SS General Slocum

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Career
Name:	SS General Slocum
Namesake:	Henry Warner Slocum
Owner:	Knickerbocker Steamship Company
Port of Registry:	United States
Builder:	Divine Burtis, Jr. a Brooklyn, New York boatbuilder.
Launched:	1891
Fate:	Caught fire and burned to the water in New York's East River on June 15, 1904.
General characteristics
Class and type:	Sidewheeler passenger ship
Displacement:	1,200 tons
Length:	235 feet (72 m)
Beam:	37.5 feet (11.4 m)
Decks:	three decks
Installed power:	three engines built by W. & A. Fletcher Company of Hoboken, New Jersey
Propulsion:	Sidewheel boat each wheel had 26 paddles and was 31 feet (9.4 m) in diameter.
Speed:	16 knots (30 km/h)
Crew:	22

The SS General Slocum was a steamship launched in 1891. It caught fire and burned to the water in New York's East River on June 15, 1904. More than 1,000 people died in the accident, making it the New York City area's worst loss-of-life disaster until the September 11, 2001 attacks.^[1]

[edit] The ship

The ship was named for Civil War officer and New York Congressman Henry Warner Slocum. It was built by Divine Burtis, Jr., a Brooklyn boatbuilder. Its keel was 235 feet (72 m) long and the hull was 37.5 feet (11.4 m) wide. The ship was built mostly of white oak and yellow pine. She displaced about 1,200 tons. It had three engines, built by W. & A. Fletcher Company of Hoboken, New Jersey. It was a sidewheel boat. Each wheel had 26 paddles and was 31 feet (9.4 m) in diameter. Its maximum speed was about 16 knots (30 km/h). The ship had three decks. It usually had a crew of 22, including Captain William H. Van Schaick and two pilots. It was never christened.

[edit] Ship history

drawing of General Slocum by Samuel Ward Stanton

The SS General Slocum had seen a series of mishaps since its launch in 1891. Four months after launch, it ran aground off Rockaway. Tugs had to pull it free. On July 29, 1894, when returning from Rockaway one night with some 4,700 passengers, it struck a sand bar so forcefully its electrical generator went out. The General Slocum ran aground off Coney Island in August 1894 during a storm. The passengers had to be transferred to another ship. In September of the same year, it collided with the tug R. T. Sayre in the East River. It sustained substantial damage and lost its ability to be steered. Another collision happened in July 1898 when it collided with the Amelia near Battery Park.

On August 17, 1901 it was carrying what was described as 900 intoxicated Paterson Anarchists. Some of the passengers started a riot and attempted to take control of the vessel from the captain. The crew fought back and maintained control of the ship. The captain then docked the ship at the police pier and 17 men were taken into custody by the police. The General Slocum ran aground again in June 1902 with 400 passengers aboard. The passengers had to camp out, as it remained stuck throughout the night.

[edit] The disaster

Firefighters working to extinguish the General Slocum

Wreckage of the General Slocum

Victims of the General Slocum washed ashore at North Brother Island

Carrying away a body from North Brother Island

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 the St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in the German district Little Germany, Manhattan. This was an annual rite for the group, which had made the trip for 17 consecutive years. Over 1,300 passengers, mostly women and children, boarded the General Slocum. It was to sail up the East River and then eastward across Long Island Sound to Locust Grove, a picnic site in Eatons Neck, Long Island.

The ship got underway at 9:30am. As it was passing East 90th Street, a fire started in a storage compartment in the forward section, possibly caused by a discarded cigarette or match. The first notice of a fire was at 10am - eyewitnesses locate the initial blaze at several locations, including a paint locker filled with flammable liquids or a cabin filled with gasoline. Captain Van Schaick was only notified ten minutes after the fire was discovered - a twelve year old boy had tried to warn him earlier, but was not believed.

On board the Slocum, where the Captain has ultimate safety authority, no effort had been made to maintain or replace safety equipment. The ship's dryrotted fire hoses fell apart when the crew attempted to put out the fire. Likewise, the crew had never had a fire drill. Although the ship had lifeboats and life preservers, survivors reported that the life preservers were useless and fell apart in their hands. The lifeboats were tied up and inaccessible. 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 floated, due to the condition of the jackets. Also, the population of the boat consisted mainly of women and children, most of whom could not swim.

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.

Captain Van Schaick mishandled the situation badly. 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 immediately to ground the vessel, he actually fanned the fire. Very flammable paint also helped the fire to 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 three-level floors of the overloaded boat collapsed; others were mauled by the still turning paddles as they attempted to escape into the water or over the sides.^[2]

By the time the General Slocum was beached at North Brother Island, just off the Bronx shore, an estimated 1,021 people had been killed by fire or drowning, with 321 survivors. Two of the 30 crew members died. The Captain lost sight in one eye due to the fire. Reports indicate that Van Schaick deserted the Slocum as soon as it ran aground, jumping into a nearby tug, along with several crew. Some say his jacket was hardly rumpled. 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.

[edit] Aftermath

Seven 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.^[3] He was pardoned by President Taft on December 19, 1912,^[4] and died in 1927.^[5]

The Knickerbocker Steamship Company, which owned the ship, paid a relatively small fine despite evidence they may have falsified inspection records. The 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 declined following the disaster — many socially prominent people had been lost, and with the trauma and arguments that followed the tragedy, most of the German settlers eventually moved uptown. The church that chartered the ship for the fateful voyage is now a synagogue.

The victims were buried in cemeteries around New York, with fifty-eight identified victims being buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn.^[6]

[edit] Survivors

On January 26, 2004 the last surviving passenger from the General Slocum, Adella Wotherspoon (nee Liebenow), died at the age of 100. At the time of the General Slocom 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.^[7] Prior to Mrs. Wotherspoons passing the previous oldest surviving member was Catherine Connelly (nee Uhlmyer-Gallagher) (1893-2002) who was eleven years old at the time of the accident.

[edit] In popular culture

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (March 2009)

The General Slocum disaster memorial in Tompkins Square Park, Manhattan, New York City. Tompkins Square Park is in the heart of Alphabet City, what was once Little Germany.

• There is a reference to the disaster in James Joyce's Ulysses, the events of which take place on the following day (June 16, 1904).
• The first scenes of the film Manhattan Melodrama recreate the disaster; however, the movie implies that there were Jews among the passengers.
• The 2005 Hugo award nominated novella Time Ablaze by Michael A. Burstein (Analog, June 2004) concerns a time traveler who comes to record the disaster. The story was published to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the disaster.
• German Television produced and showed an hour long documentary The Slocum is on Fire! by Christian Baudissin in 1998 about the disaster and its impact on the German community of New York.
• The General Slocum disaster was featured in the documentary My Father's Gun.
• The General Slocum disaster is at the center of the novel The Unresolved, by T.K. Welsh.
• The disaster is also mentioned in Kevin Baker's novel Dreamland.
• The story of the General Slocum was described as an "Avoidable Catastrophe" in Bob Fenster's book, Duh! The Stupid History of the Human Race, in Part One, which discusses stories involving stupidity.
• The General Slocum disaster plays a prominent role in Richard Crabbe's novel Hell's Gate
• The story is told from the imagined point of view of survivor Adella Wotherspoon in a song recorded by the Brooklyn-based history band Pinataland.
• The disaster is mentioned in the novel Forever by Pete Hamill
• The disaster is mentioned in the novel It's Superman! by Tom De Haven.
• A description of the disaster and the following events in relation to September 11 is given in Act II by David Rakoff in Episode 194: Before and After (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=890) of the radio program This American Life.
• The disaster plays a prominent role in In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff.

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Jay Nash, Darkest Hours. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1976. ISBN 0882291408
• Werner Braatz and Joseph Starr, Fire on the River: The Story of the Burning of the General Slocum. Krokodiloplis Press, 2000. ISBN 0974936308
• Ed O'Donnell, Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum. Broadway, 2003. ISBN 0767909054

[edit] See also

• Eastland
• List of historic fires
• Sultana disaster

[edit] External links

• US Coast Guard Accident Report
• Ship Ablaze - website devoted to the General Slocum disaster
• Maritime Industry Museum: General Slocum
• New York Historical Society: General Slocum
• Brothers: NYC's worst maritime tragedy - Photos of the islands in 2004 and images of the General Slocum from Forgotten New York.
• General Slocum Steamboat Mass memorial monument at Find-A-Grave
• http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs743a,0,7616452.story