Postcard Thursday: The Frozen Hudson

As you hunker down for the "bomb cyclone" bringing snow and cold temperatures to New York City, here's a look back at what the city was suffering through exactly 100 years ago.

The painting above, by American impressionist Eliot Candee Clark, shows the icy Hudson River in January 1918. In fact, the winter was so cold that year that both the Harlem and Hudson Rivers had frozen solid.

As the New York Sun pointed out in its lead story on January 4, 1918, under the headline "COAL FOR CITY NOW TIED UP BY ICE IN HARBOR," the city was facing down a real crisis.

Found on Newspapers.com

"The fight to get coal to this city -- just enough coal to supply the bare necessities of industry and the homes -- has become a fight against ice. For the next forty-eight hours at least it will be a grim and grinding struggle, with nature piling up the odds against the coal samaritans."

The story goes on to note that the "Hudson River is solid ice down to 200th Street" and the "Harlem River is a glacier to 140th Street...." Exacerbating the problem was the fact that big tug boats had been requisitioned by the government for the war effort, leaving the city with "ice breaking facilities ridiculously limited for a port of this size and importance...."

The rival New-York Tribune noted that 31 public schools were closed due to the coal shortage and that many people had turned to kerosene as the coal ran out, but that, too, was quickly being depleted. Compounding the problem of no heat was the issue of frozen water pipes. As the Tribune reported, Hoboken, New Jersey's "water supply failed completely" and "not a drop of water came from any hydrant" for hours.

The next day, the Sun reported that railroad tugs had broken through the ice, liberating 50,000 tons of fuel that was waiting outside the harbor. As the temperature ticked up a few degrees on January 6, coal was being distributed throughout the city, alleviating the immediate crisis.

Still, they weren't out of the woods: the winter of 1917-18 would go down as one of the coldest on books in many parts of the northeast, remaining unchallenged.... until this year, which could unseat the century-old record.

 

Footprints in New York: Tracing the Lives of Four Centuries of New Yorkers

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City

The Hoboken Pier Fire of 1900

One hundred and ten years ago, on June 30, 1900, one of the worst maritime disasters in New York history took place when a fire broke out at Pier 3 in Hoboken. The blaze, which may have started spontaneously in a bale of cotton, engulfed ships from the North German Lloyd Line, one of the most prestigious passenger ship companies of its day. By the end of the day somewhere between 325 and 400 people had been killed, many of them trapped inside the burning ships.

The fire broke out about 3:55 p.m. and despite the fact that the fire department was notified almost immediately, it was soon burning out of control. Four Lloyd Line ships were docked in Hoboken at the time, the Saale, Bremen, Main, and the line's flagship, the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, then the largest passenger ship in the world. The Saale was scheduled to depart the next morning; the others were busy loading in coal for departures later in the week. The Kaiser Wilhelm also had a number of tourists aboard who had come to see the magnificent ship up close.

Within a few minutes, the fire had leaped from the pier to the Saale and within twenty minutes all four ships were on fire. The blaze was so huge that it could be seen from every office tower in Manhattan as well as from points south on the Jersey Shore. Dozens of ships in the harbor raced to aid of the burning vessels. The Kaiser Wilhelm, which carried the most passengers, was pulled into the Hudson. Though her bow and stern had caught fire, these blazes were soon brought under control and the ship was able to anchor safely in the river near 46th Street. All passengers and crew on the Kaiser Wilhelm were saved.

The same could not be said about the other ships. The Saale and Bremen (the two ships closest to the initial fire) had burned through their mooring lines and were adrift. The Saale floated down toward Governors Island and the Bremen floated toward Pier 18 (at today's South Street Seaport), where it set the pier on fire. In both ship, dozens of people were trapped and while they were able to open the portholes (or the glass had burst in the fire), they could not get out -- portholes in this era were only 11 inches wide.

The Saale was eventually towed to Communipaw, New Jersey, where she sank ten minutes after arrival. The Bremen and Main were tugged to Weehawken. The Kaiser Wilhelm had seen so little damage that she was put back in service almost immediately.* The Bremen and Main needed major repairs, but they, too, soon rejoined the Lloyd Line. But the Saale, the oldest of the four ships, was scrapped. In all over 27 ships were damaged that day in the fire, many of them tugboats that had come to the aid of the burning cruisers.

Just four years later, the General Slocum would catch fire in the East River leading to the death of 1,021 New Yorkers. These two events were instrumental in improving safety regulations on passenger ships in American waters.


* The Kaiser Wilhelm was converted into a military transport during World War I and sank off the coast of Africa.

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Read more about the General Slocum and New York's importance as a shipping city in

Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City.

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