| Career | |
|---|---|
| Name: | General Slocum |
| Namesake: | Henry Warner Slocum |
| Owner: | Knickerbocker Steamship Company |
| Port of registry: | United States |
| Builder: | Devine Burtis, Jr., of Brooklyn, New York |
| Laid down: | 23 December 1890 |
| Launched: | 18 April 1891 |
| Maiden voyage: | 25 June 1891 |
| Out of service: | 1904 (sank); 1911 (sank) |
| Fate: | Caught fire and sank in New York's East River on June 15, 1904. Remains salvaged and converted into a barge; sank 1911. |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Sidewheeler passenger ship |
| Tonnage: | 1,284 grt |
| Length: | 235 ft (72 m) |
| Beam: | 37.5 ft (11.4 m) |
| Depth: | 12.3 ft (3.7 m) |
| Decks: | three decks |
| Installed power: | 1 × 53 in bore, 12 ft stroke single cylinder vertical beam steam engine |
| Propulsion: | Sidewheel boat each wheel had 26 paddles and was 31 ft (9.4 m) in diameter. |
| Speed: | 16 knots (30 km/h) |
| Crew: | 22 |
The PS General Slocum was a passenger steamboat built at Brooklyn, New York, in 1891. The General Slocum was named for Civil War officer and New York Congressman Henry Warner Slocum. She operated in the New York City area as an excursion steamer for the next thirteen years under the same ownership. During her service history, she was involved in a number of mishaps, including multiple groundings and collisions.
On June 15, 1904, the General Slocum caught fire and sank in New York's East River.[1] At the time of the accident she was on a chartered run carrying members of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church (German Americans from Little Germany, Manhattan) to a church picnic. An estimated 1,021 of the 1,342 people on board died. The General Slocum disaster was the New York area's worst disaster in terms of loss of life until the September 11, 2001 attacks.[2] The events surrounding the General Slocum fire have appeared in a number of books, plays and movies.
Contents |
The General Slocum was built by Devine Burtis, Jr., a Brooklyn boatbuilder who was awarded the contract on February 15, 1891.[3] Her keel was 235 feet (72 m) long and the hull was 37.5 feet (11.4 m) wide constructed of white oak and yellow pine. The Slocum measured 1,284 tons gross,[4] and had a hull depth of 12.3 feet (3.7 m).[3] The Slocum was constructed with three decks, three watertight compartments and 250 electric lights.[3]
General Slocum was powered by a single-cylinder, surface condensing vertical beam steam engine with 53 inch bore and 12 foot stroke, built by W. & A. Fletcher Company of Hoboken, New Jersey. Steam was supplied by two boilers at a working pressure of 52 psi.[5] The Slocum was a sidewheel boat. Each wheel had 26 paddles and was 31 feet (9.4 m) in diameter. Her maximum speed was about 16 knots (30 km/h). The ship was usually manned by a crew of 22, including Captain William H. Van Schaick and two pilots. She was named for Civil War officer and New York Congressman Henry Warner Slocum.
The General Slocum experienced a series of mishaps following her launch in 1891. Four months after her launching, she ran aground off Rockaway. Tugboats had to be used to pull her free.
A number of incidents occurred during 1894. On July 29, while returning from Rockaway with approximately 4,700 passengers, the Slocum struck a sandbar with enough force that her electrical generator went out. The next month, the Slocum again ran aground off Coney Island during a storm. During this grounding the passengers had to be transferred to another ship. In September 1894 the Slocum collided with the tug R. T. Sayre in the East River with the General Slocum sustaining substantial damage to her steering.
In July 1898 another collision occurred when the Slocum collided with the Amelia near Battery Park. On August 17, 1901, while carrying what was described as 900 intoxicated Paterson Anarchists, some of the passengers started a riot on board and attempted to take control of the vessel. However, the crew fought back and maintained control of the ship. The captain docked the ship at the police pier and 17 men were taken into custody by the police. In June 1902 the General Slocum ran aground with 400 passengers aboard. With the vessel unable to be freed, the passengers had to camp out while the ship remained stuck throughout the night.
The General Slocum worked as a passenger ship, taking people on excursions around New York City. On Wednesday, June 15, 1904, the ship had been chartered for $350 by St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Little Germany district of Manhattan. This was an annual rite for the group, which had made the trip for 17 consecutive years even as German settlers deserted Little Germany for the Upper East and West Sides. Over 1,400[6] passengers, mostly women and children, boarded the Slocum, which was to sail up the East River and then eastward across the Long Island Sound to Locust Grove, a picnic site in Eatons Neck, Long Island.
The ship got underway at 9:30 a.m. As it was passing East 90th Street, a fire started in the Lamp Room[7] in the forward section, possibly caused by a discarded cigarette or match but certainly fueled by the straw, oily rags, and lamp oil strewn around the room.[8] The first notice of a fire was at 10:00 a.m.; eyewitnesses claimed the initial blaze began in various locations, including a paint locker filled with flammable liquids and a cabin filled with gasoline. Captain Van Schaick was only notified ten minutes after the fire was discovered. A 12-year-old boy had tried to warn him earlier but was not believed.
Although the captain was ultimately responsible for the safety of passengers, no effort had been made to maintain or replace the ship's safety equipment. The fire hoses had been allowed to rot, and fell apart when the crew attempted to put out the fire. Likewise, the crew had never had a fire drill, and the lifeboats were tied up (some claim they were wired and painted in place)[9] and inaccessible. Survivors reported that the life preservers were useless and fell apart in their hands. Desperate mothers placed life jackets on their children and tossed them into the water, only to watch in horror as their children sank instead of floating. Most of those on board were women and children who, like most Americans of the time, could not swim; even victims who did not don the worthless life preservers found that their heavy wool clothing weighed them down in the water.[9]
It has been suggested that the manager of the life preserver manufacturer actually placed iron bars inside the cork preservers to meet minimum weight requirements at the time. Many of the life preservers had been filled with cheap and less effective granulated cork and brought up to proper weight by the inclusion of the iron weights. Canvas covers, rotted with age, split and scattered the powdered cork. Managers of the company (Nonpareil Cork Works) were indicted but not convicted. The life preservers had been manufactured in 1891 and had hung above the deck, unprotected from the elements, for 13 years.[10]
Captain Van Schaick mishandled the situation. He decided to continue his course rather than run the ship aground or stop at a nearby landing. (Van Schaick would later argue he was attempting to prevent the fire from spreading to riverside buildings and oil tanks.) By going into headwinds and failing to immediately ground the ship, he actually fanned the fire. Flammable paint also helped the fire spread out of control.
Some passengers attempted to jump into the river, but the women's clothing of the day made swimming almost impossible. Many died when the floors of the overloaded boat collapsed; others were battered by the still-turning paddles as they attempted to escape into the water or over the sides.[11]
By the time the General Slocum sank in shallow water at North Brother Island, just off the Bronx shore, an estimated 1,021 people had died by fire or drowning, with 321 survivors. 2 of the 30 crew members died. The captain lost sight in one eye owing to the fire. Reports indicate that Van Schaick deserted the Slocum as soon as it settled, jumping into a nearby tug, along with several crew. Some say his jacket was hardly rumpled, but other reports stated that he was seriously injured. He was hospitalized at Lebanon Hospital.
There were many acts of heroism among the passengers, witnesses, and emergency personnel. Staff and patients from the hospital on North Brother Island participated in the rescue efforts, forming human chains and pulling victims from the water.
Eight people were indicted by a Federal grand jury after the disaster: the Captain; two inspectors; and the president, secretary, treasurer and commodore of the Knickerbocker Steamship Company. Only Captain Van Schaick was convicted. He was found guilty on one of three charges: criminal negligence, failing to maintain proper fire drills and fire extinguishers. The jury could not reach a verdict on the other two counts of manslaughter. He was sentenced to ten years imprisonment. He spent three years and six months at Sing Sing prison before he was paroled. President Theodore Roosevelt declined to pardon Captain Van Schaick, and he was not released until the federal parole board, under the William Howard Taft administration, voted to free him on August 26, 1911.[12] He was pardoned by President Taft on December 19, 1912,[13] and died in 1927.[14]
The Knickerbocker Steamship Company, which owned the ship, paid a relatively small fine despite evidence they might have falsified inspection records. The sunken remains of the General Slocum were recovered and converted into a barge, which sank in a storm during 1911.
The disaster motivated federal and state regulation to improve the emergency equipment on passenger ships.
The neighborhood of Little Germany, which had been in decline for some time before the disaster,[15] almost disappeared afterwards. With the trauma and arguments that followed the tragedy and the loss of many prominent settlers, most of the Lutheran Germans remaining in the Lower East Side eventually moved uptown. The church whose congregation chartered the ship for the fateful voyage is now a synagogue.
The victims were interred in cemeteries around New York, with fifty-eight identified victims buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn.[16] Several were buried at Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens (now Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery), where an annual memorial ceremony is held.
On January 26, 2004 the last surviving passenger from the General Slocum, Adella Wotherspoon (née Liebenow), died at the age of 100. At the time of the disaster she was a six-month old child. Mrs. Wotherspoon was the youngest survivor of the tragedy that took the lives of her two older sisters. When she was one year old she unveiled the Steamboat Fire Mass Memorial on June 15, 1905, at Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery, in Middle Village, Queens.[17] Prior to Mrs. Wotherspoon's passing the previous oldest surviving member was Catherine Connelly (née Uhlmyer) (1893–2002) who was eleven years old at the time of the accident.
1904-2004
This is the site of the former St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church (1857–1940) a mostly
German immigrant parish. On Wednesday, June 15, 1904, the church chartered the excursion
steamer, GENERAL SLOCUM, to take the members on the 17th annual Sunday school picnic.
The steamer sailed up the East River, with some 1400 passengers aboard, when it
entered the infamous Hell Gate passage, caught fire and was beached and sank on
North Brother Island. It is estimated 1200 people lost their lives,
mostly woman and children, dying within yards of the Bronx shore.
The GENERAL SLOCUM had been certified by the U.S. Steam boat Inspection Service
to safely carry 2500 passengers five weeks before the disaster. An investigation after the fire
and sinking found the lifeboats were wired and glued with paint to the deck, life jackets
fell apart with age, fire hoses burst under water pressure, and the crew never had a fire drill.
Until the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001,
the Slocum disaster had been the largest fire fatality in New York City's history.
Dedicated Sunday, June 13, 2004, by the Steam Centennial Committee.
The Maritime Indistry Museum
SUNY-Maritime College, Fort Schulyer, The Bronx, NY