New York City's Titanic

Mr. R. looked out over the river from his perch on the Hellgate bridge. Although a powerfully-built, intelligent and skilled ironworker, ward-leader for his Astoria home, there was nothing that he could do to save the doomed souls aboard the burning ship. No friendly letters of recommendation, no coal for new arrivals fresh from the ghettos of Germany and Ireland. Although, in one sense, the Taminent system of political favors bought and paid for had everything to do with its fate, this party functionary watched in mute horror while over a thousand men, women and children saw their fine Lutheran Church picnic transmute into a voyage straight to hell.

The Slocum disaster that took place two generations before I was born still cast a long shadow over Astoria. As a child, I delighted in hearing about the drunk captain who went down in the whirlpools under the Hellgate bridge-undoubtedly a garbled folk memory of the actual events. And the cemetery belt of Queens hosted some lovely new monuments and profitable fresh graves as a horrible result of that day.

Even the Yorkville neighborhood where I watched the Van Steuben Day parade with my father and got my first job as a bank teller in the late 70s paid mute witness to the echoes of that historic past. It was a day that emptied neighborhoods and reformed forgotten byways into new urban ghettos. It was the day that Kleindeutschland in the Lower East side died and Yorkville in the streets of the high 70s on Manhattan's East Side was born. For those fleeing the devastation, it was a new beginning.

On June 15, 1904 over thirteen hundred congregants of St. Mark's Lutheran Church located in the East Village, near Tompkins Square park headed out for a rare day of relaxation in Long Island. The ship, captained by the experienced sixty-eight year old Captain, William van Schaick was to steam towards Locust Point in Huntington on Long Island's North Shore. But this voyage was not to end in warm memories nor was the experienced captain to continue towards the gold watch and retirement party expected as a reward for his long years of labor. By day's end, the ship would have taken over a thousand to the bottom and the ship's captain off to jail.

Near today's Triborough Bridge (aka JFK Bridge) the trouble began. A cry of "Fire" range out and so began a desperate race towards shore and safety, according to Edward T. O'Donnell's, Ship Ablaze the crew had missed an earlier attempt to discover the problem when they dismissed a child's report of fire and instead threatened him with a kick. Upon discovering the fire, the crew quickly worsened the situation by leaving a door open so that oxygen could fan the flames.

In 1904 the shores of the Bronx were loaded with highly flammable industry. Astoria's shores were rocky and underdeveloped. So a controversial decision was made to steam at full speed to North Brother Island in an attempt to beach the boat there. As the ship plowed towards its destination, the passengers made full haste to leave their fiery hell. But as they tried to flee they discovered that the lifeboats had been painted stuck to the decks of the ship.

Those who tenderly wrapped their precious children in life jackets discovered too late that the jackets were false friends and deceivers. Once in the icy waters of the turbulent East River, the jackets took their wearers straight down to Davy Jones Locker. Instead of buoyant cork, the jackets were old and filled with the dust of cork past. The required weight was provided instead by lead sinkers.

These aids to safety had recently been certified to the highest standards by New York City's Steamship Inspectors, suma cum laud graduates of New York City's school of graft.

There are tales of the bravery of the Riker's Island inmates . Two of whom, John Merther and Dan Casey compelled their overseer, Dr. Broder, to get a rowboat and work as a team to pluck the living and the dead from the roiling East River. Two policemen would be recognized for their heroic efforts, but in an illustration that no good dead goes unpunished, one would refuse to accept Taminent Hall's rewards and the devil's bargain that came with it. In retaliation, the thwarted bosses would transfer him to every command in the city in an attempt to drive him out. Inhabitants of North Brother Island, including a nurse who had never swum a stroke in her life but had always wanted to learn, waded or swam into the treacherous currents and dragged people to safety.

When it was all over, the men of the East Side would greet the end of their sixteen hour work days with the news that the wife and child for whom they were slaving were no more, followed by an exhausting trip to the morgue to put name to one of over a thousand fatalities. The prisoners would return to their cells. The captain would await a pair of handcuffs, a trial, incarceration. Mr. R. would return to his high perch in the iron girders of a growing city and would live to bear witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire seven years later.

But in both the Slocum disaster and in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory the victims would be consecrated to making a buck and the true villains would skip away scot-free.

Sources:

Ship Ablaze
Edward T. O'Donnell
Random House, 2004

My Father's Gun: One Family, Three Badges, One Hundred Years in the NYPD
Brian McDonald
Penguin Group, USA, 2000

http://www.newyorkhistory.info/Hell-Gate/General-Slocum.html

http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/genslocum/genslocum.html