Half Moon on the horizon?
The City Council of Hoorn in the Netherlands voted to end its financial support of the Half Moon next year, throwing into doubt the future of the Albany-built replica of a ship explorer Henry Hudson sailed in 1609 up the river that bears his name.
The decision, which is being debated by the Dutch, echoes the lack of financial commitment from politicians in Albany. The past collective shrug locally sent the Half Moon across the Atlantic in 2015. It was secured as cargo on a large ship, unlike when Hudson sailed the 85-foot, square-rigged, threemasted wooden vessel across a tempesttossed ocean with a crew of 15 in search of a northwest trade passage to Asia on behalf of the Dutch East India Co.
In late January by a vote of 20 to 15 the council members of Hoorn — a city
of about 73,000 with a strong maritime history north of Amsterdam along the Zuiderzee — decided not to extend the contract of the Half Moon. The replica ship had been a signature attraction of the city-run Westfries Museum of Dutch history, on loan for the past five years. The council said the ship was too costly to maintain and must leave port when its contract expires on April 1, 2020.
Dutch devotees of the Half Moon took to social media to criticize the Hoorn council’s decision to send the ship packing.
“It is a political discussion with a lot of arguments used by both critics and supporters of the project,” Westfries Museum Director Ad Geerdink said in an email. “What happens next is open for negotiation. There are a lot of options, whether in the U.S. or here in Holland.”
“We want the ship to come back and we’re having discussions with various places on the Hudson River who expressed interest,” said Eduard van Breen, a board member of the not-forprofit New Netherland Museum, which owns the Half Moon. “The ship does belong back here in New York. We are doubly cautious for the second chapter because we heard a lot of empty promises in Albany and outright lies from politicians before.”
With estimated annual maintenance of $400,000 and a costly major overhaul due, van Breen said any offer will have to include a substantial financial commitment. “We patched things together for 25 years without much support from Albany,” van Breen said. “We’ve heard a lot of talk before. The proof will be in the pudding in terms of monetary commitments.”
Given the cold shoulder Albany previously gave the Half Moon — the ship scrambled to find dockage here and made its home berth in Verplanck, Westchester County — it seems a longshot to bring the Half Moon back.
“This is a second chance to see if people in Albany are genuinely sincere about keeping the Half Moon on the Hudson River. We’ll see if the people who complained the loudest when it went to the Netherlands actually put up money to bring it back,” said Charles Gehring, director of the New Netherland Research Center at the State Library, who has spent 45 years translating hundreds of pages of 17th-century records from the Dutch colony.
Dr. Andrew Hendricks, a dermatologist and cosmetic surgeon in North Carolina with a keen interest in maritime history, bankrolled the design and construction of the Half Moon, starting in the late-1980s. He continues to be the primary financial backer. He envisioned the Half Moon as the centerpiece of an Albany tourist attraction, a Colonial Dutch village along the Hudson River. Gov. George Pataki expressed interest in the plan in 1999, but those discussions ended after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2011.
Under the direction of skipper Chip Reynolds, the Half Moon carved out a niche as a popular floating classroom, bringing middle school and high school students from Albany to New York City as crew mates to learn about maritime history, the Dutch fur trade, Native American relations and river ecology. It remained on shaky footing financially, though, as Hendricks sought out other funding sources.
The Half Moon overcame an early catastrophe. In 1989, as the ship’s wooden ribs took shape in the Snow Dock’s parking lot next to the U-haul building in Albany, designer and shipwright Nicholas Benton took a freelance job working on another sailing vessel across the Hudson River in Rensselaer. As he climbed the mast of that historic wooden schooner to begin dismantling it so it could pass under bridges upriver on its way to the Great Lakes, the mast gave way. Benton fell more than 50 feet and was killed when he hit the ship’s deck. His wife and young children witnessed the incident from across the river. It was Benton’s 36th birthday. Construction was halted. Eventually, another shipwright was hired to finish the project.
After decades of half-hearted offers, failed negotiations and empty promises by state and local officials in Albany, there was a loud chorus of lament about losing the Half Moon to Hoorn. There followed a familiar toolittle, too-late groundswell of pledged support in Albany. The cries of concern rang hollow. Antipathy from officialdom, annual budget shortfalls and the lack of a permanent berth made the local mooring unsustainable.
Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan called a news conference two days before Christmas in 2014 to plead for the ship to remain in Albany. She was joined by Schenectady Mayor Gary Mccarthy, then-troy Mayor Louis Rosamilia, Assemblywoman Pat Fahy, former Assemblyman Jack Mceneny, Proctors CEO Philip Morris and Center for Economic Growth CEO Mike Tucker. “This is where the Half Moon made history,” Sheehan said, but the Hoorn deal was already a foregone conclusion.
The ship is more important for Albany than Hoorn, according to Len Tantillo, a noted Rensselaer County artist of Colonial Albany scenes who had a major exhibition of his paintings at the Westfries Museum in Hoorn in 2009.
“It’s just another ship in the Netherlands, but for Albany it is historically significant,” Tantillo said. “I wish the state of New York would step in and do something to bring it back. It will be a lost opportunity if it doesn’t return.”
Tantillo hoped it would have a better fate than a replica of the Half Moon the Dutch built in 1909 and shipped to New York to celebrate the tricentennial of Hudson’s voyage. Neglected for years, it was destroyed by fire in Cohoes in the 1930s.
Several years later, when Dutch officials asked for their ship back to display it in a world exposition, they were informed it was already gone.
Paul Grondahl is the director of the New York State Writers Institute at the University at Albany and a former Times Union reporter. He can be reached at grondahlpaul@gmail.com.