This was day laborer Paul Endicott’s first day on the water. His trade was that of an apprentice cobbler, but times were so good that people were purchasing new shoes instead of having the old ones repaired. His work was slow and he needed money, so he’d signed on for a day of work.

“Where are the buckets?” Endicott asked Anthony.

“Damn,” Anthony said loudly, “they’re in the forward storeroom.”

“What should I do?” Endicott asked.

“Climb up to the pilothouse and explain our problems to the captain,” Anthony said. “Ask him to make his way to shore.”

It was bad, and Reverend Haas knew this. The fire had spread to the bow deck, and with the ship still moving forward, the flames were being fanned backward onto the mid and rear decks. All around him there was confusion — he watched as another hose was hooked to the spigot. This one burst only feet from the knob. The life vests Haas had been able to secure were rotted and deteriorating. Even so, with help from a few of the other adults, he strapped in the children and tried to line them up on the rear deck.

“We’ll try to make North Brother Island,” Van Schaick said, after Endicott’s report, “and run her aground.”

North Brother Island was three miles away.

“Full steam,” Van Schaick shouted down to the engine room.

With smoke and embers flying from her bow, General Slocum raced upriver.

Captain McGovern was on his dredge boat Chelsea. He looked up as General Slocum steamed past at full speed, trailing smoke. He watched the decks as a mass of people ran aft. They piled up along the wooden railing until it gave way and nearly a hundred passengers were pitched into the water. Making his way down to his steam-powered launch Mosquito, McGovern headed to the site to try to rescue those swimming.

At the bathhouse at 134th Street and the East River, Helmut Gilbey had just settled into a wooden Andirondack chair for a day of fresh air and sunshine. Seeing the burning steamer running upriver, he ran out to the street and flagged down the first police officer who happened past.

“There’s a steamer burning on the river,” he said breathlessly.

Michael O’Shaunassey looked between the buildings and caught a glimpse of General Slocum. Racing down the street to the precinct house, he sounded the alarm.

The precinct house emptied as the police fanned out in search of boats.

Boats were dispatched from the Seawanhaka Boat Club and the Knickerbocker Yacht Club while the police boats of the Twelfth Street substation were readied. Within minutes, the fireboat Zophar Mills and the Health Department’s tug Franklin Edson pulled from their docks and chased after the burning steamer. At the same time, two nearby ferryboats diverted from their runs to comb the waters for survivors.

Van Schaick was captain of a dying ship. His crew’s inexperience, combined with the shoddy fire hoses and a myriad of other problems, had proved to be General Slocum’s undoing. His decision to run at full speed for North Brother Island had not helped matters any — the winds had fanned the flames into a near maelstrom. Followed by two dozen boats, Van Schaick ran his command hard aground.

John Tischner was trembling. His day of fun and frivolity had turned into a horror that his young mind could not comprehend. Tears streaked down his face as he tugged at the straps on his rotting life vest. At that instant the ship’s keel struck earth, and Tischner was tossed to the deck. Peering up, he could see that the paddle wheels were still spinning wildly. Crawling through the legs of the panic-stricken adults, he made his way to where the railing had broken away and rolled into the water. As soon as the life vest met water, it became waterlogged and pulled him under.

The shock of running aground collapsed part of the hurricane deck, spilling nearly a hundred passengers directly into the center of the fire. Their screams grew loud as their flesh was burned from their bones. Several passengers were tossed directly atop the spinning paddle wheels, where their bodies were battered, then pulled under.

Reverend Haas managed to toss nearly eighty of the younger children into the water before a burning timber from the upper deck slammed into his shoulder and brought him to his knees. Hair on fire, he tried to roll off the deck but was sucked under by the paddle wheels.

“Amelia,” Ida shouted, “Amelia.”

But there was no answer.

Ida had no way to know this, but Amelia Swartz had leapt from the burning ship a mile back. At this instant, Captain McGovern on Mosquito was fishing her from the water, more dead than alive. Racing aft while shouting her name, Ida stepped upon a section of smoldering deck that gave way underfoot. Falling through up to his shoulders, Ida struggled to climb back out again.

Nurse Agnes Livingston paused just outside the main doors to the Municipal Hospital on North Brother Island. She watched as a man, his hat ablaze, crept from the small house at the highest point of the burning ship. The man climbed over the railing, then dived into the water. Livingston had no way to know that Captain Van Schaick had abandoned ship.

“Let’s go,” Dr. Todd Kacynski shouted, as he raced out of the hospital.

Livingston followed Kacynski to the shoreline. A nurse hardened by years of service, she was conditioned to blood and gore. Still, the sight of blackened and burned bodies washing up on shore sickened her. Walking a few feet away, she vomited into a bush, then tidied her white hat and headed back into the fray.

Big Jim Wade steered his tug Easy Times toward the burning excursion boat. What he saw was a horrific sight. The top deck had collapsed into the center of the vessel, and the additional fuel stoked the fires. Flames shot skyward with a column of dirty black smoke. The paddle wheels had stopped spinning, and several people were clutching the wooden paddles in an effort to stay clear of the flames. Wade approached along the starboard side. He could see large sections of railing that had given way under the crush of passengers, and pockets of people clustered fore and aft.

Without thought of the danger, he eased Easy Times alongside the burning hull.

Back in the city, a reporter with the Tribune called his office from police headquarters. “The excursion boat General Slocum, carrying a Sunday school group, is ablaze in the East River. Casualties will be high,” he finished.

The Tribune editor arranged for photographers and reporters to be sent to the scene.

Mayor McClellan paced the floors of his office in City Hall. “The police commissioner reports that he has sent all his available men to the scene,” he said to his aide. “Make sure the fire chief is pulling out all the stops, as well.”

The man started for the door.

“What’s the number for City Hospital?” McClellan shouted at the retreating man.

“Gotham 621,” the man shouted back.

McClellan reached for the telephone.

“This is the mayor,” he shouted into the phone. “Give me the head of operations.”

“Pull them across,” Wade shouted to his deckhands out of the window of the pilothouse, “then send them aft.”

Glancing toward the transom, Wade could see several blackened bodies floating close to his propellers. There was nothing he could do — he needed propulsion to stay close to the steamer and to be ready to back away at a moment’s notice. He watched as a corpse swirled in the propellers’ whirlpool, then was sucked under and shredded.

He turned back to the bow.

“Get them off there,” he screamed.

Little Germany on the Lower East Side was in chaos. Relatives of the passengers on General Slocum jammed the elevated train platforms from Fourteenth Street to First Street in an effort to board an uptown train. Rumors ran through the crowd as the tension grew. Outside St. Mark’s Church, a crowd grew large. Parents with tearstained faces awaited word of a miracle that would never come.