Description

On September 25, 1909, a replica of Half Moon left the Brooklyn Navy Yard and entered the Hudson as part of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in commemoration of the 300th anniversary of Hudson's discovery of the Hudson River and the 100th anniversary of Robert Fulton's first commercial application of the paddle steamer in 1807. A replica of Fulton's Clemont was built by the Staten Island Shipbuilding Company from the careful research of an appointed committee. The researchers for the Half Moon replica scoured the archives of the VOC (Dutch East India Company) and Robert Juet's log looking for details of the type and size of the ship for the time period and decided on a set of plans thought to be a sister ship. The keel was laid October 1908 and launched April 1909. She was put aboard a Holland-American Line steamship Soestdyk and transported from Rotterdam to New York.