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| The Slocum Disaster |
 The General Slocum was launched in 1891. A steamship plying New York's East River, she was named after Civil War officer and New York Congresmman Henry Warner Slocum and built by Divine Burtis, Jr., a Brooklyn boatbuilder.
Her keel was 235 feet and her hull was 37.5 feet wide. Built of white oak and yellow pine, she displaced about 1,200 tons. A sidewheel boat with 31-foot in diameter wheels featuring 26 paddles, she could achieve 16 knots.
A crew of 22, including the captain and two pilots, worked the ship's three decks.
She ran aground only four months after being launched. Tugs managed to free her. In July of 1894, she hit a sandbar while ferrying 4,700 passengers. The force of the impact was enough to knock the electrical generator out, panicking the passengers and resulting in hundreds of injuries. The next month, she ran aground in a storm. The next month, she hit a tug, sustaining substantial damage and losing the ability to be steered.
Four years later, in July of 1898, she collided with another vessel. A riot broke out on board on August 17, 1901, while 900 drunken Paterson Anarchists were on board. Passengers attempted to wrest control of the vessel from the captain but the crew fought back. Seventeen men were arrested when the vessel docked at the pier.
In 1902, she ran aground with 400 passengers aboard. Stuck throughout the night, passengers camped out.
The real disaster struck on June 15, 1904 on an excursion around New York City. The General Slocum was chartered by the St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church as part of an annual rite for the group, something they had done for 17 consecutive years. Thirteen hundred passengers boarded the General Slocum, headed down the East River, across Long Island Sound, and arriving at Locust Grove, a picnic site.
 A fire broke out shortly after the ship got under way at 9:30 a.m. A discarded cigarette or match in the storage compartment in the forward section was probably to blame. The fire burned unnoticed until 10:00 a.m. and the captain, Captain William H. Van Schiack, was not notified for another ten minutes.
Also the safety authority on the ship, Captain Van Schiack had not had the fire hoses or lifejackets replaced in some time and there had never been a fire drill for the crew. Survivors of the fire later reported that the life jackets fell apart in their hands and that the lifeboats were tied up and inaccessible. Mothers who had thrown their life jacketed children into the waters watched in horror as the children sank under the weight of the useless life jackets.
Some suggest that the manager of the manufacturing company that made the jackets placed iron bars inside the cork jackets to meet minimum weight requirements. Mangers of the company, Nonpareil Cork Works, were indicted but not convicted. The canvas covers of the jackets, rotten with age, and spilled what cork was inside the jackets into the water.
Captain Van Schiack decided to not run the ship aground or find a nearby landing, later arguing that he feared it would ignite buildings and docks on land. Going into headwinds, however, the flames were fanned.
By the time the General Slocum made land at North Brother Island, off of the Bronx shore, 1,021 people had been killed by fire or by drowning when the heavy clothes of the day made it impossible to swim. There were 321 survivors. Two of the 30 crew members died as well. Captain Van Schiack lost sight in one eye from the fire. Eyewitnesses said Van Shiack abandoned his ship as soon as it ran aground, boarding a nearby tug along with several of his crew, his jacket barely ruffled.
The Captain, two inspectors, and the president, secretary, treasurer and commodore of the Knickerbocker Steamship Company were indicted by a Federal grand jury. Only Captain Van Schaick was convicted, found guilty on charges of criminal negligence and failing to maintain proper fire drills and fire extinguishers. The jury deadlocked on two counts of manslaughter against him.
Sentenced to ten years prison, Captain Van Schiack spent three years and six months in Sing Sing prison before being paroled. He was pardoned by William Howard Taft after President Theodore Roosevelt declined to do the same.
Despite evidence that the Knickerbocker Steamship Company had falsified inspection records, they only paid a small fine.
The General Slocum was recovered and converted to a barge before sinking in a storm in 1911.
The General Slocum disaster was the worst lost-of-life disaster in New York City prior to the September 11th, 2001 attacks.
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