2014.044

Brown, Doris Conrad

Loan

Gift of Doris Conrad Brown.

1886 - 1900

Date: 1886-1900

Notes: Excerpt 2014 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saale_(ship) Saale was a German passenger ship owned by the North German Lloyd company of Bremen, and was built by the Fairfield shipbuilding company in Glasgow in 1886. She was launched on 21 April 1886 and made her maiden voyage on 18 August 1886. She was capable of carrying 1,240 passengers: 150 in first class, 90 in second class, and up to a thousand in steerage. Saale primarily sailed the express route between Bremen, Southampton and New York. On the afternoon of 30 June 1900, Saale, along with her line mates Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, Main, and Bremen, were moored alongside piers 1, 2 and 3 in Hoboken, New Jersey. Saale had passengers on board readying to depart for Southampton. While the ship remained alongside her pier, some cotton that was on the pier caught fire, and due to a strong wind the flames blew over to some barrels of oil and turpentine, which quickly went ablaze. The wind fanned the flames along the pier and over to the ships. Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse quickly managed to get up some steam and get away, but there was no such luck for the other ships which moved away ablaze. Passengers above decks on Saale were able to jump into the Hudson River and swim to safety. Many others who were in cabins were trapped, and prevented from exiting the ship because the portholes were not big enough for a person to get through, so many were suffocated or incinerated. Saale eventually sank, and when she was raised the charred remains of 99 victims were recovered. The ship was raised, sold, rebuilt, re-engined, and renamed S.S. J. L. Luckenbach in 1901–02. The ship served as a cargo ship for the Luckenbach Line. As a result of this disaster it was legislated that portholes had to be big enough for a person of reasonable size to escape. ==== ==== Status: OK Status By: dw Status Date: 2014-08-14