The paddle-steamer General Slocum caught fire and burned in the East River 106 years ago today. The ship was a wooden sidewheel-paddle excursion steamer. She had been chartered by a German immigrant church group. 1,021 people were known to have perished in the greatest disaster in New York City during the 20th Century.
The lifeboats had apparently never been moved from their davits in the 13 years since the ship was built; they were painted in place and some say wired. The life-jackets were filled with inferior cork and were also original to the ship. Most of the life-jackets were rotted, the outside of the life-jackets was canvas, and they fell apart. Others, allegedly, were filled with cork fragments and were too light to pass the initial inspection, so they were weighed down with iron bars.
In popular culture, the burning of the PS General Slocum was soon overshadowed by the sinking of the RMS Titanic, which had a far more glamorous passenger list,and, to be frank about it, as time wore on and after two world wars, not too many people could get worked up by the deaths of a bunch of Germans. So don't expect to see Leonardo DiCaprio trying to shelter his sweetie from the advancing flames as the ship burns.
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