The greatest loss of life in the New York City area prior to September 11th was caused by the 1906 disaster of the General Slocum, a steamer carrying approximately 1400 souls to a Sunday school picnic on Long Island. The classic photo above shows the aftermath of a fire, which began somehow in the Lamp Room, creating a conflagration which soon engulfed the ship. More than 1000 people perished. The last survivor of the calamity was Adella Wotherspoon, a baby at the time who lived to see her hundredth birthday. An excerpt from her 2004 New York Times obituary:
“On June 15, 1904, a sunny Wednesday morning, Mrs. Wotherspoon, then the 6-month-old called Adele Liebenow, was part of the 17th annual Sunday school picnic of St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, on the heavily German Lower East Side. The church had chartered a paddle-wheel, 264-foot-long steamboat, for $350 from the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company to go to Locust Grove Picnic Ground at Eaton’s Neck on Long Island.
The Liebenow party included Adele’s parents, her two sisters, three aunts, an uncle and two cousins. When the boat left the East River pier at Third Street at 9:40 a.m., a church band on board played, ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.’
Forty minutes later, the joy turned to abject terror. Smoke started billowing from a forward storage room. A spark, most likely from a carelessly tossed match, had ignited some straw. Soon, the boat was an inferno. The captain ignored cries to steam for shore and proceeded at top speed through the perilous waters known as Hell Gate to North Brother Island, a mile ahead.
The inexperienced crew, which had not had a single fire drill, provided scant help. Lifeboats were wired or glued to the deck with layers of paint, cork in the life jackets had turned to dust with age and fire hoses broke under water pressure.
By the time the General Slocum reached the island, it was too late. The death toll among the estimated 1,331 passengers was 1,021, according to most sources. The dead included Adele’s sisters, Anna, 3, and Helen, 6. Munsey’s Magazine, a periodical of the time, wrote, ‘Children whom the flames had caught on the forward decks rushed, blazing like torches to their mothers.'”