08/17/2025
A view of a “Windjammer of the Hackensack” passing through the open Bergen Turnpike bridge at Little Ferry (with Ridgefield Park in the background). During the nineteenth century, shallow-draft sailing schooners known as the “windjammers of the Hackensack” conducted an active shipping trade carrying all kinds of merchandise.
Concerning the Bergen Turnpike, it was a private company that was incorporated in 1802, for the purpose of constructing and operating a road “from the town of Hackensack to Hoboken.” Constructed in 1804, it started in Hackensack, and the road went south to a little ferry boat guided by a rope across the Hackensack River (now you know how Little Ferry got its name). In 1828, a proper wooden drawbridge was constructed (later it was replaced by this swivel bridge).
Little Ferry was nine miles from Hoboken, and that is how the well-known restaurant “Tracey’s Nine Mile House” got its name, as it stood at the foot of the Bergen Turnpike bridge (at the nine-mile point). The view here changed when the old turnpike crossing was replaced by the Route 46 drawbridge in 1934 (just to the north).
And the reason it was a drawbridge was to allow the sailing vessels to pass through. (Note the tall poles at either end of the bridge opening, they are there to support a telegraph wire across the river well above the boat masts.)
As to a “Windjammer of the Hackensack,” and what they looked like – if you have ever seen the boat called “The Clearwater” – you pretty much have seen one (https://www.clearwater.org/).
Most of the Hackensack boats were commonly called "windjammers” from the practice of “jamming” on all possible sail to make speedy voyages. The sailing trade on the Hackensack River was once huge, and several towns along the Hackensack were prospering as shipping points.
The early Dutch settlers set up the first rudimentary trade connections with New York by way of the river early on (as the river was the first “highway”). By 1750 the Hackensack as a commercial river was only exceeded in New Jersey by the Raritan.
Sloops sailed as far north as New Milford Avenue, in New Milford, where Jacob and Henry Van Buskirk operated a gristmill. At this point the river narrowed and became too shallow to proceed further (and the mill dam naturally blocked the river). And yes, “New Milford” got its name from the many mills.
The windjammers carried farm produce, lumber, grain, pork, beef, butter, bricks, and iron from the forges in the Ramapos. Bergen County products were transported as far north as Albany and as far south as Virginia. On return trips the Hackensack ships carried rum, molasses, sugar, pitch, tar, turpentine, wines, salt, and occasionally household luxuries.
River Edge was one of the most active river ports, there Captain Stephen Lozier kept a general store and bought and sold cord wood which was shipped to coastal cities and the South. The Hackensack River was a major commercial asset in the county.
And all through the eighteenth and until the late nineteenth century the Board of Freeholders granted permission to build docks and wharves to accommodate the increasingly numerous "Hackensack Windjammers."
The windjammers were fast, and the trade was brisk. And competition among the river men was fierce. Two of the best-known schooners of the 1830's were the Charity and the A. C. Zabriskie.
Another early boat to ply the Hackensack was the Kate Lawrence, owned by the Van Buskirks who owned the mill at New Milford which was captained by Joe Whitehead. Later it was commanded by a black man known as Captain "Bob."
Among other Hackensack schooners were the Stewart, which carried coal and lumber and was captained by Dick Hawkey, "one of the most fearless men on the river"; the Jasper, owned by the Demarests of Old Bridge; the Henry Brown, owned by Christopher Cole; the Onward, owned by Barney Cole, and the Two Sisters, commanded by Capt. Henry Berry.
Other boats were named the Sunrise, the Farmer, the Ophelia, the Fancy, the Onward, and the Magic. There is a great maritime history to our little Hackensack River, and this post only touches the surface. – Tim Adriance
