Governors Island Alliance

Henry Hudson set out from Holland 400 years ago to find an easterly passage to Asia. Instead he found America - and New York. Governors Island is one of the possible legacy sites for the quadricentennial celebration in 2009.
    Hudson explored today's Hudson River up as far as Albany before realizing that it was not a shortcut to the Pacific. He did, however, establish the Dutch presence in the New World, trading furs, beads and wampum with the natives. Fifteen years later, in 1624, the Dutch West India Company established a settlement on Governors Island, before moving to the larger Island of Manhattan.
    Next year is also an anniversary for "Fulton's Folly" - Robert Fulton's wrongly scorned steamboat. He built his first commercial boat - the North River Steamboat, later known as the Clermont - in a Manhattan shipyard, launched it on the Hudson in 2007, and two years later, in 1809, presented the city with an improved version, the Car of Neptune, that was put into service as a ferry between the city and Albany. Fulton is buried in the Trinity Church graveyard.
    While neither Hudson 400 years ago, nor Fulton 200 years ago, landed on Governors Island, Wilbur Wright did 100 years ago, during the Hudson-Fulton celebrations in 1909. With a canoe strapped to his plane as a pontoon, Wright flew from the Island across the harbor around the Statue of Liberty and back again. It was the world's first flight over water. Months later he returned to claim a $10,000 prize by flying five miles up the west side of Manhattan to Grant's Tomb.