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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 battlefield. 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.”
On the East River, New York City police boats were dragging the river for bodies. By seven that evening, they had retrieved more than two hundred. It was dark when the coroner stood over another blackened body.
“Check the pockets,” he said to a fireman.
The man rolled the body over and removed a soggy leather wallet from the pocket.
“George Pullman,” the fireman said, as he stared at the name on a library card, “and there’s a check here for $300 made out to the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company.”
The coroner nodded. “I knew George,” he said quietly. “He was the treasurer of the St. Mark’s Sunday School.”
The fireman nodded.
“At least these bastards never got paid,” the coroner said angrily.
General Slocum’s hold still held some air, and the ship was drifting on the current. After traveling a short distance, the hulk grounded off Hunt’s Point. A diver was sent down into the hull. He found nearly a dozen bodies trapped in the wreckage. He brought them to the surface one by one.
The last was a lad nine years old who was clutching a prayer book in his hands.
As soon as the heavy dive helmet was removed, the diver burst into sobs. As his boat made its way back to the city, the diver sat on the stem deck, alone with his thoughts. General Slocum was his last dive ever.
Joe Flarethy, a lieutenant with the New York City Police Department, stared at the man on the stretcher at the hospital on North Brother Island with barely concealed disgust. The man’s leg had been fractured when he’d leapt from General Slocum.
“I understand you’re Captain Van Schaick,” Flarethy spat.
“I am,” Van Schaick said.
“You’re under arrest by order of the mayor,” Flarethy said. “Now, why don’t you make it easy on us and point out the rest of your crew?”
Van Schaick raised himself up on his elbows. “I’m the captain,” he said. “I’m responsible. You want to identify the crew, you do it yourself.”
Flarethy turned to the sergeant at his side. “Go bed to bed and ask the patients for identification. The seamen should have papers. Anyone that doesn’t — tag their toe and we’ll sort through them later.”
He turned back to Van Schaick.
“A real hero, aren’t you? Trying to protect your crew.” Flarethy pointed out the window toward the river. “The time to be a hero was out there.”
Van Schaick said nothing.
“Cuff this son of a bitch,” Flarethy said to a patrolman standing nearby.
“The Twenty-Sixth Street morgue is full,” Mayor McClellan said over the telephone to Dougherty. “We can’t take any more bodies.”
“Hold on,” Dougherty said.
McClellan heard snippets of conversation as Dougherty spoke to someone nearby.
“Okay, sir,” he said after a few moments, “there’s an abandoned coal shed just to the side of the hospital we can use as a makeshift morgue.”
“Excellent,” McClellan said.
“There’s just one thing,” Dougherty said.
“What’s that?” McClellan asked.
“We’ll need another boatload of ice to chill the bodies.”
“I’ll have it sent over immediately.”
There was a dim electric light illuminating the Twenty-sixth Street Pier as the first load of coffins was unloaded from the boats. Ice had been placed in the coffins to keep the bodies from decomposing, and as it melted it ran through the cracks in the wood and stained the street. Hundreds of ashen-faced parents had gathered to see if they could locate their missing children. A few survivors straggled off the boats. Most were half-dressed or slightly injured in some way. Almost all were adults. They hung their heads in shame.
Halfway up a ladder, in the center of the crowd, was a fireman from Engine Company Number 35. As the 432 caskets were carried past, he shouted out the names of the dead that had been identified. The wails from mourning parents filled the area around the pier. Those that had not been identified were stacked in neat rows waiting for space to open up at the morgue.
The morning following the disaster dawned clear and warm. Throughout New York City, flags flew at half-mast. At City Hall, Mayor McClellan learned that bodies were still washing up on the banks of the East River. He made the arrangements for collection and burial, then turned his attention to preventing another such disaster. First, he instituted a free “Learn to Swim” program. Second, he ordered all excursion boats in New York Harbor to cease operations until the vessels were checked and approved. Third, he began a full-scale investigation into the General Slocum tragedy.
When the final count was tallied, 1,021 passengers had perished.
But General Slocum was not finished.
Diver Jackson Hall stood on the side of the hull above water and shouted across the water to the captain of the salvage ship Francis A
“You can pick me up now,” Hall shouted across the water.
“How’s she look?” the captain shouted back.
“She can be raised,” Hall said. “The lower hull is intact — it’s the upper decks that sustained the most damage.”
“What’s she look like inside?” the captain questioned.
“Lots of blackened wood is piled in the center,” Hall said. “I was nearly hung up twice. The boilers appeared intact but bent. The port paddle wheel is shredded from the weight of the hulk pressing down.”