On the 30th of June, 1900, a small fire began in a stack of cotton bales on a wharf at the
Hoboken Docks in New Jersey.
Over the next few minutes this tiny blaze would spread and grow, edging steadily closer
to a nearby store of oil and turpentine.
One of the worst disasters the area had ever seen was about to take place – a disaster
that would cost hundreds of people their lives.
Hoboken is a city in the US state of New Jersey.
Situated on the Hudson Waterfront it is a vital port and transit hub, and has been for
over a hundred years.
In the late 1800s the Hoboken Docks were a busy area – as well as being the terminus
of several railway lines, they were also the site of many wharfs and piers owned and operated
by different companies.
Ships would deliver and pick up huge quantities of cargo and large numbers of passengers on
a daily basis.
One company to have facilities at the Hoboken Docks was Norddeutscher Lloyd (or NDL) – a
German shipping company founded in 1857, which by 1900 was one of the largest shipping companies
in the world.
It both delivered cargo and transported passengers to and from Hoboken on trans-Atlantic voyages.
It owned and operated many piers and warehouses in the area, and at any given time there were
likely to be several NDL ships moored in the area.
The original source of the fire that began on the 30th of June, 1900, is unknown.
Flames were first noticed around 4:00pm in a single bale of cotton near pier number three,
the southernmost of the piers owned by NDL.
It is possible that the bale had been smouldering unnoticed for some time.
Whatever started the fire, it could not be extinguished.
A strong breeze that was blowing at the time provided oxygen for the blaze and spread it
quickly to other bales of cotton stacked on the wharf, and then to other cargo.
Stored nearby were hundreds of barrels of oil and turpentine.
The fire quickly engulfed these, and the barrels began to explode.
The buildings which lined the dock were mostly of timber construction.
These were soon ablaze as well, as was the mostly wooden pier.
Within just 15 minutes, the flames had spread to engulf an area of the docks 400 metres
(or a quarter of a mile) long.
The rapid spread of the flames stranded hundreds of people on the piers.
Many were dock workers, but there were also dozens of visitors and merchants.
With escape by land impossible, and the wooden piers beginning to burn, they took the only
way out available them: they jumped into the water.
At this time and place in history, many people – even those who worked on or around ships
– could not swim.
Many of those who jumped drowned, while others clung to the stanchions of the pier, only
to suffocate as the fire consumed the wooden decking above them.
The ships moored at the burning piers were in danger of catching fire too – it would
take hours to prepare their engines, and so they could not simply move away from the fire
under their own steam.
One ocean liner, the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, was quickly pulled away from the conflagration
by two tugboats, and thus survived the blaze.
Though she was left with a massive scorch mark on the side of her hull, nobody on board
lost their life, and the ship was able to sail as scheduled just a few days later.
Other ships moored at the Hoboken Docks did not fare so well.
The Saale, the Main and the Bremen all caught fire.
Their mooring lines were cut, and they drifted out into the river.
The fire on board the Saale left as many as 100 people trapped below decks.
As firefighting boats hosed down the deck, some were able to emerge from shelter and
jump overboard, but others remained trapped by the flames, waving frantically for help
through portholes that were too small for them to climb through.
One fireboat was able to feed a hose through a porthole to the people trapped within, but
this was insufficient to tackle the fire, and these people did not survive.
When the Saale looked as though she might drift towards some piers on the other side
of the river, she was towed towards Ellis Island, where she sank with significant loss
of life.
The Bremen had around 200 people on board when its mooring lines were cut.
Every passenger and crewmember subsequently left the vessel at some point – almost all
of them by jumping overboard to take their chances in the water.
The burning ship crossed the river and bumped against a pier on the New York side, almost
setting it ablaze.
Fortunately, firefighters were standing ready to extinguish the fire before it could take
hold.
Eventually, the Bremen was towed to the Weehawken flats, where it was grounded and gutted by
the fire.
The Main was also towed to the Weehawken flats, and there grounded.
Firefighters worked tirelessly to extinguish the flames, and eventually did so after almost
seven hours.
Sixteen survivors were found on board – all of them coal passers who had taken refuge
inside a coal bunker when the fire began.
After enduring oven-like temperatures for such a long period of time, one had lost his
sight, and the others were extremely distressed, but all survived.
While tugs and fireboats on the water worked to extinguish the burning ships, firefighters
on land struggled to fight the flames on the burning piers.
The blaze was simply too intense to extinguish, and so they resorted to containing the fire
and allowing it to burn out, which it eventually did.
As well as moving ships, tugboats pulled many people from the water.
Crowds gathered on the shoreline to watch, and threw lines to anyone who was able to
swim close enough to be rescued.
Despite these efforts, many of the people who entered the water did not survive.
In total, at least 326 people were killed in this disaster.
The recovery of bodies from the Hudson River over the next few days and weeks was a difficult
process.
While some were pulled from the water on the day of the fire, others were found inside
the gutted ships as they were drained.
In an attempt to dislodge further bodies that might be stuck on the bed of the Hudson, dynamite
was used, but this did not cause any further bodies to rise to the surface.
An investigation in the aftermath of the fire was unable to establish a cause for the blaze.
It was put down to carelessness – with some possible causes being a dropped match, or
a stray spark landing in the cotton during transit, and smouldering away for hours or
days before being fanned into a full-blown fire by the wind.
Whatever the cause, it was recognised that the disaster could not be allowed to happen
again.
When the piers were rebuilt, they were constructed from steel and other less flammable materials.
The design of many ships was also changed – the scenes of trapped people waving from
portholes on board the Saale had been deeply shocking, and it was decided that portholes
on passenger boats should be at least large enough for most people to clamber through
in an emergency.
There was also some criticism of the actions of the tugboat captains during the fire.
A German inquiry accused tugboat captains of being uncooperative, and argued that more
lives could have been saved if the crews of the tugboats had focussed on retrieving people
from the water rather than attempting to salvage the ships.
Despite this, there were no serious legal consequences.
A mass funeral was held on the 4th of July, during which all bodies which could not be
identified were buried in a mass grave, at a plot in Flower Hill Cemetery paid for by
NDL.
A granite marker was installed the next year, bearing the names of those who had lost their
lives in the fire.
The gutted ocean liners were re-floated and rebuilt, and continued to sail for many years
before finally being lost or decommissioned.
The Hoboken Docks Fire of 1900 was not the last fire to strike the docks that line the
Hudson River… but it was the most deadly.
Thanks, in part, to changes made in the aftermath of this fire, subsequent dock fires have been
only a fraction as dangerous and a fraction as deadly.