Ambitious Albany

Ever since that September day in 1608 when Hendrik Hudson in his 80-ton Half Moon sailed 143 miles up from the sea to its site, Albany has had a maritime history. In 1686, when it received the charter which today makes it the oldest incorporated city in the U. S., the little Dutch fur trading post already was a prominent port.

Second U. S. skipper to sail into Canton, China, was Albany's Captain Stewart Dean of the sloop Experiment in 1789. It was to Albany that Inventor Robert Fulton chuffed up the Hudson from New York in the world's first steamboat in 1807 and in 1825, when the Erie Canal was opened to Buffalo, Albany, now the logical gateway to the West, felt its marine prestige assured.

As the 19th Century matured, seagoing boats outgrew the Hudson. Railroads killed the canal. But since Albany sits at the junction of the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys, it found itself in command of the low-level land passage through the Atlantic-Coastal ranges, became an important rail centre. Nevertheless, Albany still looked longingly down the Hudson. Valley toward the sea. After a generation of civic agitation, in 1925 Congress authorized dredging the Hudson to permit ocean-going vessels to reach Albany. In the next seven years the War Department spent $6,000,000 scooping out a 27-ft. channel. Albany spent $7,000,000 building a modern waterfront. In 1932, with great ceremony, the Port of Albany was opened to the world.

The world responded. In 1933, 161 deep-sea ships cleared Albany. Last year 255 ships dropped down the river to the sea, 625 barges plied up & down the deepened and renovated canal. Total volume of Albany's 1935 harbor traffic: 500,000 tons, chiefly grain, oil, wood pulp, canned goods. About 90% of the world's ships can use Albany's harbor. Latest figures of the U. S. Shipping Board list Albany as eleventh in foreign imports, 21st in total foreign trade.*

Nonetheless, Albany was not content. It clamored to the Interstate Commerce Commission that high railroad freight rates put it at a disadvantage in competing with the ports of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston. Last week, over railroad protests, the I. C. C. recognized Albany as an Atlantic port, ordered the roads to allow Albany the lower rates to the western trunk lines applicable to seaborne goods landed at other eastern ports. In handling European shipping into the Midwest, Albany's new rate status puts her on a par with Philadelphia, behind Baltimore, ahead of New York. Another gain from last week's decision was the I. C. C.'s order to the New York Central to absorb wharfage charges in Albany as it does at Boston.

Ambitious Albany is pointing toward another marine transport objective. Meeting, there last week was an International Joint Commission of six appointed by Canada and the U. S. to discuss the feasibility of a passage for deep-sea vessels from Albany to the St. Lawrence River. This passage, first projected in 1902, would follow the Hudson as far as the Champlain Canal, thence through Lake Champlain to the Richelieu River, which would be dredged to the St. Lawrence. Behind this scheme, which would cost some $150,000,000 last week were ranged Albany civic societies and such groups as the New England slate industry. Against it stood railroads and Canadian cities along the St. Lawrence which might lose their ocean trade.

*Of the 48 U. S. States, 22 have direct access to tidewater. Busy though far inland are such U. S. ports as Houston, Tex., 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico; Portland, Ore., 112 miles, and Seattle, Wash., 143 miles from the Pacific; New Orleans, 107 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi.

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