biology

PS General Slocum

PS General Slocum is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand PS General Slocum rather than just read about it. In short: PS General Slocum was an American sidewheel passenger steamboat built in Brooklyn, New York, in 1891. During her service history, she was involved in a number of mishaps, including multiple groundings and collisions.

Key takeaways

PS General Slocum belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect PS General Slocum to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of PS General Slocum from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

PS General Slocum was an American sidewheel passenger steamboat built in Brooklyn, New York, in 1891. During her service history, she was involved in a number of mishaps, including multiple groundings and collisions. On June 15, 1904, General Slocum caught fire and sank in the East River of New York City. At the time of the disaster, she was on a chartered run carrying members of St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church (German Americans from Little Germany, Manhattan) to a church picnic. An estimated 1,021 out of the 1,342 people on board died. The General Slocum disaster was the worst maritime disaster of the 20th century until the sinking of the RMS Titanic surpassed it eight years later in 1912. It remains the worst maritime disaster in New York City history, and the second-worst on U.S. waterways, after the explosion and sinking of the steamboat Sultana, and until the September 11 attacks in 2001 was the deadliest manmade disaster of any sort in the New York area. The events surrounding the General Slocum fire have been explored in a number of books, plays, and movies.

Construction and design

The hull of General Slocum was built by Divine Burtis Jr., a Brooklyn boatbuilder who was awarded the contract on February 15, 1891; the superstructure was built by John E. Hoffmire & Son. Her keel was 235 feet (72 m) long and the hull was 37.5 feet (11.4 m) wide constructed of white oak and yellow pine. General Slocum measured 1,284 tons gross, and had a hull depth of 12.3 feet (3.7 m). She was constructed with three decks (main, promenade and hurricane), three watertight compartments and 250 electric lights. She drew 7.5 ft (2.3 m) unladen and was 250 ft (76 m) long overall. General Slocum was powered by a single-cylinder, surface-condensing vertical-beam steam engine with a 53 inches (1.3 m) bore and 12 foot (3.7 m) stroke, built by W. & A. Fletcher Company of Hoboken, New Jersey. Steam was supplied by two boilers at a working pressure of 52 pounds per square inch (360 kPa). General Slocum was a sidewheel boat. Each wheel had 26 paddles and was 31 feet (9.4 m) in diameter. Her maximum speed was about 16 knots (30 km/h). The ship was usually crewed by a contingent of 22, including Captain William H. Van Schaick and two pilots. She had a legal capacity of 2,500 passengers. Cabins, storeroom, and machinery spaces were below the main deck. Crew quarters were the second compartment aft from the bow, with a hatch and ladder leading to the main deck. Aft of the quarters was the "forward cabin", also fitted with a companionway to the main deck; it was originally intended to be a cabin space, but had been used as a storeroom and lamp room. The forward cabin also housed the ship's steering engine and dynamo. The forward cabin, measuring approximately 30 ft × 28 ft (9.1 m × 8.5 m) (length × width), was used for general storage and to store and refuel the ship's lamps from oil barrels kept there. Oil had been spilled on the deck of the Lamp Room numerous times, and it was frequented by crew who habitually used open flames in the room. Aft of the forward cabin was the machinery space for engines and boilers. The stern compartment below the main deck (aft of the machinery) was used as an aftersaloon.

The forward section of the main deck was enclosed just in front of the companionway leading to the forward cabin. The promenade deck, located above the main deck, was open except for a small section amidships. The hurricane deck, situated above the promenade, was where the lifeboats and life rafts were stored. The pilot house was positioned above the hurricane deck, with a small stateroom immediately behind it.

Service history General Slocum was named for Civil War General and New York Congressman Henry Warner Slocum. She was owned by the Knickerbocker Steamboat Company. She operated in the New York City area as an excursion steamer for the next 13 years under the same ownership. General Slocum experienced a series of mishaps following her launch in 1891. Four months after her launching, she ran aground off Rockaway. Tugboats had to pull her free. A number of incidents occurred during 1894. On July 29, while returning from Rockaway with about 4,700 passengers, General Slocum struck a sandbar with enough force to knock out her electrical generator. The next month, General Slocum ran aground off Coney Island during a storm. Passengers had to be transferred to another ship. In September 1894, General Slocum collided with the tug R. T. Sayre in the East River, causing substantial damage to General Slocum's steering. In July 1898, General Slocum collided with the Amelia near Battery Park. On August 17, 1901, while carrying what was described as 900 intoxicated anarchists from Paterson, New Jersey, some of the passengers started a riot on board and tried to take control of the vessel. The crew fought back and kept control of the ship. The captain docked the ship at the police pier, and police took 17 men into custody. In June 1902, General Slocum ran aground with 400 passengers aboard. Passengers had to camp out overnight while the ship remained stuck.

1904 disaster

General Slocum worked as a passenger ship, taking people on excursions around New York City. On Wednesday, June 15, 1904, the ship had been chartered for $350 by St. Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Little Germany district of Manhattan. This was an annual rite for the group, which had made the trip for 17 consecutive years. Nearly 1,400 passengers, mostly women and children, boarded General Slocum, which was to sail up the East River and then eastward across the Long Island Sound to Locust Grove, a picnic site in Eatons Neck, Long Island. The official post-disaster report stated there were 1,358 passengers and 30 officers and crew; fewer than 150 of the passengers were estimated to be adult males over 21. Of those on board, there were 957 deaths and 180 injuries. Less than twenty minutes elapsed between the start of the fire and the collapse of the hurricane deck.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with PS General Slocum

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what PS General Slocum claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to PS General Slocum before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about PS General Slocum ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of PS General Slocum

In research: PS General Slocum appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses PS General Slocum in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: PS General Slocum is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1891 ships, 1904 fires in the United States, 1904 in New York City, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for PS General Slocum outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study PS General Slocum in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what PS General Slocum means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain PS General Slocum out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is PS General Slocum in simple terms?

Why does PS General Slocum matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study PS General Slocum?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on PS General Slocum.