For more than 200 years, sloop-rigged sailing craft carried the bulk of the commerce on the Hudson River, helping to make New York America's premier seaport. Historian and model-maker Fontenoy looks at the origins of Hudson River sloops among seventeenth-century Dutch vessels, then traces the changes through the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that resulted in the classic Hudson River sloop of the 1830s-50s. He also considers the revival of the type with the 1969 sloop Clearwater. Making full use of visual documentation, as well as narrative accounts and business records, he has produced the definitive work on this well-known American vessel type. The mix of plans, illustrations, and analysis make this a book for historians, modelmakers, and Hudson River enthusiasts alike.