New York Disaster.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 158, 8 July 1904, Page 4

New York Disaster.

BURNING OF AN" EXCURSION" STEAMER. STORIES OP SURVIVORS. APPALLING AND HARROWING SCENES. The San Francisco papers receive! by ilie mail contain thrilling euid graphic accounts of the burning of ihi 1 excursion steamer General Slocum in New York waters, by which over 10(111 lives were lost, the i,m-

jorily being those of women and children. One account desciebes it as "a spectacle of horror beyond words to express—the great vessel all in flames, sweeping forward in the sunlight, within sight of tile crowded city, while helpless, screaming hundreds were roasting alive or swallowed up in the waves—women and children with hair and clothing on lire ; crazed mothers casting babies overboard, or leaping with them to certain death : wailing children ami o.'il men trampled under foot or crowded into the water ; lh<. burning steamboat, its whistle roaring lor assistance, speeding on lor tile shore of Xorth Hi-other Island, with a trail

of g'hastly faces and clutching hands in the tide behind her ; grey-haired mothers and tender infants going down to death together." In the fifteen minutes that elapsed from the discovery of the deadly peril until the General Slocum was burned to the water's edge there was a holocaust of the helpless. Death -b;v lire, death by drowning, death beneath the rush of the cruel panic that seized every soul on board idled each second to the brim. The most cruel part of it a,l was that nearly everybody was a woman's or « child's.

The General Slocum, one of the largest excursion steamers in these waters, left Third-street, East River, at half-past nine o'clock on the morning of the disaster, having on board the Sunday School excursion of St. Murk's Lutheran Church, loIcated on Sixth-street. Her destination was Locust Grove, one of the many resorts on Long Island Sound. The excursion was in charge of the Rev. George G. Haas, pastor of the church. The steamship, after leaving her dock, proceeded up the Kust River, all three of her decks crowded with merrymakers. Bands played, and the groat side-wheeler was decorated with flags fr o in stem to stern. The Slocum had reached a point near the Sunken Meadows off One Hundred and Thirty-fifth-streot, Manhattan, which is at the extreme eastern end of Randalls Island,'when lire broke out in a luncheon: room on ths forward deck. The blaze was caused by the overturning 0 f a pot of grease. The wind almost instantly fanned the flame into a fury. The blaze spread like: lightning. Captain Van Shaic.k, in the pilot-house, had been informed of the outbreak of the lire, and. being aware of the danger, decided to send his vessel on shore at One Hundred and Thirty-foiirth-stroet. At this point there are a number of lumber yards mid several huge oil tanks, and the captain Wus warned that to attempt to land ut this point would endanger the property and perhaps further imperil the scores of persons who had already been frightened into a state of almost uncontrollable excitement. Altering the big steamship's course slightly, he headed her for Xorth '•roller Island, a half-mile away. By this lime the flames were rushing by leaps and hounds from the forward part of the ship ,nft, unci n wild panic seized the passengers.

Frantic women and children began to jump overqourd, and as the me increased tho struggle to gain a point of vantage at the stern li,ecamc frightful, Women and children crowded against the aft rail until it gave way, and hundreds were pushed ol! into the river. After this theiewn.' a steady stream of persons who jumped (ir_wv^.thrown into iftiTwatw. In the wake of the Slocum asshe hurried up stream was a line of little black specks. sh ( ,wiii;.i the heads of those who had sotul.t tv, iscape the roaring furnace of (lie ship by throwing ihenis'.ves overboard. Few of those saved by the small boats had on life preservers. At no time during the progress o"' tho fire was there an opportunity ro either lower the lifeboats or t-> get out the life preservers. This, perhaps, gives an idea of the rapidity with which the flames swept the

decks. It was an experience harrowing and terrible, and that any escaped alivo seems wonderful. When the steamer reached N o rth Brother Island she was beached in ■.hallow water. The scone here, us descriH-tl ■)')',' the rescuers, was a pitiful one. Hows of bodies were'stivlc.hed along the beach. Frantic :ne:i went along looking at one after another, searching for children and friends. Women with disligured faces, their clothing partially stripped from them, were carried to the improvised emergency hospital, crying for children who had been torn fi\,in thorn in the mad rush when the boat took lire. Meanwhile the Slocurn burned to the water's iMlgc At twenty-live minutes past twelve o'clock, two hours and twenty i:.inutes after the lire was discovered, she sank.