It’s hard to believe that a disaster as horrific as the burning of the ferry General Slocum could fade from a nation’s memory. Perhaps that’s the thinking behind HR 251, a bill in Congress to “authorize the Secretary of the Interior to study the suitability and feasibility of designating Oak Point and North Brother Island in the Bronx… as a unit of the National Park System.” The new park would commemorate the tremendous loss of life that happened just offshore from North Brother Island more than 100 years ago.
Today, the only memorial to one of the nation’s greatest peacetime disasters is a simple, tombstone-shaped marble fountain that stands in Manhattan’s Tompkins Square. Inscribed in the stone is a short commemoration: “In memory of those who lost their lives in the disaster to the steamer General Slocum JVNE XV MCMIV. They were Earth’s purest children, young and old.”
Here’s the ship’s story: On June 15, 1904, 1,358 members of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Kleindeutschland (Little Germany) on Manhattan’s Lower East Side boarded the General Slocum on their way to a picnic on Long Island’s North Shore. The New York Times reported, "As she cast off and stood out into the stream her flags were flying, the band was playing a lively air, and her three decks were crowded to their capacity with a happy throng that looked for a pleasant day's outing at Locust Point, on the Sound."
As the ship passed into the river’s narrow strait known as Hell Gate, cries of “Fire!” rose from the lower decks. In seconds, the entire bow of the boat was in flames, fanned by the quick pace the unsuspecting captain continued to maintain. The flames consumed the foredecks in no time, moving rapidly along the boat to the stern, where the passengers—nearly all women and children—had run for their lives.
Captain William van Schaick finally saw the blaze out the window of the pilothouse. “I started to head for One Hundred and Thirty-fourth Street, but was warned off by the captain of a tugboat, who shouted to me that the boat would set fire to the lumber yards and oil tanks there,” he told the Times. ”I then fixed upon North Brother Island.”
Staying at the wheel while his own clothes were in flames, the captain ran the Slocum on the shore of the island. “She went up on the beach, bow on, in about twenty-five feet of water,” he said. “Most of the people aft, where the fire raged fiercest, jumped in when we were in deep water, and they were carried away. We had no chance to lower the lifeboats. They were burned before the crew could get at them.”
North Brother Island housed a hospital that served as a sanitarium for patients with contagious diseases. While the patients screamed to be let out of the locked ward to help, staff members made for the water and pulled out as many people as they could. Captains of other boats in Hell Gate pulled alongside and braved the flames to rescue children and their mothers. Their heroic efforts saved more than 300 lives, but in the end, 1,021 people died in the disaster.
In the ensuing weeks, grief, recrimination, rumors and trials served to make the situation increasingly worse. Reports circulated of life jackets too rotten to use, fire hoses so decayed that they burst, and an unfeeling skipper of a nearby luxury yacht who watched the disaster through binoculars, unwilling to help. Captain Van Schaick was convicted for his role in the disaster, and served four years before President William H. Taft pardoned him.
The most dramatic casualty, however, was Kleindeutschland, the tight-knit German immigrant neighborhood clustered around Tompkins Square. Unable to recover from the tremendous loss of life and the grief that followed, the area’s remaining families moved away, many of them establishing a new community in Astoria, Queens, or moving uptown to a new settlement known as Yorkville.
The process of creating a fitting memorial could begin with a study conducted by the National Park Service. “The study area marks the location where the greatest loss of life occurred in this, the most deadly peacetime maritime disaster in American history,” HR 251 reads. “North Brother Island is where the General Slocum beached and Oak Point is where rescuers assembled and hundreds of bodies were brought ashore.”
Rep. José Serrano (D-NY 16) introduced the current bill in Congress on January 7, 2011, and it was referred to the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands. This is the fourth time Serrano brought this bill to Congress: He introduced HR 183—essentially the same bill—in January 2009; HR 214 in 2007, and HR 5423 in January 2006. In all cases, the bills languished in committee.
"This day is a sad and tragic day in the history of New York City, and one that we must strive to commemorate due to its impact on the subsequent development of our city and the lessons it still imparts to us a century later," said Serrano during a 2007 commemoration of the disaster. "It also reminds us that despite our outward differences, we are all New Yorkers at heart. While the General Slocum was mostly filled with German immigrant families on that day, those who attempted rescue included African-Americans, as well as Jewish, Italian, and Irish immigrants. The victims were nearly all new arrivals to this country and their children, some of whom spoke no English and many of whom still clung tightly to the traditions of their homeland. The city opened its arms to them and embraced the survivors, as it has always done for newcomers to our shores. The whole nation can and should learn from New York’s example in the aftermath of the Slocum disaster."
Comments