1900 — June 30, North German Lloyd Line Fire, Piers & Ships, Hoboken, NJ –325-400 –326-40

–326-400 Hoboken Historical Museum. CD-ROM: The 1900 Hoboken Pier Fire.
–325-400 History.com. This Day in History, Disaster, June 30, 1900. Fire Breaks Out…
–300-400 Country Beautiful. Great Fires of America. 1973, p. 97.
— 392 Woodland Democrat, CA. “Close of…19th Century. The Year 1900…” 12-31-1900, 6
— < 360 NYT. “Calamity of Fire Grows in Horror, Over 360…Missing.” July 2, 1900. -- 350 NFPA. Spreadsheet on Large Loss of Life Fires (as of Feb 2003). -- 326 Cornell, James. The Great International Disaster Book (Third Edition). 1982, p. 401. -- 326 Nash, Jay Robert. Darkest Hours. 1977, p. 244. -- 326 NFPA. “100 Conflagrations Since 1900.” NFPA Quarterly, V29, N1, July 1935, 139. -- 326 National Fire Protection Association. Key Dates in Fire History. 1996. -- 326 National Fire Protection Association. The 1984 Fire Almanac. 1983, p. 140. -- 326 NFPA. U.S. Unintentional Fire Death Rates by State. December 2008, p. 23. -- 325 Blanchard tally from ship and pier death breakouts noted below. -- 300 Hoboken Fire Department. Hoboken Fires: Important Fires in Hoboken History. -- 300 Nash, Jay Robert. Darkest Hours. 1977, p. 692. -- 245 Pier 3. “A History of the Great Hoboken Pier Fire of 1900.” 2001. -- ~200 Insurance Register. “The Great Hoboken Fire.” Vol. VII, No. 26, 7-3-1900, p. 404. --150-200 Machinery. “The New York Harbor Fire.” Vol. 6, No. 12, August 1900, p. 354. -- <200 New York Times, “Over 200 Perish in Burning Liners…” July 1, 1900. -- 171 New York Times. “Hoboken Fire Anniversary.” 7-1-1901. -- 145 (Main, Bremen, Saale). Berman. Encyclopedia of American Shipwrecks. 1972, p. 60. -- 9 Bremen (crew). Hoboken Historical Museum. CD-ROM: The 1900 Hoboken Pier Fire. -- 0 Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. Hoboken Historical Museum. Hoboken.pastperfectonline.com. -- 44 Main. Hoboken Historical Museum. CD-ROM: The 1900 Hoboken Pier Fire. -- 99 Saale. Eastlake, Russell, Sharpe. World Disasters. “Saale, New York.” 2001, p. 30. --173 “…on the piers.” Hoboken Historical Museum. CD-ROM: The 1900 Hoboken Pier Fire. --325 Narrative Information History.com: “The fire was so large that it could be seen by nearly every person in the New York City area. “William Northmaid was working as the afternoon watchman on Pier 3 in Hoboken when he spotted a fire just before 4 p.m. The old wooden pier was at serious risk for fire and the combination of strong winds and the presence of wooden fuel-filled cargo sheds made it spread very rapidly. Before the Hoboken fire department could respond, the ship Saale, which had been docked at the pier, caught fire and drifted out into the Hudson River. Many of the ship’s workers did not know how to swim and drowned. “There was so much flaming debris in the Hudson that 27 boats in all caught fire during the evening. The pier fire also spread to the shore. The Hoboken Warehouse and Campbell’s Store burned to the ground. Three other piers also burned. By the time all the fires had been put out, somewhere between 325 and 400 people had died and property owners had suffered $4.5 million in insurable damages, which is equivalent to nearly $100 million in today’s money. Many people were missing, so crews set off dynamite in hopes that the explosions might help bodies stuck in the river floor to surface…. “The piers were rebuilt using steel.” (History.com. This Day in History, Disaster, June 30, 1900. Fire Breaks Out at NJ Pier.”) Leyland in U.S. Congress: “Capt. Leyland ….The next case I want to speak of is the Bremen Line fire, which took place in New York in 1900. That was one of the greatest marine conflagrations that ever occurred in any port in the world. There were four or five ships that were lying right alongside the dock, in close proximity to the fire engines. Fire engines were playing water on them, tugboats all around the harbor were playing water on them. At our Pier 26, which we had then leased, a little south on the other side of the river I saw the fire when it broke out. I had three or four tugboats there and steam lighters and I ordered them all over there. I got into one myself, the tug Sterling. “By the time we got over you could not see the wharves and you could not see the ships, but we finally made the end of a dock, which was on fire, and got a line out on that dock. I got the steam lighter Nellie, which happened to come just alongside us. I told the captain to get his hose out and play on the eye of that line so it could not burn away. We could not move our propeller. It was dangerous to do so because there was so much floating wreckage there. We were afraid it would get into the wheel and break it. Finally, we commenced to slack down on this line, and the first thing I knew I felt flame in my mouth, although I could not see it. I dropped immediately to the deck and told all hands to do the same and to get behind the bulwarks. We crawled that way on our stomachs, and the thought struck me that this flame was coming down the dock, and you could not see it except that where there was a ray of smoke. We slacked away and we got to the stern, and I looked over the taff-rail of the boat and I saw a raft. There were 16 or 17 men on that raft. The ebb tide was running very hard, and these men could hardly move that raft in order to get it away from the ship's counter, so we slacked the line a little more until I could throw a heaving line. We threw a heaving line to this raft; they made it fast; then we kept pulling on it by hand. We pulled that life raft around so that it drifted around the end of the corner and pulled these men out, and the tug Belvedere followed the life raft and the captain cried, "All right, Leyland. I will get these fellows; you go in and get some more." “I thought it was very kind of him. Nevertheless, we had to go out and get a little fresh air, but we went in again and repeated the operation, and this time the raft was an improvised raft that had been made on the lower deck of a ship and thrown overboard. “About three days after I asked one of the sailors about it, and I said. " How is it you did not lower some lifeboats and get into them?" He said. "'We could not." I said, "Why; what was the matter with them ? " He said, " The falls were all burned off." “Mr. Manahan [Representative]. What? “Capt. Leyland. The falls; the boat falls. “Mr. Manahan. What does that mean? “Capt. Leyland. The rope which goes through the block and sustains the weight of the boat. They are made of rope, and it seems as though the flames will take hold of that kind of fiber quicker than anything else I know of. “The second lot of men we pulled out that way. “The captain of that ship was burned to death right on the bridge. He was on the starboard side of the bridge. His name was Capt. Keyser. We found all that was left of him the next morning was his gold watch and chain, melted into one solid mass. “The steamship Saul [Saale] we helped to pull out and backed away down to below Bedloes Island. There were 80 persons burned to death or drowned whom we could not get at. “Here was a condition, gentlemen, where their fire boats, firemen, and everybody else in that immediate vicinity—they could not assist those people, and something like four or five hundred persons were burned to death and drowned in New York Harbor and on the docks. I want to say that you would not think that such a condition as that could exist. You would not think that fire could make such headway and kill those people, but if it had not been for those life rafts, the improvised life rafts and the regular ones, there were 32 lives that would have been lost, and these life rafts were the means of saving them.” (Leyland, in: US Congress, House Merchant Marine Committee. Seamen’s Bill Hearings, 1914, pp. 396-397.) Newspapers July 1, NYT: “A fire that started among the cotton stored on Pier 3 of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company, in Hoboken, at 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon, in less than fifteen minutes covered an area a quarter of a mile long…and caught four great ocean liners and two dozen or more smaller harbor craft in its grasp, putting in peril at least 1,500 lives and property worth $10,000,000…. “….The most conservative figures indicate that possibly 220 people have perished…. “The strong wind almost in an instant carried the flames across a narrow strip of water into the cabins of the Saale, crossed Pier 2, seized hold of the Bremen, leaped thence to the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, and catching Pier 1 in their folds laid hold on the Main....Only one ship escapes….there were 150 on the Main. The vessel never got away from its pier. It lay there in a cauldron of flames, with its many victims, some of whom were seen trying to get out of the port holes, when the smoke drew a curtain over the ghastly scene…when it lifted for a moment, their bodies were seem hanging limp and apparently lifeless in the same portholes, and later, when the fire had subsided somewhat, it had removed all traces of its victims….Within three-quarters of an hour the three piers of the North German Lloyd Line were a mass of blazing debris, leveled almost to the floors, the only objects rising out of the flames being the steel masts of the Main and the great pile of burning cotton bales on Pier 3, in which the fire started…” (NYT. “Over 200 Perish in Burning Liners…Steamships Caught in Berths of Fire…” 7-1-1900.) July 2, NYT: “Dawn yesterday revealed on the Hoboken water front a long stretch of half-burned piles, a tangle of iron work, and heaps of half-consumed merchandise – all that had been left of the American terminal of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company….Smoke still rose from the debris and the streams of water played upon the fire were turned into sprays of steam, giving warning that the heat was still too intense to permit a search to be made for the victims who were trapped upon the piers….Stranded and partly sunk off Ellis Island lay the liner Saale, still smoking and holding in its fire-eaten, water-filled interior and on its charred and cinder-covered decks the bodies of possibly 128 victims, 127 of the 255 persons in the vessel having been accounted for….Up the river, beached and still burning, lay the other ill-fated liners, the Bremen and the Main, each stripped of all its upper woodwork and the fire still eating in the interior of the vessels, while the tugs kept on pouring water into them…According to careful and conservative estimates made late last night the loss of life may reach a total of 361, the estimates being as follows: Missing from the steamship Saale… 128 Missing from the steamship Bremen… 74 Missing from the steamship Main… 61 Reported missing to the police… 48 Longshoremen, boatmen, and visitors…50 ….The bodies of many of those who were drowned in the river, or who, already lifeless fell from the burning vessels or piers, will never be recovered, and it will never be known how many perished on the burning decks, leaving only their ashes, which cannot be discriminated as human remains.” (NYT. “Calamity of Fire Grows in Horror, Over 360 Now Estimated to Be Missing.” 7-2-1900.) July 5, NYT: “….The German societies of Hoboken always have elaborate celebrations on the Fourth, but this year no such events were held. Instead the societies marched with draped flags as the escorts at the funerals of two of the victims of the fire. “While the funerals were being held the search for more bodies continued. An unpleasant discovery was made by Morgue Keeper O'Donnell, and that was that some persons were deliberately, robbing the dead. Additional police details were sent to the water front in order, to prevent further work of this kind. “The thunder storm of yesterday was held to be accountable for the bringing of many bodies to the surface. There were many more bodies found yesterday at Hoboken, Staten Island and along the Brooklyn water front. “Thirty-five bodies were found yesterday of supposed victims of the fire. Of this number twenty-seven were found near the scene of the calamity. Three were found in the Narrows, along the Staten Island shore. Four had drifted over to the Brooklyn shore. One was picked up at the foot of Christopher Street, this city, and a part of a leg and foot was picked up by one of the police patrol boats. Of the bodies recovered yesterday three found at Hoboken were identified. “One of the funerals held yesterday in Hoboken was that of John Walrabe, first engineer of the Saale…. To-Day’s Great Funeral. “These two funerals were the forerunners of the large funeral which will be held at 10 o’clock this morning…At least eighty bodies will be buried….” (NYT. “Mourning for the Dock Fire Victims.” July 5, 1900, p. 5.) Sources Berman, Bruce D. Encyclopedia of American Shipwrecks. Boston: Mariners Press Inc., 1972. Cornell, James. The Great International Disaster Book (Third Edition). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982. Country Beautiful Editors. Great Fires of America. Waukesha, WI: Country Beautiful, 1973. Eastlake, Keith, Henry Russell, and Mike Sharpe. World Disasters. “Saale, New York.” p. 30. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2001. Accessed 7-15-2020 at: https://www.google.com/books/edition/World_Disasters/zviAAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=lloyd+line+fire+hoboken+nj+1900&pg=PA30&printsec=frontcover History.com. This Day in History, Disaster, June 30, 1900. “Fire Breaks Out at New Jersey Pier.” Accessed at: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=Article&id=767 Hoboken Fire Department. Hoboken Fires: Important Fires in Hoboken History. Accessed 3-5-2013 at: http://www.hobokenfire.org/fires.cfm Hoboken Historical Museum. CD-ROM: The 1900 Hoboken Pier Fire. Accessed 7-15-2020 at: https://hoboken.pastperfectonline.com/archive/752096E1-571E-4854-B302-516644201882 Insurance Register. “The Great Hoboken Fire.” Vol. VII, No. 26, 7-3-1900, p. 404. Accessed 7-15-2020 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=aWNJAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false Machinery. “The New York Harbor Fire.” Vol. 6, No. 12, Aug 1900, p. 354. Accessed 7-15-2020: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Machinery/1AhGAQAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=lloyd+line+fire+hoboken+nj+1900&pg=PA354&printsec=frontcover Nash, Jay Robert. Darkest Hours – A Narrative Encyclopedia of Worldwide Disasters from Ancient Times to the Present. New York: Pocket Books, Wallaby, 1977, 792 pages. National Fire Protection Association. “100 Conflagrations Since 1900.” Quarterly of the National Fire Protection Association, Vol. 29, No. 1, July 1935, pp. 129-156. National Fire Protection Association. Key Dates in Fire History. 1996. Accessed 2010 at: http://www.nfpa.org/itemDetail.asp?categoryID=1352&itemID=30955&URL=Research%20&%20Reports/Fire%20statistics/Key%20dates%20in%20fire%20history&cookie%5Ftest=1 National Fire Protection Association. Spreadsheet on Large Loss of Life Fires (as of Feb 2003). (Email attachment to B. W. Blanchard from Jacob Ratliff, NFPA Archivist/Taxonomy Librarian, 7-8-2013.) National Fire Protection Association. The 1984 Fire Almanac. Quincy, MA: NFPA, 1983. National Fire Protection Association (John Hall, Jr.). U.S. Unintentional Fire Death Rates by State. Quincy, MA: NFPA, 31 pages, December 2008. New York Times. “Calamity of Fire Grows in Horror, Over 360 Now Estimated to Be Missing.” 7-2-1900. At: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F0DEEDD163FE433A25751C0A9619C946197D6CF New York Times. “Hoboken Fire Anniversary.” 7-1-1901. Accessed 7-15-2020 at: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1901/07/01/117967776.pdf New York Times. “Mourning for the Dock Fire Victims.” July 5, 1900, p. 5. Accessed at: http://www.newspaperarchive.com/FullPagePdfViewer.aspx?img=52173598 New York Times. “Over 200 Perish in Burning Liners – Ocean Steamships Caught in Berths of Fire – 1500 Lives Imperiled.” July 1, 1900. Accessed October 5, 2008 at: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A07E0DF1039E733A25752C0A9619C946197D6CF Pier 3 (Website). A History of the Great Hoboken Pier Fire of 1900.” 2001. Accessed at: http://www.pier3.org/pier3/index.html United States Congress. House of Representatives, Committee on the Merchant Marine and Fisheries. The Seamen’s Bill (Hearings, on S. 136, an act to promote the welfare of American Seamen in the Merchant Marine of the U.S…., Part 1). Wash.: GPO, 1914. Digitized by Google: http://books.google.com/books?id=fDkuAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_atb#v=onepage&q&f=false Woodland Daily Democrat, CA. “Close of the 19th Century. The Year 1900 in the Record of Time.” 12-31-1900, p. 6. http://newspaperarchive.com/woodland-daily-democrat/1900-12-31/page-6