Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Our next episodes of the show cover somebody
Speaker 1: whose life is really just like a whole tour of
Speaker 1: previous episodes of the show, and one of the historical
Speaker 1: events that's going to come up on those episodes is
Speaker 1: the general slocum disaster, so we are bringing that one
Speaker 1: out as today's Saturday classic. Heads Up, this is probably
Speaker 1: one of our all time saddest episodes and it originally
Speaker 1: came out on June. Welcome to stuff you missed in
Speaker 1: history class. A production of I heart radio. Hello and
Speaker 1: welcome to the PODCAST. I'm racy B Wilson and I'm
Speaker 1: holly frying. The PS general slocum burned in the East
Speaker 1: River in New York on June oh four, so a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen years ago this month, and this disaster
Speaker 1: has also been a really frequent listener request, including from Kell, Suzanne, Linda,
Speaker 1: Jesse Torrey and Michael Um. It has some similarities to
Speaker 1: the east land disaster, which we talked about on the
Speaker 1: show a couple of years ago. Both of these vessels
Speaker 1: had been chartered for a group outing that turned into
Speaker 1: just a deadly maritime disaster very suddenly. Both of these
Speaker 1: were also topics that I knew from the start we're
Speaker 1: going to be tragic, but then turned out to be
Speaker 1: even worse than I imagined them. The Paddle Steamer General
Speaker 1: Slocum was built in it was named after Henry Warner
Speaker 1: Slocum of New York, who had served as a general
Speaker 1: in the Union army during the civil war. The ship
Speaker 1: was one of two steamers owned by the Knickerbocker steamboat company,
Speaker 1: the other being the grand republic. It was a large
Speaker 1: wooden sidewheel steamer with three decks. The General Slocum was
Speaker 1: licensed to carry up to passengers and when it was
Speaker 1: first launched it was a modern, luxurious vessel, but by
Speaker 1: nineteen o four it was really starting to show its age,
Speaker 1: although it, I'd been regularly repainted over the years, including
Speaker 1: shortly before the disaster. But it also passed an inspection
Speaker 1: on May fifth of nineteen o four. The slocum was
Speaker 1: an excursion boat intended for making short trips around New
Speaker 1: York's waterways from the spring through the fall. In the
Speaker 1: early part of the season, people could charter the whole
Speaker 1: vessel for a flat fee. Starting around the beginning of July.
Speaker 1: It operated as a ferry on the rockaway route connecting Manhattan,
Speaker 1: Brooklyn and rockaway on Long Island. For its June fifteenth
Speaker 1: nineteen o four trip, it had been chartered by St
Speaker 1: Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church at a cost of three hundred
Speaker 1: fifty dollars. The church was hosting its annual picnic to
Speaker 1: celebrate the end of the school year, and most of
Speaker 1: the people who were attending were church members who lived
Speaker 1: in Manhattan's lower east side. They lived in a neighborhood
Speaker 1: known as Klein Deutsch Land, or little Germany, because of
Speaker 1: a very large population of German immigrants and their descendants
Speaker 1: who lived there. At the time, this was one of
Speaker 1: the largest German American community us in the United States.
Speaker 1: About one thousand three hundred fifty eight passengers were aboard
Speaker 1: the Slocum on the day of the disaster. The exact
Speaker 1: number is actually an estimate, since there were tickets for
Speaker 1: this excursion, but babies didn't need one, and sometimes multiple
Speaker 1: children were brought aboard on one ticket. Since the picnic
Speaker 1: was being held on a Wednesday, most of the adult
Speaker 1: passengers were women. The men and the families were more
Speaker 1: likely to be at work. Overall, more than half the
Speaker 1: people aboard were children and only between fifty and one
Speaker 1: fifty of the passengers were adult men. These passengers were
Speaker 1: in high spirits, dressed in their Sunday best and prepared
Speaker 1: for a two hour cruise along the East River from
Speaker 1: the Third Street recreation pier to the north shore of
Speaker 1: Long Island. Once they got there, they would spend the
Speaker 1: day at a picnic ground called Locust Grove. They had
Speaker 1: food and a bar on the boat, along with entertainment
Speaker 1: provided by a band that was playing on the promenade deck.
Speaker 1: Although they embarked generally as families, once people were aboard,
Speaker 1: parents were totally comfortable letting their children go off on
Speaker 1: their own and play together. They left the dock between
Speaker 1: nine thirty and nine forty in the morning. In Command
Speaker 1: was the captain, William h Van Shaik, with first pilot
Speaker 1: Edward Van Wort and second pilot Edwin Weaver. Van Shaike
Speaker 1: had been aboard the General Slocum since its launch and
Speaker 1: had a reputation for being safe and careful, but he
Speaker 1: was also in his sixties and the general slocum had
Speaker 1: been through a number of incidents and accidents over the years,
Speaker 1: so some people thought that it was maybe time for
Speaker 1: him to retire. Not long into this journey, a fire
Speaker 1: started in the forward compartment on the main deck. It's
Speaker 1: not clear exactly how, because there were just so many
Speaker 1: possible sources. The forward compartment was being used as both
Speaker 1: a storage room and a lamp room. Machine Oil for
Speaker 1: the mechanical systems was stored in the forward compartment as well,
Speaker 1: along with two bags of charcoal and various rubbish. There
Speaker 1: were lots of other flammable materials in this wooden compartment,
Speaker 1: including three open barrels of glassware that we're packed in hey.
Speaker 1: Those had been brought aboard for the excursion. This was
Speaker 1: also where a member of the crew filled and maintained
Speaker 1: the lamps, using a makeshift table made of wooden planks
Speaker 1: laid over a couple of trestles. In the course of
Speaker 1: this work, the floor of the compartment had been covered
Speaker 1: in a thin layer of oil. There had also been
Speaker 1: an open flame in this room at several points over
Speaker 1: the course of the morning. The compartment itself had electric lighting,
Speaker 1: as did other parts of the ship, but that morning
Speaker 1: the porter who was responsible for filling the lamps had
Speaker 1: found the room to be very dark, so he had
Speaker 1: lit one of the lamps using a match. He later
Speaker 1: testified that he could extinguish the match and he had
Speaker 1: thrown it down on a bench. Someone else had been
Speaker 1: working on part of the mechanical system in the room,
Speaker 1: using an open torch as a light source. People also
Speaker 1: lit matches and had other open flame in the room
Speaker 1: for all kinds of reasons, something that was just inherently
Speaker 1: dangerous given what was in there. Shortly after the fire started,
Speaker 1: the general slogan was approaching a narrow part of the
Speaker 1: East River known as Hellgate. About that time a boy
Speaker 1: noticed smoke coming from near the forward cabin. He told
Speaker 1: a member of the crew, who apparently thought that the
Speaker 1: child was playing some kind of prank and told him
Speaker 1: to mind his business. A few minutes after that, other
Speaker 1: members of the crew saw smoke coming from the forward
Speaker 1: cabin and they realized there was a fire and started
Speaker 1: trying to put it out. The ship's firefighting equipment included
Speaker 1: a standpipe and hoses. The standpipe and its valves were
Speaker 1: in good working order, but the hoses were mostly old,
Speaker 1: cheap linen hoses. Members of the crew attached a piece
Speaker 1: of this old hose to the valve near the forward
Speaker 1: compartment and asked the engineering room to send water through
Speaker 1: the Standpipe, but as soon as the water hit that
Speaker 1: hose it shattered in multiple places. There were also a
Speaker 1: couple of newer rubber hoses on the boat and members
Speaker 1: of the crew got one of those to try again,
Speaker 1: but they couldn't get that new hose to connect to
Speaker 1: the standpipe. When they couldn't figure out why, they gave up,
Speaker 1: and an investigation later revealed that when the hose shattered,
Speaker 1: it was blown off the coupling that was holding it
Speaker 1: onto the standpipe, but the coupling itself was still there.
Speaker 1: In their panic, the crew members didn't realize that the
Speaker 1: old coupling was still connected, and if they had removed
Speaker 1: the old coupling, the new pose would have connected with
Speaker 1: no problem. This was really the last of the cruise
Speaker 1: effort to try to fight the fire. There were fire
Speaker 1: buckets on board, but they were empty and they weren't
Speaker 1: put into use. There are also reports that a hapless
Speaker 1: crew member dumped a bucket of charcoal onto the fire
Speaker 1: to try to smother it. That doesn't appear in the
Speaker 1: Federal Commission's report about the disaster and it's such a
Speaker 1: far fetched idea that someone would do that that it
Speaker 1: seems almost unbelievable. At the same time, the way the
Speaker 1: disaster progressed from here is almost unbelievable, and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk more about it after we first paused for
Speaker 1: a little break. After the fire was discovered in the
Speaker 1: forward compartment of the PS General Slocum, it doesn't appear
Speaker 1: that the captain, William h Von Shaik, personally assessed what
Speaker 1: was happening with it or gave any kind of orders
Speaker 1: to try to get it under control. Instead, he looked
Speaker 1: at where they were on the river and decided to
Speaker 1: beach the ship so that people might be able to
Speaker 1: jump to safety. The nearest land was west of the boat,
Speaker 1: in the Bronx, but this area was full of stored
Speaker 1: lumber and gas tanks. Apparently someone warned von Shaike away
Speaker 1: from it for that reason, or he decided that landing
Speaker 1: a flaming vessel there would be more dangerous than trying
Speaker 1: to find another location. The captain ordered the pilots to
Speaker 1: aim north northeast toward north brother island. This required them
Speaker 1: to travel at full steam ahead into deep water in
Speaker 1: the middle of the East River. So the PS general
Speaker 1: slocum was made almost entirely out of wood. It's middle
Speaker 1: deck was a promenade deck with that was mostly open
Speaker 1: to the air, with a smaller enclosed space in the middle.
Speaker 1: The top deck was a her cane deck that was
Speaker 1: similarly open to the air, and hurricane decks just get
Speaker 1: their name from how incredibly windy attempts to be up there.
Speaker 1: So when the vessel started bearing down toward north brother island,
Speaker 1: it was full steam ahead against the wind, and the
Speaker 1: resulting airflow across its structure quickly spread the fire from
Speaker 1: the forward compartment toward the back of the vessel. When
Speaker 1: the fire started, the passengers were spread all around the ship.
Speaker 1: There were more people on the promenade deck than in
Speaker 1: other passenger areas because that's where the band was and
Speaker 1: because the fire started in the forward compartment, most of
Speaker 1: the passengers were behind it. That meant that as the
Speaker 1: boat picked up speed, the wind was spreading the fire
Speaker 1: directly toward them very quickly. People started to panic, as
Speaker 1: various family members had got off to play or socialized.
Speaker 1: People had become separated from one another, so parents didn't
Speaker 1: know where their children were and children couldn't find their parents. Also,
Speaker 1: most of the people aboard could not swim. Swimming hadn't
Speaker 1: really taken off as a pastime in the United States
Speaker 1: at this point and clothing suitable for actually swimming was
Speaker 1: not considered decent for women to wear at all. And,
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, because this was a nice outing,
Speaker 1: the people aboard were in their Sunday best. So as
Speaker 1: the fire spread, people had a choice. They could jump
Speaker 1: into deep water, weighed down by their clothing, knowing that
Speaker 1: they could not swim, or they could stay where they
Speaker 1: were and risk burning to death. The General Slocum did
Speaker 1: have life preservers aboard, unlike a lot of the other
Speaker 1: maritime disasters that we've covered on the show, there was
Speaker 1: a life preserver for every passenger, but these were old.
Speaker 1: Some of them probably dated back to when the ship
Speaker 1: was newly built. Their covers were rotten, so when people
Speaker 1: got them down and tried to use them, some of
Speaker 1: them just fell completely apart in their hands. Others had
Speaker 1: intact covers, but the cork inside had rotted into dust.
Speaker 1: So when people jumped into the water with these on,
Speaker 1: they just soaked up the water and became incredibly heavy
Speaker 1: rather than helping people to stay afloat at the same time, though,
Speaker 1: very few of Slocum's life preservers were put into use.
Speaker 1: Some passengers, as we said, grabbed a life preserver only
Speaker 1: for it to fall apart in their hands and then
Speaker 1: they just gave up on trying to find another one. Also,
Speaker 1: the crew did almost nothing to help distribute them. One
Speaker 1: testified at the coroner's inquest that he had put one
Speaker 1: life preserver onto a person and that was the one
Speaker 1: that he put on himself. Only about fifty life preservers
Speaker 1: were definitely used during the disaster, twenty of them on
Speaker 1: people who drowned while wearing them. The slocum also had lifeboats.
Speaker 1: The boats themselves were in generally good condition, but they
Speaker 1: weren't put into use during the disaster either. The crew
Speaker 1: had never been trained on how to operate them and
Speaker 1: the mechanisms to lower them had been painted over and
Speaker 1: were immovable. Some of the lifeboats were even wired down.
Speaker 1: Even if the crew had been able to move these
Speaker 1: boats with the ship operating at full steam ahead, they
Speaker 1: just couldn't have been lowered safely into the water. The
Speaker 1: timeline of the disaster was pieced together from eyewitness testimony
Speaker 1: and it took as long as twenty minutes from the
Speaker 1: time the fire was discovered to the general slocum being
Speaker 1: beached off north brother island. During that time the fire
Speaker 1: consumed more and more of the boat and passengers jumped
Speaker 1: into the water rather than burning to death. Most drowned
Speaker 1: and some were crushed in the paddle wheels. Then, just
Speaker 1: as the boat was reaching North Brother Island, the starboard
Speaker 1: side of the hurricane deck collapsed under the weight of
Speaker 1: hundreds of passengers, dumping all of them directly into deep water.
Speaker 1: But beating the vessel off North Brother Island did not
Speaker 1: allow the rest of the passengers to jump to safety
Speaker 1: the way that the captain had hoped that it would.
Speaker 1: The vessel came to rest at an angle with its
Speaker 1: bowl between ten and twenty ft from the shore. That's
Speaker 1: between three and six MS, but that put the stern
Speaker 1: of the boat more like forty to sixty ft from shore,
Speaker 1: or twelve to eighteen meters. The current there was very fast.
Speaker 1: The water was way over people's heads and because of
Speaker 1: the way the fire had spread, almost all the passengers
Speaker 1: were towards the very stern of the ship, where they
Speaker 1: had to jump into this deep, fast moving water. It's
Speaker 1: estimated that between four hundred and six hundred people jumped
Speaker 1: into the water and drowned after the boat had been beached.
Speaker 1: North Brother Island was home to a quarantine hospital for
Speaker 1: people with contagious illnesses, and members of its staff came
Speaker 1: to the shore to try to assist. Two nearby tug boats,
Speaker 1: the John L Wade and Walter Tracy, also rendered aid
Speaker 1: and probably saved the lives of hundreds of people. Two
Speaker 1: men incarcerated at nearby rikers island compelled a doctor who
Speaker 1: was working there to take them to the site of
Speaker 1: the wreck in a rowboat so that they could help
Speaker 1: with the rescue, and there were people on other boats
Speaker 1: or boats who rode out from shore who rescued people
Speaker 1: who had jumped into the water along the way. But
Speaker 1: even with the prompt assistance of all these people from
Speaker 1: outside the ship, almost everyone aboard was injured or killed.
Speaker 1: It was the worst single day disaster in New York
Speaker 1: until the September eleventh two thousand one terrorist attack on
Speaker 1: the World Trade Center. Roughly a thousand passengers died, and
Speaker 1: that was more than seventy of the passengers aboard. Only
Speaker 1: two passengers escaped without injury. Meanwhile, the crew, most of
Speaker 1: whom did not try to help stop the fire or
Speaker 1: assist the passengers was almost unscathed. Twenty three of the
Speaker 1: thirty crew escaped without injury and two were killed. For
Speaker 1: a while after being beached, the General Slocum stayed in
Speaker 1: place off north brother island. People who came to help
Speaker 1: were mostly able to get it extinguished and for a
Speaker 1: time the number of bodies pulled from the water was
Speaker 1: relatively small. So a lot of people. We're hopeful that
Speaker 1: there had been a miraculous recovery of a lot of
Speaker 1: the folks. But the East River isn't really a river,
Speaker 1: it's a title estuary that connects New York harbor to
Speaker 1: the long island sound. Consequently, it experiences regular tides and
Speaker 1: as the tides rose, it lifted the wreck, which about
Speaker 1: a mile before coming to rest again off hunt's point,
Speaker 1: which is north of rikers island. The shifting tides and
Speaker 1: currents also meant that more and more bodies started washing
Speaker 1: ashore all along the East River, something that continued for days.
Speaker 1: By One am on the Sixteenth, seven hundred thirty nine
Speaker 1: bodies had been recovered and sent to a city morgue,
Speaker 1: as well as temporary morgues on north brother and rikers islands.
Speaker 1: This disaster was catastrophic for New York City's German American
Speaker 1: community and it was also obvious that something had gone
Speaker 1: colossally unacceptably wrong. We'll get to the disaster's aftermath after
Speaker 1: another sponsor break. The disaster aboard the PS general slocum
Speaker 1: was devastating, especially in New York's German American community. At
Speaker 1: least six hundred families lost someone, and some families only
Speaker 1: had one surviving member, somebody who had been at work
Speaker 1: that day instead of on the excursion, who basically came
Speaker 1: home and found that their whole family had died. Many
Speaker 1: of the people who survived had serious burns, some of
Speaker 1: which were disabling. Many had lifelong breathing problems because of
Speaker 1: smoke inhalation and burns to their lungs. Post traumatic stress
Speaker 1: disorder wasn't recognized until decades later, but survivors also had
Speaker 1: ongoing effects on their mental and emotional health. The little
Speaker 1: Germany neighborhood of the lower east side had started to
Speaker 1: coalesce in the nineteenth century as people left Europe in
Speaker 1: the face of famine and unrest. The neighborhood really grew
Speaker 1: from the eighteen thirties to the eighteen fifties, and in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty five it was one of the largest German
Speaker 1: communities in the world. By nineteen O four, this community
Speaker 1: had outgrown the lower east side and was starting to
Speaker 1: expand into other parts of New York. This included people
Speaker 1: who had been born to that first wave of German
Speaker 1: immigrants who wanted to get out on their own. So
Speaker 1: some of the neighborhood's population was already moving else where
Speaker 1: before this disaster happened. But afterward the neighborhood changed dramatically.
Speaker 1: People who had lost family members found it too painful
Speaker 1: and moved away, either to other parts of New York
Speaker 1: or other cities, or back to Germany. Even for people
Speaker 1: who weren't really close to any of the families that
Speaker 1: had been aboard, the sudden deaths of so many children
Speaker 1: changed the character of the neighborhood enormously. People described it
Speaker 1: as unnaturally painfully quiet. Soon the Manhattan neighborhood of Yorkville
Speaker 1: was more associated with the city's German community than the
Speaker 1: lower east side was. Other communities in New York were
Speaker 1: affected by the tragedy as well, including neighboring Italian and
Speaker 1: Jewish neighborhoods, but the lower eastsidnes German Protestant community was
Speaker 1: by far the hardest hit. St Mark's Lutheran Church also
Speaker 1: lost much of its congregation. That building still stands today
Speaker 1: and it was converted into a synagogue in ninety. Naturally,
Speaker 1: people were outraged by this incredible loss of life. The
Speaker 1: captain was also hospitalized due to injuries that he sustained
Speaker 1: in the disaster, and he was arrested while he was
Speaker 1: still in the hospital. He also received hundreds of threatening letters.
Speaker 1: People called for investigations into the accident and the steamboat
Speaker 1: company and the excursion boat industry in general. A coroner's
Speaker 1: inquest was held about two weeks after the incident and
Speaker 1: recommended that charges be brought against the president and directors
Speaker 1: of the Knickerbocker steamboat company, the captain, the company's port captain,
Speaker 1: John A P S, the ship's mate and the government
Speaker 1: inspectors who had cleared the boat. The coroner's jury also
Speaker 1: issued the opinion that the system for inspecting vessels in
Speaker 1: New York's harbors was not sufficient. Federal Commission was also
Speaker 1: convened to investigate and they issued a report on October
Speaker 1: eighth nineteen o four. By that point, the General Slocum's
Speaker 1: wreckage had been raised from the river and towed to
Speaker 1: rikers island to be pumped out, and the process, the
Speaker 1: bodies of eighteen more people were found within the wreck
Speaker 1: including one lodged in the wheel. The investigation emission personally
Speaker 1: inspected this wreckage, which was later sold and converted into
Speaker 1: a barge. That barge thank in New Jersey in nineteen eleven,
Speaker 1: but that time there was no loss of life. Nearby
Speaker 1: tugboat rescued the crew, who were the only people on board.
Speaker 1: The commission's report was scathing and found numerous problems that
Speaker 1: were not at all unique to the general slocum. To
Speaker 1: start with, it had been built with minimal attention to
Speaker 1: fire safety. It had a working standpipe in the event
Speaker 1: of a fire and it was built with the boilers
Speaker 1: that required distance from the wooden surfaces. Beyond that, though,
Speaker 1: fire safety did not seem like it had been a
Speaker 1: consideration at all. The boat didn't have fireproof bulkheads or
Speaker 1: any other feature that might slow down or stop the
Speaker 1: spread of a fire. Instead, it was almost entirely a
Speaker 1: flammable vessel, covered in layers and layers of flammable paint
Speaker 1: and varnish. The same was true of most excursion vessels
Speaker 1: that were in use at the time. The crew also
Speaker 1: was not trained in fire safety or in what to
Speaker 1: do in the event of a fire. Crews were supposed
Speaker 1: to have regular fire drills, but the slocum's crew had
Speaker 1: not had one in more than a year. Compounding this
Speaker 1: lack of training was the fact that most of the
Speaker 1: crew were seasonal workers who had been hired for very
Speaker 1: low pay. They had very little training or experience and,
Speaker 1: because they've been seasonally hired, some of them had never
Speaker 1: experienced a fire drill of any type on any ship. Ever,
Speaker 1: they were not familiar with basic things like what the
Speaker 1: ship's fire alarms sounded like or how to put on
Speaker 1: a life preserver. Another problem was an overall lack of maintenance,
Speaker 1: with many life preservers and fire hoses literally rotten with age.
Speaker 1: After the General Slocum disaster, other companies started replacing their
Speaker 1: worn out, rotten life preservers with new stock, but that
Speaker 1: uncovered another problem. Compressed blocks of Cork were commonly used
Speaker 1: to make life preservers. An employee at a life preserver
Speaker 1: factory in New York discovered that at least one cork
Speaker 1: supplier was tampering with the product. This employe had been
Speaker 1: handling a block of Cork that was sold to them
Speaker 1: by the Non Perel Cork Works of Camden, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and something just didn't feel right about it. Breaking Open
Speaker 1: the block of Cork revealed a six inch long iron bar.
Speaker 1: It's about fifteen centimeters and it weighed about eight ounces,
Speaker 1: or more than two grams. So Life preservers were supposed
Speaker 1: to contain six pounds of Cork, but instead of selling
Speaker 1: six pound cork blocks, this corkworks was shorting the amount
Speaker 1: of Cork and making up the difference with iron. President
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt wrote a letter to the Secretary of Commerce
Speaker 1: and Labor that went along with the federal commission's report.
Speaker 1: In it he described this as an offense, quote so
Speaker 1: heinous a character that it is difficult to comment upon
Speaker 1: it with proper self restraint. It appears that the national
Speaker 1: legislature has never enacted a law providing in set terms
Speaker 1: for the punishment of this particular species of infamy, doubtless
Speaker 1: because it never entered the head of any man that's
Speaker 1: so gross in infamy could be perpeture e did. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: when you are reading articles on the Internet about this disaster,
Speaker 1: it'll say that the life preservers on the slocum had
Speaker 1: iron bars in them. That does not appear to be
Speaker 1: the case. This appears to be like the newly made
Speaker 1: ones that people were using to replace the ones that
Speaker 1: clearly needed to be replaced. The commission's report was also
Speaker 1: scathing in terms of the captain and the two pilots
Speaker 1: and how they had conducted themselves during the fire. As
Speaker 1: we noted earlier, the Master of the vessel, William h
Speaker 1: Van Shike, doesn't appear to have evaluated what was happening
Speaker 1: with the fire or given any orders about fighting it,
Speaker 1: or issued any instructions about getting the passengers to safety.
Speaker 1: He and the boat's pilots were all in the pilot
Speaker 1: house when they learned about the fire. Van Shik ordered
Speaker 1: the pilots to proceed full speed ahead. He left the
Speaker 1: pilot house for a moment and then he said, upon returning,
Speaker 1: that they should beach the boat at North Brother Island.
Speaker 1: When the boat was beached, he jumped overboard, breaking one
Speaker 1: of his legs in the process. So van Shaike had
Speaker 1: failed in multiple duties. That were his responsibility both before
Speaker 1: and during the accident. He had not ensured that the
Speaker 1: boat and its life saving and firefighting equipment were up
Speaker 1: to safety standards. He had not seen to the safety
Speaker 1: of the passengers, he had not conducted a fire or
Speaker 1: lifeboat drill that season. He had not fulfilled any of
Speaker 1: his duties in the actual emergency, which included delegating responsibilities
Speaker 1: to see to the passenger safety and ensure that they
Speaker 1: did not panic. The commission also found that Vansheke had
Speaker 1: multiple opportunities to safely beach the vessel much earlier, but
Speaker 1: didn't take them, and if he had done so, the
Speaker 1: fire would have had much less time to spread before
Speaker 1: people could evacuate. These other possible beaching points included Little
Speaker 1: Hell Gate and Sunken Meadows, and getting to them would
Speaker 1: have required the boat to turn sharply to the West.
Speaker 1: Then the wind would have been blowing across the vessel
Speaker 1: rather than down its length, which could have helped limit
Speaker 1: the spread of the fire. Van Shaike maintained that he
Speaker 1: had learned of the fire too late to beach the
Speaker 1: ship at any of these other points and that north
Speaker 1: brother island was their only option. It should also be
Speaker 1: noted that he stayed at his post in the pilot
Speaker 1: house even as it burned around him and his clothes
Speaker 1: caught fire. The commission also found that the lead pilot,
Speaker 1: Edward l Van Wart, was also at fault for the
Speaker 1: way the vessel came to rest off north brother island.
Speaker 1: It had come to rest at such an angle that
Speaker 1: there was just no way for the passengers to escape safely,
Speaker 1: and in the commission's opinion, this was either poor judgment
Speaker 1: or a lack of skill. Compounding all of this, the
Speaker 1: testimony of the captain and the pilots didn't match up
Speaker 1: with the timeline that was pieced together from other witnesses.
Speaker 1: These three men all said the same thing, that they
Speaker 1: beached the boat off north brother island less than three
Speaker 1: minutes after being informed of the fire, and north brother
Speaker 1: island was their only option. But whitness testimony from survivors
Speaker 1: and from witnesses on other vessels and on shore suggested
Speaker 1: that the time between when the fire started and the
Speaker 1: vessel was beached was as long as twenty minutes. Either
Speaker 1: no one informed the captain of what was happening for
Speaker 1: more than ten minutes, or the captain and pilots were
Speaker 1: trying to protect themselves by saying they didn't know about
Speaker 1: the fire until later, and the investigation also found a
Speaker 1: lot of other problems as well, including that the ship's
Speaker 1: mate did not have the required license. It was also
Speaker 1: noted that the nature of an excursion crowd meant that
Speaker 1: the passengers themselves really were not equipped to take over
Speaker 1: and handle things in a crisis. They needed to be
Speaker 1: in the care of a competent, well trained crew who
Speaker 1: knew how to keep their safety in mind. And, to
Speaker 1: quote the report quote, a very important conclusion from this
Speaker 1: set of facts is that the law and regulations must
Speaker 1: recognize the fact that an excursion party must be taken
Speaker 1: care of and cannot take care of itself. Henry Lundbergh
Speaker 1: was one of the inspectors who had passed the general
Speaker 1: slocum just before the incident. He was fired from his
Speaker 1: position and both he and inspector John W Fleming were
Speaker 1: indicted on charges of fraud, misconduct and inatten into duty.
Speaker 1: The managing directors of the Knickerbocker steamboat company were indicted
Speaker 1: as well, but the only person ever convicted of a
Speaker 1: crime was captain Van Shike, who was convicted of criminal negligence.
Speaker 1: On January seventh, nineteen O six. He had also faced
Speaker 1: two charges of manslaughter, but the jury was unable to
Speaker 1: reach a verdict and those he was sentenced to ten years,
Speaker 1: including hard labor, which was the maximum sentence allowed. The
Speaker 1: judge said that he wanted to make an example of him,
Speaker 1: in part because no one else who clearly was culpable
Speaker 1: in this was facing any actual trial. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: a carnival of complete inattention to duty. Yeah, like Van
Speaker 1: Stike clearly made a lot of errors here, but he
Speaker 1: also was scapegoated for this whole thing. Like he the
Speaker 1: whole thing got pinned on him when it was a
Speaker 1: systemic problem at multiple levels. Yeah, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of balls dropped along the way. Uh, Van Shike was
Speaker 1: incarcerated at sing sing, but he was paroled after three
Speaker 1: and a half years. President William Howard Taft pardoned him
Speaker 1: in nineteen eleven. The families of the victims also received
Speaker 1: no restitution or compensation. The knickerbocker steamboat companies creditors filed suit,
Speaker 1: as did survivors and families of the victims and eventually
Speaker 1: the city of New York. The company asked the court
Speaker 1: to limit its liability to five thousand dollars, which was
Speaker 1: the value of the ship after the disaster, and the
Speaker 1: company also faced enormous criticism for continuing to operate its
Speaker 1: other vessel, the grand republic, especially when the grand republic
Speaker 1: was found to have its lifesaving and firefighting equipment in
Speaker 1: similarly poor repair. The Grand Republic was involved in a
Speaker 1: series of crashes with other vessels before being destroyed by
Speaker 1: fire while docked in nineteen twenty four, with the crew
Speaker 1: safely evacuated. The KNICKERBOCKER steamboat company eventually closed down. In
Speaker 1: nineteen O six, a memorial fountain was unveiled in Tompkins
Speaker 1: Square Park. It had been paid for by the Sympathy
Speaker 1: Society of German ladies. It's described with the words they
Speaker 1: are the earth's purest children, young and fair. There's also
Speaker 1: a monument at all faiths cemetery in Queens New York,
Speaker 1: where sixty one unidentified bodies were buried. Adela Lebaneau, who
Speaker 1: had been six months old at the time of the disaster,
Speaker 1: unveiled the statue while she was still a toddler. She
Speaker 1: was the youngest survivor of the incident, as well as
Speaker 1: the last living survivor. She died in two thousand four
Speaker 1: at the age of one hundred. By that time she
Speaker 1: was Adela Lebaneau weatherspoon. Two of her sisters also died
Speaker 1: in the disaster, one of whose body was never found.
Speaker 1: Laws passed after the disaster regulated the excursion boat industry
Speaker 1: more strictly, including requirements for crew training and equipment maintenance.
Speaker 1: The disaster has also been noted as one of the
Speaker 1: inspirations for more formalized life saving programs in the United
Speaker 1: States and for children to be routinely taught how to swim.
Speaker 1: It's not totally clear how direct this connection is, though.
Speaker 1: As the story goes, Wilbert a longfellow of Rhode Island,
Speaker 1: known as Commodore, was distressed about this disaster, and so
Speaker 1: he started working with organizations to teach children how to swim.
Speaker 1: Longfellow was definitely involved in this work, there's no doubt
Speaker 1: about that at all, but several of its milestones were
Speaker 1: still a few years off when this slocum happened. In
Speaker 1: Nine longfellow started working with the American Red Cross to
Speaker 1: develop water safety and swimming programs. He worked with the
Speaker 1: Y M C A and the boy scouts in the
Speaker 1: nineteen teams as well, but it was still some time
Speaker 1: before it was considered appropriate for women and girls to
Speaker 1: wear swimsuits that you could actually swim in. That's something
Speaker 1: that we talked about more in our episode on a
Speaker 1: Nette Kellerman, hey so much for joining us on this Saturday.
Speaker 1: Since this episode is out of the Archive, if you
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