Ship Ablaze

by Ed O'Donnell

  Some passengers, their vision obscured by panic or smoke, never noticed the armada of rescue boats in pursuit of the Slocum. Most, however, did see the boats putting out from shore or changing course in midstream to give chase, and it encouraged them to hang on a bit longer. Haas later remembered that when he and his family saw the boats as they clung to the railing at the far end of the promenade deck, “a faint ray of hope came to us.” They just might be saved after all—if the boats could only catch the steamer.

  Wade and his fellow tugmen had the same goal in mind: to pull alongside the burning vessel and take off as many passengers as possible. This desire grew more urgent as the growing number of bodies floating in the wake indicated that people had begun to jump—or fall. “To see the faces of those little ones, who drifted by struggling against death, but just out of our reach,” recalled one pursuer, “was agony to every one of us.” Some cap tains, unable to bear the agony and seeing no sign that the Slocum was about to slow down or stop, gave up the chase and began plucking victims dead and alive from the water.

  The rest pressed on, but few boats could match the Slocum for speed. “She went like the wind,” noted Captain Hillery of the Goldenrod. Only one managed to get alongside long enough to rescue some passengers. Captain Flannery of the Walter Traceydrew his tug alongside the burning steamboat, and in an instant a shower of children spilled across his deck from above. Some jumped; others were simply thrown by parents and bystanders. Catherine Gallagher, the eleven-year-old who received a last- minute ticket for the excursion, remembered that a man appeared out of nowhere and dropped her over the rail onto the tug. A few seconds later, the dauntless rescuers pulled away, fearful of setting the Walter Tracey on fire or getting blown to bits should the Slocum’s boilers explode. In his heart and head, Captain Flannery knew he’d done all he could to save dozens, but the decision to retreat did not come easily, nor would it be one easily forgotten. “Until my dying day,” he later told reporters, “I will hear the anguished cry that went up as I cut loose the burning boat.”

  CRUEL WATERS

  Passengers fortunate enough to jump without one of the Slocum’s deadly life preservers, or who managed to wrench themselves free from one in the water, were scarcely out of danger even if they could swim. Thundering toward them were the massive thirty-one-foot paddle wheels mounted on either side of the boat. Those still aboard watched in horror as people disappeared beneath the churning paddles. Only bubbling water and foam appeared on the other side, as if the unlucky had been ground to dust.

  A second peril to those in the water came from above. While a good many passengers jumped from the Slocum as individuals or, as one eyewitness described it, “in pitiful little clusters of three, four and five at a time,” huge numbers poured over the sides in a tangled mass of terrified humanity. Only the last to go over stood any chance of surviving the fall, as the first were knocked unconscious by those who landed upon them. Such was the fate of bandleader George Maurer. After he abandoned hope of finding a decent life preserver, he brought his family to the railing and prepared to jump. First he helped his wife lower herself into the water from a dangling rope. Then he clasped his two youngest daughters’ hands in his and jumped. Just as they surfaced, a large man landed on them and forced them under for good. The deep heel mark later found on Maurer’s head made it clear that he was knocked unconscious by the man who landed on him and most likely took his daughters down with him.

  If they managed to escape the paddle wheel and the heels of those who followed them into the water, a third peril awaited them—fellow victims. People drowning are arguably in the highest state of panic possible. By thrashing desperately with their arms and legs they usually are able to keep themselves afloat for 60 to 90 seconds. All the while they look for something—anything—to grab on to. To drowning people, anything above the surface of the water looks like salvation, even if it happens to be another person’s head. Filled with a primal urge to live, they lunge at the nearest person, lock them in a nearly inescapable panic clutch, and bring two lives to a quick end. This explains why modern-day lifeguards-intraining spend half their in-water time learning techniques for saving lives and the other half developing defensive skills to avoid the death lock of a drowning victim.

  Panic aboard the Slocum had moved decent, caring people to unspeakable acts of violence and cruelty in the name of self-preservation. “In the water,” remembered Susan Schultz, “it was worse.” While some managed to cling to a floating plank, chair, or life belt, most of the hundreds of desperate people fighting to stay afloat in the wake of the doomed vessel attacked their fellow victims. As soon as people hit the water, one witness remembered, “there would be a skirmish of grabbing at heads and arms, and the fellows that could swim would be pulled down and had to fight their way up.” Indeed, swimmers proved inviting targets for those clinging to life. “A powerful swimmer in that fearful, fighting crush of women and children,” wrote a reporter, “was almost as helpless as those who could not swim.”

  Annie Kiesel and her husband Edward, expert swimmers both, discovered this dreadful irony as soon as they began to swim for the shore with their children. While Edward and his son made it safely, Annie was attacked by a drowning man. She fought him off as best she could, but as a reporter later described it, “the man’s strength proved greater and Mrs. Kiesel saw her little girl disappear beneath the water with the drowning man.” Charles Schwartz, Jr., a seventeen-year-old who could swim, had his grandmother torn from him in a similar manner.

  Bernard Miller had much the same experience. He jumped overboard with his wife and four sons and they immediately made their way toward the shore on Randalls Island. “I started after them, but had not taken more than a dozen strokes when I was surrounded by half a dozen women, who clung to me and dragged me under.” A moment later all seven were saved by a rowboat, but by then Miller’s family had disappeared. He would later die on June 25, grief-stricken at his total loss.

  Later, during the body recovery phase, these stories of attack in the water were corroborated by grisly evidence. Time and again recoverers reached for a body only to discover two or three people locked in a final embrace. “[W]e found several women and children all tangled together,” remembered one rescuer, “as if they had fallen in a panic-stricken heap in to the water … and gripped one another tightly in their death struggle.” Some, like Emma Ottinger, who was found in the arms of a schoolmate, held fast to a terrified relative or friend; most simply died in the arms of a complete stranger.

  Not everyone who clutched another person in the water went to the bottom. Indeed, some managed to buy themselves precious additional seconds above the water’s surface by grabbing several fellow victims in succession before being pulled from the water. What saved them from a double-drowning was the fact that the person they grabbed managed to break free after a brief struggle. Many simply flailed about until they found another person to lock on to.

  Adult survivors emerged from the waters traumatized by the things they’d seen and done, and few spoke of having grabbed others. Children, however, told a different story. Unaware of the true nature of their actions— essentially drowning another person so they might live—they freely described them to reporters on the shore. “A man and a woman were in the water where I jumped,” explained twelve-year-old Sally Klein. “I caught hold of the man’s hair. He went under the water, and then I caught the woman by the foot. She went down too.” Young Walter Mueller recounted how he “grabbed a man’s neck and he went under the water. When I came up again I seized a woman by the hair.” Clara Hartman, another twelve- year-old, even expressed indignation that the man she grabbed by the neck fought her off. “He was awfully mean,” she remembered, “for he tried to push me away.” While children spoke of such things in innocent oblivion, adults remained silent, too ashamed to admit to their demoralized actions in the water.

  Many swimmers moved by pity or valor tried to help the drowning. George Heins was swimming for Nor
th Brother Island when he saw a little girl about six years old struggling in the water. “The poor little kid’s eyes were starting from her head,” he remembered, “and she was calling for her mamma.” He grabbed her, but “the current was so strong that I had to let go.” It was a look, he said, he’d never forget. Fred Lieberman was similarly traumatized by his unsuccessful attempt to save his brother. “I caught hold of Johnny’s hand and tried to save him,” he explained. “He lost his hold on my hand and the last I saw of him he was looking at me with an appeal on his face that was terrible.” Willie Keppler, a boy of eleven, nearly lost his life when he tried to save two women. “I had to break away to save myself.”

  A few succeeded in saving others and lived to tell of it. Not surprisingly, they tended to be the ones who saved young children—victims too small to overpower them. One young boy recounted that as soon as he surfaced in the water, “a little girl grabbed me by the back of my collar and held tight. I did not try to get rid of her. I swam to the shore, where one of the nurses took the child from my back.” Twelve-year-old Sally Klein was the only member of her family of ten to survive, because a boy about her age “put his arm around my waist and swam around with me … until I was dragged up on a boat.” John Muth, Jr., a boy of three, was saved by his father, who, recognizing amid the panic-churned waters his son’s bright red coat, grabbed hold and swam to shore.

  Adding to the struggles of those in the water was the fact that most were dressed in their Sunday best. Few had the presence of mind—or time—to remove their shoes and excess clothing. Men and boys went overboard in full suit and tie, but it was the women—and most of the passengers aboard the Slocum were women and girls—who had it hardest. Their ankle-length, long-sleeved dresses, undergarments, stockings, and high shoes weighed them down in the water and made it difficult even for the few swimmers among them to move.

  When they failed to find something to keep them afloat—another person or a buoyant object—the people in the wake of the Slocum began to drown. Although it is an experience of sheer terror, drowning usually happens quickly and without extreme pain. After sixty to ninety seconds of thrashing about on the surface, a drowning person submerges for the last time. If they managed one last gasp of air before going under, they will hold their breath (apnea) for as long as possible—until they reach what experts call the “breath-hold breakpoint,” the moment when their bodies can no longer tolerate the buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood (not to mention the lack of oxygen). For 85 to 90 percent of drowning victims who reach this point (somewhere between 87 and 140 seconds), their bodies’ internal survival system triggers a breath. In these so-called “wet” drownings, victims inhale (or aspirate) water, causing pulmonary distress and a rapid shutdown of vital organ function leading to death.

  In the remaining 10 to 15 percent of drownings, victims do not take that fateful underwater breath and aspirate. In these “dry drownings,” the larynx remains closed (laryngospasm) and victims lose consciousness and die from oxygen deprivation without a drop of water in their lungs. Susan Schultz was certainly well on her way to this fate when she was somehow grabbed and revived. “[A]fter I had been in [the water] a short time,” she remembered, “I felt a sort of suffocation. I could not breathe. My ears tingled and I seemed to hear sounds like music afar off.” The next thing she knew, she was on the island with a doctor working to revive her.

  Once a drowning victim reaches the breath-hold breakpoint and either aspirates or passes out, the fight is over. Many survivors of near-drowning experiences describe this stage as a peaceful surrender to what seems inevitable. “I gave up hope,” remembered Margaret Maurer, wife of the band- leader, “thinking I was going to be drowned. I felt a ringing sensation in my head and seemed as if I were going asleep.” Kate Kassenbaum related a similar experience. “I stopped struggling and didn’t seem to care any longer whether I ever rose to the top or not.”

  It is at this point that many report the proverbial experience of having their “life pass before their eyes” (what near-death experience, or NDE, experts call a “past-life review”). If not their whole life, they recall seeing loved ones and reviewing special moments in their life. Some, of course, also speak of encountering God, deceased relatives, and a glimpse of the afterlife. Most of the Slocum victims who plunged into the East River never lived to tell of such experiences as may have occurred. They simply drowned in a matter of three to four minutes. Some of the victims brought to shore and pronounced dead would have been easily revived in our era, but no one knew how in 1904. The development of the technique known as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was half a century off yet. Of the few who were brought back from drowning, only two mentioned entering into such a euphoric state. “I remember I wondered in a dreamy sort of way,”recalled Kate Kassenbaum, “if any of my children were near me and if they would be saved.” Clara Hartman remembered, “I had a dreamy idea that I was going to my death, and along with it was a delicious sensation of having left all mortal cares aside.”

  IT’S OVER WITH HER

  Up in the pilothouse, pilot Ed Weaver unleashed a steady stream of whistle blasts announcing to all within earshot the steamer’s distress. Van Wart gripped the wheel, his hands sweating from the rising heat, and steered the charging ship for the small island just ahead. It still looked agonizingly far off, despite making good headway. And the flames now surrounded the pilothouse.

  Van Schaick shouted orders amid the smoke and flame. He faced straight ahead, eyes fixed on North Brother Island. Then he glanced toward the piers along the Bronx shore. Minutes earlier he’d rejected the idea of landing there. Now they seemed so close, and a nagging voice inside him said, Do it! Hard to port and you’ll be at a pier in no time!

  For a brief moment Van Schaick’s fixated mind-set buckled and he gave the order to Van Wart to swing the Slocum hard to port. Van Wart spun the wheel and the Slocum’s bow turned toward the Bronx piers. In making the sudden turn, the boat heeled to starboard, a motion that sent dozens of passengers pouring pell-mell over the side.

  Ten seconds later Van Schaick countermanded his own order. “Ed, it’s over with her,” he shouted to Van Wart. “Keep her jacked up and beach her on North Brother Island right ahead, starboard side in, so the people can jump into the shallow water.” Again his pilot turned the vessel—this time to starboard—sending still dozens more into the water off the port side. “It seemed as if women and children were pouring over the sides like a waterfall,” remembered one eyewitness.

  The captain later claimed that he made his decision to veer away from the Bronx piers only when a tugboat captain waved him off, warning that he’d touch off an even larger inferno at the nearby lumberyard and gas works if he landed. That he ever saw—much less heard—a tugboat under the conditions then present in the pilothouse is doubtful.

  In the final seconds of the race to North Brother Island, few on board the Slocum knew that land was at hand. Smoke and panic obscured their vision and left them disoriented. All they knew was that fire seemed to be closing in from all directions. Clothing and hair ignited in the heat and flying sparks, and more and more jumped overboard. But those who could clung to the rails, hoping to avoid death by incineration as much by drowning at the hands of a careening crowd.

  Reverend Haas and his family had reason to hope that they might make it. By virtue of their position by the boat’s stern railing, the point farthest from the flames, they’d been able to hang on longer than most. But as they neared—perhaps even as they hit—North Brother Island, they were carried into the water and away by a wave of terrified humanity.

  When Haas resurfaced he momentarily found his wife and daughter and struggled to hold their heads above water. A moment later another torrent of desperate passengers poured down upon them, forcing them beneath the water once again. Haas lost his grip on Anna and Gertrude, and when he surfaced for the second time, “my wife and child were gone.” Badly injured and in shock, Haas did not remember how he managed to avo
id drowning, only that dozens around him were engaged in the same struggle. “One by one,” he later remembered, “I saw them sink around me, but I was powerless to do anything.” The shepherd never mentioned it, but in all likelihood his struggle to survive forced him to beat back his own flock, panic-crazed and attempting to use him as a life raft. Eventually a tug came and hauled him to safety.

  In its final minute the interior of the General Slocum began to collapse. The hull shuddered and groaned like a wounded animal as the fire devoured wooden bulkheads and support beams that held up the decks. August Schneider, a member of the band, stood with his wife and three children on the main deck. Luck seemed to be with them, for they’d managed to sidestep a panicked group as it careened through the railing and spilled into the river. Now with the steamer’s turn toward North Brother Island, the wind began to blow the flames away from them. Hearts pounding, they huddled together, hoping to hold on until the ship hit land. Suddenly and without warning the upper deck collapsed toward the center of the steamboat in a thunderous crash. The implosion sent up a huge torrent of flame and sparks. When Schneider opened his eyes he found that only he and his daughter, little Augusta, remained. His wife and two older daughters had disappeared into the fiery hole yawning before them, gone forever.

  Moments later the second deck gave way toward the center. Dozens more were crushed to death by the tons of falling debris. Others not so fortunate were pinned alive beneath the wreckage, condemned to a slow but certain death by smoke or flame.

  Van Wart brought the floating inferno at full throttle onto the beach at the island’s western edge. He came in straight and hard and at the last minute tried to swing the vessel in such a way that would leave its starboard railing parallel with the beach. But rocks and other obstacles hampered his effort. Seconds later, to the deafening sound of the hull striking rocks, the Slocum shuddered to a halt like a wounded dragon, twenty feet from the shore at the bow, stern out.