Ship Ablaze

by Ed O'Donnell

  The unusually large crowd gathered on East Seventh Street near the pastor’s house gasped when they saw him shuffle out onto the stoop, his son and brother on each side. They were moved, as they had been on board the Slocum during the panic and at North Brother Island in the aftermath, by his unbending sense of duty and courage. They’d been told he was near death and now here he was, burnt hands swathed in bandages and scorched face covered in medicinal powder, preparing to make a long, jolting ride to the cemetery to bury his wife and sister-in-law. Even in this moment of extreme personal grief and suffering, Haas found strength in the crowd’s remarkable display of support and sympathy. Though it only added to his sorrow to gaze out across the ocean of grief-stricken faces as he descended the brownstone stairs to the curb, he nodded silently to them, acknowledging their condolences and offering his own. Haas then gingerly stepped up into the black carriage and took his seat. One of the attendants from the undertakers closed the door and signaled the driver of the lead hearse. Slowly the cortege pulled away, the weeping crowd gradually filling in the street behind it.

  One hour later, at 3:00 P.M., mourners and sympathizers gathered by the thousands to witness the most moving spectacle of the sorrowful day. Starting from the morgue at East 26th Street, thirteen hearses moved in somber formation south along Second Avenue. All traffic, even other funeral processions, was stopped to let pass the ten black and three white vehicles bearing the remains of twenty-nine unidentified victims. Only one carriage followed, carrying two men from the health department under orders to make an accurate map of the burials should any of the coffins need to be disinterred.

  Aware that with hundreds of victims still unaccounted for, and that many grieving relatives of the dead would identify with these unknowns, officials arranged for the procession to wind its way through the streets of Little Germany, making certain to traverse East Sixth Street past St. Mark’s Church. From the sidewalks mourners threw flowers in front of the hearses and called out the names of their missing kin. Many knelt on the hard sidewalk as it passed. Reporters noted that even the policemen wept as the vehicles slowly rolled by on their way to the Williamsburg Bridge and the burial ground.

  By the time the cortege of the unknown Slocum dead arrived at the Lutheran cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, at about 4:30 P.M., thou sands of mourners and dozens of hearses and carriages jammed its narrow lanes. Many, like the Haases, were on hand to bury their dead, but a great many had made the trek to attend the burial of the unknowns. Among them were those whose loved ones remained unaccounted for and who just might be among the twenty-nine burned beyond recognition. They looked upon each casket with expectant eyes that asked, in the words of one reporter, “Does it hide one of mine from me?”

  A full hour passed before the coffins containing the remains of eleven children, seventeen women, and one man were placed in the long trench dug the night before. Shortly after the last worker climbed out, Rev. D. W. Peterson of nearby Trinity Lutheran Church raised his hand. Silence fell over the scene as thousands fixed their eyes upon the minister. “We are gathered here under the shadow of common grief,” he told the crowd in a voice that broke with emotion, “and we will join in the singing of ‘Nearer, My God, To Thee.’ ” With a trembling voice he began the song that all knew by heart. Gradually the crowd joined in, sending the mournful strains of the song out across the rolling hills of the cemetery. By the end of the first verse, the crowds assembled throughout the cemetery at eight other funerals had joined in, as had the grave diggers, journalists, and policemen. For several minutes all set aside their individual sorrows to join in a common expression of faith and forbearance. When at last the final lines were uttered, Reverend Peterson again raised his hand to speak some final words of encouragement. “Remember that the Lord does all things well. His ways are mysterious but they work out His own glorious ends.” Then, in spite of himself, he dissolved into uncontrolled sobbing. Like the song of a moment before, the minister’s tears set the crowd to crying and wailing. Then in groups and as individuals they came forward to murmur a final prayer and toss handfuls of dirt into the trench before turning to walk away.

  QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

  While the people of Little Germany struggled in what one paper termed “one complete web of woe,” the work of city officials, fund-raisers, investigators, divers, and journalists continued unabated. In the case of the latter, no group was busier than the investigative team sent out by the Times to establish an accurate list of the dead and missing. In apartment after apartment they found grieving relatives. Most proved willing to provide the reporters with the information they sought. Many of these interviews took place next to one or more coffins awaiting burial. Others, like that with Fred Diehl of 200 East Fifth Street, occurred in an atmosphere of despair. Diehl jumped to his feet when the reporter knocked, but immediately collapsed in a chair when he realized he’d misinterpreted the intention of the caller. “Oh, I thought it was someone bringing them to me,” he said, referring to his missing wife and three children.

  I have almost walked my feet off looking for them and I can’t find a trace of a single one. If this keeps up much longer I shall go crazy. I walk through the house and at every step a pain goes to my heart. There are their schoolbooks, just where they left them. I open a closet door and see their clothes, and I have to turn away. I cannot believe that they will never return. Oh, they must come back! This is just a bad dream I’m having, and soon I’ll wake up.

  The reporter recorded his information and left the despondent man to continue his vigil in his dark and empty apartment.

  Other knocks went unanswered, as many families were out visiting the morgue, making funeral arrangements, or attending funerals. Neighbors answered questions and corrected errors on the list. As expected, the reporters were able to strike several hundred names from the list, mostly because multiple spellings or erroneous addresses had resulted in several families being listed twice. The Times also noted that many addresses were clearly fraudulent, doubtless supplied by curiosity seekers in order to gain entry to the morgue.

  But to their great surprise, the reporters found themselves adding nearly as many names to the list as they took off. One child listed as Agnes Alga, for example, turned out to be two girls, Agnes and Olga Grolke. In addition, the reporter also learned that a third girl previously unaccounted for, Mamie Ryan, had gone with the Grolke sisters and not returned. More startling, however, were the discoveries of families not on the list because every member had perished in the fire. A widow named Johanna Vassmer, for example, went on the excursion with her daughter and never returned. Only a chance mention by a neighbor to a Times reporter led to the discovery and the addition of two more names to the list.

  At the end of the day, the reporters returned to the Times offices and began comparing notes. Over the course of the next few hours, they fashioned a new and far more accurate list. Whereas in Saturday’s morning edition the paper listed 560 bodies recovered and 448 missing with an estimate of 900 killed, the adjusted totals in Sunday’s paper would read: 581 bodies recovered, 270 missing, and 812 estimated dead. The Times canvass had clarified the picture considerably, but its goal of dramatically reducing the death toll estimate was not realized. The “extreme estimate,” the paper feared, would prove correct in the end.

  Far downtown at the USSIS offices, Robert S. Rodie faced a different set of reporters. Perturbed by their probing questions, he once again inflamed public opinion with his arrogant and officious responses. Would he, they asked, consent to public demand for the Grand Republic, sister ship of the Slocum, to be reinspected? No, he answered curtly, the USSIS will only reinspect a vessel if requested in writing by its owner. “The board,” he informed the reporters in an irritated tone, “does not devote its time to attending to the wants of the public.” Two hours later, doubtless aware of the anger generated by his dismissive remarks, Rodie notified reporters that henceforth he and other officials would communicate with the media only through w
ritten statements.

  It was this attitude of indifference to the suffering of hundreds that spurred Coroners O’Gorman and Berry on all day in their relentless search for evidence of negligence and wrongdoing on the part of Barnaby and the officers and crew of the Slocum. O’Gorman made arrangements for a local captain to take him and other officials on an excursion retracing the Slocum’s ill-fated journey. He also collected more physical evidence from the wreck, most notably a section of cheap and worn fire hose. Berry issued more subpoenas and interviewed several witnesses in preparation for the formal inquest on Monday.

  At city hall the most pressing matter was an emerging dispute over how best to recover the several hundred bodies believed to be still trapped inside the sunken Slocum. There were two options—dynamite the wreck, as the divers recommended, or hire a salvage company to raise it. Frank Barnaby, McClellan was told, was blocking either move, claiming that the Slocum was no longer owned by the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company, but rather by a marine insurance company. If he gave permission to dynamite the wreck, he explained, his company would forfeit the $70,000 claim that, he assured everyone, he intended to donate to the relief fund. Barnaby likewise tried to block the effort to raise the Slocum, claiming that his company was bankrupt and unable to afford the expected $10,000 fee (this move was part of Barnaby’s overall plan to dissolve his company and thereby leave no assets that might later be seized in a lawsuit). The boat’s insurers were willing to offer only $5,000.

  McClellan bristled at the news of Barnaby’s obstinance. “There is no time to be lost,” he explained. “Red tape can not enter in to this matter.” Grieving family members must not be made to wait to receive the remains of their loved ones. Raise the wreck immediately. The city will put up whatever funds are necessary. “These bodies must be taken out at once….” Turning to Police Commissioner McAdoo, he authorized him to contract with the Merritt Chapman salvage company to raise the boat as soon as possible.

  The mayor’s Relief Committee reported that as of Saturday evening, more than $22,000 had been collected. Already over one hundred families had been given assistance. “The visitors have found the people affected,” a representative of the committee assured the public, “to be self-respecting and not the kind who would ordinarily accept aid from any committee.”

  Out on the East River, divers and boatmen extracted twenty more bodies from the water. Now more than ever, as the effects of seventy-two hours’ submersion began to render the bodies less and less recognizable, morgue officials took note of any small clue that might lead to a positive identification. One woman in her late twenties wore a wedding ring marked “F.H. to A.T. Jan. 28, 1892.” A young boy carried a piece of stamped metal that read “Frank De Luccia goes to P.S.” Another woman bore no identification, but drew the attention of nearly everyone because she was found tangled in an American flag. A little boy was found with a small flag in his pocket on which was stitched the motto “Be thou faithful unto death.”

  All were taken by tug to the Charities Pier and immediately embalmed. Identifications began almost as soon as the doors were flung open to admit the searchers. Only seven remained unclaimed when the morgue closed at

  10:00 P.M. Nearly five hundred had yet to be found. Several hours later the police received a call from a citizen reporting a disoriented man wandering the streets talking incoherently to himself. The officers who responded to the call found Walter Watson in a state of sheer madness. The twenty-nine-year-old morgue attendant had been on duty at the Charities Pier since Wednesday. “I can’t identify that body,” he said to some imagined figure. “Take it away. Bring me another one. No, I can’t identify that, either. Take it away.” The officers took him into custody without a struggle. He was later committed to the psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital.

  THE ACT OF MAN

  He could hear their cheerful voices echoing down the tiled hallway of Lebanon Hospital. The sound pulled him out of the delirious fog that had enveloped his mind since his arrival Wednesday night. Captain Van Schaick had slept only intermittently since then, in between intense bursts of pain from his broken heel and burned skin and the haunting, harrowing memories of the fire that destroyed his boat and more than three-quarters of its passengers.

  The cheerful chattering grew louder and then stopped just outside the door to his ward. Then in filed fifteen or so young girls dressed in Sunday best. They were members of a group called the Christadora Club from Little Germany. They had come to bring flowers and treats to the victims of the Slocum disaster still recuperating in the hospital. By chance their first stop was at the bedside of Captain Van Schaick.

  Their innocent faces, full of life and devoid of judgment, were a welcome sight to the weary mariner. He’d had regular visits from his son and other well-wishers, but also less welcome calls from the press and the coroner’s and district attorney’s offices.

  With tears in his eyes, the old captain thanked the girls for their kindness, but gently declined to accept their offerings of flowers and fruit. Give them to the victims whose injuries and sufferings were greater than his, he told them. Somewhat hesitantly they retrieved their gifts and went on their way.

  The captain had had few pleasant moments since the fire. Confined to a bed in a dreary ward, he’d had little to do but relive over and over in his tormented mind the dreadful final minutes aboard the Slocum. Each time as the events replayed in his mind he could hear the screams of women and children and see the flames chasing them overboard. No matter how many times he assured himself that he’d done all that he could, voices of doubt whispered in his head. He went over the options and every time came to the same conclusion: beach her on North Brother Island. Convincing himself that he’d made the right decision, however, did little to stop the traumatic images unfolding over and over again in his mind. And then there was the matter of the Slocum’s safety equipment and the readiness of his crew. How would he answer the inevitable questions that would surely arise during the coming coroner’s inquest?

  The one bright spot in all this gloom was the chance reunion of the captain and a former love. Van Schaick had been married briefly in his younger days, but had lived the life of a bachelor for more than thirty years. Handsome and affable, he’d dated a succession of women, but each relationship dissolved for one reason or another. So it had been with Grace M. Spratt, a nurse twenty-five years his junior. They’d courted for seven years when the relationship finally dissolved. Several years had elapsed since their parting when their paths crossed a second time at Lebanon Hospital. It seemed a small miracle to Van Schaick that such horrific circumstances could produce so welcome a result. Perhaps it was his helpless condition, or maybe just the fact that he was a bit older now, but he realized how much he cared for her—needed her. He looked forward to her regular visits and warm words of encouragement. He sensed that she still harbored feelings for him. And, he learned to his great relief, she was not married.

  Sunday morning, scarcely a pulpit in the city failed to take up the subject of the Slocum disaster. Some ministers, like Rev. John B. Remen snyder, president of the Lutheran Synod, urged his listeners to accept “this fearful visitation” of God’s hand. “God’s ways,” he reminded them, “are higher than our ways, and His thoughts higher than our thoughts, …let us not question them.”

  A far more common theme, however, focused not on God’s ways but on the actions of His deeply flawed people. “If a cowardly crew,” thundered Rev. John L. Belford of Saint Peter and Paul in Brooklyn, “seeks its own safety instead of fighting the fire or saving the helpless, the disgrace is not due to Providence, but to selfish and base humanity.”

  To drive a boat at full speed with a burning furnace in her bow seems madness. To expect God to change the laws of nature would be presumption. The disaster was not the act of God. It is the act of man. It comes from greed, neglect of duty, from defiance of law and conscience.

  Still others hit harder, bringing forth a theme then gaining wider currency in t
he reform-minded Progressive Era: the evil of the impersonal and unreachable corporation. “With the growth of corporations,” noted Reverend Huntington of Grace Church, “there is a tendency to eliminate the individual, so that no one person will be held responsible when something goes wrong.” Reverend James Oliver Wilson of the Nostrand Avenue Church in Brooklyn agreed, but was more blunt in his assessment of guilt. “Sin did it,” he declared, “sin in the individual, and sin in the corporation. But for sin in the Knickerbocker Company, the sin of greed and carelessness, the boat would not have burned.” “We wonder at times,” lamented Rev. C. D. Case of the Hanson Place Baptist Church, “whether many a corporation does not do the least possible and not the most for the good of the people. If a corporation can prove that it simply obeyed the law, it feels morally free.” At a minimum, most clerics agreed, the guilty should be brought to justice, tougher codes for steamboat construction should be enacted, and an honest system of inspectors put in place. In most churches, special collections were taken up for the relief of those affected by the tragedy. The most extraordinary service on Sunday was attended by neither sermon nor collection. At 10:00 A.M.a modest crowd, half the normal size for a typical Sunday, filed into the pews at St. Mark’s Church. While outside the edifice “the fluttering emblems of death” were everywhere in the form of flower arrangements and black bunting and crepe, inside, the church gave no indication of the extraordinary fate that had befallen its members. “The pews were gaunt and crypt-like in their empty desolation,” recorded one journalist, “the walls were undraped and the altar …was naked and bare. On the lectern only were a few black bows.”