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This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

Experiment In Social Change: One View of
the First Five Years of the
Hudson River Sloop, Clearwater.
presented by

Joseph Janeti

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

PhD d . English (American
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ABSTRACT

EXPERIMENT IN SOCIAL CHANGE: ONE VIEW OF THE FIRST FIVE YEARS
OF THE HUDSON RIVER SLOOP, CLEARHATER

By
Joseph Janeti

In 1966 a number of Hudson valley residents decided to
form a group called Hudson River Sloop Restoraion which
would work toward building a replica of a Hudson River 8100p.
Hudson River 8100ps played a significant role in the devel-
opment of the early Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam and
the development of the American colonies in general. The
early direction of Hudson River 3100p Restoration was histor-
ical and served to stimulate public interest in regional his-
tory.

As the organization developed it took on other dimen-
sions as well. The construction of the Clearwater tended to
involve citizens who were interested in sailing and nautical
history. So significant was this aspect of the Clearwater
that 2122 Magazine labeled it the ”best known sailing ves-
sel in America today.

The involvement of the sloop organization with the
Hudson River and with the history of the Hudson valley led
to a natural interest in the state of the Hudson itself.

The organization became active in promoting citizen action

aimed at environmental legislation. Its relatively early

role in the eXpanding field of environmental education served

to transform the Clearwater into a symbol which helped

Joseph Janeti

stimulate public investigation into the realities of the nat-
ionwide ecological crises.

Since the early board of directors of the sleep organ-
ization included internationally-known folk-singer Pete
Seeger as its chairman, it had a ready-made avenue for fund-
raising and public involvement. The Hudson River “SIOOp Con-
certs” became a means of attracting the public. the press,
and international media peOple.

As Hudson River SloOp Restoration moved into its fifth
year. other organizational deve10pments were beginning to
surface. The Clearwateg became a kind of “floating class-
room". Local schoolboards made use of the Clearwater to
develop some dramatic methodology to aid in the teaching of
history. art, literature, mathematics. and environmental
education.

The combination of sailors, historians, scientists,
musicians. educators, environmentalists, lawmakers. activ-
ists, and rank-and-file citizen members make Hudson River
SloOp Restoration a very dynamic organization. As inter-
esting as its successes were the many internal conflicts
arising out of the interworking of its eclectic membership.
The failures and successes of this diversified group in its
efforts to work together toward a commonly held goal of a
better Hudson Valley is perhaps the most interesting aspect
of Hudson River Sloop Restoration.

In one sense. Hudson River SloOp Restoration's ex-
pressed ideals mirror the fundamental democratic presup—
positions of the United States as a whole. Pete Seeger,

in an early statement on the composition of Hudson River

J0seph-Janeti

$100p Restoration. noted:

The 8100p Clearwater has brought together people
who normally don't speak to each other: wealthy
yachtsmen and kids from the ghetto, shaggy students
and crewcut Legionaires. housewives and scientists.
teenagers and goldenagers. churchmen and athiests,
businessmen and anti-businessmen, farmers and hous-
ing develOpers and conservationists, DAR members
and new immigrants.

For the social or cultural historian, the organization
provides an unusually live case study in the problems and
workings of American democratic principles. In this sense
a study of the 8100p project is a miniature study of Amer-
ican society at large.

This study prOposes to review the various disciplines,
frames of reference, and public groups which have composed
Hudson River SlOOp Restoration from its founding to the
present. More especially, however. it will analyze the prob-
lems and pressures which deve10p as a result of the inter-
relationship of these various groups. Finally, it will
_portray both the overall effect of Hudson River 8100p Res-
toration in public affairs. and its educative value for those

individuals who participated in the organization directly.

EXPERIMENT IN SOCIAL CHANGE:
ONE VIEW OF THE FIRST FIVE YEARS OF THE
HUDSON RIVER SLOOP, CLEARWATER

By

Joseph Janeti

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State university
in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 1975

Department of English: American Studies

Forward

Why I received a flier-invitation to the “Hudson Valley
Folk Picnic“ held in June of 1968 is its own story. My
involvement with the Clearwater began when I decided to
attend that picnic. There was a wooden model of a boat, a
stage that looked something like the deck of a ship, and.as
I recollect, some words said by Pete Seeger about the idea
of building a $100p. I didn't understand very much about the
3100p. but I remember following Pete Seeger around a bit,
watching from afar as he sampled someone's home-made pie.
sang songs to some little children gathered around a tree
stump on a hill-side, and talked and listened to a lot of
people. I didn't hear Pete sing that day, but I did see
hundreds of peOple dancing arm in arm in a large meadow
surrounded by giant oak, hickory. and maple trees. I have
never got that scene of those peOple dancing out of my
mind: it remains, I think, the most beautiful thing I ever
saw. What I did forget pretty quickly was the talk about
the 3100p.

Some fifteen months later, a couple of days before I
was to return to East Lansing from a summer in the east, I
was visiting at a friend's house in Scarsdale, New York..
She mentioned that she had been thumbing through a TX_§uigg
and saw that Pete Seeger was scheduled to be on a TV Special
that evening. We decided to watch it. The Special. which I

was nationally broadcast, turned out to be not about Pete,

ll

111

but about a 76 foot long sloOp, with a hundred foot mast.
During the fifteen months while I was running around the coun-
try and learning about the mid-west, the Clearwater had been
built, fitted out, and launched. I suddenly made the con-
nection between the picnic, the half-heard talk about a
8100p, some words of Pete's on a may 1969 appearance on the
Johnny Carson Show, and this young miracle, the Clearwater.
There was still two days before returning to East Lansing
so we decided to find out whether we could still see the

Clearwater. It turned out that the sloOp was about to host

 

its last festival of the year at Kingston, New York. The
following day about six of us loaded in a car and drove the
hundred miles to the festival. Sure enough, it was every-
thing the TV Special had characterized - bright banners.
colorful displays. a beautiful boat, all kinds and ages of
peOple. I was very impressed. A year later many different
peOple told me I had picked a good day. It was the 912g;-
wgtggfs best celebration of the season. There was, of course.
no way for me to know that; I believed what I saw.

I probably would never have become involved with the
Clearwater had not the MC of the music program noticed my
banjo lying on the ground. "Some of our performers didn't
show up and we need some peOple to fill in up to six o'clock.
Do you think you could help out?”

I had never performed music before and had only been
playing the banjo for a few months but, "What the hell" I

figured. An hour later Pete Seeger was introducing my friend

 

iv

and me and we were singing in front on and along with,a thous-
and peOple on a sloop concert. ”§gm§; lg 922;!" I thought.

We were asked to perform again that night but since we
had to get our riders back to New York, we decided to decline.
We did agree to show up the next day and sing a few more
songs. What I remember most about that next day was the
music program. There was a Junior gospel choir from a local
church, a lot of folksingers, and a policeman! The policeman,
suspicious of the whole undertaking on Saturday, had, by Sun-
day, become so thoroughly involved that he asked whether he

might be allowed to sing a song for the assembled audience.
The MC was delighted. The policeman sang, “You'll Never
Walk Alone”, while Pete accompanied him on twelve-string
guitar. I doubt that anyone who was there will ever forget
that picture of the two peOple on stage: Pete Seeger, the
outspoken fighter for social causes, the legendary victim
of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and the
policeman, completely dressed in official blue, gun strapped
to his side.

The day (and the Clearwater's first season) ended with
a marching band composed of mothers, fathers, children, and
maybe even a dog or two playing some marching music. Allan
Aunapu, captain of the Clearwater, began marching around the
festival field. He was Joined by dozens of others - then
hundreds. For fifteen minutes the marching and dancing
continued: and then it was over.

I went back to East Lansing the next day but never really

forgot the Clearwater. What stood out most in my mind was
the way the Kingston festival had managed to bring together
peOple who normally wouldn't have anything to do with one
another. I remembered also that the project really needed
money so I thought, ”Wouldn't it be great to organize some
benefit concerts and raise some money for the Clearwater!”

The first concerts we put together in Michigan made
taco. Considering how far it was from the Hudson valley, I
suppose I should have been elated. Instead, I almost ap-
pologetically sent the money to Pete Seeger thinking, “What
could such a small amount of money be good for?” I was
amazed a few days later to receive a letter that said:

Holy Mackerel! What a wonderful surprise.
If it is okay with you I would like to earmark

this for a special fund to get a Clearwater Song-

book printed. Don McLean is already working on

it. We need some cash advance for the printer and

these four hundred dollars will really come in

handy....In the long run the books should make a

profit so East Lansing's investment should end up

being a sizeable contribution.

The letter was encouraging so we worked a bit harder.
We managed to get more concerts together in Michigan and
Ohio. The main result of these concerts was not so much the
money but the interchange that was beginning to develop with
Pete Seeger. The idea of me working with the 8100p project
gradually began to emerge. A few more letters passed back
and forth, the result of which was my Joining the Clearwater
at Cold Spring, New York on June 13, 1970.

Over the course of that summer I did many different

things: performed at some music festivals, did some

vi

community organizing, helped develop displays and the exhibit
trailer, drove a truck, picked up garbage, got rained on a
lot, sat in on policy-making sessions. It was an expanding
time for the 8100p and almost anything was open to anyone
interested in doing it. During this time I was one of many
volunteers who lived with the Seegers, and the summer was
pretty much devoted to working with the many kinds of peOple
who made up the "s100p group”. We were continuously with
one or another person in the project. Being somewhat a
“hanger-outer“ I believe I probably talked to every kind of
person that worked with the Clearwater. Being also some-
thing of a jack-of-all-trades, I got involved in many types
of jobs and numerous aspects of the sloop project.

One afternoon, riding north on the Taconic State Parkway,
I was listening to Jimmy Collier talk about some of the inside
deliberations that had taken place in the civil rights move-
ment. It occured to me as he was talking that if one were
to put together all of the participating peOple's ideas, the
story of what went on in the sloop organization would make
an interesting book. I put the idea aside however, because
I felt that the very thing which would make such a book in-
teresting was the candid nature of the remarks made by the
different people involved. Since most of what passed back
and forth was not meant for the media, I felt that the
disclosure of some of this material would violate the per-
sonal confidence within which it had been expressed.

When I left the Hudson Valley in September I hOped I

 

vii

would never see the Clearwater again. What had gone on that
summer was too confusing for my small mind to deal with. Some
of what went on was beautiful: some of what went on was ugly:
all of what went on was too real. After a year went by I
finally started understanding a little of what I had learned
the year before. It took six more months to incorporate it
into my life. I would say without question that my involve-

ment in the 8100p project has thus far been the most sig-

I..—

nificant learning experience of my life, but that is another
subject.

In the fall of 1970 Doug Miller of the history department
of Michigan State University suggested that I do a study of
the Clearwater. I turned down the idea for mainly the al-
ready stated reasons dof. confidence and proximity. Some
fifteen months later in winter of 1972 Victor Howard of
Michigan State University's American Studies Department
also suggested a study of the Clearwater. By this time I
was far enough away from personal involvement in it to take
the idea a bit more seriously.

I wrote to Pete Seeger to see how he felt about the
idea of a detailed “history” of Hudson River SloOp Restora-
tion being written. I was not sure if it was yet the proper
time for such a study. However, Pete's reSponse was quite
positive.

With a Michigan State University grant I bought a field
recorder and financed two trips to the east coast. I talked

to twenty or thirty pe0ple and was given access to all

V111

Hudson River 8100p Restoration files. Access to both of
these was comparatively easy, in part due to my earlier
work with the sloop.

The story that follows is put together from a number of
sources. Chiefly it is a memoir, though not written in the
first person. I have Spent a good deal of time in the Hudson
valley over the last five years so most of the focus is
drawn from first-hand experience, letters, phonecalls, etc.

The second largest resource is the body of interviews on

 

tape. These cover about thirty recorded hours and are a
representative cross section of the people who made up the
sloop project. The third source was the Hudson River Sloop
Restoration files. I was allowed access to all papers.
These included official documents, hundreds of newSpaper
reviews. and all correspondence - public, and private.

The fourth source for this study was several pamphlets and
magazine articles, which, besides the many newspaper items,

comprise the only heretofore written material on the Clear-

water.

INTRODUCTION

What follows is not really for the long-time s100p-
chaser or even the rank-and-file citizen of the Hudson Valley.
Rather, it is for the person who has never heard of the
8100p, Clearwater, or even seen the Hudson River.

Hudson River SIOOp Restoration members will wish that
more had been said about ecology, or history, or music, or
boats. But that is all beside the point. The Hudson River
8100p, Clearwater is something a bit larger than the sum of
its parts. Actually, it is a very inventive eXperiment in
social change.

We in twentieth-century America are part of an over-
anxious society. The middle-class tells us that "the problem"
is the poor, the poor tell us ”the problem" is the rich, the
rich tell us ”the problem'is the government. Where do we
turn when everyone is either "middle class", a “fascist pig",
or an ”intellectual snob”?

The only sensible answer is for everyone to stOp the
name-calling and finger-pointing and realize that if the
world is going to make it into the twenty-first century,
everyone is going to have to lend a hand, and this means every-

one. We are not going to buy our way, shoot our way, or

bargain our way. We are going to have to work our way.

 

 

2

Our first job is to let everyone have his-or her say.
It may take a long time, but at least we'll have all the com-
plaints out in the cpen. Next, we are going to have to
realize that our rainbow-like world, both beautiful and dif-
ficult because of its many colors and facets, is not likely
to change or necessary to change. Rather, we must come to
the point of being able to say, “Good morning Red, my name
is Green. I hope you enjoy being Red today, because I enjoy
being Green. I don't really understand about redness but
that's okay because I'm not red. If you don't care for
greenness, that's okay as long as you let me be green." As
in the rainbow, we need only blend where our edges meet.

Practically Speaking, what does this mean? It means we
must find new and meaningful ways of seeing one another and
working with one another. We are going to have to find ways
of agreeing to disagree.

The Hudson River SloOp Clearwater was an attempt in
such a direction. One group of people took a limited prob-
lem: a dirty river; they decided to bring to bear on the prob-
lem as many forces as were available in their locale - this
meant rich, poor, black, white, scientists, fishermen, mus-
icians, historians, lawyers, and sailors. What they accom-
plished or didn't accomplish is what this story is about.
More important than an ecological project, it was an excercise
in communication, an eXperiment in social change.

I believe we can make it into the twenty-first century,

 

but not unless everyone is paying the same amount for their

soybeans, and waiting on check-out lines of equal length.

I.

"It is by far the most interesting river in America,
considering the beauty and magnificence of its scenery, its
natural, political, and social history, the agricultural and
mineral treasures of its vicinage, the commercial wealth
hourly floating upon its bosom, and the relations of its
topography and geography to some of the most important events
in the history of the western hemiSphere."

Benson J. Lossing 1866

 

 

 

 

 

For the casual visitor, the scene on Morton Street Pier
that Friday evening in late August seemed predictably excit-
ing. Looking west, he could see the seven o'clock sun set—
ting over New Jersey. From across the river, just a bit to
the north, sailing gracefully toward the pier, was the Hudson
River Sloop, Clearwater. Silhouetted against the beautiful
palisades, the Clearwater was a distinctive symbol of the
purity and simplicity of an earlier time when there was a
greater unity between human beings and the natural order.
Contrasted dramatically with the smog, soot, factories, and
chimneys of the New Jersey Skyline, the Clearwater also
served to remind those on the pier of one of the frightful
prices of what Henry Adams termed the ”multiplicity" of the

modern age.

 

 

 

 

 

As the Clearwater moved slowly into position to tie up,

the same casual visitor was understandably excited by

the sounds which filled the air: shrill cries of little
children, the constant clicking of photographers' cameras,

the continuous shouted orders of Captain Oestergard, the
heaving and hauling of the great ropes, the creaking sound of
the turning capstan. Soon, the pier was overrun with workers
of every description: local 8100p club officials carrying
news of permits, sound-systems, and washing facilities for the
crew, volunteers readying themselves for setting up and run-
ning the weekend festival scheduled to begin in the morning,
”shore-crew? advance men rolling the exhibit-trailer into
place, reporters and media men looking for this or that inter-
view, lots of local teenagers carrying guitars, hOping that
some new song they had just written would be heard and en-
thusiastically received by the public. Through all, a few
calm and a few not-so-calm local residents, taking their
customary evening walk, wondered about all the noise on their
usually quiet pier: and, here and there, some lone pigeon
tried to find a peaceful resting place.

The scene then, for our casual visitor, was one of
excitement, movement, anticipation. A hundred years ear-
lier, a similar kind of setting might well have signaled
the arrival of a steamboat, or a railroad train, or perhaps
even the circus. This evening, however, it marked the arrival
of the Hudson River 8100p Clearwater and preliminary pre-
parations for a three-day "sloop festival."

The story of the Clearwater, however, is more than a

history of a beautiful boat with great white sails: it is
more than the story of a lot of music and good times. It

is also a history of some hard times, some sad times, some
disagreement, some argumgntg, and a whole lot of agoniz-
ingly hard work. In one sense it is a tale of America it-
self: the history of a group of very un-like-thinking
people trying to forget, in one arena at least, the differ-
ences which so often divide one human being from another, and
to pool talents, energies, and aSpirations to bring off a
commonly held goal based on a commonly shared idea: to
bring together a group of dissimilar peeple who, by sharing
their interests and talents, would help clean up a river and
a valley.

So if after the sun had sunk below the New Jersey pal-
isades that evening, our casual visitor might have been
allowed to share the crew's Simple supper down on the Elééir
watg§_deck, he might have noticed, amid the anxious tone of
the conversation, the voicing of Opinions which were a bit
divergent not only with each other, but with the publicly
accepted concept of what the Clearwater was all about as well.

This August weekend, in fact, is particularly signif-
icant in the history of Hudson River Sloop Restoration. The
events of the three-day period were particularly provoking
in setting at odds with one another every un-like thinking
group in the organization. How their differences were re-

1

solved of left unresolved is a good indication of the kind

of argumentative,

was, and is.

yet cooperative venture the sloop

 

 

 

 

project

 

 

 

II

"The sloops which ply the Hudson are remarkable for
their picturesque beauty, and nothing is more beautiful
than the little fleets of from six to a dozen, all scud-
ding or tacking together, like so many white seabirds
on the wing."

N . P . Willi s 1840

 

 

 

 

 

10

Hudson River sloops, whose design combined the best of
both Dutch and English nautical ideas, had a formidable
influence on the settling and development of the Hudson valley.
During the early Dutch settlement of the region, they pro-
vided practically the only means of communication between
the northern colony of Fort Orange (Albany), the great sea-
port colony of New Amsterdam (New Yerk), and Esopus (Kingston),
the settlement about half-way in between. The Dutch were
active traders and these strong wide boats carried cargo not
only up and down the river, but back and forth between Eur-
Ope, the Caribbean, and the colonies as well.

When the British took over the Hudson valley they mod-
ified these craft somewhat. Hudson River sloOps, as they
eventually develOped, had a flatter bottom than ocean-going
8100ps and would consequently draw less water. This made
them an ideal craft for traffic on the river which, in
places, was quite shallow.

In the early settlement of the New Yerk region leOpS
were virtually the only means of travel up and down the
valley. Since the railroads did not make their appearance
until after 18h7, sloOpS continued to be pre-eminent in
travel in the valley well into the 1800's. At the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century there were over two hundred
of them engaged in commerce on the river.

SlOOpS also provided tranSportation for all kinds of

commercial goods. Cargos of vegetables, fruit, hay, stone,

11

brick, and ice could commonly be seen on the deck of a south-
bound boat. Sloops bound upriver would be laden with manu-

factured items, books, whale oil, and dry goods.

 

 

 

 

 

With the coming of the steamboat after 1807 sloOps were
forced to make their schedules more precise in order to keep
up with their fuel-powered competitors. Notices would be
posted in localities advertising when a particular sloOp
would arrive and what it would be carrying. Villagers could
purchase cargo if the sloop was bound north, or Sign creps or
products on with the captain if he was on his way to New York.

The Hudson River sloops had other value besides use as
a commercial vessel. For the river traveler leOpS cpened
up a world of great but simple beauty. Washington Irving,
writing in 1800. -told excitedly of his trip on board a sloop:

12

What a time of intense delight was that first
sail through the Highlands! I sat on the deck as
we slowly tided along at the foot of those stern
mountains, and gazed with wonder and admiration at
cliffs impending far above me, crowned with for-
sets, with eagles sailing and screaming around
them: or listened to the unseen stream dashing
down precipices, or beheld rock, and tree, and
cloud, and sky reflected in the glassy stream of
the river...how solemn and thrilling the scene as
we anchored at night at the foot of these moun—
tains...and everything grew dark and mysterious:
and I heard the plaintive note of the whip-orwwill
from the mountain-side, or was startled now and
then by thelsudden leap and heavy Splash of the
sturgeon.

James Fenimore Cooper was well acquainted with the simple
beauty of river travel aboard a Hudson River 3100p. 0f
the old days on the river before the coming of the steam-
boat, he wrote:

In that day, the passenger did not hurry on
board...he passed his morning saying adieu, and
when he repaired to the vessel it was with gentle-
man-like leisure, often to pass hours on board
previously to sailing...There was no jostling of
each other...no impertinence manifested, no swear-
ing...On the contrary, wine and fruit were pro-
vided, as if the travellers intended to enjoy
themselves: and a journey in that day was a festa
...The vessel usually got aground at least once,
and frequently several times a trip: and often a
day or two, were thus delightfully lost, giving
the stranger an opportunity of visiting the sur-
rounding country. 2

Walt Whitman, too, was a traveler on these beautiful
boats:

We sailed along at a stiff rate - told anec-
dotes and riddles, and chatted and joked, and made
merry. As for me, I blessed my lucky stars: for
merely to sail - to bend over and look at the
ripples as the prow divided the water - to lie
on my back and gaze by the half-hour at the passing
clouds overhead - merely to breathe and live in
that sweet air and clear sunlight...was happiness
enough for one day. 3

13

Since early steamboats had higher Shipping rates, were
less reliable, and were not so elegant a way to traVel, the
sloops maintained their pre-eminence in river transportation
far into the days of steam. George William Curtis spoke for

many when he wrote in 1852:

It was a happy fortune for the beauty of the
river that steam did not drive away the sails. It
was feared that the steamers would carry all the
freight, and so bereave the river of the char-
acteristic andupicturesque life of the white
sailed sloOps.

 

 

 

By the middle of the ninteenth century, however, these
sailing ships, still dependent on the wind and tide, were no
longer any match for the much-improved steamboats. They were
gradually seen less and less until by 1900 there were none
even in existence. The passing of these beautiful boats marked

the loss of a special kind of beauty in the Hudson Valley.

14

Washington Irving, quoted in Bob Atkinson,”Setting Sail For
Yesterday", in Audubon, vol. 73. no. 2, March 1971, p.74.

James Fenimore C00per, ibid., p.7h.

3 Walt Whitman, ibid., p.75.

George William Curtis, ibid., p.76.

III

"The purpose for which this Corporation is formed,
which is to be charitable and no other, is: to acquaint
people with matters relating to our cultural heritage and to
maintain and promote interest in the history of the Hudson
River both as a commercial and pleasure artery: and in
connection therewith to build, own, Operate, and exhibit
replicas of the great sloops which once freely navigated
the river, thereby generating a greater interest in our
cultural heritage and an understanding of the contributions
made to our culture and commerce by the river and the sloops
which sailed it."

ARTICLE II
Hudson River 3100p Restoration IncorporatingCharter

 

 

 

 

 

15

16

Although the tone of its incorporating charter was
distinctly historical, from the beginning the membership of
Hudson River SloOp Restoration was marked by a kind of
diversity uncommon in most organizations. The first impulse
to restore or build a Hudson River sloop develOped within a
group of Hudson valley residents basically interested in
living by the river and sailing on it occasionally. One
of those in this first group was Pete Seeger whose own Bea-
con, New York, home was built high on a mountainside over-
looking a ten-mile span of the Hudson. In 1966 Vic Schwartz,
a resident of Cold Spring, New York, the town just south of
Beacon and some fifty miles north of New York City, had lent
Seeger a cOpy of William Verplanck and Moses Collyer's book,
The 310028 22 tthudson.1 Together, they came up with the
idea of locating the hull of one of these beautiful old
boats and restoring it so that there could be at least one
sloop sailing the river again. Vic Schwartz talked about the
idea among friends riding the morning commuter train into
New York City. Soon, there was an enthusiastic group inter-
ested in the project.

In July of 1966 a picnic or ”lawn party" was held at the
Garrison, New York,home of Alexander Saunders. Pete Seeger
sang a few songs, and the folks that had gathered talked the
idea around a bit. By the end of the party $15k had been
collected, Alexander Saunders elected treasurer, some com—

mittees set up, and Hudson River Sloop Restoration had been

17

born.

In the beginning the members of Hudson River SIOOp Res-
toration were essentially a small group of friends and neigh-
bors. Nevertheless, even at this early stage, they were
interested in the organization for different reasons. While
the first impulse for building or rebuilding a sloop had
come from a group Pete Seeger called "some sailing nuts", the
sloop organization was already taking on historical and eco-
logical dimensions as well. At this point in Hudson River
3100p Restoration's development, Pete Seeger was a very
influential leader. His years of work in folk-lore and folk-
music made him a person of obvious historical perspective.
Moreover, the character of the boat itself lent an historic
bent to the group. The SIOOpS g§_§hg Hudson, published in
1908, had talked about the beauty and grace of these old
sailing boats as a bygone fact. The authors had predicted
that such simple elegance would never be seen again on the
waters of the Hudson. Besides the Clearwater, there were
no other sloops in existence in 1967. It was therefore a
natural develOpment for the leOp project to take on hist-
orical and antiquarian dimensions.

At the same time, there was a deve10ping environmental
perspective. Since most of the people in the early sloop
group lived in Hudson River towns, they were concerned at
first hand with the state of the Hudson River valley itself.

Within this environmentally-directed group there was an

18

interesting assortment of pe0ple. Helene Duffy, a Pough-
keepsie resident, eventually became the first executive direc-
tor of Hudson River SloOp Restoration. She and some of

her neighbors were becoming involved in ecological ques-

tions because of the threat of the prOposed pumped-storage
plant which Consolidated Edison was planning to build at near-
by Storm King Mountain. She tells of her early involvement
with Hudon River SIOOp Restoration in these words:

A great many of the peOple that were early
involved in it like Ernie Waivada, and Vic Schwartz,
and several other peOple from the Cold Spring-
Garrison area, got involved in it because Vic
Schwartz rode the commuter train with them and
talked about the idea. That was essentially how
I got involved. It was my husband that rode the
commuter train. I can remember his coming home
with this idea...of building a Hudson River sloop.
I didn't even know what a Hudson River SlOOp was
at the time. At that point I don't think anyone
else did either.2

Alexander Saunders, a long-time resident and successful bus-
inessman from Cold Spring, New York, is owner of a tool and
die foundry. His interest in environmental issues is un-
derlined by his membership in Scenic Hudson, a conservation
group founded in 1963 to help preserve the beauty of the
mid-Hudson region. Of his first involvement with the 3100p

group, Saunders recounts:

I understood that Pete Seeger and various
friends were interested in doing something in the
way of building a replica of a Hudson River sloop...
Pete Seeger had wanted to do something for Scenic
Hudson...There was one particular individual who,
for reasons that don't have to go into the record,
didn't like Pete Seeger. He was a very important
individual in our organization. He really didn't
want to have any association of Scenic Hudson with
Pete Seeger or any support from Pete Seeger, (which
is a strange thing at this point.) It did kind of

19

get my dander up as it were, that there was this

discrimination or criticism of someone that I

admired, namely Pete. And so it did pique my inter-

est as to what Pete wanted to do for the river.

It did seem that the creation of the sloop would be

a way of helping the river and, indirectly, a way

of helping this Scenic Hudson cause. So, I did

join the group that worked on the original idea.

Having a place of business here in Cold Spring, and

being that minded, I was willing to be treasurer

of it. 3
And, of course, again there was Pete Seeger whose interests
and recordings of songs about environmental problems made
him what Dom Pirone was later to call "one of the finest
citizen ecologists in the country.”

The fact is that although the incorporating charter pro-
filed Hudson River SloOp Restoration as basically an hist-
orical group, the organization had as its first members sail-
ing buffs and citizen ecologists as well. But this was only
the beginning. Hudson River SlOOp Restoration's eventual
membership was to be even more diversified. Next to come
were the musicians.

The idea of the original little "lawn party” eventually
develOped into the first annual ”Hudson valley Folk‘Picnic”.
There was to be some music, some games, some singing, some
dancing, some home-cooked food, and a whole lot of home-made
fun. On June 2“, 1967, the picnic was held on the Bill Os-
borne prOperty in Garrison, New York. A description of the
prOposed Sloop was announced to those on hand. A plea for
donations was made. In all, some $1500 was raised. The

SloOp group now had a real bank account. Many of the people

20

present were there simply because they enjoyed music and
dance. They had a good time, liked the sound of the idea,
and contributed their dollars to the project. As time went
on the number of people attracted to the project because of
the festivals and concerts increased greatly. The next
"Hudson valley Folk Picnic" was held in June of 1968. This
celebration, which netted $10,000 had as one of its draw-
ing points the performances of some well-known musicians.
Moreover, Pete Seeger had been performing some benefit
concerts, the proceeds of which went into the sloop fund.

A substantial part of Hudson River Sloop Restoration's
expanded following, then, was made up of people who enjoyed
singing, performing, and listening to music, and who donated

time and money because of that dimension of the 8100p project.

 

 

 

 

 

21

1 Moses and Collyer, Sleeps 9: the Hudson, New York and
London, 1908.

2 Helene Duffy, tape transcript: original cOpy.

3 Alexander Saunders, tape transcript, original cOpy.

IV

"And it'S a coalition of people that have come from
different types of activities and because of that we did
have people who were interested in the boat as an historical
object, an historical replica of boats that sailed the river.
We've had people who were primarily interested in the
ecological aspect of the river being polluted...and there
were others, myself being one of these, who were primarily
interested in the things that could happen to people
surrounding the boat and the things that could happen in
terms of developing power bases that people could operate
from in the valley.”

Jimmy Collier 1972

 

 

 

 

 

22

.. . ..u .. u.

tum. .

'l

u _
'
.

 

23

The original idea of the 8100p group had been to find
and restore a nlneteehth-centhry sloop. When the search
for an old hull proved unsuccessful, an attempt was made,
during the summer of 1968, to locate a Hudson River Ship-

builder to begin work on a new SlOOp.

 

 

 

 

 

The new boat had been designed by Cy Hamlin after
completely researching old plans, drawings, and paintings
of sloops. When no Hudson Valley shipbuilder could be
located, the contract was finally given to one of the few
surviving craftsmen of the old shipbuilding school, Harvey

Gamage of Bristol, Maine.

24

 

 

 

 

 

The keel was laid in November of 1968, and the Clearwater
was launched on May 17, 1969.

For its maiden voyage a singing crew was enlisted to
deliver the Clearwater to New York City. This group of
musician-sailors spent a month bringing the Clearwater
down the New England coast to the mouth of the Hudson River.
To help defray the expenses of building and fitting out the
Clearwater the singing crew raised a good deal of money by
giving almost nightly concerts in the major cities visited
in its trip down the New England coast. At last, in Aug-
ust of 1969, the Clearwater was delivered to New York harbor
amid a great deal of fanfare, media coverage, and Speeches
by politicians. It was ready to begin its first sail up
the Hudson.

AS proposed, the Clearwater was host to a number of

waterfront festivals over the course of the next six weeks.

25

Stopping at one or another Hudson River town the boat would
generally dock for a couple of days. During this time visit-
ors would be allowed on board to look over the boat. There
were a number of portable diSplays on Hudson River Valley
history and on the general theme of river ecology. For
entertainment there were music programs, speakers, and booths
with hand-crafted goods, home-made foods, and environmental
information.

The original idea behind these riverfront celebrations
was that they would be community festiVals. It was heped that
the general tone as well as the major participation would
come from the community rather than be imposed from the
outside by the sloop organization. Thus, a festival at
Kingston might have on its program a speaker interested in
getting some community project apprOVed, or a gospelsinging
group from a local church. At one such festival, a police-
man assigned to keep an eye on things ended up singing,
”You'll Never Walk Alone” for the assembled crowd. The local

character of the festival was what was important.

 

 

 

26

By the time the Clearwater's first summer was officially
over (September 17, 1969), onlookers had a pretty fair idea
Of how Hudson River Sloop Restoration, Inc. was going to
Operate in the future.

First, there were the very promising achievements. The
Clearwater had been built, paid for, and launched. It had
made its maiden voyage up the Hudson and had, in fact, drawn
many peOple to the riverside. There were numerous news-
paper and magazine articles. There were television news-
Spots and specials. A two hour NET program hosted by Steve
Allen and broadcast in September, sent the story of the SIOOp
project into homes throughout the country. The combined
media coverage gave an incredible amount of publicity to
not only the Clearwater, but, as had been anticipated, to the
problem of Hudson River pollution as well.

The Clearwater's achievements had to be weighed, how-
ever, against the problems which were beginning to emerge
within the 8100p organization. Pete Seeger, the most vocal
spokesman for Hudson River SlOOp Restoration had, in many
places, called for an organization to be made up of ”con-
servative oldsters, bearded students, youths from the ghetto,
farmers, teachers, housewives and teenagers, and small-
town merchants.”1 As improbable as such an organization
would seem, it became a very real profile of Hudson River
SIOOp Restoration membership. While it represented, on one
hand, an interesting experiment in democratic principles, it

represented, at the same time, a practical impossibility

27

when decision~making was necessary. Already, the intennal
conflicts which were bound to arise in an organization with
such a diverse membership were becoming apparent.

The singing crew of the Clearwater, which was respon-
sible for its delivery to New York City, was a group of
about a dozen musician-sailors- musicians first, sailors
second. Alexander Saunders tells of the delivery of the
Clearwater to New York City:

The delivery crew coming down were a group
of singers and they worked very hard. They were
not, for the most part, boatsmen except for a
few pOOple of technical ability.

As the Clearwater came down the coast, a
lot of peOple interested in it as a boat, as a
ship, as a yacht, were in a state of shock when
they saw the condition of the condition of the
boat - which really reflected the working con-
ditions of the delivery crew. They were moving
the boat, they were living on board the boat in
crowded quarters. They were having a series of
concerts, SO they were up half the night. They
were Often sleeping in the morning when the pub-
lic came aboard when it was tied up to the dock.
People started looking at the boat, and it looked
kind of strange from a tight-Ship-handled appear-
ance.

When it came down to New York, all the inter-
ests in the leOp came together and it was almost
a cataclysm. It was a very hot day. Every-
body was very emotionally charged. Having been
a little bit in the navy, I have a...feeling for
the peOple who are on the boat and are working,
and are dirty, and want a bath, and want to get
their feet on shore, and the clash between them
and the shore peOple who come on board all rested
and expecting everything to be turned out for them.
Well, here were the peOple greeting the boat in
New York who had all their hOpeS in the SlOOp,
saw it as a beautiful thing, and couldn't under-
stand why maybe they weren't receiving thezyacht
of their dreams, or something like that.

28

The conflict here was based on differing views of the 9123;:
ggtgg's actual role. This was to become a critical problem
in Hudson River Sloop Restoration within a year.

Another problem already apparent was with the leOp
festivals. For one thing, they were not all equally suc-
cessful. The kind of community ferment necessary to Spark
a good festival was Often absent from towns long disposed
to relative conservatism. Furthermore, at this early stage,
the festivals were, in the main, the work of a few peOple.
If the pace of the Clearwater and the 8100p festivals was
to be maintained for its second year, it would be necessary
to have a more elaborate system of design-execution than
during the first year. More important than this, if the
organization were going to survive at all, a great deal of
OOOperation was going to be necessary among the boat peOple.
ecology peOple. musicians, fund-raisers, and soon-to-arrive

community organizers.

29

1 810023 of the Hudson, Hudson River SlOOp Restoration pub.,
New York, 1970, p.3.

2 Alexander Saunders, edited tape transcript, sec. 1.

”The musical programs we hold on the waterfront Should
represent the different tastes and traditions of all the
people in the town...So, during the weekend, the mikes may
be used by a teen-age rock band or a barbershop quartet,
or a jazz combo, or a fiddle, or a bongo drum. If someone
wants to bring his piano down, he can give us a concierto.
Perhaps there will be clowns or puppets for the kids, or
the high school tumbling team. Who knows? All we are sure
of now, is that it should be a community party on the water-
front."

Pete Seeger 1969

 

 

 

 

 

30

31

It might one day be said that summer of 1970 was Hudson
River Sloop Restoration's most complex season. All in all,
during that time, what was best and what was worst in the
3100p organization as originally conceived was brought for-
ward. The project would continue afterward but it would
continue in a different form. What 1969 had suggested was
possible, 1970 was to bring into reality: successes and
failures both.

It was to be a festival summer. In all, some twenty-
one waterfront celebrations were planned. In order to
bring them about as efficiently as possible it was decided
that Hudson River SlOOp Restoration would hire two ”advance
men”. As in the great days of the circus, it would be their
job to do the public relations work necessary to get the
selected towns ready for the festivals. They would find a
dock large enough to handle the Clearwater, obtain a docking
permit, secure electricity and water privileges, contact
local community groups (civic, church, cultural, etc.),
and arrange for diSplays, exhibits, booths, food, rest room
facilities, and a music program.

The two peOple hired for this complex job on a New York
State Council on the Arts grant were Lesta Morningstar and
Jimmy Collier. The former, while working for a Boston book-
ing agency, had set up the New England coast concerts which

had marked the Clearwater's sail from Maine to New York.

 

Arkansas-born Jimmy Collier had been doing community organ-

izing for some time. He had worked with the Southern

32.

Christian Leadership Conference and later with Martin Luther
King. Jimmy had joined the ”movement" at Selma, Alabama, and
had been singled out very quickly because of his dynamic lead-
ership qualities. Reverend Frederick Douglas Kirkpatrick, the
other musician-organizer on Dr. King's staff, had been on the
Clearwater's delivery crew and had encouraged Jimmy to join
up with the Clearwater during the summer Of 1969. From that
point, Collier's abilities to communicate well with dif-
ferent social groups made him an obvious choice for a Hudson
River SlOOp Restoration ”advance man”.

The task facing Jimmy and Lesta was an enormous one.

The results were almost predictably uneven. At some towns
along the river there were local groups already interested
in the Clearwater and already committed to environmental
reform, Hudson River Sloop Restoration, and the idea of
waterfront festivals. These groups were somewhat loosely
official and, depending upon their degree of organization,
were sometimes known as “SIOOp clubs”. In other localities,
the interest and atmosphere ranged from non-receptive to
lukewarm.

The festivals were all very different. At times they
were very "establishment”: long skirts, Sport-coats, lawn
chairs, the Hudson valley Philharmonic playing Handel
Eggs; flggig. At other times they were very "alternative”:
body painting, electric music, street dancing, Spanish-

Speaking masters-of-ceremonies. The greatest festivals, as

33

festivals go, were the ones with the greatest mixture of both
extremes. In one sense, the festivals presented the onlooker
with a fairly good view of the face of America: the struc-
ture of the festivals, like the composition of Hudson River
SlOOp Restoration itself, was a cross-section of all the
strengths, weaknesses, aspirations, prejudices, and conflicts
of our society. All of them were interesting, each for a
different reason.

The first festival of the season, held on the thir-
teenth of June, at Cold Spring, New York, had Special inter-
est from a political point of view. The Hudson valley, once
a series of large estates owned by a few extremely wealthy
peOple, had become, first because Of leOp trade and later
because of railroad commerce, a series of small towns, each
with a Main Street, a Broadway, and a pOpulation composed
mainly of working-class peOple. As Reverend Bill Reisman,

a Cold Spring EpiSOOpal minister interviewed in the compos—
ition of this study suggested, though the valley is just
outside New York City, it is basically middle-America. The
political atmosphere in many of these towns is conservative,
leaning, at times, toward reactionary. Cold Spring is per-
haps among the nearest to the far right.

The Hudson valley has had a history of small volatile
right wing - left wing skirmishes, the best known of these
being perhaps, the “Peekskill Riots" in August of 19u9. At
that time an attempt was made to block an Open-air concert

which was to be given by Paul Robeson, the well known actor

34

and Singer. Robeson was outSpoken in his views on civil rights
and the plight of the black American. An American Legion-
backed crowd blocked traffic, paraded in front of the stage,
and harassed performers. The concert was postponed until the
following Sunday. What looked like a successful resched-
uling ended in disaster. Autos and buses exiting from the
festival area along a narrow road were stoned from the woods.
Cars were overturned, windows smashed, and over one hundred
peOple injured. Local police did little to intervene: in
fact, New York State Police arrested the son of the Peek-
Skill chief of police for overturning automobiles, and some
alleged that local police aided the rioters by re-routing
cars and imprOper use of two-way radios.1

Added to this sort of local history was the fact that
the Hudson River SlOOp Restoration office was located at
Cold Spring. Local nay-sayers were thereby provided with a
constant source of incident for criticism since the SlOOp
workers, whose dress, attitudes, and actions they found gen-
erally Objectionable were regularly on the streets of the town.

Finally, and probably most abrasive to the self-
appointed vigilantes, was the presence of Pete Seeger.
Seeger's appearance before the House Committee on Uh-American
Activities in the summer of 1955 provoked years Of black-
listing aimed directly at undermining his career.2 For
Seeger, the committee's subtle method of denigrating insin-

uation resulted in not only lack of access to public media,

but also a long line of confrontations with self-righteous

35

”citizen's groups" in any of a number of places, and most sig-
nificantly, for present purposes, in the Hudson valley itself.
On the day Of the Cold Spring festival, argumentative

conservatives bouyed up by a group of strong reactionaries
began, around mid-afternoon, to make their presence known.

At first there was merely some altercation. Arguments began
with crew members over the incidents of the night before when
the Clearwater had been stoned after dark and forced to anchor
off-shore. As the evening program was about to begin, mem-
bers of this group of townSpeOple began gathering in larger
numbers. Insinuating looks were cast at leOp volunteers.
Remarks like, "I'm going to handle this one,” or, ”This guy
won't put up much of a fight," were mumbled just audibly
enough to be provocative. Pebbles began to be thrown. The
Hudson valley Philharmonic, which had been scheduled to per-
form, took to the platform at last and the evening program
began.

POOple began drifting past the gazebo onto the Spacious
pier. The scene was a colorful one: women wearing long skirts
with bright patterns, men with sport-coats and summer shoes,
lawn chairs, pennants waving, the sun setting across the
river over the beautiful palisades, an Open-air tavern with
tall steins of beer served on outdoor, umbrella-covered tables,
Handel's Water Music from the bandstand. When the program
was near to completion Seeger was invited up to the stage
by the conductor to say a few words about Hudson River SlOOp

Restoration. A short general description of the Clearwater

36

and its purpose was given. AS Rete began the plea for con-

tributions and memberships a ”plant” in the audience shout-

ed, "If it's a non-profit organization, what are you collec-
ting money for?”

Seeger began reSponding calmly: "The festival you
see here this weekend, and the maintenance of the 9132;-
gate; is the work of hard-working, dedicated volunteers who
work without pay. For the purposes of safety, the 2125;?
wgtgg_has a paid captain and first mate....”

He never finished. To loud shouts and drum beats, a
flag-waving group appeared on shore and began marching across
the pier and through the assembled audience. At the head
of the group were several men with “hard hats” (the scene
occurred several weeks after the famous nationally~telecast
”hard hat” - peace demonstrator riot at City Hall in New
York City.) Others carried a twenty foot banner. Inscrib-
ed on the face of it were the words, ”Clean up the Hudson -
Get rid Of Pollution Pete."

There was much shouting, running about, and pOpping of
flash bulbs. One woman screaming hysterically,”It's the
Germans! It's the Germans! I've seen them before: it's
the Germans!”, had to be helped away. Threats were hurled,
and at the moment that it seemed violence was about to break
out, the orchestra struck up ”The Star-Spangled Banner”.
The demonstrators were momentarily stalled. Not sure

whether to salute "their anthem, or storm the stage and kill

the ”commies”, they applauded and booed at the same time.

37

Some waved flags, others fists. The confusion went on just
long enough to allow local, state, and county police to
surround the mob and stave off violence. Some of the more
belligerent demonstrators had to be carried off. The anger
of the remainder slowly cooled over the next couple of hours.
Shouting ensued on every side. One group argued with Seeger:

”Just tell me if you're a communist.”

"I'm about as much of a communist as the
American Indian.”

“Why are you always singing those foreign songs?"

”I sing, 'Guantanamera': that's a song about
a man who loves his country. You don't think
there's anything wrong with a man loving his
country, do you?”

”Well, why don't you sing some songs about
America?”

"I sing, 'This Land IS Your Land'.”

“Yeah, I think that's alright. But why don't
you sing something like, 'In The Good Old Summer-
time'?”

”Yes, I like that song:

'In the good old summertime,
In the good old summertime...”

”NO! Don't sing it now!“

And so it went for a half-hour until Cold Spring police
escorted Seeger to his car and off the festival site.
Volunteers stayed on for another two hours collecting
scraps of paper and cigarette butts. (No festival site was
ever left even slightly littered.) The season was off to
a stormy beginning.
Not all the festivals were large affairs. Some, such
as the one at Coxsackie, New York, were small one-day, mid-
week stops. Occasionally a festival would be tied to a formal
concert such as at Catskill, New York, where Pete Seeger did

a benefit for the Boy Scouts.

38

Some festivals were exciting for the amount of local
flavor involved. The September 5-6 festival at the Ninty-
sixth Street Boat Basin in New York City was typical of this
type of leOp stOp. Much Of the local organizing was done by
the "Hey-Brother! -Coffee House“, a branch of the Many Races
Cultural Foundation. The exhibits at that festival had a
local quality to them Since they dealt almost entirely
with problems of New York City air and water pollution,
housing, sewage control, parks, and recreation. Jimmy '
Collier, master of ceremonies for the beginning part of the
musical program, humorously offered a cash prize of ten dol-
lars to anyone who could identify any of his or her own
raw waste as it flowed out of a nearby Department of Sanita-
tion open sewage pipe.

Both that festival and the one on Labor Day at the
riverside park on West 125th Street had a "street" quality to
them. Since it was located on the outskirts of West Harlem,
there was more black attendance than there generally was at
many of the festivals farther up the valley. This made for
some wonderful differences in the festivities themselves.
There were stands selling ”soul food“, a good deal of elec-
tric music, interesting body—painting booths, square-dan-
cing to banjo-guitar combos during a temporary power black-
out in the afternoon, and "soul” dancing to rock ensembles
at night.

The festivals which would probably be judged most suc-

cessful in terms on the original goal of Hudson River SlOOp

39

Restoration were those which blended together the most Varied
activities and ideals: of these, perhaps the most memorable
was held at Poughkeepsie on August 1-2. One reason for its
success was the presence and organizing energy of a local
"SlOOp clu ". A SlOOp club was a group of people from some
particular area in the Hudson valley which met perhaps

once a month, and sponsored picnics, fund raisings, and
other such events to help carry on its own affairs and to
help organize the 3100p festival which would be held each i
summer in that area. The Poughkeepsie group was particu-
larly energetic and got together a very fine festival.

To put the music program together they enlisted the
help of Toshi Seeger, film-maker, potter, trustee of several
cultural foundations, and wife of Pete Seeger. Toshi's
ability to get people working together was a significant
asset in the evolvement of the whole SlOOp project. In
this case the Poughkeepsie SlOOp Club was calling upon her
talent at concert programming, a complicated undertaking
involving a thorough knowledge of performers, audiences,
sound equipment, and even weather.

As it was designed, there were two music programs
operating simultaneously during the day. At the main stage,
there was a good deal of electric music, congO-drum bands,
and dancing. At the second stage a long line of solo folk-
musicians performed for people waiting on long lines to
board and inspect the Clearwater. There were numerous dis-

plays dealing with a variety of local, national, and

#0

international ecological problems: some indicated how much
of the American tax dollar went into the ”all out war on
pollution”: others indicated the condition of the earth's
water, air, and natural resources: some others indicated the
need for parks in the Hudson Valley. Some pinpointed every
known source of Hudson River pollution, the type and quantity

of their discharges, and the apprOpriate cost of abatement.

 

 

 

 

 

Interspersed throughout the program were Speakers talking

on political problems such as housing and voting, and on sci-
entific problems such as water pollution abatement and
nuclear power plant virtues and vices. At night the Hudson
Valley Philharmonic performed a program of classical music
which concluded with a rock-gOSpel oratorio. After that, and
simultaneous with one another, there was an informal folk-

jazz program on the main stage, a slide Show nearer the river

 

41

beneath some trees, and a rock music program in another part
of the field. The Sunday part of the festival featured a mor—
ning church service with a variety of clergymen, musicians.
and public Speakers as participants.

While one part of the program attracted more of a
suburban, middle-class crowd, and another, a more downtown,
working-class crowd, it is significant that the festival,
as a whole, was attended by all kinds and ages Of people,
and that all audiences were widely mixed - racially,

culturally, and socially.

 

 

 

 

 

By the end of the summer of 1970 the conflicts in-
herent in Hudson River SlOOp Restoration's composition were
drawn to an irritating climax. Those in the organization
who were interested in the Clearwater as primarily a sailing

vessel had been agitating all summer for fewer festivals,

 

l . 1":1 Ill ll:«|'r

 

 

#2
fewer day-sails (space permitting, all Hudson River SlOOp

Restoration members were entitled to sail on the Clearwater),

 

and less frequent public inspection. Those who were inter-
ested in the Clearwater as primarily an organizing tool were
almost constantly defending the boat's numerous appearances
and the importance of public accessibility. Then, there were
those, interested in the 8100p as primarily an educative

tool which would lead the rank-and-file Hudson valley

resident to a greater level of ecological awareness. Fi-
nally, there were those who sought to ”clean up" the SlOOp
organization by returning it to its more simple past, re-
viving, perhaps, more of the small, club-like atmOSphere
which was part of its beginning. The fact that these diver-
gent forces were to reach some sort of showdown was inevit—
able. The fact that the organization was capable of sur-
viving that showdown is a tribute to both the natural
bouyancy in the original conception of the project and the
basic willingness of the peOple involved to listen to one
another's ideas - at times, submerging individual interests
to the general well-being of the group.

The weekends of August 22-23, and 29-30, were perhaps
the most convulsive 1n the early years of Hudson River
Sloop Restoration. More than anything, they put to the
test the basic formulation of the organization. In the
short history of the Clearwater, never did it seem less
likely that different kinds of peOple could work together on
a common project: nSVer, in fact, did the American egalitarian

basis of the sloop project seem more absurd than during those

two weeks.

1 R.

2 It

43

Serge Denisoff, "Radical Consciousness and Social Sanc—
tions: The Case of People's Songs and Artists Inc."
unpublished paper presented at annual meeting of
American Studies Ass., Toledo, Ohio, October, 1969,

pp. 15—16. A good discussion of the events all around
the incident is in Howard Fast, Peekskill QSA, New
York, 1951.

is interesting to note that in spite of the fact that
some of Seeger's songs are known all over the world and
have been translated into over twenty languages, there
are few Americans who even know he wrote them.
(cf."Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and "If I

Had A Hammer")

 

VI

”You know...we've got orders to leaVe tonight and to
get the boat to Storm King Mountain by ten O'clock tomorrow
morning...It was one of these deals where four dudes on the
board got together and rammed this through - four peOple
with their own idea came in and usurped the whole organ-
ization and have done something most undemocratic. What
kind of group do you have when four people can run that
kind of thing through?"

Captain Jim Oestergard
August 23, 1970

 

 

 

 

 

44

45

Our casual visitor who had watched the Clearwater sail
across from New Jersey and tie up at Morton Street Pier on
that Friday eVening, the twenty-first of August very likely
returned sometime early Saturday afternoon to see what this
"Hudson River SlOOp Festival” was all about. If he arrived
early enough, he would have been in time to watch volunteer
workers unload exhibits from the thirty-foot display trailer
which had been rolled into place the evening before. Accord-
ing to a plan drawn up by free-lance artist and Hudson Valley
resident Natalie Hofman. seven-foot-tall panels were fas-
tened one to another until a giant, honey-comb exhibit had

been constructed which covered some three-hundred square feet.

 

 

 

 

 

Most probably, our visitor walked casually among these panels.

Each of them dramatized one or another problem facing our

46

environment: air pollution, thermal pollution, the vanish-

ing population of fish, the vanishing tax dollar.

 

 

 

 

 

Here were graffiti panels where his child could contribute his
or her own view of the problems facing our land: there were
booths and displays put together by the local sloop club
and other interested organizations. At each exhibit were
several workers standing-by ready to discuss the display and
the problem it dramatized.

That afternoon an informal hootenany was held. For
all the young singers and songwriters eager for a performance
before a New York crowd, it was an especially important part
of the weekend. If our casual visitor so wished, he could
have joined in on the choruses.

If he stayed around late enough, he would haVe watched

Morton Street Pier fill up with a couple of thousand peOple,

 

47

and Sitting among them. he would have enjoyed one of the many
free folk-music concerts sponsered by Hudson River SlOOp Res-

toration that summer.

 

  

   
 

Afr

' 5

\
d
r

 

 

 

For the young and wish-they-were—young there was Suzi
Lynn, the vantriloquist-puppeteer from Detroit via Boston,
and her little wooden-headed friend, Audry. For music with
a pOpular sound there was Don McLean who, after a half-
dozen tunes, was encored back to the stage to re-sing the
opening song, "Everybody Loves Me Baby, What's the Matter
With You?" For the topical song-oriented, there was Jimmy
Collier singing, "Do You Want Your Freedom?" There were
local musicians of every sort: and, for a bit of everything,
there was Pete Seeger. For the thousand-thousandth time
some youngster in the front of the crowd shouted, ”Sing

'Abiyoyo'!” And for the thousand-thousandth time, Pete

 

#8

danced up and down, back and forth, weaving the wonderful
tale about the father with the magic wand, the boy with the
ukelele, and the giant with the foolish grin.

It was a beautiful concert. Pete Seeger concluded
the program by asking for all the floodlights to be turned off
and leading the two-thousand members of the audience in a
chorus of "America the Beautiful”. The audience, Morton
Street Pier, Seeger, and the Clearwater were gently washed

in the soft light of the full moon. Behind the Singer, to

M“... a

his left as the audience watched him, stood the Statue of
Liberty, her lamp lifted in a promise once made to all
Americans, and in fact, to all the citizens of the world.
It was a very moving scene. It was a very beautiful concert.

By Sunday morning, the Morton Street Festival had touched
upon every beautiful thing for which the Clearwater stood.
There had been gaiety, music, song, education, and the
confluence of thousands of dissimilar people. They had met,
talked together, sang together. Amongst the SlOOp workers
there had been the cameraderie and sense of purpose for
which they had left homes and jobs and had traveled long
distances to find. Some had been up late the night before
at a party given by one of the New York Sloop Club members.
There had been drinks, sandwiches, and showers for any tired
and dirty after a long day's work.

As the morning sun climbed higher in the sky people

slowly began rising and getting things in order for the Sun-

day afternoon festivities. There were to be a couple of

49

special happenings today. For one thing, the Clearwater
was to go out on a day-sail. Most of the passengers would
be members of the New York SlOOp Club which was hosting the
festival. Another different sort of event was to be a
video-taping by a crew flown over by French educational
television.

For the most part, the day seemed to pass rather smoothly.
The Clearwater slowly pulled away from the dock under a sunny
sky with just the right amount of wind. Passengers milled

around the deck while interviewers listened to Pete Seeger

u ..q

and Jimmy Collier talk and sing, "We've Got To Learn To Love
Our River Again!“

Evening came on and the Clearwater returned to Morton
Street. As the festival drew to a close, the crowds dwin-
dled, exhibits were packed away, tired workers found rides
back to the mid-Hudson region, and the French television
people got set for a long flight home. For our casual vis-
itor, it had been a good weekend.

But our casual visitor, remember, had missed the tone
of the discussions on the Clearwater deck Friday around sup-
pertime. He hadn't been in on the nervous conversations held
intermittently all day Saturday at coffee-shops half-a-dozen
blocks from the festival site. Nor had he caught the infer-
ences during the procedural discussions among the volunteers
and the Clearwater crew all during the day on Sunday.

Superficially, the brewing conflict centered around the

scheduling of the Clearwater itself. In a broader sense,

50

however, disagreement over the where-about and what-about of
the boat was really symptomatic of the conflict arising out
of the divergent backgrounds and aims of Hudson River SlOOp
Restoration's individual members. The immediate problem was
what the boat was to be doing on Monday morning, August 2h.
For some years, the Consolidated Edison Company had
been trying to get final license to construct a nuclear power
plant at Storm King Mountain. In the entire one hundred and
fifty miles that marks the main flow of the Hudson River from
Albany to New York there is probably no section more beau-
tiful than the Hudson Highlands - the area directly sur-

rounding Storm King.

 

 

 

 

 

Washington Irving, looking on the Catskills from the north

end of the Highlands, singled out this region long ago:

51

Never shall I forget the effect upon me of the
first view of them predominating over a wide extent
of country, partly wild, woody, and rugged: part
softened away into all the graces of cultivation.
AS we slowly floated along, I lay on the deck and
watched them through a long summer's day, under-
going a thousand mutations under the magical
effects of atmOSphere: sometimes seeming to ap-
proach, at other times to recede: now almost melt-
ing into hazy distance, now burnished by the set-
ting sun, until in the evening, they printed them-
selves against the glowing skylin the deep pur-
ple of an Italian landscape.

Of all the sites that Consolidated Edison might have
proposed, none was so likely to be Opposed by valley res-

idents more violently or more bitterly. Scenic Hudson, an

.-—.—.____

organization of ecologically concerned citizens, had gath-
ered forces to meet this challenge to the local environment.
For some it was an ideological battle: a Scenic Hudson
flyer notes:

Con Ed wants to build a pumped storage hydro-
electic plant on Storm King Mountain on the Hudson
River. What happens at Storm King affects you.

In our ten years of defense of Storm King Mountain

and the Hudson Highlands, our case in the courts

provided much of the impetus for what are now 2

nationwide measures to protect the environment.
For others, involvement was more pragmatic. Helene Duffy
recounts:

We were all just beginning to get involved
with the fight for the environment via the Storm
King fight. Usually, peOple get involved for
personal-type reasons. I got involved because
Con Edison wanted to put a two hundred foot tower
at the end of my driveway!

The Consolidated Edison - citizen ecologist battle had
been in and out of the state courts for years. At last the
Atomic Energy Commission decided to send several represen-

tatives to inspect the site personally. The day chosen

'1

52

for the inspection was August 24, 1970. It was the thinking
of those members of Hudson River SlOOp Restoration who were
concerned with the Clearwater as primarily an environmental-
awareness educating tool, that the Clearwater shoudd be un-
der full-sail in the Storm King vicinity while the area was
being inepected. Alexander Saunders expressed the group's
thinking in this way:

The desire to have the SlOOp sailing in the
Hudson valley that day, up in the Hudson Highlands,
was that there was a group from the Federal Power
Commission itself that was up here inSpecting the
terretory because the Con Ed thing was so serious
and was being fought so hard by Scenic Hudson.

I will take full responsibility for the re-
quest that the 3100p be up here and be in motion
under sail so that it would be seen by the Federal
Power Commission to demonstrate the fact that the
old [Currier and IveS] pictures were true, and
that they had a validity: that this was a scenic
area, that this was a recreation area.

Unfortunately, maybe all the background of
that thought didn't get through to all the peOple
that were responsible for moving the boat, and it
was really muffed from the standpoint of the 8100p
being in motion. The objective was to have the boat
under sail making the pictures come true. It
wasn't possible for the peOple on board the boat
to know just when they were being looked at by
the peOple from the Federal Power Commission because
we didn't know ourselves exactly when they'd be
where, and how they'd be. We thought they might
be flying in a plane.

It did seem like an arbitrary excercise, but
it might have contributed quite a bit to the Scenic
Hudson case as far as an appearance of the fact that
this was a recreation area in excercise, being
excercised as such, being used as such, and that
the SlOOp was an image from the past that they“
just wouldn't see again except right here.

At the same time, there were Hudson River SlOOp Rest-
oration members, concerned primarily with the Clearwater as

a sailing vessel, who thought differently. Fed up with the

53

over-crowded “day sails”, the seemingly impossible schedule
of appearances the Clearwater was supposed to make, the
consequent pile-up of missed days off for the sloop's of-
ficials, and the lack of scheduled days for much-needed
maintenance work, these sailor-members were infuriated at
the idea Of having to move the Clearwater from Morton Street

Pier to Storm King Mountain overnight.

 

 

 

 

 

In this particular case, since the festival and sched-
uled sails did not end until around seven on Sunday evening,
that gave the crew only until the next morning to make the
sixty mile trip. For another thing, the tides were such
that the sail could not be profitably begun until about
3:30 Monday morning. The lack of wind at that time of night,
and the actual time necessary to move the Clearwater made

motoring the only way the trip was even possible. The

5h

physical dynamics of moving against the tide and of motoring
for that distance made the whole sail, from a nautical point
of view, a poor idea. For the ”boat people", it was just
one more decision dumped upon them by a governing board whom
they felt were not concerned with what Hudson River SlOOp
Restoration was "really about”, i.e.. the construction and
maintenance of the Clearwater - a beautiful sailing vessel.

The confrontation between these two groups might have
been averted if the Clearwater had been able to move on Sun-
day: but since the ”festival peOple' had made the Clearwater's
presence necessary at Morton Street on Sunday for the day-
sail, the television taping, and the sybolic hosting of the
festival, that possibility was ruled out.

AS it turned out, the Clearwater motored up the Hudson
to Storm King at 3:30 in the morning, but not without some
grave disagreement. Fundamentally, the controversy tended
to throw into sharp relief the variant ideological concerns
of Hudson River SlOOp Restoration members. Was the point
of Hudson River SlOOp Restoration to build and sail a rep-
lica of the beautiful boats that had traveled the river in
days gone by? Was the point of Hudson River Sloop Restoration
to attract public attention by dramatizing the difference
between the natural beauty of the Hudson Valley and what
Pete Seeger called ”the stinking mess” which had been made
of it? Was the point of Hudson River SlOOp Restoration, as

some would have it, to operate the Clearwater as a kind of
private yacht and, by using it to court politicians and other

55

influential peOple, thereby gain a very Special kind of per-
sonal political power in the Hudson valley? Was the point of
Hudson River SlOOp Restoration to get peOple, by use of a
brilliant symbol or tool, to talk to one another, work with
one another, perhaps even care about one another's problems?
Or was it the point of Hudson River SlOOp Restoration, as
some others felt, to do most of these things simultaneously?
unfortunately, for the time being, there was no consensus in
answering these questions. Fortunately, however, for the
long run of Hudson River SlOOp Restoration, there were enough
Optimistic individuals who thought the Clearwater could do
many different things to pull the organization through the
crisis.

During the week between the Morton Street Festival
(August 22-23) and the Nyack Festival (August 29-30) even
the most clear-thinking members of Hudson River SlOOp Res-
toration were having trouble thinking clearly. Each ideo-
logical position was attacked On every side, tempers were
rubbed raw, patience was in short supply.

By the time the week which ended with the Nyack Festival
was over, it seemed almost miraculous that there was an
organization left at all. During the course of the week
Mike Micinowski, executive director of Hudson River SlOOp
Restoration resigned from his position unwilling to face, any
longer, the multiple, and at times, contradictory pressures
upon him. Captain Jim Oestergard made it known that he would
like to be relieved of any further reSponsibility in

56

directing the Clearwater's day-toaday activity. Lesta Morn-
ingstar was making it pretty clear that she would be glad when
the season was Over. Jimmy Collier was having difficulties
with his strongest supporters. VOlunteers, wide-eyed and
Optimistic in June, were wondering why they had ever gotten
involved in the first place: looking around themselves at
so much disagreement and negativism, they were ready to leave
immediately with little prompting. Pete Seeger, who had
Spent a good deal of his life defending causes of various
types, paying the price of putting his career on the line
for his values, was being called ”establishment” for something
so simple as trying to head off a confrontation over a dock-
ing site. By Saturday, long-time SlOOp workers who had been
with the Clearwater since its beginning, attended the Nyack
Festival literally holding back tears over the mess things
were in.

Of all those visibly concerned with what was going on,
Pete Seeger alone had the clear sight and Optimism to Speak
positively that weekend. If our casual visitor from Morton
Street had taken the thirty mile drive up the New York State
Thruway and across the Tappan Zee Bridge to Nyack, he pro-
bably would have been fascinated once again by what looked
like another wonderful SlOOp festival. He probably wouldn't
have noticed Pete Seeger running back and forth from this
disgruntled worker, to that down-cast volunteer, to that
other long-time SlOOp-chaser now in tears. He probably would

not have noticed how the master-of-ceremonies came running

57

over to Seeger shouting, “Five minutes, Pete!“: nor would he
have watched how Pete spent that five minutes trying to patch
up a lot of shattered ideals and heavy hearts, running from
one person to another and finally, with a jump, up onto the
stage. Most likely, our casual visitor would have found a
Spot of grass directly in front of the stage, and with a
heart banging with excitement, would have listened as Pete
began: ”Friends, all you see here today is the work of a
dedicated group of hard-working volunteers. Hudson River

SlOOp Restoration is an argumentative group of conservative

oldsters, bearded students, youths from the ghetto, farmers,
teachers, housewives, teenagers, and small town merchants.
They probably disagree on a thousand things, but they're
united in one idea: to sail a beautiful boat from town to
town to help their fellow citizens to learn to love their
river again.”

Somehow, the songs that followed, songs of partici-
pation and hope, made a louder sound than the complaints
and SObS that went up behind the stage. Somehow, in the magic
that seemed always to surround the Clearwater, the festival
ended on a note of hope. The wonderful Helen Hayes Spoke
a few glowing words about the Clearwater and its mission.
Giant squares formed across the whole festival field and
the day ended with hundreds of peeple gayly dancing to the
music of half—a-dozen musicians who jumped up on the stage

and played together for the first time. Even in the minds

and hearts of the downcast workers there was confusion:

 

58

what was really real, - their complaints which, all of a
sudden, seemed so petty, or the magic of Helen Hayes and
of hundreds of peOple, arm in arm, dancing to the sounds

of banjos and fiddles?

59

1 Washington Irving, 92. cit.. p.76.

2 "Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference", Scenic Hudson pub-
lication, document 1.

3 Helene Duffy, tape transcript, original cOpy.

h Ander Saunders, tape transcript,edited cODY. sec. 2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VII

"Six PM, waiting for the sleep. She's a beautiful
sight out on the river - peaceful and peace loving. But
like the rest of the world, full of stress, some rot
(literally!) and turmoil. With the chaos today, we were
naive to think she would be otherwise. All of us pre-
viously existed on our own little planets - our paths
would probably never have crossed, until the Clearwater.

So we've hit a crisis, mainly through lack of com-
munication on everyone's part. And many of us are reacting
on our own without talking it out, without trying to
understand each other, without finding out what each has
to give and less worry about our points of difference.

As...said on the phone today, all his friends are
watching to see how the Clearwater solves its problems.
They think of it as a miniature world. If we can't, then
thereS little hope."

Toshi Seeger, Summer 1970

60

 

 

61

One more festival in Manhattan (September 5-6) ended
the Clearwater's 1970 season. The week between Nyack and
Manhattan was filled with more confusion than the one before.
While, on the one hand, emergency meetings were held to try
to decide how, if at all, Hudson River SlOOp Restoration was
to continue, new people were discovering for the first time
the beauty and wonder of the sleep project as originally
conceived. Susan Crane, a sixteen-year-old volunteer crew
member, recounts:

You'd meet all kinds on there: it varied.

It made it more interesting and you found that

even though there were people you didn't like,

they could still all work together. We just had
a great time doing everything and nobody minded

working. e e
It was the first time I'd ever pitched in and

done something. I felt really good about it

because I felt like I was doing something and it

was worth something and it means a lot. It was

like nobody was begrudging the fact that they had

to help - just lots of people working together on

a common cause and having a good time at it.

In spite of everything else, the September 5-6 festival
on New YOrk City's upper west side, was one of the most suc-
cessful and widely attended of the whole summer. Peeple did
come to the river, did hear the Clearwater's message: never-
theless, some in Hudson River SlOOp Restoration felt ”so what'.

Discord, running as deep as that which had character-
ized the preceeding two weeks, was not to be settled by any
sort of festival, no matter how beautiful. Forces gathered
for a general confrontation which would take place at the
annual membership meeting to be held on November 15 in Pough-

keepsie.

62

Although, superficially, disagreement had centered
around boat usage with ecologists criticizing boat peeple
criticizing festival organizers criticizing ecologists, the
real division of perspective lay much deeper. Basically,
one group was saying something like:

We have worked hard to raise money and build
a beautiful boat. The boat is a wonderful symbol
of a bygone era. Let us preserve, by judicious
usage, the beauty of that beat and let us use it
to teach peeple to love their river.

The other group was saying something like:

There is a giant problem facing mankind:
survival. If the human race is to see the twen-
ty-first century, it is going to have to adequately
deal with a number of pressing issues: world
peace, civil liberties, the pollution of our en-
vironment, the problems of our cities, the question
of economic balance. Here we have a boat that
can bring together peeple of different back-
grounds and ideologies. Perhaps if we come together
and discuss things, we may come up with some
answers or, at least ”agree to disagree“.

The conflict of interests inherent in these two posit-
ions is more real than immediately apparent. It is, as the
Reverend Bill Riesman suggested, “an American problem”.
More than that, it is the problem inherent in the American
brand of democracy: what happens to the ideas and rights
of minority interest groups when the majority rules? At
its most fundamental level, the conflict here was one between
paternalism and egalitarianism.

The “paternalists” in the organization were basically
conservationists. They had joined Hudson River Sleep Res-
toration for preservationist reasons. They were historians

who loved to see these old boats and to dream of a bygone

63

day when the Hudson River was dotted with their sails.
Others from among this group were interested in the Hudson
itself. They hoped through Hudson River Sloop Restoration
to bring about that sort of political pressure which would
get industry and municipalities along the valley to do
something about their roles as polluting agents. They hoped
through Hudson River SlOOp Restoration to dramatize the need
for conservation efforts in not only the river, but in the
swamps and streams that made up the greater Hudson River
system. The political pressure which this group hoped to
bring about was to be accomplished basically through what

we might call "teaching“.

a‘ - ' ‘ [Phosmctalnlkzmmlx FUNK/H l
( _, -. ,

A ,l -l W9 ° ...- e
\_,l.t) , a

[a

 

       

 

 

People could come and look at the boat, learn something of
its history, listen to ecologist-Speakers, perform pollution

probes. Hudson River SlOOp Restoration would assume the

6i:

role of an instructor.

The 'egalitarians“, on the other hand, were basically
political activists. They had found their way to Hudson
River Sloop Restoration through avenues such as community
organizing and topical music. For these members the Elgar:

water was basically a tool, a means of access to civic groups,

 

media, the rank and file resident of the Hudson Valley.

Once this sort of access was made available, it could be used
to point up not only the state of our environmental system,
but of our social system as well. The bringing together of
different kinds of people, which a project like a Clearwater
festival could do so well,was a natural teaching device, a
microcosmic field study in communication and human under-

standing.

 

 

 

 

Many of the sleep workers actually fell partly into both

65

categories. Some of them moved through different phases dur-
ing the course of their involvement with Hudson River SlOOp
Restoration. A study of the early years of Hudson River
Sloop Restoration is, in fact, a study of a whole organiza-
tion going through different phases of self-realization. The
fact that it experienced such growing pains as it did is, in
a sense, a tribute to its vitality and fertility.

Both groups which have been described had teaching as
their fundamental goal, and further, teaching through
dramatization. Disagreement came primarily over what was to
be taught and how it was to be dramatized. The conservation-
ist group wanted to stick mainly to the fundamentals. The
original incorporating charter of Hudson River Sleep Res-
toration had billed the organization as a non-profit educa-
tional project dedicated to the preservation and dissemina-
tion of knowledge about Hudson River sleeps with an overall
hope of getting peOple, through actual contact with the
waterfront, to learn to love their river again. The activist
group disagreed with this only in the matter of method.

They felt that large gala festivals, calling on.a variety
of community groups for assistance, and attracting all sorts
of peeple, was a better way of going about it.

To support their variant organizational models, the
groups had differing views on management. The preservation-
ists envisioned an organization with a strong central office
where policy decisions would be made, handed out, and followed

by workers. Central to this system was an "executive director”

66

and his or her assistants. All officers under this system
were to be hired by the board of directors of Hudson River
SlOOp Restoration and funded with organization money. Each
worker, then, was Specifically responsible for certain jobs
which She or he was expected to perform competently. Thus,
power was to be centralized in the main office at Cold

Spring and in the captain's cabin aboard the Clearwater.
Heeponsibilities would be delegated Specifically: each worker
would know his or her own place and job.

The activists' working model was quite different. While
the executive director was still responsible for official
day-to-day organizational decisions, and the captain answer-
able for the Clearwater's well-being, different jobs and
responsibilities would be overseen by the workers themselves.
In addition, it was heped that the organization would be
able to make wide use of volunteer help. This would both
keep Operating expenses down and extend the circle of Hudson
River SlOOp Restoration's actual involvement. Officials
of the organization would give final approval to projects,
but the projects themselves could be both envisioned and
carried out by volunteers.

In practice, both systems and both groups worked to-
gether simultaneously in the early days of the sleep project.
By mid-1970, however, co-existence was beginning to be a prob-
lem. The tightly-controlled organizational model of the
preservationists failed to reSpond fully and quickly enough

to the preposals and recommendations of the workers in the

6?

”field” and to the demands and needs of the communities and
of the media. Meanwhile, the de-centralized system of the
activists was covering too much ground too fast. Both groups
too often lost sight of ends in their struggle for means.

Any number of aspects of Hudson River SlOOp Restora-
tion as it operated in 1970 showed the strain of an organi—
zation weakened by disagreement. There was, for example. the
question of the exhibit trailer. Originally it was thought
that this thirty foot trailer could provide good shore support

for the Clearwater's activities.

 

THIS RIVER IS DYING!

C0416 Sf! WHO'S (Ill/”G /7’.

 

 

 

 

The idea was that it could preceed the Clearwater into the
various communities by several days. Volunteers could be
on hand to fold out the giant Sides diSplaying the maps

and photographs on the panels. Small supporting exhibits

could be erected and a volunteer could answer questions,

ill-Ill.
, illll 1,-} I‘ll.

 

 

68

talk with visitors, and be a sort of ambassador of good will
and advance man for the coming SlOOp festival as well. Child
as this was of the organization's activist thinking, it was
doomed to be under the constant criticism of Hudson River
SlOOp Restoration's more conservative members.

First, it was argued that the organization could ill-
afford to buy and Operate such a trailer effectively. More
Optimistic members argued that the money would come in just
as funds to build the Clearwater had two years earlier. As
for operation, volunteers could handle the project, thereby
cutting to a minimum actual Operating expenses.

The preservationists, however, wanted as little to do
with volunteer help as possible. For one thing, it decen-
tralized authority: for another, volunteers were looked on
by some as “hangers-on”. Some of the critics of volunteers
questioned why these individuals were not gainfully employed
elsewhere instead of ”hanging around the Hudson Valley”.

This was rather unfair criticism: some of the volunteers were
professionals in their own fields, whether musicians, artists,
or seamen. Some took on reSponsibilities such as community
organizing, trailer Operation, diSplay design and construc-
tion, press relations, boat maintenance, benefit concerts,

and the like which, had the organization been forced to

fund them, would not have been possible. While it might be
argued by some that many of the volunteer projects were un-
wanted anyway, there can be little doubt when objectively

viewed that Hudson River SlOOp Restoration as a venture

69

would have been impossible without the enormous amount of
energy it derived from unpaid assistants of every sort.
Perhaps the real question was over which volunteers were ac-
ceptable, and at what point in time. A higher priority, for
example, would be given to help offered by a cabinet maker,
an electrician, or a professional artist. The proceeds
from a Pete Seeger benefit concert were always acceptable.
On the other hand, the generalized willingness-to-help ex-
pressed by a long-haired college freshman on leave from his
or her university was, by some officials, taken for granted.
At times,this sort of discrimination was implied, at other
times, expressed. One official commented:

What we don't need to save the Hudson is a

bunch of filthy long-haired characters who don't

know what the hell they're talking about and who

couldn't get into an environmental conference, let

alone know what—to say or what to do. 2
In the typical contradiction which surrounded Hudson River
SlOOp Restoration, this same individual was generally favor-
ably impressed by the assortment of volunteer help which made
itself available to the Clearwater.

Actually, the volunteer question probably had more to
do with unauthorized personnel and the consequent decen-
tralization of authority than with anything else. There
was a running battle, for example, between the official po-
sition on crew assignments and the actual arrangement by
which the crew Operated onboard the Clearwater. According

to official Hudson River SlOOp Restoration policy, crew

members were expected to arrive on a Sunday evening, attend

70

a kind of sailing seminar. and then perform a variety of
duties during their stay on the Clearwater. These duties
included cooking, scrubbing, painting, hauling up sails, and
a whole variety of Operational and maintenence chores pe-

culiar to the business of sailing.

r

-
g
-1

 

     

l 'I
L

Crew members were what might be called officially-sanc-

 

 

"J ‘
' '.
q-
4-.
l

V

 

tioned volunteers. Applicants for crew positions were ex-
pected to submit a certain form which would be processed by
the central office. It was generally heped that all inter-
ested would get a turn for a week's assignment, and some
attention, which varied in kind, was paid to trying to get

a crew with as mixed a background as possible. More than
one crewmember singled out his or her week aboard the Clear?
[5295 as the most exciting of their entire life. Crewing on

board the Clearwater was educational in the widest sense of

 

 

 

71

the word. One had to learn to get along with other work-
ers. In a ship's tight quarters there is no place for one
person to escape from another: moreover, most jobs aboard
ship (hauling up a mainsail is a good example) require the
combined effort of a number of people. It is good practice
to learn to get along with the person hauling next to you:
for one thing, one's life might depend upon it.

In regard to the Clearwater , conflict between official
postion and the actual method of procedure arose after par-
ticular crew memberS' assignments were completed, or when
some volunteers showed up without an actual assignment.

Many volunteers ”illegally” stayed around and helped after
their official stay Was over. Official policy on this point
was often compromised for the sake of the valuable jobs

some of the volunteer crew performed. Since these unassigned
workers were water-borne versions of the“land crew“ volun-
teers being questioned in other places, the same attacks,
both explicit and implicit, were leveled against them also:
why weren't they somewhere working? What good were most of
them doing aboard the Clearwater? Pejorgtive statements of
various kinds were made. Some alleged that the Clearwater
was little better than a “floating commune”, or “floating
hippie pad”.

Basic to all these criticisms was again the protec-
tionist stance taken by one body of Hudson River Sleep Res-
toration's membership. “Extra” peeple, hanging around with-

out Specific, assigned functions, tended to decentralize

 

72

authority and vary the complexion of the organization's
image. It was alleged that the “hippie types" were un-
friendly, ignored visitors to the Clearwater, and dragged

down the organization's image as a whole.

 

 

 

 

Some criticism of this group may be founded in fact.
Sam Sunshine, village barber, and a highly respected, long-
time resident Of Cold Spring, when questioned about the
general negative attitude toward Hudson River Sleep Restor—
ation evident in Cold Spring, put the general onus on the

backs of the group in question:

The people that were on that beat created that
ill feeling right here in the cummunity - right here
in this community, and probably in other communities
too...When this group came in here the natives felt
they were being looked down upon and pressured
into something they didn't want...Now then, if
they hadn't had that crew that they had on the boat
in the beginning who went around looking for trou-
ble...went around antagonizing the young ex-
military men — the military men were probably

73

throwing threats too, but [the sleep peOplzj
were throwing threats also instead of just taking
it and not saying anything and forgetting about
it and walking away from it...

The situation has gotten out of hand... We
saw these peeple on this boat walking up and
down Main Street half naked and everything else.
Peopleaof the community don't do that kind of
stuff.

Part of the criticism of sleep volunteers as aloof and
unfriendly must be accounted for in what long.time sleep
official, and Poughkeepsie businessman Len Bard calls the
"American Legion attitude”, an “anti-intellectual" tone
evident, to some extent, throughout the Hudson Valley and
SSpeeially in Cold Spring. 0n the other hand, Susan Crane,
a volunteer from Westchester County, who, in fact, saw her-
self as part of the “floating commune“ group recounts:

It was like a floating commune. We had a
great time. Everybody shared the work...

We were having a great time: peeple swing-
ing from the rOpes and whatever...

There was also the whole feeling of belong-

ing to something. When you were on the sleep you

were part of the crew and that made you something

Special. There was a kind of swagger that most

of the kids had...and you'd go ashore and peeple

would ask things about the boat and you could

give them the answers and you could say: “Yeah,

yeah, I'm crewing on the Clearwater now.“

Implicit in this is the unwitting admission that at
least some volunteers considered themselves as somewhat
apart from the general public. In fact, when this elitism
was mentioned in an interview with another long-time SlOOp
supporter, he straightforwardly declared that crew members'
superiority was not a matter of viewpoint, but rather a fact! 5

The best tBCK in the official handling of the situation

74

might well have been for the anti-volunteers to realize the
conservative bias in the complaints of these citizens of
rural small towns. Americans have been notoriously opposed
to groups or individuals concerned with ideas ever actions,
quality over quantity, freedom of conduct over pragmatic con-
formity.6 However, little was done to officially cepe with
the volunteer question because the preservationists were of
an orientation similar to that of the critics and were not
really interested in making the use of volunteers a work-
able proposition. They chose, rather, to focus on the negative
image being projected and to use it to rid the organization
of both volunteers and activists whom they grouped together
as undesireables.

This sort of internal conflict continued on all sides.
It had been implicit in points of view from early in Hudson
River Sleep Restoration's history and had become eXplicit
and a matter of policy disagreement by mid-summer 1970.
Since, in general, all Hudson River Sloop Restoration members
agreed on the organization's fundamental purposes - the
crusade for a cleaner environment through the sailing of a
beautiful beat - the differences within the organization had
to find expression elsewhere. Volunteers were ancillary;
sleep festivals were, perhaps, a more central target.

The festivals served as the means by which the organ-
ization's activists dramatized their most fundamental con-
cerns: the necessity for the interaction and coeperation of

all kinds of peeple to help solve their common and ultimate

75

problem - survival. These festivals which were most suc-
cessful in bringing together different kinds of peeple and
different ideas were the most irkseme to certain members of
Hudson River Sleep Restoration. The Poughkeepsie Festival on
August 1-2 attracted probably the widest range of peeple and
ideas of any that summer: yet, the same peeple who wondered
why certain volunteers were not gainfully employed somewhere
instead of "hanging out" in the Hudson Valley remarked that

the festival looked like a ”rally for the Black Panther party".

 

 

 

 

 

This same group which criticized volunteers and festivals
tended to accent problems with the diSplay trailer. Every-
time the trailer had to be relocated (twenty-five dollars
would be considered inexpensive for the move), emphasis was
placed on the bill and its drain on organization money. Lit-

tle real attempt was ever made to utilize the trailer in an

76

organized, professional way. Its Operation was left solely
to volunteers not always prepared for the responsibility.
Positive reinforcement from the central office was generally
lacking. It seemed as though the trailer's complete fail-
ure would have been eagerly accepted by some with an “I told
you so" attitude.

The "festival summer" ended with a great deal of dis-
appointment on the part of a great number of peeple. Many
young volunteers, for whom the sleep project represented a
kind of ”movement”, who saw it as a tool for bringing peeple
together and dealing with fundamental social and political
problems, went home in September quite dismayed. The die-
illusionment they felt had only partly to do with the rel-
ative success or failure of the individual festivals. More
than that, their disappointment grew out of the inconsis-
tancy they saw between how the sleep was represented and how it
in reality, was Operated. For some of these volunteers the
farewell to innocence came as a harsh taste of reality.
Others, not so young and not so innocent, saw Hudson River
Sloop Restoration's failures as a cold, negative reminder
about what it meant to get involved at all. Some, who had
worked with the organization for what was new four or five
years, felt dismay at just what all of their time and energy
had come to. A few very angry individuals began thinking
about how to regroup and insure a shift in the organization's
policy-making base. And finally, there were these indomi-

table few who kept en believing that a better day would come

77

when differences would be settled and there would be fair
winds for all. Pete Seeger, in his gentle way, expressed this
Optimism in a letter to Reed Haslam and Harry Dobson on Sep-
tember 25, 1970:
...I think there is still a chance that the

Clearwater can fulfill our original dream that

she can persuade people of different races, politics,

ages and sex and occupation, to temporarily dis-

regard the fact that some of their actions and

behavior offend each other, and to work to restore

the Hudson.

There's even a certain humor in facing up

to the fact that we offend each other. The feeling

is mutual. But if peeple like us the world around

can't agree to disagree, the world hasn't got any

more of a chance than the Clearwater. 7

The passing of the festival summer of 1970 signaled the
passing of more than just a season in the Clearwater's his-
tory. For one thing, it marked the end of what might be
called the early days of Hudson River Sloop Restoration.
Before, and to a great extent even up into the summer of 1970,
Hudson River Sleep Restoration had exhibited all the marks
of a young high-energy organization. Any ideas or suggestions
were openly listened to and considered. Any volunteer was
welcome. Every possibility was eXplored: all assistance
gratefully accepted. Beginning in the summer of 1970 and
continuing routinely thereafter such unsolicited help was
put on the “in" pile and considered as time and need war-
ranted. While an interested party was likely to receive an
extended personal reSponse to communication in 1969, by spring

of 1970 his chances depended a great deal on the inclina-

tions and harried schedule of the central office.

78

But this energetic, Open-to-all stance was not the only
thing changing. Hudson River Sleep Restoration, as an organ-
ization, was beginning to undergo a kind of identity check.
Questions on the order of ”who are we?" and, "what exactly
are we supposed to be doing?” began surfacing. In a sense,
Hudson River Sloop Restoration, now without a doubt in the
public eye, (Time Magazine had called the Clearwater “the
best-known sailing boat in America”), was beginning to be-
come self-conscious. Some would say it was losing its open-
ness, others that it was “cleaning up its act“. However
the changeover is viewed, it is unquestionable that the com-
bination of resignations and changes in the board of directors
brought an end to the "early days" of the Clearwater. After
the summer of 1970, Hudson River Sloop Restoration quite
simply had fewer tendrils going out in fewer directions.

As an organization, it chose rather to concentrate on a pro-
gram of ecological activism and awareness. The historical
aSpeot of the Clearwater was moved to a secondary position

and its social activist posture was virtually obliterated.

Oxmt’wNv-A

79

Susan Crane, edited tape transcript, secticns 1a and 1b.
Anonymous, tape trascript 1.

Sam Sunshine, edited tape transcript, sec. 1.

Susan Crane, ;p_g,. sec. 2.

Anonymous, document 1.

For a good analysis of this concept see Richard Hofstadter,
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, New York, 1962.

Pete Seeger, document 2.

 

VIII

“I would suggest that HRSR adept but a single thrust -
clean water for the Hudson River and connecting estuaries...
We are in an environmental crisis today. We have lost 10%
of our fresh waters to mercury alone. One-third of our
estuaries are closed to shell—fishing due to man-created
oontaminations. Our political and bureaucratic leaders,
with a few significant exceptions, are playing games with
our waterways. It is up to individual citizens, such as
this Board to create an overpowering demand for clean
waters."

Dom Pirone, 1971

 

F

‘ ~_~c.g:.=¢-- -'¢-"«. ....

 

’

 

 

 

 

80

 

81

The new profile which Hudson River Sloop Restoration
was to project as it went into the early 1970's was signaled
at the end of the summer 1970 season. Hal Cohen, an IBM
engineer and resident of Poughkeepsie, had been involved
with the sleep organization from the very first lawn party.
As organization president he wrote an editorial in the autumn
1970 issue of the 32323 5112; Navigator, Hudson River Sleep
Restoration's official newsletter:

HRSR, through the Operation of the Clearwater,
has demonstrated a unique ability to draw many
thousands of Hudson valley residents to our water-
front festivals. Last year, our attraction was
“Clearwater" herself and the festivals. Residents
of apathetic river communities learned that they
and their neighbors could create town parties and
have a good time working together.

This year we have become more informative.
Knowing that people were concerned about their home
towns and country, we brought them exhibits which
showed the degrees of pollution in the river,
named the polluters, indicated the polluting sub-
stances such as detergents, sewage, etc., and told
the value of a clean river by showing how it was
used in the past. We also told people how much it
would cost to clean our rivers and how much money
was available to governments according to the pri-
orities the peeple set through their elected
representatives.

I believe we are ready to move ahead to the
next phase. We must accept that most people are
willing to learn the lessons of history and want
to do something to improve the quality of their
lives. This will require active sloop organizations
of local peeple working in their own towns under
the guidance of HRSR. These sleep clubs must
represent the entire community. By this, I mean
a real mixture of people of different ages, races,
beliefs, etc., and not just token representation of
any one segment of the pepulation. They will act
as a group on problems that may affect different
peeple in the group to different degrees but the
common goal will be an improved life in harmony
with nature. These projects will range from build-
ing waterfront parks to starting sailing programs

82

to leading the move to ban threw-away cans to re-
cycling garbage and to the improvement of housing.

The significant statement is, "I believe we are ready to move
ahead to the next phase." What follows immediately is more or
less the “next phase” as viewed by an "early years“ sloop
organization member. It involves, basically, the idea of
community organization and social activism. As it worked out,
however, the ”next phase" was characterized by a committment
to education and environmental action instead.
Dom Pirone was one of the scientist members of Hudson
River Sleep Restoration. A university educator and well-
known environmentalist, he became involved with the sleep
project for solely ecological reasons. Speaking about the
shift in emphasis which began in autumn of 1970 he char-
acterized it in this way:
The Clearwater's first years were a sort of
"Phase 1“. We tried to bring people to the river,
to show them there's something in the river for
them.Now we're getting into "Phase 2", into direct
environmental action and education. This boat
is going to be working for the environment,
day in and day out. 2
The foundation for the sleep project's educational in-
volvement had been laid long before. Hudson River Sleep
Restoration had always viewed itself as an educational or-
ganization and had been chartered as such in 1966 by the
State of New York. The question was really in what field
was Hudson River Sloop Restoration to be educational.

Earlier directors, interested in more fundamental social

questions, had used the word in a wider sense. The new

83

group (1971-72) was speaking about environmentally-oriented
classroom education.

The Ngg§h_§iggg Navigator noted in its June 15, 1970
issue, that the Clearwater had just completed “a very suc-
cessful month of educational activities...under the aus-
pices of SCOPE” ( the Suffolk County Organization for the
Promotion of Education). It continued:

...throughout May, the sleep was used as a floating

classroom on the problems of environmental quality

by over 1,000 students, teachers, and civic lead-

ers. This was HRSR's first in-depth educational

venture. 3

By a year later, Hudson River Sloop Restoration was
fully committed to the idea of the use of the Clearwater as
a floating classroom. The first massive attempt at such a use
for the sleep became a reality in Spring of 1971. Mildred
Katz, a New Rochelle housewife, active PTA member, and cit-
izen ecologist, preposed to the city's school board that
New Rochelle retain the Clearwater for a month as the key
feature in the school system's environmental education pro-
gram. After several fund-raisings, a number of different
mailings, and a great deal of hard work, the New Rochelle
City School District raised the necessary $8,000 and char-
tered the Clearwater for the month of April. During that
month, the Clearwater was visited by some one-thousand
sixth-grade students. It was thought by the school district's
administrators that this age group would benefit most from

this type of educational experience. A prepatory classroom

manual for pre-visit use was put together by a curriculum

84

committee composed of historians, English and social studies
teachers, and biology instructors. Reviewing the project,
Steve Brown of New York City's Sunday News wrote:

As part of the special curriculum set up by
a committee of teachers, the pupils measured the
water's temperature at one and two fathoms (six and
twelve feet for landlubbers), took samples of water
for analysis, kept logs of the ship activities and
gained at least a basic understanding of how
sailing ships use the wind for locomotion.

The shipboard experiments were preceded by
classroom instruction and will be followed by
more classroom time devoted to analyzing the cruise.
Topics included the effects of pollution on the
environment, history of the Hudson sloop trade,
geography of the Hudson River Valley and the Long
Island Sound, marine biology, songs and literature
of the 19th Century and the seamen who sailed
the cargo sleeps. 4

New Rochelle staff evaluation of the project was quite
favorable and might be summarized in the words of Adrienne
Bedelle, committee chairman of the project:

...the Clearwater project...was one of the finest
experiences that New Rochelle sixth grade children
have ever had. A discovery classroom of this type
which brings about an awareness of a new area of
our planet and a recognition of ecological rela-
tionships is priceless.

Richard Olcctt, assistant superintendent of New Rochelle
schools added:

On the whole, I think it fair to say that the
Clearwater project was an unqualified success. It
brought a unique and enlarging educational exper-
ience to more than one-thousand sixth grade students
and produced an excitement and interest in environ-
mental issues in the total community.6

We plan to repeat the program...

The program was repeated, in New Rochelle and elsewhere.
As the program developed, the Clearwater was used for ed-

ucational purposes by an ever-widening group of organizations.

85

The schedule for 1972 found the sleep in New Rochelle for the
month of May, with the Rye Conservation Society in Rye, New
York, for two weeks of April, with the Wave Hill Center for
Environmental Studies of Riverdale, New York for the other
two weeks of April, with PS 3 of New York City in June, New
Haven, Connecticut in September, and several New Jersey com-
munities in October.

By this time, the educational program had developed
enough to warrant the hiring of an on-board environmental
educator. Also, additional equipment such as microscopes,

a bottom grab, and a plankton net were added to the water

testing, fishing, and seining equipment already on board.

 

 

 

 

 

The North River Navigator for August, 1972 carried this review

of the season's education program:

86

We were very happy with our school program
this spring. During April-June approximately 3,000
children and 1,200 adults participated in an
extensive educational program aboard the Clearwater
which included fishing, seining, water testing,
plankton and bottom sampling, as well as lectures
and discussions about the environment, ecology,
water, and the Hudson's history.

In one sense, the development of Hudson River Sloop
Restorations education program was a natural outgrowth of its
widening participation in the process of environmental
awareness. As with the education program, concern with
environmental problems had been implicit in the organization's
aims since its beginning. Actually, Hudson River Sloop
Restoration's concern with the conservation of the Hudson
River grew quite naturally out of its interests in the river's
past.

The special loveliness of the Hudson River valley has
been a thing of special note ever since Henry Hudson called
it "a very good land to fall in with, and a pleasant land
to see" back in 1607. Washington Irving, whose own residence,
Sunnyside, sat on the east bank of the river at Tarrytown,
Spoke for many when he said:

It has been my lot, in the course of a some-

what wandering life, to behold some of the rivers

of the old world, most renowned in history and

song, yet none have been able to efface or dim the

pictures of my native stream thus early stamped

upon my memory. My heart would ever revert to

them with a filial feeling, and a recurrence of the

joyous associations of boyhoodz...if ever I should

wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the

world and its distractions, and dream quietly away

the remnant of a troubled life, I knowaof none more
promising than this little valley.

8?

 

 

 

 

 

Certain of the world's rivers have inSpired the imagina-
tion enough to be remembered in literature, music, and art.
The majesty of the Hudson has frequently prompted comparison
with these other famous rivers. George William Curtis, civil
service reformer, and editor of Putnam's Monthly Magazine and

Harper's Weekly noted:

...its Spacious and stately character, its
varied and magnificent outline, from the Palisades
to the Catskills, are as epical as the loveliness
of the Rhine is lyrical. The Hudson implies a con-
tinent behind. For vineyards it has forests. For
a belt of water, a majestic stream. For graceful
and grain geldened heights, it has imposing moun-
tains... The Danube has, in parts, glimpses of
such grandeur. The Elbe has sometimes such deli-
cately pencilled effects. But no EurOpean river
is so lerdly in its bearing, none flows in such
state to the sea.

Moreover, the Hudson River provided a Special kind of
inspiration for early American artists and writers. Using

the river valley as a rallying point, these men attempted

 

 

 

88

to establish an American art and an American literature. The
"Hudson River School" of painters and the “Knickerbocker Men
of Letters” (as they came to be called), hoped to remove the
American artistic tradition from its slavish imitation of
EurOpean models. Painters such as Asher B. Durand and Thomas
Cole roamed the Hudson valley in search of breathtaking land-
scapes which they could transfer to canvas. Imitations soon
followed and, as was heped, younger artists began making
similar use of American subjects for their work.

Writers, as well, who heped to establish an American
literature, drew inSpiration from the Hudson. Authors such
as Washington Irving, James Fenimore CoOper, and James Kirke
Paulding began writing about local places and peeple. In a
sense, the more creative of these writings became a kind of
American folklore which younger authors could imitate and
upon which later writers could draw.

Both groups were amazingly successful in what they set
out to do and both made extensive use of Hudson valley mater-
ial in the process.

The Hudson's importance is not confined, however, to
its Spiritual qualities. Naturalist Robert Boyle, writing
in 1971, had this to say about the river:

To the handful of people who truly know it, the

Hudson River is the most productive, abused, beau-

tiful, ignored, and surprising body of water on the

face of the Earth. There is no other river quite

like the Hudson, and, for many persons, no other

river will do. The Hudson is the river.

This attitude may seem affected or extravagant...

Compared to the Mississippi, the Rio Grande, and
almost 80 other American rivers, the Hudson is a

89

midget. From its source in the Adirondack Moun-
tains to its mouth at the south tip of Hanhattan
Island, the Hudson runs for only 315 miles. Yet
the river has grandeur, and it is of just such a
size and length as to compel strong sentiments.

You feel as though you can come to grips with the
Hudson....

...Geologically, the Hudson flows through five phys-
iographic provinces - the Canadian Shield, the
Folded Appalachians, the Hudson Highlands, the New
England Upland, and the New Jersey Lowland - and
past a Sixth, the Catskills. According to geolo-
gist Christopher J. Schuberth of the American Mus-
eum of Natural History, few rivers in North America
traverse "such geological diversity and complexity
in such a short length.“

Botanically, the Hudson Valley has great vari-
ety. The natural climax vegetation is what plant
ecologists call oak-chestnut-hickory forest... In
point of fact, there probably are more Species of
trees in the Hudson watershed than in the British
Isles... The variety of vegetation may be explained
in part by the diversity of...changing landscapes.
Then again, the river water itself has a moderating
influence on air temperatures. In many ways, the
Hudson serves as a long, finger-like chute of the
south, up which warm air can travel northward.
Southern plants normally found in the Carolinas or
Virginia, such as prickly pear, grow in parts of the
valley. Moreover, the varying combinations of
vegetation, temperature, and tepography makes the
Hudson Valley an interesting transition or ”tension”
zone for birds and animals coming from both north
and south .

Above all, there is the Hudson River itself
and the unseen life beneath its surface. The
Hudson nowadays is really not a single, continu-
ous river but a half-dozen or so different bodies
of water stitched together...a mountain trout stream,
a bass and pike river, a canal,...an estuary, and
a seaport. South of the Narrows at the entrance
to New York harbor is the sunken channel of an
older Hudson. In glacial times, the continental
shelf was above sea level, and the Hudson then
flowed another 120 miles out to sea....

As of new, the biological productivity of the

lower Hudson is staggering. Fishes are there by the
millions, with marine and freshwater Species often
side by side in the same patch of water. All told,
the pepulations of fishes utilizing the lower
Hudson for Spawning, nursery, or feeding grounds
comprise the greatest single wildlife resource in
New York State...BeSides striped bass and sea

90

sturgeon, the river is aswarm year-round...with

white perch, bluefish, shad, herring, large-mouth

bass, carp needlefish, yellow perch, menhaden,

golden shiners, darters, carp, tomcad, and sunfish

...blue crabs, grass shrimps, sand shrimps, and...

other invertibrates.

Indeed, the US Army Corps of Engineers has termed the lower
Hudson "probably the most complex major estuary in the United
States."

Besides its attraction for artists, writers, and nat-
uralists, the Hudson held a Special importance for the lead-
ers of the fight for a better environment in general. Audubon,
the bi-monthly official publication of the society of the same
name, chose to dedicate its ujhth issue to the Hudson. The
Audubon Society had been founded in the ninteenth century.
Though it was principally concerned with the study and pro-
tection of birds, it has a long reputation as a leader in
the fight for the conservation of our natural order in total.
Les Line, the editor, wrote in the Special issue on the Hudson:

...this issue of Audubon is unique in our 73
years of publishing history. For it is dedicated
to a single subject - the Hudson River...

We chose the Hudson River as the subject for

an entire issue not because of Eastern parochial-

ism, but because the story of the Hudson is clas-

sic. It is a magnificent river, an historic

river, and a terribly abused river. What has

happened to the Hudson has happened to every major

river in America (and most smaller streams).

Only the names need be changed. 1

The Hudson then, already had played several important
roles in the development of the "American experience”. For
its use as a Significant environmental rallying point only

one further element was necessary - widSSpread public in-

terest in ecology.

91

What we might call the “pepularization of the ecology
movement” can be reasonably dated to the very successful
”Earth Day“ celebrations in April of 1969, and to Richard
Nixon's “all out war on pollution” speech on New Year's Day,
1970. Almost overnight ”ecology" became a household word.
Widespread lay interest and action became evident on every
side, though, unfortunately, much of this effort was often
diluted by a good deal of rhetoric in high places. The Clear-
water, preceding all of this flag-waving by several years,
was a very tangible symbol and was immediately useful to
different interest groups involved in the fight for a bet-
ter environment. So it was that CBS news covering national
Earth Day activities on April 22, 1970, chose to focus upon,
among other things, the Clearwater's arrival in Washington
D.C. and its crew's presentation, in congress, of the State
‘22 the Hudson report. The Washington Post described the re-
port as a “striking multi-media dramatization of the pol-
lution problems of the Hudson River - and, by analogy, of
many of the nation's waterways." It went on:

Slide after Slide and song after song brought
vividly to life the contrast between the Hudson

River of 1850 and the Hudson of today. At one mo-

ment, fresh water Sparkled over rocks or lapped

against a green and sunlit shore: at the next,

stiff congeries of dead fish lay beached in ponds

of scum: orange oceans of filth belched from fac-

tory conduits: dried streambeds crusted in in-

dustrial heat.1

As the battle for the environment took form there was

a good deal of possibility for the Clearwater's involvement.

Its unique ability to symbolize an era when human beings

92

lived in better harmony with their environment made it a
prominent tool for ecologists both here and abroad.

The organization's own involvement with an ecology pro-

gram moved slowly at first. But from late 1970 through early

1971, as the education program gradually fell into place, it
became evident that its central focus was to be on environ-
mental awareness.

By summer of 1971 Hudson River Sloop Restoration was
looking for an ecologist-executive director. This it found
in Dom Pirone. Pirone was born and raised in New York and
had what he called a sense of ”patria“ for the area. An
intelligent and outspoken professor of biology and environ-
mental science, he focused much of his energy on problems
of water and had been involved in Hudson River conservation
for years. He was a well-known figure at hearings on prob-
lems of water pollution, and was actively involved in the
Hudson River Fisherman's Association. The Fishermen's
Association had been achieving national notoriety for its
prosecution of Hudson River polluters. Basic to its system
of halting polluters was the 1899 Federal Refuse Act. The
exact wording of the bill is as follows:

It shall not be lawful to throw, discharge, or
deposit, or cause, suffer, or procure to be thrown,
discharged, or deposited either from or out of any
ship, barge, or other floating craft of any kind,
or from the shore, wharf, manufacturing establish-
ment, or mill of any kind, any refuse matter of any
kind of description whatever other than that flow-
ing from streets and sewers and passing therefrom
in a liquid state, into any navigable water of the
United States, or into any tributary of any navig-

able water from which the same float or be washed
into such navigable water: and it shall not be

93

lawful to deposit, or cause, suffer, or procure to
be deposited material of any kind in any place on
the bank of any navigable water, or on the bank of
any tributary of any navigable water where the same
Shall be liable to be washed into such navigable
water, either by ordinary or high tides, or by
storms or floods, or otherwise, whereby navigation
shall or may be impeded or obstructed. Every per-
son and every corporation that shall violate, or
that Shall knowingly aid, abet, authorize, or in-
stigate a violation of the provisions of this sec-
tion shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and on con-
viction thereof shall be punished by a fine not ex-
ceeding $2,500 nor less than $500, or by imprison-
ment (in the case of a natural person) for not less
than thirty days nor more than one year, or by both
such fine and imprisonment, in the discretion of
the court, one-half of said fine to be paid to

the person or persons giving information which
shall lead to conviction.1

 

 

 

 

 

James Miller, commenting on this act notes:

Not only did this law require every factory
releasing material into any navigable stream in the
United States to get a dumping license from the
Corps of Engineers: it made unlicensed dumping a
federal crime punishable by a $500 to $2500-a—day
fine. Moreover, it stipulated that any citizen

9“

who helped the Corps of Engineers get a polluter 4
convicted could keep half the fine for himself. 1

The Fishermen proved to be unrelenting in their prosec-

ution of polluters. Pipe by pipe, they proceeded up and
down the river, gathering data on individual polluters of
the Hudson. The information would then be passed on to
Federal attorney Whitney North Seymour whoSe responsibility
it was to initiate legal proceedings. Pirone, a key figure
in the Hudson valley Fishermen's Association, was offered
and accepted the position of executive director of Hudson
River Sleep Restoraion. From that point in time, the 9123;:
yatgy's position as an ecological watchdog was firmly

established.

Pirone's view of Hudson River Sloop Restoration was

well defined:

The Hudson River sleeps were workboats. The
sleep, CLEARWATER, has a particular job to do.
That job is to help restore and preserve a living,
healthy Hudson River and to get peeple to use it
non-destructively. If this can be accomplished, by
example, it will be of great benefit in retrieving
and maintaining quality natural environments all
over the globe...

It must be clearly recognized that the goal
set forth here is a clean viable, and utilizable
Hudson River, not the glorification of a class of
boats long since historical. The CLEARWATER will
achieve fame as the vehicle which got the Hudson
valley really moving into a rational human future,
which, by definition, means reSpect and protection
for the natural river ecosystem....

The questions are: Can the rational use of
a living system that the sleep embodies, be the
rule of the river again? Can she help determine
the priorities which will be imposed upon our val-
ley in the future? Will we learn to use our re-

sources in a constantly renewable manner, as a
wind-driven vessel does, or will we court disaster

by grabbing at momentary expedients to the rapidly

95

approaching point of no return?

The sleep, CLEARWATER, should serve as a con-
stant unremitting conscience for human society in
the Hudson valley. She must not in any way be
purposely abrading to this society: CLEARWATER
must be leading our society by bringing together,
in one massive effort, those out-front individuals
who are and will be leading us all toward? a re-
turned total glory for the Hudson River.

To back up a policy of vigorous demand for clean waters
he suggested:

What I hepe to do is to get started this year
and finance on a three year basis a real good five
to six hour environmental program complete with ten
or twelve thousand dollars worth of environmental
monitoring equipment so that we can hold our heads
high, come into any community, take out any level
of adults, children, college students, or anybody,
and give them five or six hours on the Hudson or
on Long Island Sound of really worthwhile environ-
mental eduigtion that could not be duplicated
elsewhere.

In December of 1971 this developing ecological dimen-
sion became a matter of official policy. A Special meeting
of Hudson River Sloop Restoration corporate members was
held on December 12 and the following ammendment was passed
by a vote of twenty-five to one defining the organization's
aims anew: (new matter underlined)

Article 2(a): “To acquaint peeple with mat-
ters relating to our cultural heritage and Egg con-
ditions of our waterways: and to maintain *and pro-
mote interest in the history, ecology and condition
of the Hudson River and its tributaries and connect-
ggg'waterways both as a commercial and pIEEsure ar-
tery: and in connection therewith to build, own,
operate and exhibit replicas of the great sleeps
which once freely navigated the river, thereby
generating a greater interest in our cultural her—
itage and an understanding of the contributions made
to our culture and commerce by the river and the
sloops which sailed it; and to investigate and to
conduct research concerning the ecology and present
condition 2: such waterways and the source of

96

contaminents 32 such waterways and apprOpriate means

to dispense with” Lr avoid such contaminents and‘

_%'§_ afford apprfii'ate ppbncitymts of

such investi ations s, and to promote the improvement

of the present condition Lf such waterways. 17

The sleep organization quickly took up the new chal-
lenge. Conditions within Hudson River Sleep Restoration
changed tomirrer this new role of environmental activist.
The new board of directors reflected these changes.

Pirone noted:
Look at our board of directors. Beginning

with John M. Burns, our president, they're prac-

tically all real environmentalists - not people

looking for a hobby or a good time.18

Early enactments by the new sleep board involved get-
ting an on-board teacher for the sailing season and putting
together the Hudson River Sleep Teaching Manual which had
sections on Hudson River sloops, Hudson valley ecology,
organization history, a glossary of sailing terms and test
questions. More significant, however, was the beginning of
polluter monitoring under the 1899 Refuse Agg.

John M. Burns, a former executive assistant to Whitney
North Seymour, Jr., the Nixon administration's US Attorney
for the Southern District of New York, had been elected pres-
ident of Hudson River Sloop Restoration in November of 1971.
Burns lost his position as assistant executive prosecutor
during a series of encounters with the General Motors Cor-
poration at the end of 1970. It had been alleged that he was
”over-enthusiastic” in his prosecution of polluters.19 The

case won Burns an incredible amount of publicity, which,

although it cost him his position, made him into an instant

97

here with ecologist groups. After being elected president of
Hudson River Sloop Restoration, he moved forward quickly in
the publication of information which indicated exactly who
contaminated the Hudson and how much they were contributing
to the total problem. In one of his first statements after
taking office, Burns presented formal charges against sev-
eral New Jersey firms in December of 1971. Speaking at a
public meeting in Englewoed, New Jersey, he concluded:

This report is part of a continuing program
by Hudson River Sleep Restoration, Inc., to in-
vestigate every geographical area impinging on the
Hudson and to disclose to the citizens Just who the
major polluters are in their areas.20
This report was actually a predecessor of the soon-to-

be-published Polluter Reports. On Monday morning, March 6,
1972 a press release was issued from the sleep office in
Cold Spring:

Hudson River Sloop Restoration, Inc. has
announced today a new water quality monitoring
program for the Hudson River Basin and area coastal
waters. The monitoring program called Clearwater
Polluter Reports will document county by county the
industrial wastes being dumpgq into the Hudson
River and Long Island Sound.

Thus began the statement announcing a set of reports which
would systematically document pollution of the Hudson
River. Information for the reports came, ironically, right
from the polluters themselves. A federal regulation im-
plemented by the Nixon administration in July of 1971 re-
quired all industrial plants in the united States to file
applications for waste disposal permits with the US Army

Corps of Engineers. After collecting the information from

98

these permits, the Environmental Protection Agency would
issue industry by industry guidelines on what discharge

levels were acceptable and what were not.

f

 

 

 

 

 

It should be noted that this new regulation was highly criti-
cized by environmentalists. For one thing, it granted sev-
eral years of immunity to polluters awaiting the processing
of their applications. Furthermore, it was felt that pro-
cessed permits would allow industries to legally pollute
waterways. thereby rendering ineffective the i§22 Refuse
Disposal Apt. On the other hand, these applications did
indicate the quantity of liquid waste discharged and the
concentration and absolute weight of waste substances con-
tained in the liquids. Also, the process by which the pol-
lutants were produced, abatement procedures before discharge,

and the history of such discharges all had to be specifically

99

described. John Burns completed negotiations with the local
district office of the US Army Corps of Engineers to cepy
the approximately nine hundred such applications filed by
plants affecting waterways in which the Clearwater sailed.
The March 6th news release went on to say:

The 900 applications will be the basis, in
the coming months, for Clearwater Polluter Reperts
for each county along the Hudson and the coast.

The Restoration has made arrangements with qual-
ified local scientists, including members of various
university chemical engineering faculties to review
these applications and to propose abatement prac-
tices to achieve the highest technological standards
possible for abating specific wastes. The informa-
tion in the reports will be further monitored for
accuracy by teams of local Restoration memberships
conducting on-site water quality testing.

The proposals of scientists advising the Res-
toration will be made available to state, federal,
and local pollution abatement enforcement officials
as well as the offending plant...

Clearwater Polluter Reports will be made avail-
able to other interegged organizations in the
Hudson River valley.

The Polluter Reports proved in the following months to
be very powerful documents. The Npppp River Navigate; for
October 1972 noted that the presentation of the Albany Pel-
lppgp Report to an official from the State Department of En-
vironmental Conservation was one of the "highlights" of the
summer season. The various letters. recommendations, and
public pressure prompted by the reports probably accounts for
the most significant legal progress made in the Clearwater's
five year fight to clean up the Hudson. Speaking at the an-
nual meeting of Hudson River Sleep Restoration on December 3,
1972, Burns noted that the Polluter Reports were tremendously

successful, that suggestions based on the reports had been

100

made by scientists to a number of firms involved, that abate-
ment procedures had begun at several sites, and that the US
Attorney had delivered his first indictment in the area and
“would coeperate further with pollution fighting groups if

given coeperative assistance."23

(:-

\ooowmm

10

11
12

13
1h

15

16

17

18
19

101

Hal Cohen, North River Navigator, Autumn 1970, p.2.

”Clearwater Sets Ecology Course". in Herald Statesman,
Yonkers, New York, February 17. 1972, document 3f

 

North River Navigator, June 15. 1970.

"Happy Kids At Sea", Sunday News, New York, NY, April 25,
1971. p.w1, document 4.

Adrienne Bedelle, document 5.

Richard Olcctt, document 6.

North River Navigator, August 1972, p.1
Washington Irving, QQ._QL§.. p.76.
George w. Curtis,__2.‘g;§.. p.76.

Robert Boyle, “The Hudson River Lives", in Audubon, ob.
cit.. pp. 16-17.

Les Line, in Audubon, pp, cit.. p.2.
North River Navigator, June 15, 1970, p.1.
1822 Refuse Act, quoted in Audubon. 9p, cit.. p.h8.

James Miller, "The Law That Could Clean Up Our Rivers",
in ReaderLs Digest, v. 98, no. 589, May 1971, doc. 7.

Dom Pirone, "Suggested Duties and Programs of the
Executive Director of the Hudson River Sleep Res-
toration, Inc.. document 8.

Dom Pirone, edited tape transcript, no. 3.

p1- -Laws Lf Hudson River Sloop Restoration, Inc.. Art-
icle 2.

Dom Pirone, quoted in Herald Statesman, pp, cit.

”The Burns Case” was in the media for some time in early

1971. "The Burns Case" article in Time, January 25,
197;, p. 431gives as good a summary of the affair
a s useful gor present purposes.

 

 

102

20 John Burns, Hudson River Sloop Restoration "News Release",
December 15, 1971.

21 Hudson River Sloop Restoration ”News Release“, March 6,
1972.

22'lbid.

23 Hudson River 8100p Restoration board of directors meet-
ing - minutes, December 3, 1972.

 

 

 

 

 

 

IX

"Man thrives best in challenge. The challenge can as-
sume many forms. Man has the capability of zeroing in on
challenge...and where man avoids challenge, he weakens him-
self...

We have a tendency to condemn... We have a tendency to
look at man and the acts of man which can be immoral, wretch-
ed, at times demeaning...but condemnation serves no purpose.

Man has unlimited capability. He has the capability,
given time, of accomplishing anything within the reach of
his imagination...We need to deve10p means of communication
to transmit those ideas.”

Henry Pahl, 1972

103

 

 
 
 

C"

." b"

 
   

*3}. .1

 

  

 
 

 

10“

With the develOpment of the educational and ecological
dimensions of its program, the sloop organization's emphasis
on social and community functions underwent a simultaneous
phasing-out. A booklet defining the organization's aims for
the i972 sailing season began:

Since her launching in 1969 the Hudson River

SlOOp Clearwater has been involved in a wide var-

iety of activities directed at stimulating in-

terest in the environmental crisis facing the Hud-

son River valley, the nation, and the world. This

year Clearwater embarks on a new direction in her

Operation. During the spring and fall she has been

and will be used by local school districts as part

of their program to bring to their students and

faculty the ecological and historical background

‘of the Hudson River Valley.1

Dom Pirone, director of Hudson River SlOOp Restoration
during the winter of 1972, when questioned about the water-
front festivals which had played such a significant role in
the Clearwater's early years commented:

We haven't abandoned them. We hope to have

four of them this summer. It's Just that the em-

phasis this summer will not be on singing and hav-

ing a good time.2

The schedule for summer of 1972 indicated more of this
type of thinking. or the forty-five entries listed show-
ing programs of different types, only five were announce-
ments of festivals. There was no doubt about the fact that
music and community actions for their own sake played a
small part in the 71-72 list of priorities. In part, this
was due to Pete Seeger's resignation as chairman of the
board of directors in fall of 1970. Without question his

interest in music and community affairs was a source of

105

inspiration to those Hudson River Sloop Restoration members
actively interested in either area. Also, the winding down
of those aspects of the Clearwater's program was definitely
part of a movement to “clean up” the organization's image.
There were those members who felt that the communal aspect

of the sloop organization was alienating exactly that segment
of the Hudson valley community whose support was necessary

if the Hudson were to be cleaned up at all. Thus, Dom Pir-
one, talking about his interests as Hudson River SlOOp Res-
toration director commented:

The peOple who can make some difference do not
feel welcome aboard the Clearwater. The real fish—
ermen of the river, the guys who work for indus-
try or work for a utility and Spend their free time
fishing on the river - to them the Clearwater is a
big Joke: it was those hippies sailing around screw-
ing, shooting up, etc...-some of which is true,
most of which is not true...I'm going to make the
average blue collar working man feel that the Clear-
water is his. I'm going to have him aboard, I'm
going to the sportsman's clubs up and down the
valley telling them that we want their men aboard
the Clearwater to show the kids how to fish. The
upper middle class, which is probably the most in-
fluential class of society outside of the extreme-
ly powerful which we can't reach - peOple like
doctors and lawyers and influential, conscientious
businessmen in each community - these men don't
feel welcome aboard the Clearwater: these are the
people I am going to make feel welcome aboard the
Clearwater.

At other Junctures there was criticism of those indiv-
iduals whose orientation was considered to be with the fest-
ival-music-communal group. ”Hippie-types" were more vul-
nerable to criticism, and so provided a good excuse for a
general coup. Some of the criticism aimed at this group was

explicit. One long-time Hudson River Sloop Restoration

106

supporter stated:

I've been so raw as to say it's a floating hip-
pie pad at times which may be quite unfair, but which
has been borne out at times unfortunately - the loose
way it has been run at times, the lack of recep-
tiveness on the part of crew to peOple who have
been coming aboard in a way that is hospitable and
friendly. Maybe the people at that time didn't
mean to be unfriendly or inhospitable, but still
and all there is a public to be accomodated.

Sam Sunshine, discussing Cold Spring attitudes toward the
leOp workers noted:

And then when they got caught too taking a
bath in a drinking fountain over in Mear Mountain
and their names were brought in the newSpaper and
everything else, then everybody said, "See, I
told you so! They're a bunch of goddam hippies."5

Some criticism was more subtle. One 8100p organization
member suggested:

Someone is going to say, ”Oh, he's anti-
hippie, he's anti-long hair.“ I'm not: I'm not
anti-long hair at all. But, I do get upset when
I see somebody running around with hair wild out
like a bush and not trying to do anything about
it. You know, I like long hair on peOple - I don't
for myself - but I like it on a lot of peOple if
they take care of it. I don't like to see it
grow wild.

The same thing with clothing - if I see a
guy running around with a loose pair of shorts on
and no underwear on, I don't like it because the
public doesn't like it. They see it; they know
what it is. It insults them. Maybe they ghouldn't
get uptight, but it does get them uptight.

Whatever the causes, the results were an attempt to
weed the ”hippie-types“ out of the organization and to de-
emphasize those of the Clearwater's activities which were
community-action oriented.

In one sense, what Hudson River 8100p Restoration was

doing was aligning itself with at least the techniques of the

107

political and economic power structure. It was becoming an
"overground" organization. Ironically, at the same time it
was doing this, its expressed purpose was to become a more
agressive watchdog over these same political and economic
power complexes. Moving radical types out of the organiza-
tion, or at least de-emphasizing their presence, and accepting
Pete Seeger's willing move to a more "invisible” position, was
allowing Hudson River SlOOp Restoration to enter halls pre-
viously barring entrance.

There is a good deal of evidence to bear out this line
of thinking. For one thing, it was becoming easier to deal
with ”establishment” organizations such as state and county
parks departments. Where formerly it had been difficult to
get permission to dock, agencies were now sending in work
crews to help out on festival sites. Also, while Hudson
River SloOp Restoration had received a number of grants
from the New York State Council on the Arts, it received in
June of 1972, its first allotment from the department of
Health-Education-Welfare. This highly prestigious grant is
awarded to perhaps ten percent of its applicants.

Ideas began to surface which were quite out of character
with the early, activist sloop projects. In a news brief
dated June 1972, the following suggestion was made in passing:

Talking about money - Clearwater is asking cor-
porations and businesses in_the Hudson valley to con-
tribute to the summer program. How about sending

in names of Big Business presidents or Community

Relations Directors so that we can ask them to Join
in Sponsoring the Clearwater this summer?7

108

Such a suggestion would have sounded strange, perhaps, when
back in August of 1969, Allan Aunapu, first captain of the
Clearwater, had raised the red, black, and green “Black Lib-
eration” flag up the Clearwater's mast at Kingston, New York.

There is, possibly, another line of thinking on this
changeover of political tactics. HUdSOD River SlOOp Res-
toration, like many other activist groups, was reflecting
contemporary patterns in the society at large. During this
same period of time activists were cutting their hair, de-
emphasizing radical political diSplays, and seeking out estab-
lished ways of setting their issues before the legislature
and the Judiciary. The common description of the ”back to the
50's“ phenomenon was “working within the system”, but the
practical result of all the rhetoric was a pervasive attitude
of ”benign neglect" toward all pressing social, political,
and economic issues.

Whatever the reason or reasons, there is evidence that
this type of attitude was a developing trend in Hudson River
Sloop Restoration's history. Further information points to
the same conclusion. At the board of directors' meeting in
December of 1972, Helene Duffy, Hudson River Sloop Restoration
Operations manager, reported that she had met with repre-
sentatives of the R.H. Macy department store chain. The
purpose as reported in the minutes of the meeting was:

...to discuss the possibility of Macy's Spon-
soring the Clearwater for a period of time this
summer. Selected items from Macy's sports department

would be tagged ”Clearwater“ and a percentage of
profits from sale of those articles would be given

109

to H.R.S.R. Macy's would also make membership forms

available and would provide media coverage(TV, radio,

newspapers). The format would be in the same vein

as Datsun's ”Plant-a-Tree" and Mott-Duffy's buying

a plot of land in a bird sanctuary.

Other indicators also underline this same trend. At
the January 1973 meeting of the board of directors Helene
Duffy noted that she “had been one of fourteen people from
the whole country" invited to attend a meeting Sponsored by
the National Trust for Historic Preservation to be held in
Washington, D.C.

Mere significantly the North River Navigator for Feb-
ruary of 1973 notes:

On December 19, 1972, US District Judge Charles

L. Breant, Jr. of the Southern District of New

York, ruled that for convictions of violations re-

garding the Selective Service Act and related laws,

service on the Clearwater would be in compliance

with requirements for alternate public service

beneficial to the country.9

This would certainly suggest that the image being projected by
Hudson River Sloop Restoration in 1973 was, for better or for
worse, a good deal different from that it projected on June
13, 1970 when Cold Spring vigilantes were going to take the
law into their own hands and force the ”commie-pinkos” out

of town.

\1 mm FM) N

110

"Clearwater Sets Sail Into Your Community”, Hudson River
SIOOp Restoration publication, p. 1. document 9.

Herald Statesman, 22. cit.

Dom Pirone, edited tape transcript no. 2.
Alexander Saunders, edited tape transcript no.3.
Sam Sunshine, edited tape transcript no.2.
Reed Haslam, edited tape transcript no.1.

Hudson River SlOOp Restoration news brief, June 1972,
document no.10.

Hudson River Sloop Restoration board of directors meeting
minutes, December 17, 1972, p.1.

North River Navigator, February 1973. p.2.

 

 

 

X

”There are several different ways you can get together.
One way to get together is for someone to say, 'Alright
everbody, let's shut up and listen to what our leader has
to say!’ Another way you can get together is to say,'Alright,
let's give everyone a chance to be heard.’ It's going to
take more time, but we want to make sure everyone has a
chance to be heard. Curiously enough, this old democratic
idea has been all-too-much forgotten in modern America....

Every great historical change has managed to bring to-
gether peOple from different places. The change just hasn't
been carried through by one narrow sector of the pOpulation.
It might be led by one sector of the population, it might
be led by a religious group, or a political group, or even
an age group, or population group, but the greatest his-
torical changes took place, I think, when you find peOple
coming from different directions to the same conclusion.
This is what is happening now in the world: you see peOple
of quite different backgrounds coming to rather similar
conclusions."

Pete Seeger, 1972

 

 

 

 

 

111

112

If one were to profile Hudson River SlOOp Resoration as
the Clearwater approaches its fifth birthday, the picture
would be a fairly good composite of most of its history. Its
agenda includes everything from concert series to court suits.

Perhaps the most significant involvements of Hudson River
SlOOp Restoration at the present time are in the areas of en-
vironmental awareness and ecological action.

Pete Seeger, in September of 1970, reporting on the
state of Hudson River Sloop Restoration, had signaled a
change in organizational interest:

...increasingly we are being asked, “What are

you accomplishing? Is the river any cleaner than

last year?” Our usual answer is: ”Well, we're

stirring up a lot of publicity.” But this is wear-

ing thin...My guess is that we're going to have to

involve masses of people in some activities...in

order to point to some achievments which we can

see, touch, and maybe swim in.

While school programs aimed at environmental education
were deve10ped beginning in 1971, programs aimed at the
general public were a bit slower in coming. In January of
1973, the SlOOp's board of directors approved the hiring of
a full time, on-board environmental educator whose job it is
to demonstrate methods of water sampling and explain the
over-all problems involved in water pollution.

Beginning in the summer of 1973, a series of “Hudson
Reawakening Workshops" were begun. These one-day seminars
on the Hudson bring together historians, scientists, and

legal experts who give intensive surveys of the river's-

multiple problems, wonders, past,and present.

113

The sloop organization has been especially active in
the area of direct ecological action. The North River Nav-
igator for March, 1973 carried notices of movement in several
areas underlining the Clearwater's role as Hudson valley
environmental watchdog. The two main fronts in the battle
at present are in the areas of atomic energy plant construc-
tion, and the establishment of industrial effluent standards
for the nation as a whole.

The Consolidated Edison Company of New York has been
operating a nuclear powered generating plant at Indian Point
on the Hudson River since the early 1960's. At present hear-
ings are being conducted to determine whether Consolidated
Edison will be allowed to Operate "Indian Point #2". Al-
though it was licensed to do so two years ago, temporary
injunctions were issued as a result of an Atomic Energy Com-
mission survey. The survey, prompted by a Hudson River Fish-
ermen's Association protest, indicated that the plant, if
Operated as licensed, would kill thirty to fifty percent of
the striped bass hatch. This, in turn, would seriously
affect the striped bass pOpulation of a large segment of the
east coast. Tagged Hudson stripers have been caught as far
away as the Merrimack River in Massachusetts. Since striped
bass fishermen Spend more than forty-five million dollars
per year on the Sport, this ecological loss would have a good
deal of effect on the economic situation of coastal settle-
ments throughout the northeast.

There is some serious precedent for the charges as

114

stated. Beginning in 1963, it was discovered, Consolidated
Edison's Indian Point plant had been killing fish at a phen-
ominal rate. According to Robert Boyle, a marine biologist
of some note, the fish, attracted by the discharge of the
warm water heated in the process of cooling the condenser,
would swim in under a pier which was partially closed and
would then be trapped. Some would swim into intake pipes,
othersciied from crowding, disease, lack of food, and, of
course, from the heat itself. A basket elevator was used
to remove the dead and dying fish. Fishermen discovered the
kill when great numbers of crows began converging on the
company's dump. A long coverup process began in which Con-
solidated Edison used fences:nn.guards to keep away inves-
tigators and the State Conservation Department quietly as-
sisted by collecting all photographs of the dump and lock-
ing them away. The complicity of the State Conservation
Department was obvious. Fishermen are usually fined $27.50
per fish caught out of season, yet no suit was brought
against Consolidated Edison. A congressional hearing on
problems of the Hudson in 1965 did little to end the fish
kill. Instead State Conservation Department officers check-
ed their own worker's home phonebills to see who might have
leaked information to conservationists.2

By 1969 the fishkills became so serious that the plant
had to shut down: fish were literally choking it. Estimates
of dead fish run into the millions. Thermal pollution was

again the cause of the kill, though Consolidated Edison

 

   

115

pleaded ingorance in the matter. Several peOple photographed
the slaughter. One, Don Benedetto, noted:

The three of us penetrated in about 30 to #0
feet. Guy and Mike got out and walked on the cross-
beams shooting a discharge pipe vomiting thousands
upon thousands of fingerling striped bass and
white perch along with catfish, tomcad, yellow
perch, and an occasional sturgeon. We couldn't
believe our eyes! In the background I saw a jet
of steam and paddled on to investigate. From
what looked like a huge pipe suSpended above the
water line came boiling water so hot that it seemed
to condense into steam before hitting the cooler
water below. At this point, Guy and I were dis-
covered by Con Ed personnel and ordered to leave at
once. We departed as ordered, leaving our photog-
rapher undiscovered and still shooting. Twenty min-
utes later we zoomed in and picked up Mike under
the eyes of ten Con Ed employees who did not utter
one word...This was one day in my life when I hon-
estly could say I was ashamed of being an American.3

At Storm King Mountain, fifteen miles farther north,
another controversy involving a Consolidated Edison pumped-
storage plant, is presently being argued. The plant pro-
posed for that site (it would be the largest of its kind in
the world) is designed to meet peak-period needs. During
each cycle the plant would pump six billion gallons of water
up a two-mile long, forty foot in diameter tunnel. It would
be stored in a reservoir until there was a demand for elec-
tricity, at which time the water would flow back down the
tunnel, Spinning turbines, and generating 2,000,000 kilowatts
of electricity in the process.

In the past, controversy generally focused on the dam-
age to the natural beauty of Storm King Mountain and the
Hudson Highlands. It took into account as well the unsight-

liness Of new giant-sized high-tension towers which would be

116

strung across Westchester and Putnam counties. Presently,
conservationists Oppose both the visual ugliness of the pro-
ject (which Consolidated Edison has countered by offering
to build the plant inside the mountain), and the consequent
air pollution which would be generated by its Operation.
Furthermore, taking the larger view into account, the project
as a whole is wasteful Since the plant would yield only two
kilowatts of electricity for every three used to pump the
water up to the reservoir. Although Consolidated Edison was
granted a license for the plant in 1965, a Federal Circuit
Court of Appeals withdrew the license. New Federal Power
Commission hearings ensued with Consolidated Edison being
granted a new license. At present the case is being argued
before the New York State Court of Appeals by John Burns.
Speaking on January 11, 1973, Burns noted that:
Thirty million dead fish dumped back into the
Hudson after being mauled in turbines constituted
inordinate amounts of "deleterious matter" and thus

violates one of the stream standards established
by the State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Moreover, the City of New York has consistently Opposed
the project on the basis that the plant would both increase
air pollution in the New York metropolitan area, and fur-
thermore, endanger the forty percent of its water supply
which is generated in the Storm King vicinity. The case is
important enough to have prompted even Henry Diamond, the
State Commissioner who first ruled in favor of Consolidated

Edison, to say that he did not want to see conservationists

lose their battle, ”because it is the symbol of the first

117

legal victory for theenvironment. a landmark decision saying

you have to look at the environmental impact of a project.6

 

 

 

A

The other significant environmental battle currently

 

being waged in the Hudson Valley centers around the subject

of industrial discharge standards. It is useful to review
some information here. The 1822 Refuse 5&3, passed during

the McKinley administration, contained two main ideas: the
first expressly prohibited industrial waste discharge into

any of the nation's waterways: the second encouraged citizen
participation in the legal process by granting one-half of the
fine which the courts ultimately recieVed from polluters to
the person who had first reported or identified these law-
breakers. In 1972, Congress passed a new bill requiring all
industry to submit applications to the Army Corps Of Engineers

for permits to discharge any waste commodities into waterways.

. ..s’Lfifi‘"? "-:" l-é-‘f'fl.’ u':

 

118

After studying these applications, the federal government

is supposed to issue guidelines on tolerable pollutant levels.
Enforcement of the still-to-be-determined levels will not
commence until 1983 whereas the l§22_Refuselégg required

that the best available controls be installed immediately.
Meanwhile, United States attorneys are prohibited from com-
mencing any new proceedings against polluters under the l§22

Refuse Act. For all practical purposes, this leaves pol-

 

luters free to do as they will until such time as new stan-
dards for effluents can be determined and implemented. Con-
sidering that over five-hundred suits were brought to court
between 1970 and 1972, this act represents a Significant re-
duction in what can currently be done to halt pollution of
the nation's waterways.

On January 23, 1973, Hudson River SlOOp Restoration
issued a formal communication to William Ruckelshaus of the
US Environmental Protection Agency protesting prOposed is-
suance of discharge permits under present guidelines stating
that “permits issued under hastily-drawn, possibly lax ef-
fluent standards could protect a hazardous discharge from
prosecution for up to five years."6

That Hudson River SlOOp Restoration's efforts on behalf
of environmental quality are having some impact is evident.
On March 27,1973, the organization issued an appeal to the
Hudson Valley scientific community for professional assistance
in helping the Environmental Protection Agency deveIOp nat-

ional standards for industrial waste discharge. Hudson

119

River SlOOp Restoration was one of the only public interest
groups invited by the Environmental Protection Agency to
advise in this area. It is also the only such group pres-
ently attending Environmental Protection Agency hearings on
ocean dumping.

Other kinds Of projects round out Hudson River SlOOp
Restoration's current agenda. One of the conspicuous qual-
ities of the SlOOp group has been its ability to absorb many
different kinds of ideas. Its present program includes not
only projects which are tightly organized in design, such as
the educational and ecological ones already mentioned: but
also community-oriented programs which are somewhat more
Open in structure. To some extent this represents a kind of
blending of a variety of the different directions present
from;the beginning of the SlOOp project. In one sense, the
organization has matured, allowing for a more easy expression
of sometimes conflicting ideas.

The other side of the ”working within the system” ed-
ucational and ecological programs are those which deal with
the community at large, or what is sometimes called "total
environment”. Basically, these programs are outgrowths of
the festival activities of the SlOOp'S early years.

One of the present-day SlOOp organization's chief moves
in the direction of community projects has been the establish-
ment of the post of community coordinator. A brief statement
explaining the position was drawn up by the board of direc-

tors on January 28, 1973. The description started:

120

The role of Community Coordinator is most im-
portant in that he (she) will have aroused local
interest in HRSR and the work it is doing, and that
when Clearwater sails on around the bend there will
be an active and aware SlOOp Group to wave goodbye.

Any three days in a town would include, in the even-

ing, press conferences, films, fishfries, and Sloop

Group organization programs: and during the day,

visits to local polluters, educational sails and

brochure distribution. If a fourth day is scheduled,

there will be a community picnic.7
This position is not altogether different from the ones held
by Jimmy Collier and Lesta Morningstar in 1970 when money
from the New York State Council on the Arts was used to un-
derwrite salaries for sloop "advance men”. Basically, the
position is an activist one calling for someone to work with
community groups to arouse local support for the Clearwater
and its programs. The return to such a concept in 1973
represents a broadening of the educational and environmental
programs which were begun in 1971 and a kind of re-intro-
duction of some of the vitality of early Hudson River SlOOp
Restoration activities.

In addition to the creation or re-creation of the com-
munity coordinator post, there have been other returns to
early Hudson River SlOOp Restoration projects. Probably the
most significant of these is the rebirth of the idea of fund-
raising concerts. Early in the Spring of 1973 it was decided
to Sponser a series of twenty concerts on the Long Island
Sound as a means of raising money for the organization at
large. The idea was to partially repeat the maiden voyage-

type program where a ”Singing crew” delivered the Clearwater

to port, acted as hosts for visitors, and performed in evening

121

fund-raising concerts. The 1973 concerts had performers who
rotated weekly. Some of them did do the ship's chores by
day, while others were Special guests who only made one or
two appearances. Generally Speaking, a good deal of energy
was Spent in maintaining the continuity with the first singing
crew of 1969. Besides being interesting from a musical point
of view, the idea of Sponsoring concerts suggests, again, a
renewed exploration of some old SlOOp ideas. Moreover, it
indicates a willingness on the part of the SlOOp organization
to pick up again on ideas which had been out of its central
focus for some time.

Some time was Spent in the Spring of 1973 evolving some
possible programs for the exhibit trailer which rested unused
for two summers. The new thinking was to use it as a sort of
inland SlOOp. In such a role it could visit villages, parks,
and shOpping centers which the Clearwater, restricted to
river towns, could not. Plans considered included having
the trailer host teach-ins, discussions, and film and slide
programs at mid-week shopping center stOpS, and to host
community picnics at village and city parks on weekends.
Included were to be talks by scientists and politicians,
films, music programs, diSplays, and even video-tapes of
local environmental problems. Unfortunately, only some of
these ideas materialized over the course of the summer of
1973. What is interesting, for present purposes, is that
such community-oriented projects were at least under dis-

cussion.

122

SlOOp clubs, which had always been a part of the wider
organization, have been, for the most part, fairly uneven.
The strength of any one particular group has depended a good
deal on how involved individuals within the particular leOp
club were. It has been a matter of growing concern within
Hudson River SlOOp Restoration to strengthen individual SlOOp
clubs and their various projects. One thing this would do
would be to vary the types and localities of the leOp or-
ganization's programs. Fortunately, feelings against this
sort of decentralization have slowly broken down. At the
May 1973 meeting of the board of directors, Pete Seeger in-
dicated that a thirty-foot gaff-rig day-sailer had been de-
signed by Cy Hamlin, architect of the Clearwater, which
could be built by the various SlOOp clubs. Presumably,
this would mean that the individual clubs could Operate
sailing programs independent of the main office.

That the SlOOp organization is loosening the tight sort
of stance it had taken on in 1971 is evident from other de-
velOpments as well. A resolution adOpted at the January
1973 meeting of the board of directors called for the drawing
up of a policy for the use of volunteer workers. The pol-
icy would set guidelines for volunteer workers in the Office,
at festivals, and in local environmental projects. Con-
sidering some of the obstacles would-be volunteers faced at
different times in the past, this change reflects a con-
siderable loosening of the central office's attempt to

control all Hudson River SlOOp Restoration activities.

123

Although the early SlOOp organization had been, at times,
a fairly strong social critic, some directors during the
first years of the 1970's had tried to ”clean up“ the Qigggr
Egggg's image. During that time, Hudson River SlOOp Restor-
ation became a lot less controversal an organization. In
fact, a resolution was passed at one point prohibiting Hud-
son River SlOOp Restoration from taking an organizational
stand on any issue other than water pollution. Consequently,
it was a significant shift in policy when a motion was passed
at a board of directors' meeting on March 25, 1973 to endorse
an environmental project being carried on by a local or-
ganization. Support was to be chiefly in allowing a notice
to be made in mailings of Hudson River SlOOp Restoration's
endorsement. Nevertheless, the Opening of this tOpic for
discussion at all represents some change in the tone of
Hudson River SlOOp Restoration's attempt to control its image.
In fact, the minutes of the next meeting of the board of
directors carried notice that with the approval of the ex-
ecutive board, the Clearwater flag had been flying at half-
mast to recognize the death of Frank Clearwater who had been
shot at Wounded Knee. This sort of statement is suggestive
of the sort of social activism generally connected with the
early history of the Clearwater.

All in all, the profile of Hudson River SlOOp Restor-
ation in 1974 is an interesting blend of much of its past.
In pieces, it is all there - the history, the music, the en-

vironmentalism, the community activism, the constant tug

12“

among various ideas, and to some extent, the social re-
Sponsibility and consequent involvement in civil liberties.
Possibly, as Hudson River SlOOp Restoration is maturing as

an organization it is taking another look at the beauties of
its own childhood. In this light it may be like the prod-
igal son, who after a trying adolescense filled with attempts
at self-definition, can come back again and appreciate its
own heritage. Perhaps it is that all of the ideas with

which the organization is currently involved have always

been blended in varying degrees and as the degrees have changed,
so the overall tone of the group. Most probably, a scientific
answer is not necessary, but rather what can be said, and

said positively, is that the peculiar kind of strength which
belongs to the Clearwater, arising as it does out of the di-
versity of interests and backgrounds of Hudson River SlOOp
Restoration membership, mark it as a very unique twentieth-
century institution. As it exists today, Hudson River SlOOp
Restoration is probably in its strongest position ever for
affecting the kinds of changes in which it has traditionally

been interested.

\immtw

125

Pete Seeger, letter to members of Hudson River SlOOp
Restoration, fall,1970, document 11.

For a detailed account of this matter, see Robert Boyle,
22. Cite . pp. “1-14'60

D. Bendetto, quoted igigf' p.h5.

John Burns, North River Navigator, March 1973.

Henry Diamond, New York Times, March 15, 1973, document 12.
Tom Love, North River Navigator, March 1973: p.1.

Hudson River SlOOp Restoration board of directors meeting,
minutes, January 28, 1973. p.3.

 

   

XI

“These ladies who were working with me didn't know
about ecology or what the environment even is. But once
they got the idea, once they saw a picture of the SlOOp,
and decided to help...they became, you know, kind of en-
vironmentalists...and they may never Speak up about any-
thing else...but they've become involved in ways that
they never in their lives expected or hOped for.“

Mildred Katz, 1972

 

 

 

 

 

 

126

 

127

What, at last, is the Clearwater? Why has a project so
local in origins attracted in its evolut1on so large and
diverse a following? What makes camera crews travel half-way
around the world to film a boat? Why should an involved
citizen in Minneapolis know what some citizens in the Hudson
valley are trying to do?

Perhaps the first answer to the question is prompted
ha a statement of Jimmy Collier's:

There are several different strains that run
through the SlOOp because, you see, Hudson River

SlOOp Restoration is really not an organization,

it's a coalition.

When one begins to think of Hudson River SlOOp Restoration as
a coalition rather than as an organization, some things fall
into Sharper relief. For one thing, while an organization
generally draws together like-thinking peOple, a coalition
tends to draw together peOple of sometimes highly divergent
backgrounds whose final aims, even within the grouping, may
be quite different. In a sense, it is a pragmatic grouping,
a combination devised to solve some immediate problem with
the greatest amount of efficiency. And certainly, Hudson
River SlOOp Restoration is this - drawing together, as it
does, peeple whose frames of reference are at times even
mutually exclusive. In the introduction to 810028 22 223
Hudson, Pete Seeger hints at this when he notes:

The members of Hudson River SlOOp Restoration,

Inc. are a varied lot - conservative oldsters,

bearded students, youths from the ghetto, farmers,

teachers, housewives and teen-agers, and small-

town.merchants. They probably disagree on a thousand
things, but they're united in one idea: to sail a

128

beautiful boat from town to town to help their fei-

low citizens to learn to love their river again.

This brings to mind another aSpect of what the glgggy
1522; is about: a very practical excercise in peOple
working together. A review of its history tells us a good
deal about democratic patterns. What does happen when peOple
Of different minds try to work in a common cause? Is it
possible? At some times in the SlOOp'S short history it
seemed the answer was ”no”. Fortunately, however, as we
watch the organization's members learn p23 to listen to one
another, gg!_to draw on one another's strengths, we see a
very visible lesson in what Egg be done. Hudson River SlOOp
Restoration's current agenda, combining day sails for Sixth-
graders with concerts, civil court suits with ”peOple's
marches", is a long way from the summer of 1970 when peOple
were generally so oversensitive to one another's differences
of Opinion that the organization ground to a virtual halt.
The Clearwater's history suggests what possibilities there are
for social action within our political system. It also points
up how it may be possible to realistically structure a society
composed of peOple with different interests, ambitions, and
goals.

But perhaps these lessons, important as they are, do
not really get at the heart of the Clearwater's message.
Perhaps what is more significant is what happens not to groups
of peOple, but to each person in particular as she or he goes

about working out her or his own existence.

129
There is a monastery in Japan where the life's work of
each monk is to come out each day into a courtyard filled
with white sand and begin raking it into mounds, and valleys,
and shapes. They carry on this process for the entire day
and retire finally at night. When morning comes, they go
once again to the courtyard and rake the sand anew into mounds,

valleys, and shapes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are two lessons here which can be applied to the
sloop experience. First of all, the message, or end of the
monks' work is what they do with their own hands (the accent
being on the 92135). In certain ways, the Clearwater is a
part of the folk—culture arrival or revival which has been
taking place for the last decade and a half in the United
States. Beginning with its being built by hand by one of

the last of America's old-time shipbuilders, to the raising

130

of the mainsail which requires the hard work of a dozen deck-

hands, the Clearwater is an anachronism which accents the

 

connection of a person's work to his or her welfare. Decor-
ated, as the Clearwater is, with handicrafts of many types,
hosting festivals which accent home-made food, home—made music,
and home-made artifacts, it provides us with a lesson about

a human being's more direct relation to his or her environment.
In a schizOphrenic age where even food and seventy percent of
our clothing is synthetic, where there is practically no vis-
ible connection between beginnings and endings, between the
small part each person makes and the whole which comes off

the assembly line a quarter-mile down the way, this aspect of
the sloop experience stands out particularly.

The Clearwater points up human beings' search for their
connections to their universe in other ways as well. It was
Allan Aunapu, the first captain of the Clearwater, who pointed
up the deeper meaning in the twentieth-century's use of sails
and wind for prOpulsion. At a time when we are surrounded
by every sort of energy crises, and are literally choked to
death by inefficient ways of utilizing our fuels, the 9&335-
1532; stands a unique symbol. To be a sailor, one must
learn to use the winds, to set sails so that locomotion becomes
passive, so that natural currents will carry the ship along
effortlessly. This points to a world where, instead of
Shaking one's fist at a hostile universe, each person learns
to go placidly in the direction of nature, calmly finding

one's own way within its unwritten laws.

131

There is yet another connection between the Japanese
monastery and the Clearwater: the 8100p project might well
be looked at not as a conclusion, but as a process. True,
the goals of Hudson River SlOOp Restoration are noble enough:
a river we can swim in, air we can breathe: but, perhaps
something that is even more important is that a human being
discovers himself and experiences the joys and sorrows of
what it means to be human not in what at last is accomplished,
but rather, like the Japanese monks, in the act of doing, of
trying, of striving toward a goal.

Perhaps a parable is apprOpriate. You decide you are
going to have a Thanksgiving dinner, so you invite all of
your very best friends. The day is filled with warmth and
good cheer. You share together a bottle of wine as one per-
son chOps up some vegetables, another rolls out some dough for
biscuits, another stirs up a sauce, another stuffs the tur-
key. All the while, a good time is had by all. Several
bottles of wine later, the dinner is in the oven. Meanwhile,
everyone goes out for a brisk walk, telling stories, Singing
songs, laughing, planning. At last, the group returns to
the house only to find dinner burnt. When one thinks about
it, one realizes that the beauty of the day is not lost be-
cause of a poor ending. The joy and Sharing that went in-
to the process is what the individual can take away at last.

Looked at through this fable, the SlOOp project tells
yet another tale. Perhaps what is most important in the

finite lifetime each of us lives is the quality of that Space

132

of time. If we accept the existential limits of existence,
we realize that a human being is left with two alternatives:
either one can wait on the beach for the end to come, or,

like Zorba, can dance one's world into life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

To the extent that it is enriched by one or another person,
project, or experience, we say that it is a good life. One
of the kinds of direction which the SlOOp project has pro-
vided is what it has done to the lives Of those individuals
who have come into contact with it. In this way, its in-
fluence has been tremendous. Almost everyone talked to in
compiling the Clearwater's story told of how their lives

had gone into new, more productive directions as a result

of the sloop experience. And that is not to count the lives
touched by those touched by the Clearwater. Who is to say

how many people are positively influenced by the farm girl

133

from Wisconsin who comes to be a volunteer crew member on
the Clearwater and returns to Wisconsin having learned so
many new ways of reaching peOple, teaching peOple, touching
peOple? Who is to say what sort of influence a SlOOp pro-
gram has upon a man sitting under a tree at the far end
of a festival field feeling mean or depressed? Perhaps he
returns home and decides, for once, not to kick the dog or
Shout at his wife.

It was Jimmy Collier who said:

Certainly, the river hasn't been cleaned up
at this point, but there are an awful lot of peOple
who, just through the attempt, have got involved
in other aspects of cleaning up our society and
cleaning up our lives. So, if the river, at this
point, never gets cleaned up, the kind of deter-
gent action it has had on people's hearts, and
peOple's souls is significant just in itself....

The Clearwater represents, among many projects
that exist in the world today, a way for men to
work with other men, and a direction that brings
men closer to other men. And herein lies its real
value: it has forced peOple to move, and I have
faith that with a lot of peOple in motion, some-
thing can be done to take our society out of the
very stagnant situation in which it finds itself
today.3

If nothing else, the peOple that have come into contact
with the Cleargater have learned a bit about what it means '
to deal with peOple of differing principles, have learned
something of the real demands inherent in democratic thought.
What is probably the finest thing which can be said of the
SlOOp project is that it is part of a continuing chain with
evolving effects. The SlOOp Clearwater has been able to set

large numbers of peOple in motion. These peOple, like So-

journer Truth's "fireflies in the night” are out doing

13%

things either in conjunction with, or independent from the
Clearwater. What is significant, however, is that they have
been influenced in a very distinct way by the project.

Their programs go on in different states, different coun-
tries, different disciplines, but they bear one essential
common characteristic: they learned somewhere in the midst
of a society which generally leans toward absolutes, the

lessons of relativism.

 

A.—

 

 

135

1 Jimmy Collier, edited tape transcript, no.1.
2 Pete Seeger, intro. 810028 92 the Hudson, Ob. cit.. p.3.

3 Jimmy Collier, edited tape transcript, no.2.

 

 

APPENDIX

 

 

Music and the Clearwater

A word remains to be said about music and the Clearwater.
From the beginning, the sloop project was closely identified
with music. The first 3154 had come from a small Pete Seeger
concert on the lawn of Ander Saunders' home. Much of the
original money necessary to build the 3100p and get it afloat
also came from benefit concerts which Seeger gave in the
late 1960's.

After being launched on May 17, 1969 in Bristol, Maine,
the Clearwater was manned by a singing crew which guided it
down the New England coast to its home in New York's Hudson
River. The crew did the Ship's work by day, and performed
in evening concerts to help raise money to keep the giggg-

water sailing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

137

138

The singing crew itself was a good representation of
Hudson River Sloop Restoration at large. It was composed
of all types of musicians - traditional-tapical singers
like Pete Seeger, contemporary-folk musicians like Don Mc-
Lean, civil rights activist-musicians like Jimmy Collier,
and traditional British musicians like Lou Killen. The
songs, of course, reflected the diversity of the perfom-
ers. A typical program would include children's songs, work
songs, tOpical songs, sea songs, and others. Moreover, by

the second year of leOp festivals, it was quite common for

 

programs to include steel bands, rock music, and appear-
ances by the Hudson Valley Philharmonic.

A Hudson River SlOOp Restoration publication entitled
§g§g§_§gg Sketches g; the Clearwater 9323 was published in
1970. The book, edited by Don McLean, presents a repre-
sentative selection of the kinds of songs a listener was
likely to hear at a SlOOp concert. The songs chosen reflect
a wide variety of tastes and styles.

There were other functions music had in the SlOOp pro-
ject besides fund-raising and entertainment, One of these
was to help attract volunteers to the Clearwater activities.
A concertgoer could be a potential worker once he or She
became interested in the SlOOp project as a whole. Many of
the early volunteers came into the project in this way.

Also, music was a good publicity-getter. A great deal
of the early press and media coverage the SlOOp received was

due to the concert programs Sponsored by the Clearwater.

 

139

Music had other important functions as well. As has
been long recognized in social movements, music is a good way
of attracting people's attention. Once so attracted, it is
easier, in turn, to get peOple to focus on more serious
problems such as, in this case, cleaning up a riVer.

Music within the sloop family tended to help keep things
together. Problems and disappointments often could be softened
through song. Crew workers could always congregate below
deck where a song would sooth aching muscles or disappoint-

ment over a rained-out festiVal.

 

 

 

 

 

Music also helped the work go more easily. The purpose
of the chantyman on eighteenth- and ninteenth-century sail-
ing ships was to lead the crew in singing. Songs helped

set the rhythm for certain types of work such as hauling up

11:0

the anchor or raising a sail. The sails on these Old Ships
were quite heavy. Raising the Clearwater mainsail takes the
concerted effort of a good number of peOple. If they all
pulled out Of rhythm, nothing would happen. Pulling to-
gether on the same beat or word of a chorus, however, makes
the work go more easily.

Finally, there was one other function that music had
which is both first and last - its ability to bring peOple
together and communicate something to them about life.
PeOple love to listen to songs because they help them under-
stand and share joy, sorrow, love, hOpe, birth, death. As
Jimmy Collier remarked, though words are biased and loaded
with connotations, music has the ability to cut through much
Of that and communicate a feeling or an idea more directly.
In a world where communication is so difficult yet so neces-
sary for survival, anything which brings human beings closer

to one another is of the first order of importance.

Afterword

Sunday, May 12, 1974
On Friday of this week the 3100p Clearwater will be five
years old. Those five years have witnessed, I think, some
significant shifts in point-of—view in the United States.
The Clearwater was created out of the forward-looking Optim-
ism of the mid-1960's. During that period many Americans
were looking at the problems of our society and evolving
imaginative ways of dealing with them. The belief, generally,
was that these problems, in time, would be overcome. Those
who refused to deal with the problems Specifically were hav-
ing to deal, at least, with those who §g£g_dealing with them.
Confrontations, demonstrations, sit-ins - these were some of
the tactics: civil rights legislation, clean-water bills,
the national guard - these were some of the reSponses. If
nothing else, it was a period which forced peOple to deal
with the fact that there were other peOple.
With the seventies came many social reverses. As we
moved into this era James Taylor wrote a song where he said,
I'm going to cash in my hand,
And pick up on a piece of land,
And build myself a cabin back in the woods.
It's there I'm going to stay
Until there comes a day
That this old world starts changing for the good.1
Basically, that is just what many of us Americans did - got
Off the street, went back home, and pulled down the shades.

Students became interested in grades, everybody cut their

1W1

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hair, and social causes were accorded “benign neglect“.

This brings us back to the 3100p project. The Q£g§£¢
3233;, born out of the creative Optimism of the sixties, at-
tempted to bring peOple in contact with some fundamental soc-
ial issues: the environment was only one of them. It
attempted to bring peOple in contact with other peOple, to
teach them something about the dynamics of social inter-
change, to help them realize that a society's problems can
only be solves when the welfare of 2;; the peOple composing
that society is looked after. While there were some notable
successes in the project, it is a sad thing, I think, to
have seen it reflect in many ways, the general disengage-
ment of peOple and movements going on in the society at
large.

There are three interesting post-scripts to this story
of the Clearwater. The first says something about the SlOOp
organization itself. It is coupled in my mind with an August
1973 phone conversation with J.R. Phillips, current Hudson
Sloop Restoration Operations director, where I was told that
he was Spending his time organizing the Clearwater's past
and current projects, and was not intending to take on any
new ones. The post-script is presented directly from the
minutes of the December 16, 1973 meeting of the board of
directors. I believe its message is self-evident.

The first order of business was the election of

new officers. Michael Sherker made a motion that

we vote by secret ballot. The motion carried.

John Burns and Wally Schwane were nominated for

143

the office of President. Wally Schwane was
elected. John Burns was asked to continue to
preside.

Grace Parker asked that we consider electing a
Chairman of the Board next and nominated John
Burns for that position. John declined the
nomination.

The Board then decided to go on to the Vice-Pres-

idential nomination. Davidson Gilligan was nom-

inated. Davidson declined and the Board agreed to

recess for ten minutes.

After the recess Richard Knabel was nominated for

Vice-President. Richard declined. Emerson Burger

was nominated. Emerson accepted and became Vice-

President.

Angela Magill was nominated for Secretary. Angela

declined. The point was made that the Secretary

did not have to be chosen from the current Board but

could be any member of the Corporation.

Hal Cohen was nominated for Treasurer. Hal declined.

John suggested we adjourn the elections at this

time and turn the meeting over to the new Pres-

ident. Wally agreed to preside.
The sort of attitude present at this particular meeting
reminds me of the way certain issues were handled this last
summer. In particular, I think Of how the activist thinking
surrounding the use of the festival trailer for the summer‘
of 1973 was left to wither on the vine. I think also of
how tightly controlled the sloop concerts were. The highly
organized print-out of one persons imagination, they seemed
to have hardly any of the Spirit or ferment of the '69 or
'70 programs.

The second and third post-scripts tell something about

the Hudson itself. They suggest that some kinds of entrOpy
may not be inevitable and that, moreover, a project like the

11m

Clearwater experiment may have locked somewhere within its
mechanism, the solution to some of the major problems
facing our society. The following article concerns Hudson
River shad which were taken off the open market some fif-

teen years ago due to significant traces of oil in the fish.

1000 Attend Free Shadfest

After three days of a blustering nor'easter,
the wind and rain let up slightly, and the Beacon
Sloop Club held its first annual Shadfest on April
29. Several dozen volunteers and cooks from CIA
(the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park)
sighed as the festivities ended, "It's lucky the
weather wasn't better: we had enough shad to go
around but we completely ran out of salad and
beans. We counted, and almost 1000 people got
free shadfish dinners between 2 and 5 PM.“
Musicians added to the festivities. TV cameras
recorded the unanimous verdict: not one shad
tasted of pollution.

The last article is from the January 1974 North River

Navigator.

Happy New Year! The Hudson Is Definitely Cleaner

Normally cautious biologists are now agreed:
The Hudson River is cleaner. Concrete evidence:
the Dissolved Oxygen content is rising, fish are
coming back. Lafayette fish, known locally as
"spots”, were caught for the first time in 35
years. They are a small and tasty fish, about the
size of perch.

Considering that only a small number of
sewage plants have been finished and that many
industrial plants still discharge untreated waste—
water, this is encouraging news; we predict that
Hudson beaches can be opened up again when the large
sewage treatment plants in New Yoik City and Albany
are finished in about five years.

145

1 James Taylor, "Mud Slide Slim", Mud Slide Slim and the

Blue Horizon, Warner Brothers, 1971.

2 Hudson River Sloop Restoration, minutes — board of directors,
December 16, 1973.

3 North River Ngvigator, June/July 1973.

4 North River Navigator, December/January 1973-74.

 

The Last Word

As I was typing the last page I received a phonecall
from a friend in WashingtonD.C. He told me about the
Clearwater's sail up the Hudson in November of 1973. As
the boat sailed up past the Statue of Liberty and past
New York City there was a feeling of a last sail -
perhaps it was the autumn, perhaps it was a consciousness
of what had taken place over the five years of the 91325-
!gggg's lifetime.

As the boat neared West Point one of the crewmembers
who had a friend in some official position at the academy
suggested that they try to dock. The ragged crew was given
an immediate welcome and asked to dine as guests of the
academy. The motley group of them were escorted through the
main dining hall, at which point the entire body of 3,400
cadets stood at attention and saluted Pete Seeger. The
crew was then ushered into the VIP room and when it was
announced that Pete Seeger was to dine there,a standing
ovation was accorded him from the main dining hall.

After dinner the crew went down to the boat where there
were dozens of schoolchildren assembled. Pete sang for them
on the grass.

To Toshi Seeger, my friend wrote a letter saying there's
nothing more you can expect to accomplish: to me, he said,

“School's over out here."

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