Posted on 06/15/2018 7:04:48 AM PDT by NRx
The greatest steamboat disaster ever known in this city was the burning of the General Slocum near North Brother Island yesterday morning. Of more than one thousand persons whom the steamboat was carrying on a Sunday School excursion of the St. Mark's Lutheran Church, of Sixth street, Manhattan, to Locust Grove, Long Island, only a few hundred were saved. It was estimated, unofficially, last night that more than seven hundred perished either by burning or drowning. They were mostly women and children.
(Excerpt) Read more at chroniclingamerica.loc.gov ...
Wikipedia on the disaster...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_General_Slocum
A documentary...
https://youtu.be/429t0-1jy5Q
Brian Williams says this was one of the most heart-wrenching events he ever had to cover.
Might want to put the date in the title.
Nevermind, I saw it. (It’s early in the morning for me)
Oy
Yes, a friend of mine once had a one man show on this epic disaster. In the aftermath, they changed the Yorkville area into Germantown. A wonderful neighborhood now loaded with Duane Reades, Starbucks and banks...
If CNN reads this they will blame the 1904 disaster on Trump or his dad or grandfather.
There’s a monument to it over there. Horrible, horrible event. They say that the big problem was that the captain chose to go in the wrong direction which blew the flames back onto the boat.
There were a lot of factors that contributed to the disaster. Most people back then couldn’t swim. Women wore layers of heavy clothes and corvettes which dragged them under. Any safety regulation you could think of as being a good idea for a large boat intended to carry passengers either didn’t exist or was flouted. The whole thing was a cluster bleep.
ack... covettes = corsets.
Steamboats were pretty but very dangerous. Twain describes more horrible incidents in his great book Life On the Mississippi.
That’s true. But I’ve always wondered what would happen on a DayLiner type boat now. I think it’s just less likely to happen overall because of the differences in engines and fuels and in the East River itself.
In any case, it was a really tragic event that is actually not very well known outside of NYC.
The story that gripped my heart was of a little boy who went on the trip with his mother. When he was asked what happened by rescuers, he answered with these words: "Mommy burned up."
Read the book. Interesting and tragic.
Oh my, what an awful tragedy. The acts of heroism by children were amazing. So young and kept their heads during terrible and understandable chaos.
The captain, William Van Schaick, ended up going to prison.
City kids aren’t/weren’t taught to swim. It is abuse not teaching kids to swim. Can’t imagine wool clothing in the middle of June.
Smells like the fire was intentionally set since it popped up in multiple locations.
He was the only one. Of all those responsible his culpability was probably the lowest.
This was the early 1900’s. There were no public pools and the rivers and waterways around NYC were so foul I would be hard pressed to choose between being incinerated or having to swim in the East River circa 1904.
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