steam ship on the Hudson to be named after an animal. The ship became incredibly popular almost overnight as she made her first passage from New York City to Albany in just under eight hours (making seven stops to pick up passengers along the way). Composer William Dressler wrote a polka in her honor and famous lithographer Nathaniel Currier recreated her image to sell prints.
Nothing was more appealing to an investor of ships than a fast one that could break records. In fact, there was plenty of encouragement from these investors for friendly competition between ship’s captains to see who could get their ship to its destination first. In some cases, stops along the route were skipped entirely if it looked like there weren’t enough passengers waiting to warrant the time loss. The original captain of Reindeer was Albert DeGroot and he was somewhat famous as a racer of steam ships and even managed to have one boiler explosion under his belt by the time he took control of this new ship.
Reindeer had her first (if somewhat minor) explosion on May 6, 1852, near Barrytown, while she was racing another ship called The Armenia. No one was killed in the incident, but several people were injured. Just a little over two months later, The Armenia would be involved in another steamer incident, the famous wreck of The Henry Clay, which killed some of Poughkeepsie’s own. Matthew Vassar, Jr. wrote about it in his personal diary and found himself mentioning another disaster when he heard the news of Reindeer exploding for a second time on September 4, 1852.
Interestingly enough, Captain DeGroot was not racing her on this occasion and she had a new Captain, Charles W. Farnam. She had also been stopped at the dock at Bristol near Saugerties which was one of the stops on the route heading north towards Albany. As she was launching again, “The connection pipe of the return flues attached to the boiler exploded with a sound described by those on shore like the falling of a mass of buildings.” Since the boilers were “back to back in the middle below deck” anyone who was in the dining room, which was also below deck, was either killed or badly scalded.
Among the dead was the ship’s second officer and Poughkeepsie native, Frederick Monelle. Matthew Vassar, Jr. once again briefly mentioned the tragedy in his diary: “deaths to date from Explosion of Reindeer, 31 - a horrid affair. 2 funerals here viz ‘Monell’ and ‘Beneway’ both killed at above time.” Frederick’s body was brought back to Poughkeepsie to be buried at Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery. His little sister, Nancy, signed the burial record and she would go on to become a doctor by the 1870s.
References:
Matthew Vassar Jr.’s Diary - 1852 - B Vassar Vol 2.
Allison, J. Thomas, “Hudson River Steamboat Catastrophes” 2013, Chap 9.
Poughkeepsie Eagle - 8 May 1852, 11 Sep 1852
The New York Times - 6 Sep 1852
https://poklib.org/a-dark-gloomy-day-for-pokepsie-the-destruction-of-the-henry-clay/
Burial Record of Frederick Monelle - Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery Archives
Images:
PE-1852-9-11 - News of the explosion of the Reindeer from the Poughkeepsie Eagle - 1852
Monelle-Obit - Obituary for Frederick Monelle from the Poughkeepsie Eagle - 1852
Monelle-Burial record - Burial record for Frederick Monelle from Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery Archives