by Ed O'Donnell
“499 Known To Be Dead!” (Herald)
“Horror in East River!” (Tribune)
“Many Gallant Rescues of the Drowning!” (World)
McClellan arrived to find city hall busier than usual, with all activity focused on matters related to the disaster. Key department officials filled the hallway leading to his office, as did three times the usual number of reporters. He politely brushed off their questions, promising to give a statement and entertain questions shortly.
His assistant John O’Brien greeted him with a stack of telegrams and expressions of condolence from President Roosevelt, the mayor of Philadelphia, and countless others. “Chicago sends to New York her heartfelt and honest sympathy on account of the terrible calamity which has just happened,” read a typical message. “Our own recent catastrophe [Iroquois Theater fire] makes us mournfully appreciative of the sorrow in which your city has just been plunged.” That same morning in Washington, D.C., President Roosevelt was receiving the first of many telegrams from foreign heads of state. “Profoundly moved by the awful catastrophe of the General Slocum,” wrote the president of France, Émile Loubet. “I have it at heart to address to your Excellency my sincere condolences and to send to the families of the victims the expression of my sorrowful sympathy.”
McClellan hastily dictated responses to the most important ones and then called in the heads of the departments responding to the Slocum crisis. He directed Commissioner Darlington to make arrangements for the burial of all unidentified bodies at the Lutheran cemetery in Middle Village, Queens. To Police Commissioner McAdoo, the mayor emphasized the need to relieve the suffering of those affected by the disaster. Any investigation into the causes of the fire and subsequent death toll could wait a day or two.
Next he dictated a letter to Reverend Haas.
On behalf of the people of our city and myself I express to you and to your stricken flock the sentiments of sorrow which pervade the community at the awful calamity which has come upon you.
In the hope that we may lessen, in some degree, the anguish which you and your people suffer, I have appealed to the generosity of our fellow citizens to render financial aid to those who may need it to care for their sick and to decently bury their dead.
We all hope that courage may be given to you to bear up under your great affliction.
Finally, after consulting with his advisers, the mayor drafted a proclamation announcing the creation of a relief fund and plans to create a committee to oversee it. It also called for the flags at city hall to be put at half-staff. Then, after answering several questions from reporters, McClellan excused himself and prepared to make a trip he did not want to make, but knew he must—a tour of both North Brother Island and the morgue.
It was going on noon when the mayor and several high-ranking officials stepped into a cab on Park Row for a short ride to the pier at the end of Fulton Street. Waiting was the tugboat Manhattan to take them to North Brother Island. Looking up as he stepped aboard, the mayor noticed the boat’s flag and asked that it be lowered to half-mast.
By now the overcast skies and drizzle had given way to bright sunshine and warm steamy temps. McClellan stood in the pilothouse and pressed the tug’s captain about the last journey of the Slocum, where the fire had started, and where, based on the wind and tides at the time of the fire, he would have run the steamer aground. The captain didn’t hesitate in his answer: “Sunken Meadows, not North Brother Island.”
Thirty minutes later the Manhattan docked at North Brother Island. McClellan was given a brief tour of the island by Health Commissioner Darlington, who also provided a detailed recount of the rescue response. At one point they passed the enormous stretch of coffins constructed during the night. The gloomy sight shocked the mayor and caused him to pause in silence for nearly a minute. A more upbeat moment awaited at the hospital, where he greeted and congratulated the staff for their heroic efforts the day before.
From there McClellan asked to be taken to the beach where the Slocum had run aground. He found dozens of men working in boats with grappling hooks, looking for bodies. They had been at it since daybreak, but with limited success. But now as the tide began to run, the rate of recovery in creased. Just minutes after McClellan arrived at the beach, a worker shouted that he had found a body. The mayor and his entourage watched as they lifted the frail form of a nine-year-old girl from the water and rowed it to shore.
“That makes number 522,” a coroner’s office clerk informed the mayor.
The sight made his stomach turn, and he struggled to retain his resolute bearing. “It is awful,” he muttered.
A lunch had been prepared for the mayor and those with him, but he balked. The things he had seen on the island, he said, had “robbed him of his appetite.” Instead, he took the opportunity to thank the men engaged in the recovery effort. “I can only regret the necessity that prompted it.”
With that, they headed for the tugboat Manhattan. McClellan felt a sense of relief as they departed North Brother Island, but he was hardly at ease. He had one more appointment to keep, and it was one he sorely wished he could avoid: the morgue.
LIFE KILLERS
The searching for bodies had begun again at daybreak despite the drizzle and choppy water. Toward midday, sounds of commotion on the floating diving platforms near the Slocum wreck caused salvage and recovery workers to look up. They could not believe their eyes at first, but after a few seconds it was clear they were not imagining it. Thundering upriver toward them was the Grand Republic, sister ship to the General Slocum, carrying over a thousand joyous passengers from two Harlem churches. Apparently the previous day’s disaster had failed to move Barnaby to cancel any bookings. Such a decision would not only cost the company money, but might also be taken as a sign of weakness, or worse, guilt.
The workers’ amazement at Barnaby’s decision quickly turned to outrage. Unlike the many steamers that had passed since dawn, the Grand Republic did not slow down. Nor did its captain order the band on board to cease playing. Indeed, as the boat approached the wreck, its passengers began cheering and waving hankies. They may have meant it as a sign of support and encouragement, but the men for whom it was intended took it as a gesture of derision. So too did the crowd of anxious relatives gathered on the Hunts Point shore hoping for news of lost loved ones.
Furious, Inspector Albertson began waving his arms and shouting to the pilot to veer off and slow down. Ignoring the warnings, he maintained top speed and stayed on course, clearly intent upon giving his passengers the best possible show by drawing as close as possible to the wreck. The steamer passed within a hundred yards of the wreck, sending a huge wake over the diving floats and disrupting the recovery effort for several minutes. “I thought I knew human nature,” commented Albertson, “but people are more callused than I ever thought them.”
The passing of the Grand Republic was merely the worst of many similar incidents on the East River that morning. Several more steamers would pass with bands playing and flags flying, their starboard rails jammed with gawkers, before the day was through. None came as close to the wreck as the Grand Republic, and several slowed down and silenced their bands as a sign of respect. Far worse were the scores of small boats filled with curiosity seekers and souvenir hunters. Some of the latter even pulled up to the wreck and tried to rip off pieces of the paddle wheel box. Albertson eventually had police boats establish a line beyond which none but official vessels could go. Word was also sent to the city’s excursion lines that captains of steamboats failing to slow down and steer clear of the wreck would be arrested.
The incident with the Grand Republic only served to spur on the efforts of Coroner William O’Gorman. Deeply affected by all he had witnessed in the twenty-four hours since the disaster, he was now more determined than ever to nail the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company and its callous president, Frank A. Barnaby. He’d heard enough from the survivors and seen enough useless life preservers to determine the chief cause of the disaster. To
prove his case he needed evidence, and he instructed the divers to be on the lookout for anything that might shed light on the Slocum’s safety equipment and the efforts of the crew to fight the fire.
Not long after his first dive, John Rice surfaced with a long section of pipe. It was the standpipe that ran along the boat’s starboard side to supply water to two fire stations. Just as O’Gorman had suspected, the valve was shut tight, indicating that no effort had been made to fight the fire from that station, even though it was on the side initially free of flames. His face flushed with anger, he turned to several reporters. “I don’t put a bit of stock into the pretty tales of heroic fire fighting reported by the crew when it was all over.”
Nearby stood a pile of equally damning evidence. “I found today more life preservers, or life killers rather, with rotten canvas coverings split, and rotten granulated cork half dribbled out of the place where good, honest, solid cork ought to have been.” Other life preservers were intact but waterlogged, taken from bodies pulled to the bottom of the river. What further evidence was needed, he fumed to the reporters, to show the Slocum’s owners and crew to be guilty of “criminal neglect, criminal carelessness and criminal cowardice”? His office, he warned, was committed to bringing the truth to light. “I have smoked a cigarette and tried to keep a smile going all the time, but when these things come to light, I get mad all over.” His anger would only intensify over the next few hours as subsequent dives brought up reels of fire hoses never unfurled and lifeboats wired tightly to davits.
Mad as he was, O’Gorman would not be the one to lead the first investigation into the disaster. That duty fell to fellow coroner Joseph Berry. He too was outraged by the mounting evidence that the Slocum carnage had resulted from negligence and cowardice.
Everyone agreed on the need for a formal investigation of the Slocum disaster, but there was considerable confusion over which level of government had jurisdiction in matters pertaining to steamboat accidents. Earlier in the day, McClellan had promised an investigation, but he wondered aloud whether the city had the legal standing to prosecute any wrongdoers, since steamboat laws were written by Congress and administered by the federal USSIS. George B. Cortelyou, Secretary of Commerce and Labor, the department that oversaw the USSIS, vowed to personally conduct a federal investigation leading to indictments of any guilty parties. William Travers Jerome, the flamboyant crusading district attorney for New York County, likewise promised to investigate. “I shall not rest until the guilty are punished,” he declared. “On my honor, I shall see them stew in prison!”
But until the questions of authority and jurisdiction were settled, only Coroner Berry possessed the authority to impanel a jury, issue subpoenas, and conduct hearings into the incident. By law, coroners were empowered to investigate any and all deaths involving questions of negligence or criminal activity.
Berry began his work immediately, and on Thursday, June 16, barely twenty-four hours after the Slocum ran aground, he began conducting preliminary interviews with key people associated with the disaster at his office in the Bronx. The first man called was Henry Lundberg, the USSIS inspector who certified the Slocum and its safety equipment as safe and up to standard.
“When did you last inspect the Slocum?” Berry asked. Lundberg, a large, broad-shouldered man, shifted uncomfortably in his chair, glanced at his lawyer, and spoke.
“I decline to answer that question,” he answered Berry, “by advice of counsel.” Berry immediately served him with a subpoena to appear before a coroner’s jury on Monday, June 20. He’d have no choice but to testify then. Nor would the members of the crew, officials from the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company, survivors, rescuers, and others—some two hundred in all—served with subpoenas over the next few days. But already, in addition to Lundberg’s refusal to speak, Berry had noticed a disturbing fact. The Slocum’s crewmen arrived at their interviews accompanied by high- priced lawyers paid for by the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company.
Clearly Barnaby was going to take no chances.
JUST ONE MORE
Mayor McClellan arrived at the Charities Pier at about 2:00 P.M.to inspect the morgue. North Brother Island had been disturbing, but he knew to expect far worse here. No sooner had the anxious mayor stepped onto the pier and removed his hat than his fears were realized. A woman who had just identified the body of her young daughter threw up her hands and fainted at his feet. Less than a minute later he was knocked off balance when two workers carrying a coffin bumped him on the shoulder.
A far more jarring experience awaited him inside the enclosed pier. In silence the mayor toured the facility, his shoes plip-plopping in the ice water that covered the floor, runoff from the coffins. The faces staring up at him from the open coffins—especially the children—affected him deeply. He and Mrs. McClellan had no children, but the image of so many dead innocents was seared upon his memory. “I shall never forget the horror of the scene … (at) the emergency morgue,” he wrote three decades later in his memoirs. “One little girl had gone down with her pet kitten in her arms, another was clutching what was evidently her best hat.”
He put on a good face, thanked the workers for their magnificent ef forts, and left as soon as possible, haunted by the scenes he’d witnessed and the dawning realization, as he later put it, “that there was so pitifully little that could be done.”
Not long after he departed, the orderly routine he witnessed was shaken by a near-riot outside the facility. Nearly one hundred policemen had worked to control the crowd, which grew larger as the day wore on. To keep out as many curiosity seekers as possible, the police cordoned off the area for two blocks around the morgue and allowed only those seeking their relatives to pass. The problem, of course, was that there was no reliable way to determine which seekers were legitimate and which were not. As a consequence, about six hundred or so legitimate searchers were prevented from getting to the morgue, and by 4:00 P.M. their desperation reached the breaking point. All it took to unleash their pent-up frustration was news that another tugboat bearing thirty-nine more bodies had arrived. The crowd surged forward, broke the police line, and raced for the doors leading to the pier. “With desperation born of distraction,” reported a journalist, “they fought to get entrance.” Normally the hardened blue- coats would have pulled their batons and pummeled the crowd into retreat, but they were under strict orders to use restraint given the horrific event that brought out the distressed masses. But when two elderly women at the head of the line were trampled, the batons were pulled out and orders given for the crowd to retreat. Slowly the anxious mourners fell back and reformed a line.
A short time later the crowd was again put in a frenzy when a gleaming carriage pulled by four black horses drove headlong into the line of mourners. Inside was the well-known banker William Hoffman, his wife, and several guests. Clad in formal attire and heading for an evening of fun at the Sheepshead Bay racetrack in Brooklyn, they looked as startled as anyone. Apparently Hoffman’s driver thought the ferry they wanted left from the East 26th Street pier. Fortunately no one was injured, and after profuse apologies Hoffman and his party retreated, their ears ringing from the denunciations of the crowd.
Apart from these incidents, the identification process at the morgue went surprisingly well throughout the day and into the evening. Despite continued suicide attempts and nervous breakdowns, searchers identified hundreds of bodies and made arrangements for their removal. A few of the identifications drew special attention. For example, Christian Schoett, an organist at St. Mark’s, was found in a coffin right next to one holding his fiancée. Margaret Gerdes was found, her relatives charged, without the $300 of jewelry she had worn on the trip. William Pullman, treasurer of St. Mark’s Sunday school, was found with a soggy $350 check in his pocket made out to the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company.
By midnight Thursday the body count stood at 561, including 130 as yet unidentified at the morgue. That still left as many as 500 persons missing and presumed dead. Their
relatives maintained their vigils at the morgue, growing more desperate by the minute. The trauma of losing loved ones in the disaster was now compounded by the fear that they might never recover a body. There is in most people a deep-seated need in such circumstances to find the remains of a loved one. Until they do, the tragedy seems unresolved or, in modern parlance, it lacks “closure.”
Adolph Molitor searched for forty-eight hours for his wife and three children, but with no result. “I searched high and low for them,” he told a reporter, “but can get no trace. I believe they are drowned and are floating somewhere in the Sound. It is very mysterious and I am almost heartbroken over their loss.” The great fear of searchers like Molitor was that their loved ones had been washed out to sea or that they were among the dozens burned beyond any hope of recognition.
Paul Liebenow and Frank Weber experienced the same feeling of hopelessness. Both men, brothers-in-law in search of two children each, had suffered severe burns in the fire but stayed for hours on end at the morgue, pinning their hopes on each new body delivered by the tugboats. They no longer had any illusions of seeing their children alive again. Indeed, that morning, before heading for the morgue, Liebenow had stopped at the local haberdashery to buy black armbands and other trappings of mourning. He was waited on by the same clerk who two days before had sold him a new suit and hat for the church excursion. Liebenow eventually located the body of one daughter, three-year-old Anna, but his six-year-old Helen and Weber’s two children remained unaccounted for.
The growing desperation of the searchers began to show not merely in their faces but also in their judgment. By Thursday evening morgue officials were wrestling with several agonizing cases of missing bodies. Adolph Hill, for example, identified two of his nieces, Christine and Lydia Richter, but when he returned with an undertaker their bodies were gone. The same thing happened to the Koeppler family, prompting them to take out ads in several newspapers.