Knickerbocker Steamboat Company Ticket dated 1904 - Americana - Interesting Disaster History of the PS General Slocum

Round trip complimentary tickets on the Knickerbocker Steamboat from Bridgeport, Connecticut to New York and back.

The PS General Slocum was a 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 Titanic surpassed it eight years later in 1912. It remains the worst maritime disaster in New York City history, and the second-worst on United States 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. Read more at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_General_Slocum