The Slocum Tragedy Through 9/11 Eyes

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 14^th 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.

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