What Became of the General Slocum Disaster?

On the morning of June 15, 1904, 1,300 people boarded the General Slocum ship from east village Manhattan hoping to reach Long Island for a church picnic. The boat caught fire along the East River, causing many onboard to jump into the water near Hell Gate. Hell gate is a stretch of water within the east river that is considered as being one of the city's most turbulent, where many ships have crashed before. People had to jump off the ship to avoid getting burned to death. Unfortunately the majority of people ended up dying due to drowning and being trampled on. The victims were mostly women and children. These were families who went out for what was supposed to be a nice picnic day but ended up being a tragedy, while their husbands had to stayed behind for work. This affected the community back in the east village that was mostly a German population at the time. This is a disaster that is not really spoken about for possibly several reasons, the victims were from a lower social class unlike the Titanic where people were in the upper social classes and received national attention. Another reason this isn’t spoken about is because of the view of anti German since the first two world wars. In the end it was a horrible tragedy that almost wiped out a whole community leaving behind grieving fathers and husbands. Eventually people moved out of the east village and spread out to other parts of New York city. Before September 11, this was the worst tragedy in NYC.