by Ed O'Donnell
Not all those working aboard the steamboat enjoyed such freedom. In the galley, the cook, Henry Canfield, was slicing and dicing his way through a small mountain of vegetables destined for the large chowder kettle on the stove. Over in the corner sat Edwin Robinson, a nineteen-year-old novice doing what nineteen-year-old novices did: peel potatoes. Canfield and Robinson were among eight African-American members of the thirty-fivemember crew, and theirs would be a day of incessant toil. On this and every other trip, they worked nonstop in a setting like any restaurant in Manhattan, only smaller. They earned half what white crew members did and rarely got the chance to set foot on deck. Then there were the indignities suffered at the hands of white crewmen and passengers. But who were they to complain? In turn-of-the-century New York, they were lucky to have work at all and they knew it.
The passengers began enjoying themselves from the moment the trip got under way. Groups of parents and grandparents chatted avidly while packs of excited children scurried from rail to rail, not looking for anything in particular but not wanting to miss anything either. Here and there adults stood among them pointing out landmarks and identifying the many classes of vessels plying the waters around them. Already the picnic baskets were open and the first of many treats handed out. Several children played at games like bean ball and jacks.
Adding to the festive atmosphere was the music of Professor George Maurer’s German band. Gathered on the main afterdeck, they began playing a long list of favorite songs, which set dozens of girls and boys to dancing while their parents tapped their feet. Sixteen-year-old Frieda Gardner was among them and was having the time of her life. It was almost too good to believe—a whole day with her friends far from the overprotective eyes of her parents. Still, she felt a bit ill at ease even as she twirled about the dance floor. Her mother had forbidden her to attend. Would someone tell? She hoped not. If Mother finds out, she thought, I’m dead.
Many of the passengers aboard the Slocum that morning had never been on a boat before today and were still a little nervous. They were chided by other, more experienced excursionists who pointed to the countless life preservers suspended above the decks with wire netting and six steel lifeboats and four rafts on the top deck. There was nothing to worry about and, besides, their trip covered only inland waterways. They would never be out of sight of land. And if that were not reassuring enough, Maurer’s band soon struck up the popular hymn “Eine Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott” (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”), prompting passengers young and old to join in the singing. A song about God’s love and protection through hardship and toil, it offered comfort in its rhythmic lines:
A mighty fortress is our God
Our helper He amid the Flood
Also reassuring was the sight of Reverend Haas making his way from group to group throughout the crowded steamer. Tall, handsome, and at ease in such social situations, the fifty-year-old minister moved effortlessly through the throng. Others had done most of the planning and fretting over the trip, but he was the host. He greeted parents, complimented them on their children, agreed that the weather was especially fine (praise God), and issued mock warnings about eating too much. They in turn extended their congratulations to the pastor for yet another perfect outing.
Another St. Mark’s fixture receiving congratulations and good wishes from nearly everyone was John Holthusen. He had been the head of St. Mark’s Sunday school for twenty-seven years—longer than Haas had been pastor—and had just announced his retirement. That made the seventeenth annual excursion all the more special, for it was in a way being held in his honor. All thirty-one students from his last class were aboard for the special occasion, as were his two daughters.
Even as they chatted amiably with friends and family, passengers kept an eye on the passing panorama. Traveling up the East River on a clear morning provided a unique view of the wider city in which they lived. They could see it all—the beauty and filth, the wealth and poverty, the new and old—and it was hard not to stare. Viewing the city in this manner was part of the charm and entertainment value of a steamboat excursion, but it also provided passengers a unique perspective on their lives and aspirations. The Empire City offered limitless possibilities to the intelligent and ambitious, but also many pitfalls and perils. Signs of success were everywhere, but so too was the grim evidence of failure. This duality was visible in their own neighborhoods every day, but this morning offered a chance to see it writ large—and better still, from a distance. Amid the countless thoughts and emotions conjured up by the passing urban panorama, most passengers aboard the Slocum had one in common: the thrill of knowing that for this one day they could suspend their struggles and worries and enjoy a day by the water.
Many passengers also delighted in the knowledge that they were being watched. They knew this because they themselves had often stared in envy at passing steamboats filled with revelers bound for a day at the shore. They knew it also because people on the shore and on passing boats waved to them while countless workers along the shore looked up from their workbenches and leaned on their shovels for a moment or two. A few cap tains even let fly a blast from their horns to the delight of the children. They were a spectacle of joy that morning, or what one journalist later called “a freight of human happiness.”
One worker who paused from his morning routine was John Ronan. “Look at the Slocum,” said the freight handler along the Astoria waterfront, summing up the opinion of many. “Don’t it make you hate to work when you see a crowd having as good a time as that?”
A little fire is quickly trodden out, Which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HENRY VI, PART III
They shall go out from one fire, and another fire shall devour them.
—EZEKIEL 15:7
THE DEMON
Its exact origin will never be known. Most likely it originated with a match or cigarette carelessly tossed by a crewman, but it may have come from a lamp accidentally overturned by the roll of the vessel, or a spark from an overhead wire. In the end, all that mattered was that somewhere in the lamp room below the main deck of the General Slocum, a particle of fire had found a home.
The room was dark but very warm and filled with a great menu of flammable material. Stacked in one corner were cans of kerosene for the boat’s lanterns and jars of polish for its brass fixtures. Along the walls on pegs, hooks, and nails hung clothing. Scraps of wood lay in a pile against a wall beneath a shelf loaded with oil-based paint. Just inside the door were three sacks of charcoal. And near the middle of the room were the barrels used to transport dozens of glasses for use during the picnic. Dry hay, used to separate the glasses, filled the barrels and lay about the floor.
Nestled somewhere in this hospitable environment—by all later accounts probably in the hay—the tiny ember lay glowing. Most scattered particles of fire like this one, like the millions of eggs spawned by an At lantic codfish, die quickly. They simply consume the fuel they brought with them—a tobacco fragment, a few molecules of wire casing, a match splinter—and die.
Pyrologists, the people who study fire behavior, note that a tiny ember of fire can stay alive in what they term an incipient phase for hours, days, even weeks under certain conditions. That’s why modern firefighters remain at a fire scene hours after the fire has been extinguished, pulling down ceilings and poking holes in walls looking for hidden embers. The ideal conditions for an incipient phase fire include a warm, dry location with ample oxygen and fuel—precisely those found in the forward storage room on the Slocum.
Such conditions, however, merely extend a fire’s incipient phase. To reach Phase 2, or the emergent smoldering phase, a fire must progress from its original source (a match) to an ordinary combustible such as paper, wood, or cloth. As it does so, the evidence of fire—smoke and smell— grows, but there are still no flames. Most people who smoke in bed experience lots of near misses before the day arrives when they finally go up in flames. They simply wake up with singed
sheets before the fire progresses to Phase 3. Or it simply burns out. In some settings, like the Slocum’s lamp room with its door closed, the odds are overwhelming that a Phase 2 fire will self-extinguish by steadily consuming all available oxygen or immediate fuel.
For the tiny Phase 2 fire burning quietly and imperceptibly in the Slocum’s forward lamp room, three scenarios were possible. It might evolve into a fire beyond anyone’s control and result in unthinkable catastrophe. It might flourish briefly before being brought under control by the crew, resulting in only some short-term panic and perhaps a canceled day trip. Or it might simply self-extinguish and be discovered long after the danger had passed.
So long as it remained a Phase 2 fire in a stable environment, the surrounding combustibles—hay, wood, paper, oil, cloth, charcoal—were almost irrelevant. But if something radically altered the room’s environment and introduced a sudden rush of oxygen, the fire would jump to Phase 3 or free burning.At that point the wooden-hulled boat would be in grave danger. That would only happen, of course, if someone opened the door.
Deckhand John Coakley stood at the bar just a few minutes before 10:00 A.M. enjoying his midmorning glass of lager. Droplets of condensation on the outside of the glass announced the coolness of its contents. The beer’s foamy head rocked back and forth with the rhythm of the deck as the boat cleared the northern end of Blackwells Island (later renamed Roosevelt Island) at about 86th Street. The only thought on Coakley’s mind was how long he could stretch this break out before a visit by the first mate or captain sent him bolting back to work.
The serenity of the moment was broken by an unfamiliar voice. “Mister, there’s smoke coming up one of the stairways.” He turned around to find a small, excited little boy. Perturbed, he put his glass down and went to investigate. Probably a puff of steam, ran an irritated thought across his mind. Passengers, especially boys with Tom Sawyer-sized imaginations, were forever mistaking steam for smoke and needlessly riling passengers and distracting deckhands from their duties. His glance to the bartender said, Back in a minute.
A dozen reluctant steps out the door brought Coakley to the top of a set of stairs. Smoke, real smoke, not steam, flowed upward. Still, nothing to panic over, thought Coakley. Probably just a burst exhaust pipe leading from the boiler. Even if it was a real fire, the small amount of smoke suggested it was nothing serious.
He glanced at the speaking tube, or “blower” in sailor parlance, protruding from the wall. Should he alert the captain in the pilothouse? Not for something this trifling. Although green, Coakley had already learned several of the unwritten laws by which all deckhands operated, chief among them being, Don’t draw attention to yourself, especially from the officers.
Coakley cleared the cloud of smoke with a wave of his hand and disappeared down the stairs to investigate. At the bottom he came to the heavy door of the forward storage cabin. A thin thrust of smoke emanated from the slight gap between the bottom of the door and the deck.
Had he been trained in fire safety and procedure, Coakley would have known not to blindly open the door. But since the Slocum, like most steamboats of its kind, had not held a fire drill in anyone’s memory, he put his hand on the lever and jerked the door open. In seconds the fire leaped from the emergent smoldering to the free-burning stage. Engorged with a sudden resupply of oxygen, the silent, smoldering embers in the hay spit out the first tongues of orange flame. In less than a second the flames began to expand at a temperature surging past 1000 degrees. Dry hay, as it turns out, is a superb fire accelerant. Being of low density, it has a very high heat release ratio (HRR). That is, it generates heat very quickly, and heat is what determines the speed at which a fire moves and grows. Remarkably, a barrel of dry hay or a brittle Christmas tree has a higher HRR (500–650 kilowatts) than a pool of gasoline (400 kilowatts).
Coakley, unaware of what he’d set in motion, simply saw a small fire that needed putting out. Looking about the vast tangle of things in the room, he spied a piece of canvas. Perfect, he thought, a couple of whaps with that and no more fire.
Except that the canvas was tied to the floor. Coakley, now sweating, pulled violently but couldn’t free it. The snap crackle of the burning hay along with the rapidly rising heat told Coakley he’d better do something quick. By the door he found a sack of charcoal and dropped it on the flames. For a moment, the fire disappeared from view. He turned and bolted to find First Mate Flanagan. This was a situation for involving the higher-ups.
Coakley’s decision to throw charcoal on the fire might appear to be the fateful action that ensured the coming catastrophe. Actually, it was his failure to close the lamp room door. The fire, its growth only temporarily slowed by the charcoal, quickly resumed its progress in the free burning phase. Oddly enough, the lamp room would serve merely as the inferno’s launch pad and would itself sustain remarkably little damage despite its array of inflammables. The open doorway allowed oxygen to pour into the lamp room through its four air vents, fanning the flames and pushing them up the stairwell-soon-turned-chimney to an unlimited supply of oxygen and wood.
At that moment the General Slocum and its passengers were in grave danger. They still might be saved. If anyone knew how.
ALARM
While Coakley raced to find Flanagan, Captain Van Schaick strode into the pilothouse to oversee the passage through Hell Gate. For a brief moment the open door let in the joyful sounds of Professor Maurer’s German band, but it did little to lighten the mood inside. The steamer was just short of Hell Gate, and already the current had the full attention of pilots Van Wart and Weaver. They knew it had been only twelve hours since the Chester Chapin had landed on the rocks just ahead.
The key to a safe passage through Hell Gate was steady speed and anticipation. Speed was essential for maintaining maneuverability. A boat suddenly downthrottled by a spooked pilot could be swept onto the shore in an instant. Anticipating the movement of currents and other boats was likewise vital. Failure to foresee a looming crosscurrent or discern another vessel’s course could also spell disaster.Van Schaick immediately began issuing instructions.
Just then a sharp voice broke Van Schaick’s concentration. “Hey, mister!” On the deck below stood twelve-year-old Frank Prawdzicky. Having seen the flames and smoke in the stairwell, he’d come to sound the alarm. “Hey, mister,” the breathless boy repeated, “the ship’s on fire!”
Van Schaick glared at the young messenger. He’d heard it a thousand times before and it still enraged him just the same. Practical jokes and boys, he knew, went hand in hand. But pranks on steamboats involving the words fire, sinking, or overboard were not funny. They caused panic and endangered the lives of the crew.
“Get the hell out of here and mind your own business,” boomed the irritated skipper before returning to the pressing business of navigation. In less than a minute they’d be through Hell Gate and out of harm’s way—if the damn kids didn’t kill him first.
Coakley raced up the stairs in search of Flanagan, once again passing the blower he might have used to alert the captain in the pilothouse. At the top of the stairs a few passengers peppered him with questions about the smoke. Not wanting to cause any panic and desperate to find Flanagan, he pushed his way through without saying a word. The smoke from the stairway grew darker and started to billow.
He ran everywhere about the main deck, through the saloon and along the port and starboard passageways, but found no one but passengers. At last he came upon Flanagan and Second Mate James Corcoran supervising some deckhands. Coakley did his best to compose himself and pulled Flanagan aside. “Mate, the ship’s afire forward, and it’s making pretty good headway.”
Normally a first mate put little stock in the judgments of his deckhands, especially those with only eighteen days’ experience. But Coakley had just spoken one of the most dreaded words in the business—fire. Flanagan wheeled and led the men on a dead run past the main deck cabin, where Coakley’s beer still sat on the bar. Smoke from the stairwell
beyond had begun to fill the room, and by now a crowd of several dozen milled about with panic etched across their faces.
Is the boat burning? Is the fire under control? Are we in danger? Does the captain know? How many lifeboats are on board? Where are the life preservers? What should we do?
Flanagan offered no answers and instead spun about to consider his options. He’d seen a few fires on steamboats and knew instinctively that this one was different. Although he was normally loath to do so, never wanting to arouse the ire of Captain Van, he ran to the blower that led to the pilothouse and shouted, “The ship’s on fire!” Then, without waiting for a reply, he sprinted aft to the engine room in search of Chief Engineer Conklin.
At that moment Conklin and his assistant, Everett Brandow, were chatting amiably about the exceptional performance of the Fletcher engine while a small group of boys and mothers stood nearby watching it in operation. Flanagan raised his voice in order to be heard above the roar of the engine, but not so loud as to reach the ears of the nearby passengers. “Chief,” he blurted out in a voice laced with the very fear he desperately wanted to conceal, “the ship’s afire forward.” Stunned, the veteran Conklin listened as the first mate issued instructions. “Get to the pump,” Flanagan said, referring to the steam pump that provided water to the boat’s fire hoses. As Conklin leaped to his feet, Flanagan ran to the fire hose station about thirty feet away. Neither the boys nor their mothers heard a thing above the sound of the engine and assumed Flanagan was just giving routine orders.
As Conklin headed for the pump, it occurred to him that in his thirteen years on the Slocum he’d never seen anyone send water through the fire hoses, not even to test it. This better work, he thought, as he twisted the valve several times to get water for the fire hoses. The immediate swoosh of water surging through the pump and into the standpipe leading to the fire hose eased his mind a bit.