UPPER TOWNSHIP– A ceremony scheduled for Tuesday morning in Strathmere will recognize one of the worst maritime disasters of all time that eventually ended up as a wreck off the coast.
On Wednesday, June 15, 1904, the passenger ship, General Slocum had been chartered for $350 by St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Little Germany district of Manhattan.
Shortly after the ship got underway a fire broke out on board. By the time the General Slocum was beached at North Brother Island, just off the Bronx shore, an estimated 1,021 people had been killed by fire or drowning, with 321 survivors.
On January 26, 2004 the last surviving passenger from the General Slocum, Adella Wotherspoon, died at the age of 100. At the time of the disaster she was a six-month old child.
After the fire, the General Slocum was converted to a barge named Maryland, which sank in 1911 off southern New Jersey’s coast near Upper Township.
The ceremony will start at 10 a.m. on the beach near the Schiavo Library in Strathmere.
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