There were few experienced swimmers among over 1,300
Lower East Side residents who boarded the General Slocum on June 15, 1904. It shouldn’t have mattered, since the
steamship was chartered only for a languid excursion from Manhattan to
Long Island Sound. But a fire erupted minutes into the trip, forcing hundreds of terrified passengers into the water. By the time the captain found a safe shore for landing, 1,021 had perished.
Ship Ablaze draws on firsthand accounts to examine why the death toll was so high and how the city responded. Masterfully capturing both the horror of the event and the heroism of men, women, and children who faced crumbling life jackets and inaccessible lifeboats as the inferno quickly spread, historian Edward T. O’Donnell brings to life a bygone community while honoring the victims of that forgotten day.
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Background Information
Manhattan Borough is essentially the Island of Manhattan, site of New Amsterdam and the commercial center of New York City. Long Island, a product of the last Ice Age, is largely rural in the east but part of America's largest city in the west. Beginning in the very early nineteenth century, steamboats enabled transportation upriver, revolutionizing the nature of river commerce.
