For the better part of the year I've been working on a project involving today's date, so I wanted to commemorate it on the anniversary.
It's been 115 years since the General Slocum disaster, which held top rank as the worst single loss of life in New York City until 9/11.
Until earlier this year, I had never heard of it.
You probably haven't either.
By the end of the day on June 15, this was the scene at the enclosed pier next door to the Morgue. There are three rows of coffins all the way up and down, and the mass of people are family members desperately seeking the bodies more than 1000 people, 95% of them women and children, who had died earlier that day aboard the General Slocum excursion steamer.
Entire families were wiped out, leaving only the father, who had to work that Wednesday, and could not attend the Sunday School outing for St. Mark's Lutheran Church that day.
This is their story.
In late May 1904 the General Slocum had undergone her yearly inspection and was passed as fully equipped for any threat that might come upon her passengers while on the water. Life preservers by the hundreds as well as life boats were on board, as well as fire hose.
Within a month, she took on some 1500 passengers one sunny Wednesday morning, June 15, booked by the congregation of St. Mark's Lutheran Church for their annual start of summer expedition to Locust Grove, a beach and picnic area on the north of Long Island. It was a celebration of another successful Sunday School year drawing to its close and was taking place just a week ahead of most public school's commencement exercises. All the children who sought permission to attend were granted it from their schools.
In its 17th year, the Sunday School celebration had grown very large and popular. While many earlier generations of German immigrants had arrived in Little Germany and moved north to better living conditions, everyone who had been touched by the church treated this outing as a grand reunion of sorts. Extended family, friends, local merchants who bought tickets to give as prizes from their stores, accounted for passengers.
Because it was a Wednesday, many of the men would not be in attendance, but kissed their wives, children, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and cousins as they trouped out the door for a day of sun and fun along the beach, escaping the teeming and dirty streets of the Lower East side, or even the broader but still clogged thoroughfares further north.
Everyone wore their Sunday finest. Edwardian fashion of the day dictated long skirts and often fancy hats for the ladies, while the younger girls donned their lacy frocks and best shoes. The boys were in their knickers and newsboy hats by the dozens.
As the crowds filed aboard from the East Third Street Pier, it was a clear and sunny day, and tickets required of adults typically allowed all of the younger children to board for free. One cast mate was assigned to count heads, but this was done informally and without much attention.
Later estimates suggested nearly 1000 tickets were used, thus the general consensus that at least 1500 lives set sail that morning.
The band was playing and the announcement made in the first half hour that ice cream was being served in the forward lower deck, so that streams of children left their parents happily chatting while they made their way with older siblings to take part in the treat.
Clam chowder was on the menu to be served at arrival around lunch time, so it was bubbling along around the same time.
Survivors would later recount their first thought at the smell of something burning was that the chowder had overflowed the pots. There were reports of a few children pointing out smoke to their elders only to be shushed at the thought of inciting some panic on board.
However it was, there finally came a moment when "fire" was shouted and reaffirmed by not just white smoke but actual flame leaping from a hold in the lower deck at the front of the ship, almost squarely underneath the pilot house decks above, in the most impossible position to be sighted by the Captain.
Later inquests would reveal that barrels of hay that had carried the glassware for the trip aboard the night before had not been removed to the pier but shoved in this forward hold, where all manner of combustible oils, matches, ropes, and tarps were kept. The first crewman to arrive at the door, without any fire training whatsoever, pulled it open and fed the smoldering smoke exactly what it most craved: blessed oxygen.
A few mothers and their boys who had been touring the engine rooms experienced the first blast of flame, with some racing up stairs with their hair on fire into the area where the children were eating their ice cream.
The fire, fed by oxygen and the endless layers of flammable varnish painted for years upon the wood, made an absolute banquet of the steamer. The people at the bow were cut off from any escape towards the largest portion of the ship, but they were also favored by the Captain's decision, once the news of the fire reached him, to put on full steam ahead toward North Brother Island, rather than turn the ship against the wind to slow its feast.
This pushed the ten foot wall of flames directly astern, filling up all available deck space with fire. People scrambled in blind panic to avoid the heat, trampling all those who tripped or fell or were pulled down.
The press of humanity against the railings led them to collapse, dumping hundreds into the churning whirlpools of the fast moving and rock laden East River.
It is estimated fewer than 3% of people knew how to swim in 1904, and even knowing how to swim had little advantage. Everyone was weighed down by their clothing, their panic, and the clawing desperation of drowning animals, hundreds together, in addition to falling fire debris from the ship and falling people.
Add to this, the effort to launch the lifeboats was useless. They had been part of the decade plus of painted varnish and were permanently part of the ship now. Nothing could loosen them from their moorings.
Add to this, the fire hose, not connected to the standpipes, was unfurled, hooked to one, and found to be useless old linen hose, the cheapest one could buy, and very old, with no rubber lining at all. The one attempt resulted in a million little impotent trinkles of water from every kink in the hose. Other standpipes were recovered from the bottom of the river having never even been opened.
The crew, mostly hired from the streets for cheap labor, with no training whatsoever, abandoned ship almost immediately after the discovery of the useless hose.
They did not help the women screaming for help to reach the life preservers held up in wire high above their heads on the decks. Others were bleeding from cuts on their hands as they jumped and pulled at the wire nets to bring the preservers showering down. What showered more that the preservers, though, was a fine sawdust, from the rotten ones (most of them( that had never been replaced, filled with what amounted to pounds of dirt with no buoyancy whatsoever. Many witnesses gave testimony later that the fabric could be split open with a fingernail and the insides would pour out ground up cork.
Some mothers, panicked and unaware of the consistency of the preservers, thinking themselves quite lucky to have gotten ahold of one, would strap it about their little children and push them overboard from the flames only to watch in horror as their babies sank as quick as stones, straight down to the depths.
Right around the same time, the fire was making quick work of the supports holding the decks, at which point everyone on the sides near any railing that had not yet collapsed were thrown outward and overboard, while the unlucky people anywhere else in the center of the ship were pancaked by the ship itself into the center of the fire.
One witness from shore described a rope line that ran along the boat behind the paddlewheel box to the stern as "fringed with women, boys, and girls. They were hanging there like clothes on a Monday wash below the deck line" trying to escape the flame.
The Steamer was one of the faster in the East River, and as she raced for North Brother island, few of the other boats trying to get near her to pull survivors over could keep up. A few tugs succeeded in lashing themselves close enough, but they began to catch fire themselves and had to pull away.
The John Wade tug in particular, catching fire, stayed alongside with her captain James Tug shouting "Damn the tug, let her burn!" and providing rescue to 78 lives -- of less than 400 survivors total. His boat was ten years of his savings. It was badly damaged.
Only the four trained men aboard, the captain and his first mate and the main engineer and his mate, stayed aboard until she was beached, and even the beaching was a complete failure, coming in so that her stern, where any survivors might still be hanging on, was still in deep water instead of the shallows where they might be able to stand up.
Likely three quarters of the passengers were killed, although some of these would never be reported, as entire families were wiped out in the span of the half hour from the opening of the door to the beaching of the Slocum.
It was expected that bodies would likely wash out to sea in some cases and never be recovered.
Others were only found when the searches used dynamite to blast bodies free from the rocky crags deep under the river.
Mounds of burned bodies were pulled from the hull by divers in the days after.
All you need do is read through the lists of those only ever listed as "missing" to know that many were never recovered.
On North Brother Island, as the Slocum raced for its shores, there was an unlikely assortment of heroes that sprang into action that morning.
The Riverside Hospital for Contagious Diseases was home to several hundred patients that day. Lulu McGibbon was at the switchboard when she was alerted to the incoming crisis and had rearranged the myriad of wires and summoned help from all over the city within minutes and then, unable to sit at her post, she started to run for the shore.
The scene defies description, so many people falling from what was 260 feet of flame, on fire, into almost boiling water so thick with people dead, drowning, or clinging to life in some capacity were "thick as leaves on a pond" and yet Lulu threw herself headlong into the waters and swam out and back again eventually saving a dozen people.
Eighteen year old nurse Pauline Puetz joined her and saved another dozen, almost being drowned by her last rescue twice and arriving unconscious on the beach that final time. Both women had the rare and enviable talent of knowing how to swim.
More astonishing than their bravery, was Nellie O'Donnell, another young nurse who was first into the water and who could not swim. She improvised a paddle motion to get into water over her head, snagged a child, and pulled him back to other nurses standing up to their armpits in the water to help.
And there was Mary McCann, not a nurse, but a patient, only seventeen and just recovering from scarlet fever and still very weak who swam out and back again five times to save five lives. On the fifth rescue, someone under the water grabbed for her legs and nearly drowned the now exhausted girl but another rescuer managed to pull her free from the grip and back to shore.
As some of those who had managed to make it to the island after managing to swim themselves away from the panic without being pulled under, turned around and went back in to help.
One of these was seventeen year old Charles Schwartz Jr. who saved two women before going out and finding his mother and grandmother, floating face down. He pulled them to the shore and was told by the doctors it was too late.
And then?
He turned around and went back out again to save more strangers. He rescued twenty two. And when he turned for a twenty third time, he was told to stop. There was no one else alive to help.
These are photos taken from North Brother Island that day:
It's been 115 years since the General Slocum disaster, which held top rank as the worst single loss of life in New York City until 9/11.
Until earlier this year, I had never heard of it.
You probably haven't either.
The Titanic had rich titans of industry and a brand new unsinkable ship.
The Slocum was filled with German immigrants on a Sunday School excursion boat that was just running up the Hudson river for a picnic.
By the end of the day on June 15, this was the scene at the enclosed pier next door to the Morgue. There are three rows of coffins all the way up and down, and the mass of people are family members desperately seeking the bodies more than 1000 people, 95% of them women and children, who had died earlier that day aboard the General Slocum excursion steamer.
Entire families were wiped out, leaving only the father, who had to work that Wednesday, and could not attend the Sunday School outing for St. Mark's Lutheran Church that day.
This is their story.
In late May 1904 the General Slocum had undergone her yearly inspection and was passed as fully equipped for any threat that might come upon her passengers while on the water. Life preservers by the hundreds as well as life boats were on board, as well as fire hose.
Within a month, she took on some 1500 passengers one sunny Wednesday morning, June 15, booked by the congregation of St. Mark's Lutheran Church for their annual start of summer expedition to Locust Grove, a beach and picnic area on the north of Long Island. It was a celebration of another successful Sunday School year drawing to its close and was taking place just a week ahead of most public school's commencement exercises. All the children who sought permission to attend were granted it from their schools.
In its 17th year, the Sunday School celebration had grown very large and popular. While many earlier generations of German immigrants had arrived in Little Germany and moved north to better living conditions, everyone who had been touched by the church treated this outing as a grand reunion of sorts. Extended family, friends, local merchants who bought tickets to give as prizes from their stores, accounted for passengers.
Because it was a Wednesday, many of the men would not be in attendance, but kissed their wives, children, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and cousins as they trouped out the door for a day of sun and fun along the beach, escaping the teeming and dirty streets of the Lower East side, or even the broader but still clogged thoroughfares further north.
Everyone wore their Sunday finest. Edwardian fashion of the day dictated long skirts and often fancy hats for the ladies, while the younger girls donned their lacy frocks and best shoes. The boys were in their knickers and newsboy hats by the dozens.
As the crowds filed aboard from the East Third Street Pier, it was a clear and sunny day, and tickets required of adults typically allowed all of the younger children to board for free. One cast mate was assigned to count heads, but this was done informally and without much attention.
Later estimates suggested nearly 1000 tickets were used, thus the general consensus that at least 1500 lives set sail that morning.
The band was playing and the announcement made in the first half hour that ice cream was being served in the forward lower deck, so that streams of children left their parents happily chatting while they made their way with older siblings to take part in the treat.
Clam chowder was on the menu to be served at arrival around lunch time, so it was bubbling along around the same time.
Survivors would later recount their first thought at the smell of something burning was that the chowder had overflowed the pots. There were reports of a few children pointing out smoke to their elders only to be shushed at the thought of inciting some panic on board.
However it was, there finally came a moment when "fire" was shouted and reaffirmed by not just white smoke but actual flame leaping from a hold in the lower deck at the front of the ship, almost squarely underneath the pilot house decks above, in the most impossible position to be sighted by the Captain.
Later inquests would reveal that barrels of hay that had carried the glassware for the trip aboard the night before had not been removed to the pier but shoved in this forward hold, where all manner of combustible oils, matches, ropes, and tarps were kept. The first crewman to arrive at the door, without any fire training whatsoever, pulled it open and fed the smoldering smoke exactly what it most craved: blessed oxygen.
A few mothers and their boys who had been touring the engine rooms experienced the first blast of flame, with some racing up stairs with their hair on fire into the area where the children were eating their ice cream.
The fire, fed by oxygen and the endless layers of flammable varnish painted for years upon the wood, made an absolute banquet of the steamer. The people at the bow were cut off from any escape towards the largest portion of the ship, but they were also favored by the Captain's decision, once the news of the fire reached him, to put on full steam ahead toward North Brother Island, rather than turn the ship against the wind to slow its feast.
This pushed the ten foot wall of flames directly astern, filling up all available deck space with fire. People scrambled in blind panic to avoid the heat, trampling all those who tripped or fell or were pulled down.
The press of humanity against the railings led them to collapse, dumping hundreds into the churning whirlpools of the fast moving and rock laden East River.
It is estimated fewer than 3% of people knew how to swim in 1904, and even knowing how to swim had little advantage. Everyone was weighed down by their clothing, their panic, and the clawing desperation of drowning animals, hundreds together, in addition to falling fire debris from the ship and falling people.
Add to this, the effort to launch the lifeboats was useless. They had been part of the decade plus of painted varnish and were permanently part of the ship now. Nothing could loosen them from their moorings.
Add to this, the fire hose, not connected to the standpipes, was unfurled, hooked to one, and found to be useless old linen hose, the cheapest one could buy, and very old, with no rubber lining at all. The one attempt resulted in a million little impotent trinkles of water from every kink in the hose. Other standpipes were recovered from the bottom of the river having never even been opened.
The crew, mostly hired from the streets for cheap labor, with no training whatsoever, abandoned ship almost immediately after the discovery of the useless hose.
They did not help the women screaming for help to reach the life preservers held up in wire high above their heads on the decks. Others were bleeding from cuts on their hands as they jumped and pulled at the wire nets to bring the preservers showering down. What showered more that the preservers, though, was a fine sawdust, from the rotten ones (most of them( that had never been replaced, filled with what amounted to pounds of dirt with no buoyancy whatsoever. Many witnesses gave testimony later that the fabric could be split open with a fingernail and the insides would pour out ground up cork.
Some mothers, panicked and unaware of the consistency of the preservers, thinking themselves quite lucky to have gotten ahold of one, would strap it about their little children and push them overboard from the flames only to watch in horror as their babies sank as quick as stones, straight down to the depths.
Right around the same time, the fire was making quick work of the supports holding the decks, at which point everyone on the sides near any railing that had not yet collapsed were thrown outward and overboard, while the unlucky people anywhere else in the center of the ship were pancaked by the ship itself into the center of the fire.
One witness from shore described a rope line that ran along the boat behind the paddlewheel box to the stern as "fringed with women, boys, and girls. They were hanging there like clothes on a Monday wash below the deck line" trying to escape the flame.
The Steamer was one of the faster in the East River, and as she raced for North Brother island, few of the other boats trying to get near her to pull survivors over could keep up. A few tugs succeeded in lashing themselves close enough, but they began to catch fire themselves and had to pull away.
The John Wade tug in particular, catching fire, stayed alongside with her captain James Tug shouting "Damn the tug, let her burn!" and providing rescue to 78 lives -- of less than 400 survivors total. His boat was ten years of his savings. It was badly damaged.
Only the four trained men aboard, the captain and his first mate and the main engineer and his mate, stayed aboard until she was beached, and even the beaching was a complete failure, coming in so that her stern, where any survivors might still be hanging on, was still in deep water instead of the shallows where they might be able to stand up.
Likely three quarters of the passengers were killed, although some of these would never be reported, as entire families were wiped out in the span of the half hour from the opening of the door to the beaching of the Slocum.
It was expected that bodies would likely wash out to sea in some cases and never be recovered.
Others were only found when the searches used dynamite to blast bodies free from the rocky crags deep under the river.
Mounds of burned bodies were pulled from the hull by divers in the days after.
All you need do is read through the lists of those only ever listed as "missing" to know that many were never recovered.
On North Brother Island, as the Slocum raced for its shores, there was an unlikely assortment of heroes that sprang into action that morning.
The Riverside Hospital for Contagious Diseases was home to several hundred patients that day. Lulu McGibbon was at the switchboard when she was alerted to the incoming crisis and had rearranged the myriad of wires and summoned help from all over the city within minutes and then, unable to sit at her post, she started to run for the shore.
The scene defies description, so many people falling from what was 260 feet of flame, on fire, into almost boiling water so thick with people dead, drowning, or clinging to life in some capacity were "thick as leaves on a pond" and yet Lulu threw herself headlong into the waters and swam out and back again eventually saving a dozen people.
Eighteen year old nurse Pauline Puetz joined her and saved another dozen, almost being drowned by her last rescue twice and arriving unconscious on the beach that final time. Both women had the rare and enviable talent of knowing how to swim.
More astonishing than their bravery, was Nellie O'Donnell, another young nurse who was first into the water and who could not swim. She improvised a paddle motion to get into water over her head, snagged a child, and pulled him back to other nurses standing up to their armpits in the water to help.
And there was Mary McCann, not a nurse, but a patient, only seventeen and just recovering from scarlet fever and still very weak who swam out and back again five times to save five lives. On the fifth rescue, someone under the water grabbed for her legs and nearly drowned the now exhausted girl but another rescuer managed to pull her free from the grip and back to shore.
As some of those who had managed to make it to the island after managing to swim themselves away from the panic without being pulled under, turned around and went back in to help.
One of these was seventeen year old Charles Schwartz Jr. who saved two women before going out and finding his mother and grandmother, floating face down. He pulled them to the shore and was told by the doctors it was too late.
And then?
He turned around and went back out again to save more strangers. He rescued twenty two. And when he turned for a twenty third time, he was told to stop. There was no one else alive to help.
These are photos taken from North Brother Island that day:
The days that followed were filled with the search for the dead
For weeks the official death toll kept changing.
and more than 1000 burials.
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