Book Description

On June 15, 1904 about 1,200 members of the Lutheran Parish of S. Mark, located in the Lower East Side of New York City, embarked on the excursion steamer GENERAL SLOCUM bound for a day's outing on Long Island. Thirty minutes later fire broke out. The crew, most of whom had only been on theship for a few days, were unable to quench the blaze which was soon out of control. Captain Van Schaick ordered full speed ahead and, ignoring the shore 300 yards away made a frantic dash for a small island nearly two miles distant. The wind, made all the stronger by the swift movement of theship, drove the fire sternward where most of the passengers, almost all of them women and children, had taken refuge. Many were burned to death but the great bulk drowned when they jumped into the rive to escape the flames, or fell in when the ship's handrail collapsed. The official death toll was1,031. It was America's second worst marine disaster. It was quickly discovered that the life-belts and fire-fighting apparatus were useless. Public opinion was outraged and the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt was seriously embarrassed when a report describing the utter incompetence of the Federal Steamboat Inspection Bureau was released. The government dismissed several members of the Bureauand even brought one of the inspectors, Henry Lundberg, to trial three times but never won any of the cases. In the end only aged Captain Van Schaick was made to pay for his own negligence as well as that of everyone else. In 1906 he was sentenced to ten years at hard labor; appeals kept himout of Sing Sing until 1908, when at the age of 71, he at last started to serve his sentence. The old man's imprisonment was considered a monstrous injustice by many who bombarded the White House with letters and petitions asking for clemency. Roosevelt stood firm. After three and one-half years in prison Van Schaickwas paroled and, a year later, pardoned by President Taft. Meanwhile, St. Mark's Parish, or little Germany as it was often called, went into an irreversible decline. The survivors attacked their leading clergyman, Pastor George Haas, for his handling of the thousands of dollars in relief money collected for the destitute. More importantly many families affected by the tragedy moved away in order to forget the horror of theaccident and within a few years one of the strongest ethnic communities in New York City had vanished.