Q: A reader asks "I know that the 9/11 tragedy was the biggest
loss of life in the city's history. What
event is the second biggest and are there any parallels to 9/11?"
 |
| September 11, 2001 Attacks |
A: The Slocum tragedy in 1904 was the second biggest loss of life in New York City history and the worst inland-waters, peacetime tragedy in the nation’s history.
On the clear summer day of June 15, 1904, more than 1,300 New Yorkers, mostly German immigrants from the congregation of St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church of East 6th Street in the heart of what was then Little Germany, boarded the
Slocum, a triple-decker wooden ship built in 1891 and named after General Henry Warner Slocum (1827-1894) who commanded the extreme right line of the Union Army at Gettysburg, for the church’s seventeenth annual picnic in Locust Grove on Long Island.
 |
| Slocum Ship (1904) |
Donning their best attire and ready for a much anticipated
day of picnics and dancing, the passengers waived goodbye to loved ones on
shore as the ship left dock on the Third Street Pier in the East River around 9:30
am and headed north.
Less than 30 minutes into the journey, the
ship caught fire, likely due to an errantly tossed match.
The fire ferociously spread, engulfing the
ship in an inferno and leaving those on board with the difficult decision of
remaining on the burning ship or jumping to their likely death by drowning in
the East River. In less than an hour, the tragedy claimed 1,021 lives.
Describing the scene of death and
destruction, Coroner William O'Gorman, Jr. said no witness "will ever
forget the scene.
It is the kind of
thing that a man will wake up nights and see again before him in the
darkness."
The events of 9/11 have awakened new interest in the Slocum
tragedy and its comparison to 9/11. While the Slocum Tragedy and 9/11 are two
markedly different events ─
the former rooted in negligence, the latter in evil ─ there are many parallels between the two
events. Like 9/11, the Slocum tragedy
brought out the best in the city. Upon
hearing the news, many rushed to the scene and risked their lives to help. Lulu McGibbon, a switchboard operator who
possessed the rare skill in 1904 of being able to swim, saved a dozen people in
a series of daring rescues into the water before she passed out on shore in
exhaustion. Also like 9/11, there was an inspiring
response to the tragedy in which many dipped into their pockets to help those
in need.
Unlike 9/11, however, the Slocum tragedy was a
"concentrated tragedy" in the words of several newspapers at the
time. Nearly all of those killed resided near each
other in what was once called Little Germany, or “Kleindeutschland” to
residents, a thoroughly German area that has its origins in the German stampede
that began in the 1830s. One observer in the 1850s remarked that
Little Germany “has very little in common with the other parts of New York” and
that there was not a single business there which was not run by Germans. The tragedy accelerated the decline of Little
Germany, which, at the time, was an expansive one-hundred block area
north-south from Houston to 14th Streets and east of Second Avenue
to the East River.
 |
| Slocum Memorial Fountain (Tompkins Sq Park) |
Edward
O’Donnell,
author of Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum, told
Hidden New York that ethnic enclaves
like Little Germany have very short lifespans
─ they provide new immigrants with advantages such as
family, friends, and customs, but over time as immigrants prosper they look to
move to better neighborhoods.
“Many
people in the neighborhood were likely considering a move elsewhere before the
Slocum disaster, but the tragedy pushed
them to take action.
Many people, even
those who had not lost loved ones, said the neighborhood held too many dark
memories of the fire,” said O’Donnell. The Slocum Memorial Fountain in Tompkins Square Park
commemorates the tragedy.
Dedicated in
1906 by the Sympathy Society of German Ladies, the nine foot upright stele is
made of pink Tennessee marble with a relief of two children looking seaward and
the words “They were Earth’s purest children, young and fair” over a lionhead spout.
Although one hundred years of acid rain and
city air has faded the memorial considerably, the lionhead spout remains
operational.
