A Whale of a tale

By Don Rittner

For most of the Hudson River to the base of the dam in Troy the water is salty; technically not a river, but an estuary or fiord, a large finger like extension of the Atlantic Ocean. The Mohicans called it Muhhekunnetuk, meaning the "river that flows both ways." It’s why we have tides in Troy, and occasionally a rare sea visitor.

Charlie Gehring has spent years transcribing 17th century Dutch documents into English so we can learn more about the lives, customs, and hardships faced by our earliest European settlers. One such find was in the memorandum book of Antony de Hooges, secretary of the patroonship of Rensselaerswijck. Tucked among the mundane business records was reference to two sightings of "whales" in Albany in 1647. Here is what was said, courtesy of the New Netherland Project (http://www.nnp.org).

[52] On the 29th of March in the year 1647 a certain fish appeared before us here in the colony, which we estimated to be of a considerable size. He came from below and swam past us a certain distance up to the sand bars and came back towards evening, going down past us again. He was snow-white, without fins, round of body, and blew water up out of his head, just like whales or tunas. It seemed very strange to us because there are many sand bars between us and Manhattan, and also because it was snow-white, such as no one among us has ever seen; especially, I say, because it covered a distance of 20 [Dutch] miles of fresh water in contrast to salt water, which is its element. Only God knows what it means. But it is certain, that I and most all of the inhabitants [watched] it with great amazement. On the same evening that this fish appeared before us, we had the first thunder and lightening of the year.

[53] On the 19th of April in the year 1647 another fish appeared here around noon before Fort Orange with the high water (seafaring men who have sailed to Greenland judged it to be a whale). It was of considerable size as the previous one (we estimated it to be over 40 feet long). It was brown in color like a [ ] with large fins on its back and blew water out of its head like the one before. He swam upstream against this extraordinary current. It seemed strange to me because it has been several years since a tuna has appeared here. It caused great amazement how the fish had swum so far and [ ] in this spring two such large fish should appear, [ ] is unheard of, for reasons stated about the previous fish.

At 40 feet long, the first visitor certainly may have been a whale. A white whale would have been a rare treat, perhaps an albino, but this first sighting could have been a dolphin or porpoise (all considered "whales"). They also have a blowhole on the top. However, dolphins and porpoises have a dorsal fin that would have been obvious to the Dutch viewers. Whales, dolphins, and porpoises all belong to the taxonomic order, Cetacea. They are warm-blooded mammals that live in water, have hair on their body, and nourish their young with milk just like humans.

There is a white whale (Delphinapterus leucas), the Beluga whale, which grows to about 15 feet, but lives in the Arctic and subarctic waters. It has been found in the St. Lawrence River in Canada and the Yukon in Alaska, so probably not the Albany visitor, unless it took a really wrong turn. Belugas are called sea canaries because they are very vocal with chirps, squeaks and clicks, and the sighting mentioned no vocalization.

Since there are many early accounts of whales in early New York City (New Amsterdam) waters, it’s not too much of a gamble to say both of those sightings were whales.

Additionally, in March of 1647, Dutch traveler Adrian Van der Donk, wrote that two whales of "common size" swam up the Hudson, one continuing all the way to the Cohoes Falls and became stranded on an island (renamed Whale island, now submerged). The residents of the Troy area boiled out the oil and left the carcass for weeks stinking up the area. Benjamin Hall, a lawyer who constructed the Hall Building (now Rice Building) wrote a humorous poem about it in 1866.

Ironically, Whale Island was not too far from the home of a young man who wrote two books out of his room facing the Hudson in Lansingburgh. Herman Melville would later write the classic whale story, Moby Dick, in 1851, 204 years after that whale beached not far from his home.