Ship Ablaze

by Ed O'Donnell

  GUILTY

  Everyone who attended Tuesday’s session of the coroner’s inquest understood that the case would go to the jury that day. As a result, an atmosphere of impatience suffused the steamy drill room as still more witnesses were brought forth to nail down final points in Garvan and Berry’s case. The calling of two final witnesses in the afternoon temporarily sparked renewed interest among the jury and spectators.

  Julius Mayer, counsel for Inspector Lundberg, sent a jolt through the audience when quite unexpectedly he called his client to the stand. Despite invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refusing to answer questions on two previous occasions, Lundberg was now eager to tell his story. To no one’s surprise, he painted a picture of a diligent inspection back on May 5, in which he counted and personally inspected all 2,550 life preservers on the Slocum. He found 25 defective and ordered them destroyed. Garvan chose not to challenge this fanciful recollection by noting how it differed significantly from a statement Lundberg issued on the day of the fire claiming that he had counted 3,000 life preservers and rejected none. The district attorney was confident that the ev idence, including Lundberg’s admission that he passed the fire hose without running water through it, pointed to criminal negligence.

  This surprise testimony was quickly followed by another remarkable announcement—that Captain Van Schaick wished to have his version of the disaster placed on the record. The drill room fell silent as a wheelchair bearing the slumped form of the captain was wheeled into the room and to the witness platform. The audience watched with a mixture of anger and pity as he gingerly hobbled to the witness chair. His face was partially covered in bandages and one foot bore a cast.

  Van Schaick’s testimony was simple and straightforward and it produced no surprises, except his admission that no new life preservers had come aboard the Slocum since 1894 and his insistence that fire drills were routinely held on the boat. As expected, the captain stood by his decision to run for North Brother Island and let it be known, with the help of leading questions from Attorney Dittenhoeffer, that he had safely carried some 30 million passengers before June 15 without a fatality. In fact, the captain exaggerated his record of safety by claiming, “I never had an accident.”

  Toward 5:00 P.M. the last witness stepped down and Coroner Berry proceeded to read his charge to the jury.

  This great loss of life has shocked the entire world, and, it is hoped, has roused the United States authorities, as it has the city authorities, to take such steps as will prevent a like possibility in the future.

  The law requires a carrier of passengers to exercise the strictest vigilance in receiving a passenger, conveying him to his destination, and setting him down in safety—the strictest vigilance that the means of conveyance employed and the circumstances of the case will permit. Now, the reason of this rule is manifest. A passenger cannot know, nor is he presumed to know, anything about the machinery of a ship or its equipment or appliances. He has paid his passage, and he is wholly passive in the hands of and is at the mercy of the owners of the vessel, their agents and employees.

  The jurors returned to an adjacent room and the waiting began. Nearly three hours later, at 8:50 P.M., the jury returned and the foreman read the verdict. They found Frank A. Barnaby, James K. Atkinson, and five other directors of the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company guilty of criminal negligence; as were Capt. William Van Schaick, Capt. John A. Pease, Edward Flanagan, and Inspector Henry Lundberg. No cheers or jeers emanated from the audience of grieving survivors and relatives, only tears and sighs of relief. If there was anything positive to be found amid their harrowing ordeal, it was the certainty that justice would be served. One thousand innocent lives had been snuffed out by corruption and greed, but justice had been served.

  As the participants in the coroner’s jury left the Second Battery Armory and made for the trains to take them home, many stopped to pick up copies of the Evening World and its rivals. In them they found coverage of the final day of testimony, but all had hit the newsstands before the verdict came in. There was another story, however, that instantly grabbed their attention. Earlier in the day the Danish steamer Norge, traveling from Copenhagen to New York with 780 passengers and crew, struck some rocks off Scotland and sank. Early reports were sketchy, but hundreds were presumed dead. In the days that followed, they and the rest of the world learned the awful details of a captain whose poor judgment brought on the disaster, a boat outfitted with inadequate lifesaving equipment, and a crew that did nothing to help the passengers and instead fought them for places in the lifeboats. Only 129 were saved.

  Well it has been said that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak.

  —LONGFELLOW

  MEMORIAL

  Just as they had precisely one year earlier, the Liebenows awoke on June 15, 1905, to a gorgeous spring day. A bright warm sun climbed steadily upward into a sharp blue sky broken only by the occasional puffy, fair-weather cloud. Through the windows of their apartment on West 125th Street came a welcome breeze, along with the familiar sounds of a city of 4 million people starting their day.

  One year ago they were a family of five, up early and filled with excitement as they prepared to head downtown to meet their relatives, the Webers, at the pier on East Third Street. Today they were only three. Paul and Anna Liebenow, along with their six-month-old baby Adella, had survived the disaster aboard the Slocum. Their two other daughters, Helen and Annie, had perished, along with the Webers’ two children and Paul’s sister, Martha. Now, one year later, they prepared to attend a memorial service at the Lutheran cemetery in Queens.

  Blissfully unaware of the ordeal she’d miraculously survived and the sisters she’d lost, Adella, now eighteen months old, chattered away as she romped around the apartment. Her parents put on their black mourning clothes, most likely the same ones worn to all the funerals the year before. On Adella, they put a new white dress. This adhered to the custom of the day that emphasized the purity and innocence of youth, but also stemmed from the fact that Adella, as the youngest person to survive the disaster, had been chosen by the Organization of the General Slocum Survivors to unveil the new monument erected in honor of the disaster’s sixty-one unidentified dead.

  Sometime after 8:00 A.M. they left their apartment to catch a train downtown to Little Germany. Unlike last year, they now had a choice between the elevated lines and the new subway that had opened the previous October. By 9:30 A.M., in accordance with the instructions issued by the organization, the Liebenows joined the Webers and hundreds of fellow members at Tompkins Square Park. Soon they boarded a series of specially arranged trolley cars that took them to the cemetery in Middle Village, Queens. After a group lunch at nearby Niederstein’s Hotel, the Liebenows and their fellow organization members marched in solemn procession to the cemetery.

  More than fifteen thousand people filled the cemetery by the time the service began at 3:00 P.M. Nearly all the adults wore black ribbons and pins that read “We Mourn Our Loss.” Where long ago lay an enormous trench filled with coffins stacked three deep there now stood a twenty-foot-tall monument wrapped in an American flag and surrounded by grass and flowers. Close at hand was a grandstand built to hold one thousand members of the survivors’ organization. Most of its seats were left empty by order of a police inspector, who at the last minute deemed the structure unsound. Because of Adella’s special role, the Liebenows were one of the few families allowed to sit on it. Snapping in the breeze above the crowd were American and German flags with black streamers attached. The afternoon air was hot and several people fainted as they waited for the ceremony to begin.

  The first mournful strains of Chopin’s Funeral March brought a sudden hush to the crowd. As they listened, a group of children placed flowers around the base of the monument, including one wreath made of sixty-one roses, one for each of the unidentified dead. Paul and Anna Liebenow, like dozens of mourners around them, shed especially bitter tears at that moment, knowing
—hoping, anyway—that the body of their Helen was among them. Both were devastated by the loss of their two oldest daughters, but the fact that no trace of Helen was ever found inflicted an especially deep and lingering pain.

  Bishop Henry C. Potter of the Episcopal Church offered an opening prayer and Rev. D. W. Peterson followed with an address in German. Charles Dersch, president of the Organization of the General Slocum Survivors and chief organizer of the day’s events, then delivered the main address. Unlike the ministers who spoke before and after him, Dersch did not dwell on the unfathomable mysteries of God’s ways, nor on the need for faith to help one carry on. Rather, he spoke to the anger and frustration of many who gathered that afternoon over the state of the prosecutions against the men indicted for their role in the disaster. One year after the event, not one had been convicted. Dersch had lost his wife and daughter, and the emotions underlying his words were palpable.

  “For a year from this day we have known what it means to be without our loved ones. They were taken from us by the greed of those who loved money more than lives. The innocents died horrible deaths to fill the purses of the greedy.” The Organization of the General Slocum Survivors demanded that justice be served and, equally important, that new laws be enacted so “that it will be impossible for such a horror to happen again.”

  Dersch’s impassioned speech was followed by several more interspersed with musical selections sung by the United Singing Societies of New York and Brooklyn. Finally the appointed moment for the monument unveiling arrived. Anna Liebenow rose with Adella in her arms, descended the grandstand, and walked slowly across the grass to the shrouded monument. As she did, soloist Miss Hattie Jacobi sang “The Holy City” over the soft weeping of the thousands of onlookers. Adella, to her mother’s relief, sat quietly in her arms clutching her doll. As the last note of the song echoed out over the crowd, she hoisted Adella upward and helped her grasp a small rope. The effort likely caused her some pain, as she was still recovering from severe burns to one side of her body. Adella gave it a firm tug. Slowly the heavy American flag slipped away to reveal the monument, and the singing societies launched into another selection.

  Nearly everyone in the crowd had contributed to the monument fund,and now for the first time they saw the fruits of their generosity. Two classically robed figures approximately six feet tall stood atop a fourteen-foot base of carved granite. One of them, symbolizing Faith, pointed upward to heaven while gazing knowingly at the other, who represented Courage. On either side of the base were two smaller sculptures representing Grief and Despair. Just below them was affixed a brass plaque depicting the burning boat and below that an inscription describing the disaster and the sixty-one unidentified dead. The words IN MEMORIAM at the lower end of the base completed the arrangement.

  The dramatic unveiling by the baby survivor coupled with the stirring choral accompaniment unleashed a flood of emotion among the thousands gathered. Families and friends wept uncontrollably and held each other for support. Not since the funerals of a year ago had there been an occasion that invited such an uninhibited exhibition of sorrow. Still, there was a certain measure of joy beneath it all, inspired by the somber beauty of the monument and its message of hope. As young Adella looked at the monument she pointed upward and said, “See, pretty.” Just then a crew member from the Franklin Edson stepped forward and handed her the doll she dropped while pulling the rope.

  After another address and several more songs, including “Nearer, My God, To Thee,” Reverend Archdeacon Nelson stepped forward and closed the ceremony with a benediction. Slowly the crowd began to dissipate as families headed for home or made one last stop at family burial plots where the rest of the Slocum victims rested. The Liebenows and Webers no doubt lingered over their lost children and Martha before making their way back to Manhattan.

  The sadness that pervaded the first anniversary ceremonies was accentuated by several things only hinted at during the speeches that day. The most obvious was the absence of Pastor Haas. Sadly, it was not infirmity or emotion that kept him away from his flock, but rather a bitter controversy over the distribution of the relief funds.

  It began only weeks after the disaster, when Charles Dersch and other members of the Organization of Slocum Survivors held a rally at Scheutzen Hall to protest the work of the relief committee. Many in the crowd of five hundred stood up and recounted their unsuccessful efforts to get the committee to pay funeral bills or provide relief to the destitute. Newspapers picked up on the controversy and ran stories of families on the verge of starvation. Dersch and the survivors’ organization charged the committee with wasting money on consultants hired from Buffalo, including paying their railroad and hotel bills.

  These charges lodged against the relief committee were understandable given the size of their task and the high expectations placed on them, but ultimately untrue. Out of a total of $124,205.80 collected by the end of August 1904, only $1,062 had been spent on operating expenses and not a dime of it on men hired from Buffalo—or anywhere else, for that matter. The great majority of the fund, $81,280, went to cover the expenses of 705 funerals. The rest went for things like temporary aid, medicine, and clothing. Approximately $18,000 was set aside in a fund to care for twenty- seven children left orphaned by the disaster.

  The controversy originated when the committee refused to pay for lavish funerals that ran as high as one thousand dollars. In other instances they denied relief to families they believed able to sustain themselves through their own resources or with the help of extended family and friends. These tough decisions stemmed not from coldheartedness, but rather from the simple fact that the relief fund was not large enough to help everyone.

  But what really sparked controversy and ultimately the schism between Reverend Haas and the Organization of Slocum Survivors was the relief committee’s decision to hand over its balance of $20,000 to St. Mark’s Parish. Haas had convinced the committee that his church was destitute after the loss of so many parishioners, especially its most prosperous ones. St. Mark’s, he explained, would use the funds to help pay its bills and, more important in the eyes of the committee, carry out its long-standing charitable services to the community. With the relief committee expected to dissolve itself by the fall, Haas was concerned about the long-term care needs of his stricken parish.

  Charles Dersch and other members of the survivors’ organization were outraged. Haas, they noted, had already received $12,400 in private dona tions and needed no further assistance. They demanded that every penny of the $20,000 still in the relief fund be spent on the families still suffering from the disaster. Haas refused to surrender the money, and the rift became permanent, shattering the unity of the flock he’d spent decades building.

  So while the thousands gathered in the Lutheran cemetery on the first anniversary of the disaster, they did so without Reverend Haas. That evening he presided over a memorial service at St. Mark’s. Every seat in the church was filled, doubtless by more than a few who’d spent the day at the cemetery. They listened intently as Haas spoke of the need both to accept the tragedy and to make sure a like event never occurred.

  The schism over the relief fund was not the only source of despair among the people directly affected by the Slocum disaster. By the time of the first anniversary memorial service, they were beset with the growing fear that no one responsible for the loss of their loved ones would go to jail. Only three weeks earlier, on May 25, 1905, USSIS assistant inspector of hulls Henry Lundberg walked out of federal court a free man. This was his third trial for manslaughter since January, and all had ended in mistrial with the juries hopelessly split (charges against Inspector Fleming had been dismissed at the outset of the first trial). Technically he could be tried again, but the chances of a fourth trial were remote. Worse, everyone knew that the subsequent trial of Barnaby and the directors of the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company depended heavily on Lundberg’s being found guilty. So long as Lundberg remained innocent, Barnaby and his cronies
could hide behind the USSIS certificate of approval issued after his inspection six weeks before the fire. As lawyer Terence McManus said during the coroner’s inquest when conceding the issue of life preservers, the company “relied entirely on the inspection made by federal authorities that everything on the boat was in first-class condition.” Eventually their fears would be realized as charges aganist Barnaby and the other officials of the company were dropped.

  That left the prosecution of Capt. William Van Schaick. The case against him still seemed strong, but in the spring of 1905 no date had been set for any trial, and federal prosecutors seemed in no hurry to set one. Justice delayed indeed seemed justice denied.

  Hand in hand with this fear that the guilty would go unpunished was the growing sense that the public had already begun to forget the tragedy. In the weeks following the announcement of guilty verdicts by the coroner’s jury, the Slocum saga continued to demand front-page coverage. On June 29, for example, one day after the verdict, Secretary Cortelyou ordered every steamboat operating in New York harbor reinspected by a team of USSIS inspectors brought in from outside the New York office. News of the reinspections and their stunning results—one-third of all life preservers and one-quarter of all fire hoses found defective on inland steamers—made headlines in all the dailies. So too did the news on July 29 that the federal grand jury to which the coroner’s jury verdict was referred voted to indict seven men (Van Schaick, Lundberg, and Fleming for manslaughter; Barnaby, Atkinson, Dexter, and Pease for aiding and abetting Van Schaick’s crime).