Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo Page 24

  His employer, the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company, continued to cut costs, and lately Van Schaick had been thinking more and more about transferring to another line. Few, if any, of his deckhands had experience—in fact, their primary skill seemed to be the ability to work for slave wages—and General Slocum itself needed work that the company seemed unwilling or unable to afford.

  Turning on his heel to glance from the window, Van Schaick felt a softness in the deck that signified rot. He turned back and noted this in the log.

  REVEREND GEORGE HAAS stood on the Third Street pier and stared up at the ship. The graceful twin-decked excursion boat was finished in white both above and below and seemed easily capable of carrying the thousand plus passengers that had signed up for the trip. As pastor of St. Mark’s Lutheran Church, Haas presided over a congregation of mainly German immigrants that numbered nearly two thousand. Today was to be an outing for the Sunday school students and whatever parents could attend. The trip was scheduled to take them from the Third Street pier to Locust Grove on Long Island for a day of picnicking and fun. Haas smiled as the band began to play Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

  Haas had no way to know the horror he would soon experience.

  THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD JOHN TISCHNER stared at the coins in his hand as he stood in the line at the refreshment stand aboard ship. The fried clams smelled good, but Tischner’s mother had packed him a tin pail with a pair of liverwurst-and-onion sandwiches for the noon meal along with a slice of chocolate cake for dessert. The pulled taffy held his interest for a time, but by the time he reached the head of the line, he had settled on a scoop of strawberry ice cream. It was a strange choice at 9:25 in the morning, but it was a day of celebration. He handed the man at the counter a few coins, then received his change and the ice cream. Enough for another scoop on the return trip.

  Things were looking up.

  VAN SCHAICK ORDERED the whistle to blow, signaling five minutes until they shoved off, then called down to the engine room to order steam. General Slocum was built in Brooklyn in 1891 and measured 263 feet with a 38-foot beam.

  Powered by a single vertical-beam engine constructed by W. A. Fletcher Company, she was supplied steam by a pair of boilers fueled with coal. A pair of sidewheel paddles with the name of the vessel in ornamental letters on the outside propelled her. Twin stacks vented the smoke into the air. Strung along the upper deck on each side were a half-dozen lifeboats on davits. The paint on the lifeboats was chipped and flaking. Originally finished with a white hull and a hardwood finish on the upper decks, the ship had been repainted with a white-on-white motif that was now showing stains from hard use. Still, all in all, she was a graceful vessel.

  “HURRY,” HENRY IDA said to his sweetheart, Amelia Swartz, “they’re leaving.”

  Swartz increased her pace along the pier, but it was difficult-her dress boots were laced tight, and the boned corset pinching her waist made deep breaths almost impossible. Twirling her parasol, she made her way to the gangplank. Ida was overdressed for summer, but he had little choice—he owned only two suits, both wool. His only concession to the heat had been to leave the vest at home. Pushing‘the straw boater back on his forehead, he switched the wicker lunch hamper to his other hand and started up the ramp. In three minutes, General Slocum would pull from the pier. Forging through the crowd, he found a spot for them on deck.

  DARRELL MILLET PRIED the top off a wooden barrel containing glasses packed in straw. The head steward needed the glassware at the aft refreshment stand immediately. Filling his fingers with the glasses, he made his way aft. Six trips later, the barrel was empty, and he dragged it to the forward storeroom. Finding a spot amid the paint pots and oil lamps, he balanced it on a couple of overturned pails, then shut the door. The straw was dry and smelled of the prairie.

  Captain Van Schaick blew the whistle one last time, then ordered the gangplank retracted. Calling down to the engine room for steam, he placed the drives in forward and steered General Slocum from the pier. More than one thousand passengers were now under his care. The band began to play “Nearer My God to Thee.”

  PORTER WALTER PAYNE entered the crowded storeroom. Making his way to a workbench, he began to fill a pair of oil lamps. Suddenly the ship rolled from side to side from the wake of a passing barge. Payne spilled some of the fuel onto the floor. After finishing the fueling, he twisted the metal caps back on the lamps. Carrying them over near the door, he paused to light a match out of the wind. Touching the match to the wicks, he tossed the match over his shoulder, then adjusted the flames. With a lit lamp in each hand, he walked onto the deck, then aft.

  Paint fumes and spilled fuel were the recipe for disaster. The burning ember from the tossed match was little more than the size of a pencil lead, but it was enough. The fumes from the paint hung low over the floor, mixing with the smell from the spilled fuel. The gas ignited with a fuzzy blue flame. At just that instant, General Slocum hit the second set of wakes from the barge. As the ship rocked from side to side, the precariously placed barrel tipped forward and spilled the straw into the almost extinguished fire. Red and yellow points of fire streaked skyward.

  CAPTAIN VAN SCHAICK was staring forward when he saw a puff of smoke from a porthole in the forward storeroom.

  “Fire,” he shouted.

  Then he ordered his second in command, Marcus Anthony, to round up a few sailors to man the hoses. They were five minutes from Hell’s Gate.

  Reverend Haas was ladling clam chowder into bowls for his young parishioners when a sailor ran past, tugging a rubber fire hose. He prayed the man was just going forward to wash the deck, but deep in his heart he knew different. Turning his head from side to side, he tried to locate where the life jackets were stored.

  “My command for an experienced sailor,” Van Schaick shouted.

  His employer had saddled him with a crew consisting of untrained day laborers and general miscreants, and it was little wonder. The economy was in high gear, and unemployment was at its lowest level in twenty years. To compound the problem, just two months before, the United States had taken possession of Panama, and many able-bodied seamen had headed south for the higher wages. Workers were hard to come by, and the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company was not noted for paying high wages. Van Schaick looked down to the deck—it was chaos. He watched as one of his deckhands strapped on a life vest and jumped over the side.

  “Turn on the water,” Anthony yelled back.

  The forward storeroom was completely ablaze. At that precise instant, the cans of paint exploded and blew the door to splinters. Deckhand Brad Creighton twisted the brass knob that fed water from the pumps in the lower hold to the fire hoses. He watched as the rubber hose expanded and filled. Halfway down the deck, along the outer walkway, the aged rubber burst. The broken end of the hose began to flail around the deck like the body of a severed snake.

  Henry Ida broke the rusted lock off the locker containing the life jackets and began to hand them but to the passengers. The canvas on the vests was old and moth-eaten, and several of the jackets burst open as soon as he grabbed them. Rotted cork littered the floor. Helping Amelia into a jacket, Ida tried to tie the straps to hold it tight. The straps broke off in his hands.

  “If we have to go into the water,” Ida shouted amid the growing pandemonium, “you will have to hold the vest on.”

  Amelia Swartz nodded. Her face plainly showed the fear she was feeling.

  “If we become separated,” Ida said, “just swim for shore. I’ll meet you there.”

  “Form a bucket brigade,” Marcus Anthony shouted, “and hook another hose to the spigot.”

  This was day laborer Paul Endicott’s first day on the water. His trade was that of an apprentice cobbler, but times were so good that people were purchasing new shoes instead of having the old ones repaired. His work was slow and he needed money, so he’d signed on for a day of work.

  “Where are the buckets?” Endicott asked Anthony.

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p; “Damn,” Anthony said loudly, “they’re in the forward storeroom.”

  “What should I do?” Endicott asked.

  “Climb up to the pilothouse and explain our problems to the captain,” Anthony said. “Ask him to make his way to shore.”

  It was bad, and Reverend Haas knew this. The fire had spread to the bow deck, and with the ship still moving forward, the flames were being fanned backward onto the mid and rear decks. All around him there was confusion—he watched as another hose was hooked to the spigot. This one burst only feet from the knob. The life vests Haas had been able to secure were rotted and deteriorating. Even so, with help from a few of the other adults, he strapped in the children and tried to line them up on the rear deck.

  “We’ll try to make North Brother Island,” Van Schaick said, after Endicott’s report, “and run her aground.”

  North Brother Island was three miles away.

  “Full steam,” Van Schaick shouted down to the engine room.

  With smoke and embers flying from her bow, General Slocum raced upriver.

  CAPTAIN MCGOVERN WAS on his dredge boat Chelsea. He looked up as General Slocum steamed past at full speed, trailing smoke. He watched the decks as a mass of people ran aft. They piled up along the wooden railing until it gave way and nearly a hundred passengers were pitched into the water. Making his way down to his steam-powered launch Mosquito, McGovern headed to the site to try to rescue those swimming.

  AT THE BATHHOUSE at 134th Street and the East River, Helmut Gilbey had just settled into a wooden Andirondack chair for a day of fresh air and sunshine. Seeing the burning steamer running upriver, he ran out to the street and flagged down the first police officer who happened past.

  “There’s a steamer burning on the river,” he said breathlessly.

  Michael O’Shaunassey looked between the buildings and caught a glimpse of General Slocum. Racing down the street to the precinct house, he sounded the alarm.

  The precinct house emptied as the police fanned out in search of boats.

  Boats were dispatched from the Seawanhaka Boat Club and the Knickerbocker Yacht Club while the police boats of the Twelfth Street substation were readied. Within minutes, the fireboat Zophar Mills and the Health Department’s tug Franklin Edson pulled from their docks and chased after the burning steamer. At the same time, two nearby ferryboats diverted from their runs to comb the waters for survivors.

  VAN SCHAICK WAS captain of a dying ship. His crew’s inexperience, combined with the shoddy fire hoses and a myriad of other problems, had proved to be General Slocum’s undoing. His decision to run at full speed for North Brother Island had not helped matters any—the winds had fanned the flames into a near maelstrom. Followed by two dozen boats, Van Schaick ran his command hard aground.

  JOHN TISCHNER WAS trembling. His day of fun and frivolity had turned into a horror that his young mind could not comprehend. Tears streaked down his face as he tugged at the straps on his rotting life vest. At that instant the ship’s keel struck earth, and Tischner was tossed to the deck. Peering up, he could see that the paddle wheels were still spinning wildly. Crawling through the legs of the panic-stricken adults, he made his way to where the railing had broken away and rolled into the water. As soon as the life vest met water, it became waterlogged and pulled him under.

  THE SHOCK OF running aground collapsed part of the hurricane deck, spilling nearly a hundred passengers directly into the center of the fire. Their screams grew loud as their flesh was burned from their bones. Several passengers were tossed directly atop the spinning paddle wheels, where their bodies were battered, then pulled under.

  Reverend Haas managed to toss nearly eighty of the younger children into the water before a burning timber from the upper deck slammed into his shoulder and brought him to his knees. Hair on fire, he tried to roll off the deck but was sucked under by the paddle wheels.

  “Amelia,” Ida shouted, “Amelia.”

  But there was no answer.

  Ida had no way to know this, but Amelia Swartz had leapt from the burning ship a mile back. At this instant, Captain McGovern on Mosquito was fishing her from the water, more dead than alive. Racing aft while shouting her name, Ida stepped upon a section of smoldering deck that gave way underfoot. Falling through up to his shoulders, Ida struggled to climb back out again.

  Nurse Agnes Livingston paused just outside the main doors to the Municipal Hospital on North Brother Island. She watched as a man, his hat ablaze, crept from the small house at the highest point of the burning ship. The man climbed over the railing, then dived into the water. Livingston had no way to know that Captain Van Schaick had abandoned ship.

  “Let’s go,” Dr. Todd Kacynski shouted, as he raced out of the hospital.

  Livingston followed Kacynski to the shoreline. A nurse hardened by years of service, she was conditioned to blood and gore. Still, the sight of blackened and burned bodies washing up on shore sickened her. Walking a few feet away, she vomited into a bush, then tidied her white hat and headed back into the fray.

  Big Jim Wade steered his tug Easy Times toward the burning excursion boat. What he saw was a horrific sight. The top deck had collapsed into the center of the vessel, and the additional fuel stoked the fires. Flames shot skyward with a column of dirty black smoke. The paddle wheels had stopped spinning, and several people were clutching the wooden paddles in an effort to stay clear of the flames. Wade approached along the starboard side. He could see large sections of railing that had given way under the crush of passengers, and pockets of people clustered fore and aft.

  Without thought of the danger, he eased Easy Times alongside the burning hull.

  Back in the city, a reporter with the Tribune called his office from police headquarters. “The excursion boat General Slocum, carrying a Sunday school group, is ablaze in the East River. Casualties will be high,” he finished.

  The Tribune editor arranged for photographers and reporters to be sent to the scene.

  Mayor McClellan paced the floors of his office in City Hall. “The police commissioner reports that he has sent all his available men to the scene,” he said to his aide. “Make sure the fire chief is pulling out all the stops, as well.”

  The man started for the door.

  “What’s the number for City Hospital?” McClellan shouted at the retreating man.

  “Gotham 621,” the man shouted back.

  McClellan reached for the telephone.

  “This is the mayor,” he shouted into the phone. “Give me the head of operations.”

  “Pull them across,” Wade shouted to his deckhands out of the window of the pilothouse, “then send them aft.”

  Glancing toward the transom, Wade could see several blackened bodies floating close to his propellers. There was nothing he could do—he needed propulsion to stay close to the steamer and to be ready to back away at a moment’s notice. He watched as a corpse swirled in the propellers’ whirlpool, then was sucked under and shredded.

  He turned back to the bow.

  “Get them off there,” he screamed.

  Little Germany on the Lower East Side was in chaos. Relatives of the passengers on General Slocum jammed the elevated train platforms from Fourteenth Street to First Street in an effort to board an uptown train. Rumors ran through the crowd as the tension grew. Outside St. Mark’s Church, a crowd grew large. Parents with tearstained faces awaited word of a miracle that would never come.

  The captain of Zophar Mills was directing a stream of water at the burning center of General Slocum. The visible flames were gone, but the wreckage was still smoldering. The water around his fireboat was littered with the corpses of adults and children. His crew had managed to pluck nearly thirty people from the water, and they huddled on the stem deck like refugees from a violent war.

  At that instant, a rumbling was heard from General Slocum, and the ship rolled to one side.

  NURSE LIVINGSTON HAD grown numb to the suffering. The shore of North Brother Island looked like a batt
lefield. She no longer heard the moans of the dying—the screams of the burned and injured were much louder. Dr. Kacynski had administered the fifty doses of morphine he had brought along.

  “Nurse Livingston,” he shouted over the screams, “return to the pharmacy. I need all the stores of pain medication we have available.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Livingston said.

  She began jogging toward the hospital, momentarily free from the horrors.

  WADE HAD DONE all he could. General Slocum was awash, only one side of the paddle wheel and a portion of the fore deck above water. Backing away from the wreckage, he turned Easy Times ninety degrees and set off for New York City with his load of sick and injured.

  The hospital on North Brother Island was filled to overflowing.

  “At least five hundred, maybe a thousand,” Alderman John Dougherty reported over the telephone to Mayor McClellan.

  “Good Lord,” McClellan exclaimed, “maybe there will be more survivors.”

  “I don’t think so, sir,” Dougherty said. “The steamer is awash.”

  “I want you to find the commander of Engine Company 35,” McClellan said.

  “The fire on board is out, sir,” Dougherty said.

  “I know, John,” McClellan said wearily. “I want the firemen to help the coroner to identify the bodies.”

  “Yes, sir,” Dougherty said.

  “I’ll send some boats across to bring the bodies back to the pier at East Twenty-sixth Street,” McClellan said. “The families of the deceased can retrieve the bodies there.”