Catalog entry

Commentary

New York Harbor at mid-nineteenth century was the undisputed hub of American shipping. New York merchants dominated marine transportation to foreign countries, to other American ports—both Atlantic and Pacific—and to the interior of the continent via the Hudson River and numerous canal systems. Only Boston offered significant rivalry in some aspects of coastal and deep-water trade. (1) Lane’s depiction of New York Harbor has much in common with his Boston views, giving pride of place to vessel activity with just enough of the city skyline visible to make the location identifiable.

To achieve the view seen in New York Harbor, Lane would have been on the west shore of the Hudson, looking due east from a pier in Jersey City. The largely hidden background probably includes Manhattan’s then-northern end at Christopher Street, extending south beyond the Battery, though not as far as Governors Island. The congestion of vessels at wharfside clears to reveal the steeple of Trinity Church against the sky, not unlike Boston’s State House in Lane’s depictions of that city. (2)

On this large canvas (3 x 5 feet), we see the meeting of two technologies for vessel propulsion: sail and steam engine. The former has reached the zenith of its employment; the latter has just begun to prove itself reliable and economical. At center foreground, a harbor tug, using steam to turn its propeller, guides a large packet ship into New York Bay on its way to a transatlantic voyage. Since it rides high in the water, the packet probably has a cargo of cotton stuffed into its hold; no amount of ballast can counter cotton's buoyancy. Partially hidden by the packet ship, a packet brig in the coastal trade is being brought to a wharf by a side-wheel tug (now obsolete). (3)

Beyond the packet brig, a large coastal passenger steamer arrives with travelers and cargo from Long Island or Connecticut, or with similar fare from the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay regions. Scattered about the background are schooners, a half brig, a bark, several ships, and other types of coastal steamers. (4)

In contrast, the foreground shows smaller vessels of local interest, including a Hudson River sloop (left), a Whitehall boat (center), and  a very small coasting schooner (right). The sloop is representative of the sailing packets that carried goods and passengers on the Hudson from Albany to New York Bay and—wind and tides permitting—Long Island Sound. The Whitehall boat, named for a street on Manhattan where the first examples were built, was the harbor’s water taxi, transporting people, communications, and small goods between wharves and vessels. Small coasting vessels were used for carrying cheaper goods in smaller quantities over short distances when it was not economical for larger coasting vessels to do the job. (5)

The complexity of vessel activity in this picture is wisely offset by muted atmospheric effects. It is late afternoon with the sun low in the west and fair-weather clouds moving off to the eastward. Sails, flags, and pennants hang slack in the still air; the only vessels moving are under steam power or oars. Has Lane mixed some prophecy into his composition?

– Erik Ronnberg

References:

1. Robert G. Albion, The Rise of New York Port, 1815–1860 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1939), 1–15, 373–86.

2. Erik A.R. Ronnberg, Jr., ”A Few Words about this Picture: An 1852 Artist’s View of New York Harbor,” American Heritage of Invention & Technology (Fall 1988): 14-20; and R. Frederick Allen, ed., Inventing America (New York: American Heritage, Forbes, 1995), 34–40.

3. Howard I. Chapelle, "Albion, Rise of New York Port", The History of American Sailing Ships (New York: W.W.Norton, 1935), 97, 116 (cotton trade); 162–64 (steam ships); 277–80 (packet ships); 293–94, 306 (brigs).

4. Ibid., 162–64.

5. Ibid., 303–04 (sloops), 305–06 (schooners); and Howard I. Chapelle, American Small Sailing Craft (New York: W.W. Norton, 1951), 195–99 (Whitehall boats).

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