Manchester Democrat. [volume] (Manchester, Iowa) 1875-1930, 1900-08-01

u is long since this country has had
to face the shock Of disaster SO ap.
palling in the loss of life and SO de
structive of property as the great fire
at the Hoboken docks of the North
German Lloyd Steamship Company.
Hundreds of lives lost by fire or water,
the hospitals crowded with other hun
dreds Of injured. great docks and three
big Atlantic steamers burned to the
waters edge and many millions of dol
lars worth of property destroyed by
the flames make catalogue of horror
grlevous to record. In its grewsomely
spectacular quality the disaster is
without parallel. On the west banL
OF the North river, just opposite the
most crowded part of lower New York,
the great fire burned the lives out Of
helpless men and women by the score
IN full view of thousands of spectators
who were powerless to aid them. Al
ways there seems peculiar irony in
the destruction of a ship and the loss of
life of Its crew and passengers by fire.
The first thought Is that the very prox-
unity of a limitless supply of water
ought to act in some way as saving
element, and yet even here, where ev-
cry means of protection was at hand,
with all the tireboats of New York at
prompt command and the supposedly
perfect appliances for fighting fire on
the docks and the steamers themselves,
where fire drills are practiced with reg
ularity, the flames had their own way
virtually unchecked. With scores of
ferries, tugboats and other harbor
craft lowering about the burning docks,
little could be done to save life. Three
steamers-the Main, the Saale and the
Bremen-were burned. The splendid
new Kaiser Wilhelm der Crosse, Sec
ond of all steamers on the Atlantic,
narrowly escaped destruction, suffer-
ing considerable damage. Great docks
and warehouses, valuable cargoes and
freight in storage or ready for ship.
ment, went up in flames. Lighters and
barges by the dozen were DESTROYED
and are hardly enumerated, SO hidden
is that smaller loss in the greater. The
North German Lloyd Steamship Com
pany has endured blow which might
disable weaker corporation. Yet all
these things are overshadowed by the
tales of suffering and death. The Main,
burning at the pier and smothering i'm
prisoned men who were helpless even
to fight for life, seventeen of them
saved after hours of torture in the low
est coal bunker, where they baked as in
a furnace; the Saale, drifting down
with the current to be beached on
Communipaw flats, where the tide rose
and poured through the lower port
hole, drowning the helpless men and
women who had their faces turned to-
ward the sky and liberty, so close to
the men who sought to rescue them
that they could be given water to
drink, yet penned in by the stubborn
steel plates that formed the side of the
ship; the Bremen, towed up the river
and left hulk so hot that no one
could examine it to see how many
bodies 1t would yield, and the host of
men and women driven from the yes.
| sells by the flames who found q refuge
and death in the stream-these are but
a part of the horrors. There is one
bright spot in the painful story. We
are told of instances of courage among
the dying and of persistent effort to
save life. Always brave men appear
in such dreadful scenes to call atten.
| ton more emphatically to the sad
waste of valuable lives in a hopeless sit
/ uatiOn