The Springfield herald., 1900-07-06
IMMENSE FIRE All
HOBOKEN DOCKS
Three Big Steamships Wholly Destroyed
with Great LOSS OF Life.

many lives lost many persons were In
jured and at least 1900 lives imperiled
by IL fire that started among cotton
bales under Pier No. 3, of the North
German Lloyd Steamship Company, In
Hoboken, N. j., at 4 o'clock, Saturday
afternoon.
In less than fifteen minutes the
flames covered an area of quarter of
mile long, extending outward from
the actual short line to the bulk-heads,
from six hundred to one thousand feet
away, and had caught four great ocean
liners and a doXcn or more smaller
harbor craft in its grasp.
The losses sustained in the fire are
tonight conseryatively placed mt near
ly S1O.OoOOOO. The loss of life merely
guess work at even this late hour, will
reach probably as high as 200 and
there are over 300 men in the hospitals
in this city, Hoboken and Jersey City,
badly burned.
Up to II o'clock tonight eighteen
bodies have been recovered. Eleven of
these We're placed in II row at the
morgue in this city and We're number
+ ed, this being the only means the au-
thorities have of maintaining any sort
of identity over the corpses, rs they
are SO badly charred and dismember-
: ed that identification will be made on
! ly by trinketS or pieces of clothing that
were found about the bodies. The on
ly way the steamship officials have of
approXimating the loss of life is by
comparing the list of those reported
safe with the list of the employees on
| the steamships
A spectacular but horrible sight was
presented to-day. Where two days ago
piers reached hundreds of feet out i'll
| to the river and rose like great hills
| alive with outgoing and incoming COM
merce. lay IL great waste of burning
/ and smouldering beams, with here and
/ there Il remnant of n high brick wall.
| The three immense piers of the North
German Lloyd line We're burned to
| til waters ripple. the Thingvalla pier
! lay smouldering and II part of the
/ Hamburg American pier, which had
I just been added to their great piers
We're ruins. Four large store houses
of the Palmer-Campbell company are
! wrecked. and they, with the piers. went
/ to make up the appalling mass of de-
/ bris, smoking. sizzling and steaming.
I 1t covers over four city blocks. and
reaches out into the river for over
thousand feet. Streams of water are
/ being pumped upon the ruins and
( workmen are polting about for bodies.
This was the scene of the greatest
attraction today and thousands upon
thousands of people went there. The
streets We're jammed.
| Far off, up the North river at Wee
hawken. n great cloud of smoke rose
and tumbled mt one moment on the
water and the next rising just enough
| to show the skeletons of two of the
great ocean liners, the Bremen and the
Maine that rose like giant spires out
of the smooth face of the water. They
I had been beached there Around them
swarmed fleet of small boats carry
ing SightSeers.
Far down the river. off Ellis island,
lay the smoking and steaming hulk Of
the Saale. almost Il total wreck.
The loss of life will probably prove
greatest when the wreck of the Shale
has been searched. Already Il number
of bodies have been taken off, and as
soon as the fire in the hold has subsid-
ed there is every possibility that many
bodies will be found below decks.
Various tugboat captains claim to
have seen thirty or forty persons In one
compartment just before the Saale
I went down.
OF the 2Gi persons reported missing
tonight it is believed some will be
found in sailors boarding houses in
this city. Jersey City and Hoboken.
| The North German Lloyd officials
deny that any passengers We're lost. de-
cleare that few, If any, visitors perish
ed, and that the loss of life was almost
entirely among employees of the com
pany.
The fearful havoc to life and proper
ty caused by the fire which broke out
ut the docks of the North German
Lloyd company in Hoboken yesterday
cannot be approximated with any de-
gree of certainty. Conservative people
docks are of the opinion that not more
than 200 lives We're lost. one Of the
officers of the steamship Bremen said
to-day that there We're fully 200 visit
prs on board that vessel when the fire
touched there. the majority of them be
ing women. A boat WAS lowered from
the Bremen shortly after the alarm had
been given. but the craft capsized as it
touched the water and all hands were
precipitated into the water, and none
of them We're saved by those remaining
on the vessel. This in itself would in
dcate that the list of dead may bd
larger than it was at first thought.
The property loss can simply be ap-
proximated at this time. None of the
officials around the docks could give
anything like a precise estimate of
their losses, and none was prepared to
make a statement on this point. a con-
servative estimate made by promi-
nent fire underwater places the entire
damage at less than S1O,OOO,oOO.