The Wooden Boat Show
VCB Crew and Hudson Star at the Wooden Boat Show
Getting There:
Lorne and Frank with Hudson Star on the trailer ready to pull out from Pier 40 headed for The Wooden Boat Show.
Lorne and the Hudson Star
Arrived at the Wooden Boat Show in Mystic CT
Lorne and Rob with their Stars
Don Betts and Lorne
Lorne Swarthout and the Hudson Star at The Wooden Boat Show
Marcel welcoming admirers
VCB Members and Friends at the Boat Show:
The Stars on the Mystic River:
Hudson Star: Rob coxing with a mixed crew from The Warren River, Rocking the Boat, and VCB
Bronx Star
The Stars and Crew Rowing on the Mystic River
History of the American Star:
In December 1824 thousands of people gathered on the shores of New York harbor to watch a race between a modified Brooklyn-built Whitehall gig named the American Star and a British longboat named Dart. The race was from Manhattan to New Jersey and back. There was reportedly a lot of betting. Happily, the American crew won, and they were feted around the town. The next year they were given the honor of rowing General Lafayette, a Revolutionary War hero who was then visiting America, around the harbor. In a burst of generosity they gifted their boat to the General, who took the American Star back to his chateau outside Paris. There it rested in peaceful obscurity until it was spotted by an American visitor one hundred years later.
Then, in the 1970s, John Gardner, a wooden boat historian at Mystic Seaport Museum, visited Lafayette’s chateau, found the gig (pictured above) and recorded her lines. Back at the Museum Gardner directed the building of the first replica of the American Star, which he named General Lafayette. Since that time at least four other replicas have been built by rowing clubs on the east and west coasts.
Building the Hudson Star:
The Village Community Boathouse is an all-volunteer organization that has been building boats and rowing them in New York waters for 30 years. Our current home in on Pier 40 in the Hudson River, just west of Greenwich Village. Mostly we build and row 25’ Whitehall gigs, a traditional style of New York harbor rowboat. Last summer we had just completed building the gig Integrity and were looking for a new project. We heard that Rocking the Boat was working on a replica of the American Star. We were intrigued by the challenge of building this racing version of a Whitehall and the possibility of our two replicas staging a bicentennial repeat of the 1824 race that made the American Star so famous.
We bought the plans from Mystic Seaport, and in September 2023 we began following John Gardner’s table of offsets to cut molds. From the beginning we decided to build a boat in the same shape and spirit as the American Star but not an exact replica. Rather than using solid 3/8” cedar planks like the original (and the Bronx Star) we chose to work with ¼” cedar strips, glue and fiberglass. We inserted rigid ½” plywood frames to support the seats. We built a stout inwale/outwale to anchor thole pin blocks, and we installed decks fore and aft. We took liberties. But we would like to think that if that original crew from 1824 came back to have a look and maybe a row, they would not be disappointed.
Volunteers came to the boathouse every Sunday and Wednesday afternoon over the winter. They were all ages and all levels of skill. We learned together and had a great time. In May we launched the Hudson Star in the Hudson River. Our hope is that our new boat will live in our boathouse and be rowed regularly by VCB members and their friends and tourists and students and when they do, they will tell each other the story of the American Star.
Rob’s Photos:
Frank’s Photos
The Building of the Hudson Star
By Mai LaThai
In Wooden Boat Magazine
