The Naval Parade.
Another day on the water came with Friday, October 1, and the weather again was all that could be wished. Early the excursion steamers took on their loads, for the route was long of the Naval Parade. Shorn of the hundreds of tugboats and small craft that had swarmed the water on the Saturday before, it was a powerful and select squadron that turned its prows upstream to escort the Half Moon and the Clermont as far as Newburg, fifty-five miles above New York. The torpedo boats and a couple of the new sub-marines formed the governmental escorting party—the very old and the very new thus touching sides—and then came over one hundred powerful craft in line, decked in vari-colored bunting and with bands playing. It was a splendid sight, as passing the war ships they swept on beyond Manhattan island up the broad, deep stream. Commander Peary on his stout ship, Roosevelt, freshly arrived that morning from the North and his conquest of the Pole, received the tribute of the thousands in the procession. The dark rocky masses of the Palisades, now glowing here and there with autumn foliage, towered on the left, and on the right lay the river towns set amid fields and woods.
Many a flag of Ireland fluttered from the upper works of the great swift steamer “Asbury Park” on which had gathered some nine hundred of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and the American-Irish Historical Society with their families and friends. Every provision for their comfort had been made, and the occasion rapidly became one of delightful enjoyment under the stimulation of the grand and historic scenery of the noble river, and the glow of friendly courtesy wherever the Irish race foregathers. The pace could not be very fast, for the greatest of the steamers was bound by the speed of the slowest, and these latter were the Half-Moon and the Clermont. All the more could the time of observation of the many points of interest along the river be extended. Dobb’s Ferry, where Washington had headquarters for so long, while his little army watched the English forces then holding New York against the patriots. Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving’s home and the scene of his romance of The Headless Horseman, were pointed out. Tarrytown, where Major André, the British spy, was arrested, and Tappan, where he was executed, were noted as the line of steamers ploughed through the Tappan Zee where the Hudson broadens almost to a lake, and is four miles wide and twelve miles long, then past the great prison of Sing Sing on the East bank. Presently, the line was passing Stony Point, the promontory of the Hudson near the entrance to the Highlands. And the gallant story was retold of how the Revolutionary soldiers posted in the rude fortress there had succumbed to an attack by the British; how the loss of the fort rankled in the patriots’ breasts, and how, at the dead of night, in mid-July of 1779, mad Anthony Wayne with a devoted band delivered so sudden and overwhelming an assault that the British garrison was slain or captured, and the stars and stripes were sent aloft never since to give way to an alien flag. On then through the Highlands of the Hudson where the mountains slope down to the river on either side. Old river men aboard pointed out Fishkill Mountain, Storm King, Crow’s Nest, Donderberg, Anthony’s Nose, names written in the history of the country and the literature of the river. At West Point was seen perched on the cliffs the quarters of the military academy of the United States, whence so many great soldiers had been graduated and rich in the memory of Ireland’s celebrated sons as well. Across the river was pointed out the road, still winding down to the stream, by which the traitor, Benedict Arnold, fled, taking boat to the English brig of war, when he surely knew that his treason had been discovered in the capture of Major André. Swinging carefully then around the West Point bend in the river, that scene of rare beauty—the straight stretch of ten miles up to Newburg bay—broke upon the view.
WILLIAM TEMPLE EMMET, ESQ.,
Member of the Society, and President of the Society of the Friendly Sons
of St. Patrick in the City of New York.