On June 15, 1904, a steamship called the General Slocum left the pier on East Third Street in New York City. The boat was filled with more than 1,300 residents of the Lower East Side. Many of the passengers recent German immigrants headed up the east river towards Long Island for a church outing, but they would never make it.
This week on the podcast, our 2004 interview with Adella Wotherspoon, the last survivor of the Slocum catastrophe which claimed 1,021 lives including members of Adella’s family.
The General Slocum was originally a part of our Last Witness series which features first-person sound portraits of sole surviving witnesses to major historical events.
A transcript of this episode is available here in English.
