Wonderful documentary. I was in Hoboken June 30, 2000 for the 100th anniversary of this historic fire. My Grandfather Ludwig Steiner, then 25 years old, was in the coal bunker of the NGL steamer Main when the fire broke out. Because he was able to swim, he survived, but watched many drown or burn to death. In the late 1950s, he wrote about his experience for the benefit of his grandchildren. Until today, I have never seen a video on this tragic event. Thank you so much for keeping this story alive. Jim Wright
I work on tugboats in New York Harbor. Ships,especially tankers since sometime around WW1 have “Fire Warps” hanging over their outboard sides. The warps are heavy steel cable with a loop at the end hanging a few feet above the water. If there is a fire on the dock the tugs can grab the warp and start pulling while the ships crew are cutting their lines.
Those measure were most likely created and implemented after this Hoboken Dock fire and New York’s General Slocum - to avoid the repeating of such tragedies.
When I was a child in Mount Clemens, MI, the whole downtown area reeked of sulfur from the mineral baths. Alas, today the bath spas are all closed down and no one remembers the mineral baths of Mount Clemens. I think the history of the medicinal bathing industry is History that Deserves to be Remembered.
I was born there then moved to Ypsilanti when the serial killer struck there, then when I was two years old we moved back to Alabama I learned about the serial killer a few years ago.
@@cornbreadfedkirkpatrick9647 I left to join the Marine Corps in 1976. I never went back for a visit since. I looked at the Google Earth satellite images of the street where I lived. It's unrecognizable today.
What years were that? I lived there late 70s to 1982 and don't remember any sulfur smell. I also never learned where the "mount" was that gave the city its name. ;-)
@@FuzzyMarineVet My late parents in the late 1990''s went to visit all the former addresses where they had lived. They were shocked. Most were gone, one an Interstate intersection, one a substantial townhouse vanished, its lot paved over for a supermarket, another an empty lot between two gutted buildings. The former sturdy structures well built in formerly functioning and prosperous neighborhoods just lost. They returned home quite shaken.
During the Great Depression my father worked for a while in a cotton gin. He said that cotton bale fires happened from time to time. He told us that if the cotton was too wet at the time the bale was compressed, the cotton would start to decompose deep inside the bale, and that would produce heat that could eventually start the compressed cotton smoldering. If the smoldering reach the outer surface of the bale, it could erupt into flames. Because this all took time, the yard help would keep an eye on the stored bales for any sign of smoke. A smoking bale was immediately isolated, the bands cut and the bale was opened. He said that when the smoldering cotton was exposed to oxygen in the air, it would usually immediately start burning. An isolated and open bale could easily be extinguished, but if a bale caught on fire while still lined up in storage, it could result in the loss of hundreds of bales.
@@RedArrow73: as I understand it, fermentation is where micro-organisms, (usually a member of the yeast family), eat sugar and produce alcohol and CO2 as a byproduct. Decomposition is caused mostly by bacteria, and can produce gasses like methane, but not alcohol. Because cotton is mainly cellulose, not sugar, so it's not a good candidate for fermentation.
I have to wonder of the fire is a result of bacterial heat. Note that even a semi-aerated compost pile can reach temperatures of 160 to 170 degrees from the bacterial decomposition. Inside a cotton bale, with fibrous air pockets as insulation, the heat build-up could be significant. Any oil or grease contamination, whether internal or external, could exacerbate the heating effect and lead to a fire.
Thank You, THG!! My Mother's family lived in Hoboken for over 100 years and I recall many happy memories of my youth in the streets, docks, rail yards and parks. The Black Tom explosion was a frequent story told around the parlors of my Great Aunts and Uncles after Sunday dinners. The post-feast family tradition of "going around the room" always occurred with the adults seated on the sofas and chairs while the kids jumped into any empty lap they could find or else they quietly laid on the floor. Each adult was expected to entertain all with songs, jokes or tales of fancy and/or facts. The tradition held on even through the dawn of television into the late 1960's. Yet, I do not believe this story was ever recalled or told. You have added one more story to the family tradition.
Whenever I'm thinking about how bad my life is, all I have to do is hear/read a story similar to this one where people are being cooked alive because they aren't 8" in diameter and all my problems instantly become insignificant....
This is why I study history. My food has more savor, my exercise more vigor, my passions stronger. Nothing sweetens life quite like the knowledge of horrible death.
Wow. I added this event as a possible topic for an episode in a comment about a year ago. Glad to see THG cover it. It was a terrible disaster now largely forgotten.
I second the motion I just read here a moment ago: "THG is the best story-teller on TH-cam." And I imagine the writing and research is shared, so I salute the team! Thank you for what you do!!
I lived through an abandoned Hoboken pier fire when I was an undergrad at Steven Tech in the early 1980s. The smell of burning Creosote was thick and we were very close to being evacuated. It actually made us WANT to stay inside during the weekend and study.
I live in Hudson County and spent most of my life here. You'd be amazed at the reaction i get from relatively new residents when i describe to them and show them pictures of the waterfront from Edgewater down to Jersey City. Especially the 1970s/80s era when most sections were pure desolation.
@@jpjpjp453 Yes! I went to Stevens from 1989-93 and River St. and up Sinatra Dr. were abandoned docks and a Maxwell House Coffee factory with abandoned Bethlehem Steel factory north of that.
Oh, how tragic!! I think my natural reaction if I was caught below decks of this fire would be to open a port window. Hindsight, however, would point to the fact that you're only giving the fire oxygen. What a horrible way to die.
I don’t often comment since I don’t know what I might add to one of these videos. However, I wanted to say that it is the mark of a true storyteller when the sorrow and horror of the situation feels real, real enough to hit you in the gut and make you cry, and that is something you do when sharing the story of tragedies like this one. It is important to know about those people who have gone before us and to understand why some of the regulations in place now have come to be. I never even considered they would make ships with portals too small for escape on the lower decks. G
I've spent many nights in Hoboken though I don't remember a lot of them. (I think Hoboken has more bars/sq. mile than any city in the USA.) I never knew about this fire. Fascinating.
There are few channels I watch that are as fascinating, entertaining and informative as THG. Not to mention the excitement of your exhuberant style of narration. Keep up the good work.
I imagine the smouldering cotton was helped along by the means of preserving wood in maritime conditions, tarring and oiling. Even today, here in Sweden, cast off motor oil gets used pain barndoors, as a way to both waterproof and hinder the gwoth of mosses in the wood. Extremely incindinary stuff to work with, and I imagine they had stores of the stuff at the docks for maintainance.
The commonest form of "tar" formerly used for preserving wood was creosote, a nasty-smelling, flammable, sticky brown gunk, once commonly used to treat railroad ties and telephone poles, but which is now known to be carcinogenic, and it's use has been banned. Used motor oil isn't likely to be any healthier, or safer ---- contains heavy metals, and benzene; and oil-soaked barn goods would likely make a great firestarter.
Thank you for bringing this incident to us, who have never heard of it. I fought a pier fire in Tampa many years ago, (it was a suspicious fire of "convince" for the developers of that island), and I thought that "This is what Hell looks like!", but that fire in no way compares to the scope of the Hoboken dock fire. No lives were lost in the Tampa fire.
If you haven't done so already, you should do an episode on the Great Baltimore Fire in 1904 and how the lack of standardization in fire equipment made the fire last longer.
Also, your theme song strikes a chord of memory, that I cannot figure out. However, I love it and will keep trying to remember what it trusts in my memory. Love your channel!
Another really great episode from history about which I knew nothing, even though I consider myself to be a 'history geek'. Keep up the marvelous work! BTW, am I the ONLY one who clicks the 'like' button before even watching the vid just because I KNOW it will be worthwhile?
Fascinating, I went to school at Stevens in Hoboken I used to walk up and down the peers to get to and from the Path station. I had no idea any of this happened. As always your child provides fascinating information.
I'm watching this on my lunch break at work. I had been watching The Great War, but figured 1914 massacres and rapes might not be the best subject to watch in the workplace. So I came over here looking for something a little lighter in tone. I, um... might not have chosen the right video. Hey, I learned something, though! This was history I'd never heard of before, so this channel is doing its job.
This tragedy in the New York area brings to mind a sad anniversary that is fast approaching, that of the attacks on 9-11-2001. I hope you will do an in depth video of those events. If any day deserves to be remembered, it is that one.
I was born and raised in Weehawken, so I find this very interesting. I'd heard of this fire before, but I never heard it explained in such gruesome detail.
Today’s media would write an essay about injustice portraying themselves as a messiah-style savior. Without visiting the site or reporting any facts. It is all about their own self gratification.
CNN would blame it on systemic racism while MSNBC would blame the fire on climate change. BLM would accuse the cotton merchants of cultural appropriation.
Utterly horrifying, Thanks H.G. Ive read several NYC histories.Most include the General Slocum disaster but this is the first i've learned of the Hoboken fire.
Awesome history! I first really became aware of Hoboken in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy. Before that it was only a gag line on TV. I've recently been working in ocean freight so this story hits home. It's sad they didn't come up with a definite cause, but freight warehouses can be very dangerous places, as was recently demonstrated in Beirut.
Please do a piece about the Morro Castle disaster of 1934. This occurred off the coast of New Jersey and family history has it that my wife’s grandfather was a steward on that voyage. Love the show!!!☮️
At 0:58, Hoboken was the *eastern* terminus of several railroads, not the western. These included the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Erie Railroad, the Delaware and Lackawanna Railroad, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and the Central Railroad of New Jersey.
There have been many large disasters in North Jersey over the years. But, the two that always come to mind for me are the Picatinny Arsenal explosion on July 10, 1926 where a lightning strike had detonated the powder stored on site and the Hercules Powder Company explosion on September 12, 1940, said blast killed 51 and registered on a seismograph in NYC which is 50 miles away.
OMG! I had, before it was destroyed in the Camp Fire 2018, a straight razor with the etched image of the Bremen on the blade. I wish I knew the full story of that straight razor. Always worth watching The History Guy.
@@navret1707 That might be possible. In railroad terms a short rail line is called a railroad spur. A very short line that might go just a short distance away or to another part of the rail yard.
There are plenty of rail origin points east of Hoboken; everything from Canada, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts... 🤔 🤷♂️ I get what you're saying, but it may not be quite so black and white.
I believe there were three basic terminus' available. Hoboken (northernmost) had maybe the Erie, Lackawana and not sure of the Lehigh Valley RR's spaces. Jersey City had the southernmost terminus, IIRC...the B&O, Jersey Central and the Reading used the terminal which is still there in historical form today (took a big hit from Sandy). The Pennsylvania ran right thru Jersey City on an elevated track over...you guessed it, "Railroad Avenue" street and right to the ferries that plied the Hudson. Understood my father and other urchins of the era used to pick the frozen coal that fell trackside from the trains running up from the coal operations down south. Coal heat in Jersey City had much diminished by the early 1950's, but you did what you had to do back then.
Watched this video after hear that one of the ships from "The Convoy and the U-Boat: SS J. L. Luckenbach, HMS Orama and SMU-62", was damaged in this very fire.
Cotton bales are well know to be hard to extinguish. My father worked in textile mills in the 1920's. They seem to have had a hot bale. It was quickly removed and dumped in a lake by the plant. After floating for two weeks, it was retrieved and broken open. Internally, it was still smoldering and burst into flame when opened. Today, firemen have a chemical that can be added to water to make it "wetter" to improve it's penetration.
Simon Whistler and his beard of knowledge joined by the History Guy and his bow tie of wisdom for an episode of Casual Criminalist would be a fun watch.
I recently read of an event which, I think, deserves to be remembered, particularly in this time. The event was America's very narrow escape from an epidemic of the Black Death. In the last years of the 19th century, a ship brought the plague to San Francisco, and the disease began to spread in Chinatown. The fate of the USA and probably its neighbouring countries was decided by a heroic struggle by America's recently established public health service against the plague and against the Chinese labourers, White businessmen, and White politicians who laboured heroically to expedite the plague-not that they would have seen it that way. The story is told in David K. Randall's book "Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague", 2019.
Sounds kinda like the Great Jacksonville Fire. A spark started burning in a pile of Spanish Moss, the fire quickly spread bcuz of winds, 8 hours later almost 150 blocks were burnt. Over 2300 buildings were destroyed and 10K people were homeless
Fascinating as always THG! On the subject of cotton based conflagrations, would it be possible for you to do a video on the Guncotton explosion of 1871? It’s a incident the happened in my hometown of Stowmarket and I would love to have a well made video by you, on the incident.
Strange I never heard about this. I went to college in Hoboken -- it was a college town even at the time: Stevens Institute of Technology was founded in 1870 and is one of the nation's oldest colleges focused on engineering. But no one ever mentioned this fire as part of the city's history. By the way, the Bamberg Herald was published in Bamberg, South Carolina. There is no Bamberg, NJ. (Although NJ once had a department store called Bamberger's. Their locations are now all Macy's.)
perhaps the bright light that comes from big fires like this is often they start the road to fire codes. Like how the Triangle factory in NYC caused wave of regulations for things like egress structures and fire suppression systems.
I think the Cocoanut Grove fire had a greater impact on fire codes.ut not enough as witnessed by the Hartford hospital fire and the Beverly Hills Supper Club
@@dwlopez57 , you would think that, being an insurance-company mecca, and having earlier suffered the infamous Circus fire, that the city of Hartford would have been leveraged into retrofitting all of its major building infrastructure for fire safety.
It is unfortunate that it takes events like this to force change in building codes and enforcement thereof. As an employee in the fire alarm/life safety industry, I'm aware of some famous events that justified the aforementioned changes; the Triangle Shirt Factory and the Coconut Grove fire are two examples. In this situation, had sprinkler systems been installed in these warehouses, either at initial construction or during later renovation/upgrades, this event probably would not have gone so badly, and with such a loss of life. Note, sprinkler systems were invented in 1872, so engineers and builders were familiar with them. But as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) was still in its infancy, having been formed in 1896, it is possible that local building codes of the time did not require sprinkler systems when these warehouses were initially constructed.
Get off that shit. I remember Hoboken when it was run down as all hell and was more or less defeated as a town, Just walking through it was somewhat of a challenge. I was working in there in the early 90s when things really began changing there (and in nearby Pavonia) and it's a hell of a place to be now. A lot of dumb shits bitching about places like that ought to take a good hard look at what was there after the industrial prime was done and gone. It sure as hell wasn't a pretty picture.
@@jpjpjp453 I remember it as well and it was as you described, it's where I'm originally from. Me and my brother and parents moved from there in 1973 when I was 13.
@@samjohnstone7535 , *you're* the one being triggered here, by someone else's expression of empathy. Who is really being the "snowflake" in this situation? Anyway, if someone isnt haunted by even the thought of having seen people unable to be rescued and overcome by smoke and flames, that person likely has something wrong with them.
Many of those docks were the eastern terminus of the railroad which brought fresh produce from the west to the New York markets right across the Hudson river from the “Washington street market”. This was the precursor to the Hunts Point Market. The largest produce market in North America, and the second largest wholesale market in the world.
Hope we enjoyed!? Certainly not, but it was moving and memorable. Foibles of human nature and of construction standards, among other issues, show up time and again - even today (collapse of Florida Condo tower the latest.)
Ship engineers complained that larger portholes could compromise hull integrity, and that the purpose was light and ability to move air rather than egress.
@@erynlasgalen1949 I was visiting a zoo with my grandchildren and was stunned with the amount of human obesity. Not "overweight", but obese. Most were middle aged, many in electric carts. One look at portion sizes in the past half century would attest to this.
The entire 4th floor of the industrial plant i was working on lit on fire a few days ago. Nobody was seriously hurt, despite most of my crew being doused in diesel at one point. These things still happen, its just usually not so horribly lethal, because we have fewer people present, better technology, and better procedures. Procedures they say, that are written in blood. A few years ago a coal processing building i work on blew up into a 200M tall fireball, launching the roof half a kilometer away. There were four men present, and all made it out in good shape. 2nd degree burns. There are still heat warped signs, and caramelized insulation in the building, reminding me of what can happen. Neither incident made more than the local news, as no one was really hurt.
Wonderful documentary. I was in Hoboken June 30, 2000 for the 100th anniversary of this historic fire. My Grandfather Ludwig Steiner, then 25 years old, was in the coal bunker of the NGL steamer Main when the fire broke out. Because he was able to swim, he survived, but watched many drown or burn to death. In the late 1950s, he wrote about his experience for the benefit of his grandchildren. Until today, I have never seen a video on this tragic event. Thank you so much for keeping this story alive. Jim Wright
I work on tugboats in New York Harbor. Ships,especially tankers since sometime around WW1 have “Fire Warps” hanging over their outboard sides. The warps are heavy steel cable with a loop at the end hanging a few feet above the water. If there is a fire on the dock the tugs can grab the warp and start pulling while the ships crew are cutting their lines.
Those measure were most likely created and implemented after this Hoboken Dock fire and New York’s General Slocum - to avoid the repeating of such tragedies.
@@LucienSabre I don’t think fire warps would have done much for the General Slocum as she was underway at the time of her tragedy, but basically yes.
@@Pocketfarmer1 Who you work for Brother? I work for Moran.
@@JayRuperRoe me too. I’m Robert back on the Marie J on Wednesday. See you around the yard.
@@Pocketfarmer1 I'm on an ATB, the Mariya. So if we get up that way I'll give you a shout.
When I was a child in Mount Clemens, MI, the whole downtown area reeked of sulfur from the mineral baths. Alas, today the bath spas are all closed down and no one remembers the mineral baths of Mount Clemens. I think the history of the medicinal bathing industry is History that Deserves to be Remembered.
I was born there then moved to Ypsilanti when the serial killer struck there, then when I was two years old we moved back to Alabama I learned about the serial killer a few years ago.
@@cornbreadfedkirkpatrick9647 I left to join the Marine Corps in 1976. I never went back for a visit since. I looked at the Google Earth satellite images of the street where I lived. It's unrecognizable today.
There were mineral baths in Green Springs, Ohio for many years too. The whole village smelled of sulfur from the springs.
What years were that? I lived there late 70s to 1982 and don't remember any sulfur smell.
I also never learned where the "mount" was that gave the city its name. ;-)
@@FuzzyMarineVet My late parents in the late 1990''s went to visit all the former addresses where they had lived. They were shocked. Most were gone, one an Interstate intersection, one a substantial townhouse vanished, its lot paved over for a supermarket, another an empty lot between two gutted buildings.
The former sturdy structures well built in formerly functioning and prosperous neighborhoods just lost.
They returned home quite shaken.
Once again I've discovered how little I know when it comes to history; channels like this are really improving my education.
During the Great Depression my father worked for a while in a cotton gin. He said that cotton bale fires happened from time to time. He told us that if the cotton was too wet at the time the bale was compressed, the cotton would start to decompose deep inside the bale, and that would produce heat that could eventually start the compressed cotton smoldering. If the smoldering reach the outer surface of the bale, it could erupt into flames. Because this all took time, the yard help would keep an eye on the stored bales for any sign of smoke. A smoking bale was immediately isolated, the bands cut and the bale was opened. He said that when the smoldering cotton was exposed to oxygen in the air, it would usually immediately start burning. An isolated and open bale could easily be extinguished, but if a bale caught on fire while still lined up in storage, it could result in the loss of hundreds of bales.
This can happen to wet hay in the loft of a barn if it's not turned frequently.
Fermentation?
@@RedArrow73: as I understand it, fermentation is where micro-organisms, (usually a member of the yeast family), eat sugar and produce alcohol and CO2 as a byproduct. Decomposition is caused mostly by bacteria, and can produce gasses like methane, but not alcohol. Because cotton is mainly cellulose, not sugar, so it's not a good candidate for fermentation.
I have to wonder of the fire is a result of bacterial heat. Note that even a semi-aerated compost pile can reach temperatures of 160 to 170 degrees from the bacterial decomposition. Inside a cotton bale, with fibrous air pockets as insulation, the heat build-up could be significant. Any oil or grease contamination, whether internal or external, could exacerbate the heating effect and lead to a fire.
@@goodun2974; you find lanolin in sheep's wool not cotton. Sheep's wool is an animal product, cotton is a plant product.
Thank You, THG!! My Mother's family lived in Hoboken for over 100 years and I recall many happy memories of my youth in the streets, docks, rail yards and parks. The Black Tom explosion was a frequent story told around the parlors of my Great Aunts and Uncles after Sunday dinners. The post-feast family tradition of "going around the room" always occurred with the adults seated on the sofas and chairs while the kids jumped into any empty lap they could find or else they quietly laid on the floor. Each adult was expected to entertain all with songs, jokes or tales of fancy and/or facts. The tradition held on even through the dawn of television into the late 1960's.
Yet, I do not believe this story was ever recalled or told. You have added one more story to the family tradition.
I'm from New Jersey and I never heard about this horrific disaster until now. Thanks for covering this.
Whenever I'm thinking about how bad my life is, all I have to do is hear/read a story similar to this one where people are being cooked alive because they aren't 8" in diameter and all my problems instantly become insignificant....
It's like when someone has terminal cancer. Everything else is so shallow and inconsequential.
Current building collapse in Florida woke me up from my "poor me" attitude almost to a shaming>
This is why I study history. My food has more savor, my exercise more vigor, my passions stronger. Nothing sweetens life quite like the knowledge of horrible death.
@@johndoe5432 Yes it does!
An 11" by 14" porthole wouldn't be any better. I am 6'2", and even at my thinnest, I'd never have fit through that porthole.
THG is the best story-teller on youtube.
Nah second to Simon whistler I love thg too tho
I have another candidate: the entire history of the earth
Cough mr.ballen cough
@@GradeEhCanadian I love Simon, but he fits in so few pirates. But lots of cocaine, and those are great stories as well.
@@GradeEhCanadian allegedly
Wow. I added this event as a possible topic for an episode in a comment about a year ago. Glad to see THG cover it. It was a terrible disaster now largely forgotten.
I second the motion I just read here a moment ago: "THG is the best story-teller on TH-cam." And I imagine the writing and research is shared, so I salute the team! Thank you for what you do!!
I lived through an abandoned Hoboken pier fire when I was an undergrad at Steven Tech in the early 1980s. The smell of burning Creosote was thick and we were very close to being evacuated. It actually made us WANT to stay inside during the weekend and study.
I live in Hudson County and spent most of my life here. You'd be amazed at the reaction i get from relatively new residents when i describe to them and show them pictures of the waterfront from Edgewater down to Jersey City. Especially the 1970s/80s era when most sections were pure desolation.
@@jpjpjp453 Yes! I went to Stevens from 1989-93 and River St. and up Sinatra Dr. were abandoned docks and a Maxwell House Coffee factory with abandoned Bethlehem Steel factory north of that.
How quickly some history is forgotten. What a horrible tragedy and worse, what a horrible way to die.
Oh, how tragic!! I think my natural reaction if I was caught below decks of this fire would be to open a port window. Hindsight, however, would point to the fact that you're only giving the fire oxygen. What a horrible way to die.
The memorial is, apparently, not very prominent given the scope of the tragedy.
I don’t often comment since I don’t know what I might add to one of these videos. However, I wanted to say that it is the mark of a true storyteller when the sorrow and horror of the situation feels real, real enough to hit you in the gut and make you cry, and that is something you do when sharing the story of tragedies like this one. It is important to know about those people who have gone before us and to understand why some of the regulations in place now have come to be. I never even considered they would make ships with portals too small for escape on the lower decks. G
I've spent many nights in Hoboken though I don't remember a lot of them. (I think Hoboken has more bars/sq. mile than any city in the USA.) I never knew about this fire. Fascinating.
My whole family loves your channel! Thank you so much!
I first read about this disaster in Jay Robert Nash's "Darkest Hours". It's heartbreaking. It was a beautiful summer day. No one could've expected it.
I like watching these before work over coffee. Thanks for sharing.
There are few channels I watch that are as fascinating, entertaining and informative as THG. Not to mention the excitement of your exhuberant style of narration. Keep up the good work.
I imagine the smouldering cotton was helped along by the means of preserving wood in maritime conditions, tarring and oiling. Even today, here in Sweden, cast off motor oil gets used pain barndoors, as a way to both waterproof and hinder the gwoth of mosses in the wood. Extremely incindinary stuff to work with, and I imagine they had stores of the stuff at the docks for maintainance.
The commonest form of "tar" formerly used for preserving wood was creosote, a nasty-smelling, flammable, sticky brown gunk, once commonly used to treat railroad ties and telephone poles, but which is now known to be carcinogenic, and it's use has been banned. Used motor oil isn't likely to be any healthier, or safer ---- contains heavy metals, and benzene; and oil-soaked barn goods would likely make a great firestarter.
Thank you for bringing this incident to us, who have never heard of it.
I fought a pier fire in Tampa many years ago, (it was a suspicious fire of "convince" for the developers of that island), and I thought that "This is what Hell looks like!", but that fire in no way compares to the scope of the Hoboken dock fire.
No lives were lost in the Tampa fire.
If you haven't done so already, you should do an episode on the Great Baltimore Fire in 1904 and how the lack of standardization in fire equipment made the fire last longer.
Also, your theme song strikes a chord of memory, that I cannot figure out. However, I love it and will keep trying to remember what it trusts in my memory. Love your channel!
That was really interesting !
Always enjoy these stories
Another really great episode from history about which I knew nothing, even though I consider myself to be a 'history geek'. Keep up the marvelous work! BTW, am I the ONLY one who clicks the 'like' button before even watching the vid just because I KNOW it will be worthwhile?
And then just a few years later you have the even more horrible disaster of the General Slocum.
th-cam.com/video/tGlLwtqhUKE/w-d-xo.html
@@TheHistoryGuyChannel 👍🏿👍🏿👍🏿👍🏿👍🏿
Oh wow, what a horror.
I grew up in northern NJ and never knew about the Hoboken docks fire until now. Thanks for sharing. Cheers!
Another great video. I believe that the Blue Ribband is history that deserves to be remembered and should get its own video. Great work THG!
Fascinating, I went to school at Stevens in Hoboken I used to walk up and down the peers to get to and from the Path station. I had no idea any of this happened. As always your child provides fascinating information.
I'm watching this on my lunch break at work. I had been watching The Great War, but figured 1914 massacres and rapes might not be the best subject to watch in the workplace. So I came over here looking for something a little lighter in tone. I, um... might not have chosen the right video.
Hey, I learned something, though! This was history I'd never heard of before, so this channel is doing its job.
Hobokenite here, well done!
This tragedy in the New York area brings to mind a sad anniversary that is fast approaching, that of the attacks on 9-11-2001. I hope you will do an in depth video of those events. If any day deserves to be remembered, it is that one.
History Guys enthusiasm is so refreshing and infectious(in a good way!), real history is so fascinating, keep em coming!!!🙏👍😷
I was born and raised in Weehawken, so I find this very interesting. I'd heard of this fire before, but I never heard it explained in such gruesome detail.
Always incredible content. Had no clue
I'm impressed with the number of different media sources on this event. Today's newspapers would simply reprint the AP or UPI story.
And that is why we no nothing today,and politicians can do as they like. Sad
Today’s media would write an essay about injustice portraying themselves as a messiah-style savior. Without visiting the site or reporting any facts. It is all about their own self gratification.
CNN would blame it on systemic racism while MSNBC would blame the fire on climate change. BLM would accuse the cotton merchants of cultural appropriation.
olson olson you're right. Some people don't even know how to spell "know" LOL
Thank you .
Learned a bit of history.
Have a great week.
Utterly horrifying, Thanks H.G. Ive read several NYC histories.Most include the General Slocum disaster but this is the first i've learned of the Hoboken fire.
Thanks for dredging up another fascinating yarn History Guy!
More New Jersey history that I was unaware of. Thank you.
Thank you History Guy.
My great grandfather sailed to Baltimore, MD aboard the refurbished Main in 1904.
Always SO good. Thank, History Guy.
This was enlightening. As someone who lives in upstate NY, I had never heard of this disaster.
I love your videos, very informative. Thanks for being an excellent history teacher.
Really love your shows! In depth videos. Thank you!
I grew up not too far from Hoboken in Bergen County. I never head of this event, though. Thank you, history Guy.
Awesome history! I first really became aware of Hoboken in the aftermath of hurricane Sandy. Before that it was only a gag line on TV.
I've recently been working in ocean freight so this story hits home.
It's sad they didn't come up with a definite cause, but freight warehouses can be very dangerous places, as was recently demonstrated in Beirut.
Love the photo of the cat and your bowties are always understated elegance.
The history of the humble barrel is history that deserves to be remembered isn't? Mr. Thg with respect- dan
Love that cat picture over your shoulder🐱Thx for the story of this tragic event, hadn't heard of it before
Another great video .this channel is a history geeks dream come true.thanks THG
Best channel on TH-cam
Please do a piece about the Morro Castle disaster of 1934. This occurred off the coast of New Jersey and family history has it that my wife’s grandfather was a steward on that voyage. Love the show!!!☮️
Love the picture of your History Cat in the background.
At 0:58, Hoboken was the *eastern* terminus of several railroads, not the western. These included the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Erie Railroad, the Delaware and Lackawanna Railroad, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, and the Central Railroad of New Jersey.
Great vlog as always! I have never heard of this horrible fire.
There have been many large disasters in North Jersey over the years. But, the two that always come to mind for me are the Picatinny Arsenal explosion on July 10, 1926 where a lightning strike had detonated the powder stored on site and the Hercules Powder Company explosion on September 12, 1940, said blast killed 51 and registered on a seismograph in NYC which is 50 miles away.
You're forgetting the WW1 Black Tom Island explosion in what is now Liberty State Park in Jersey City. It shattered windows in Lower Manhattan!
OMG! I had, before it was destroyed in the Camp Fire 2018, a straight razor with the etched image of the Bremen on the blade.
I wish I knew the full story of that straight razor.
Always worth watching The History Guy.
Hoboken could only be the western terminus of railways if the trains could swim. I think THG meant eastern terminus.
Well, it could have been a very short rail line. 😏
@@navret1707
That might be possible. In railroad terms a short rail line is called a railroad spur. A very short line that might go just a short distance away or to another part of the rail yard.
There are plenty of rail origin points east of Hoboken; everything from Canada, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts... 🤔 🤷♂️
I get what you're saying, but it may not be quite so black and white.
I believe there were three basic terminus' available. Hoboken (northernmost) had maybe the Erie, Lackawana and not sure of the Lehigh Valley RR's spaces. Jersey City had the southernmost terminus, IIRC...the B&O, Jersey Central and the Reading used the terminal which is still there in historical form today (took a big hit from Sandy). The Pennsylvania ran right thru Jersey City on an elevated track over...you guessed it, "Railroad Avenue" street and right to the ferries that plied the Hudson. Understood my father and other urchins of the era used to pick the frozen coal that fell trackside from the trains running up from the coal operations down south. Coal heat in Jersey City had much diminished by the early 1950's, but you did what you had to do back then.
No he was correct it was the terminus from western railways. Where the trains coming from the west end.
Thank you so mach your narration is the best.
Watched this video after hear that one of the ships from "The Convoy and the U-Boat: SS J. L. Luckenbach, HMS Orama and SMU-62", was damaged in this very fire.
Born and raised in Hoboken, 25 years and never heard this story before today.
I'm sure that Frank Sinatra was told about this fire. He was born 15 years later in Hoboken. Another great story HG !
His Father probably fought that Fire. Frank's Dad was a Firefighter.
Agreed. He did have a very interesting youth and climb to success.
I just checked and Frank's father did not emigrate to the United States until 1903.
He almost died and his mother the doctors was delivering him and he was a big baby he weighed 13 pounds they busted his eardrums.
@@pauldudley8837 Also, he was born in 1892,...he was only 11 when he emigrated to the U.S.
I have lived in Hoboken for 38 years, and I never heard this story.
Morning History Guy!
Hoboken station is in one of these pictures from way back. Beautiful building.
Cotton bales are well know to be hard to extinguish. My father worked in textile mills in the 1920's. They seem to have had a hot bale. It was quickly removed and dumped in a lake by the plant. After floating for two weeks, it was retrieved and broken open. Internally, it was still smoldering and burst into flame when opened. Today, firemen have a chemical that can be added to water to make it "wetter" to improve it's penetration.
Good grief. I'm born and bred NJ and had never heard of this. Unbelievable.
Simon Whistler and his beard of knowledge joined by the History Guy and his bow tie of wisdom for an episode of Casual Criminalist would be a fun watch.
Great episode!
I recently read of an event which, I think, deserves to be remembered, particularly in this time. The event was America's very narrow escape from an epidemic of the Black Death. In the last years of the 19th century, a ship brought the plague to San Francisco, and the disease began to spread in Chinatown. The fate of the USA and probably its neighbouring countries was decided by a heroic struggle by America's recently established public health service against the plague and against the Chinese labourers, White businessmen, and White politicians who laboured heroically to expedite the plague-not that they would have seen it that way. The story is told in David K. Randall's book "Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague", 2019.
Thanks for the great content. Algorithm go brrrrrrrr! Hoping you have continued and growing success, love your work.
Sounds kinda like the Great Jacksonville Fire. A spark started burning in a pile of Spanish Moss, the fire quickly spread bcuz of winds, 8 hours later almost 150 blocks were burnt. Over 2300 buildings were destroyed and 10K people were homeless
I am guessing the moss was used for home insulation?
@@goodun2974 mattresses
What a sad story. Those poor people.
Fascinating as always THG! On the subject of cotton based conflagrations, would it be possible for you to do a video on the Guncotton explosion of 1871? It’s a incident the happened in my hometown of Stowmarket and I would love to have a well made video by you, on the incident.
Be interesting to hear your take on the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in 1911.
Strange I never heard about this. I went to college in Hoboken -- it was a college town even at the time: Stevens Institute of Technology was founded in 1870 and is one of the nation's oldest colleges focused on engineering. But no one ever mentioned this fire as part of the city's history.
By the way, the Bamberg Herald was published in Bamberg, South Carolina. There is no Bamberg, NJ. (Although NJ once had a department store called Bamberger's. Their locations are now all Macy's.)
Would you be willing to a do a piece about the Labor Slugger Wars from the early 1900’s in New York? Its really interesting
I’m a Merchant Marine and we have a saying....
All the rules of the sea are written in the blood of those who went before us.
perhaps the bright light that comes from big fires like this is often they start the road to fire codes. Like how the Triangle factory in NYC caused wave of regulations for things like egress structures and fire suppression systems.
I think the Cocoanut Grove fire had a greater impact on fire codes.ut not enough as witnessed by the Hartford hospital fire and the Beverly Hills Supper Club
@@dwlopez57 , you would think that, being an insurance-company mecca, and having earlier suffered the infamous Circus fire, that the city of Hartford would have been leveraged into retrofitting all of its major building infrastructure for fire safety.
@@goodun2974 I know
It is unfortunate that it takes events like this to force change in building codes and enforcement thereof.
As an employee in the fire alarm/life safety industry, I'm aware of some famous events that justified the aforementioned changes; the Triangle Shirt Factory and the Coconut Grove fire are two examples.
In this situation, had sprinkler systems been installed in these warehouses, either at initial construction or during later renovation/upgrades, this event probably would not have gone so badly, and with such a loss of life.
Note, sprinkler systems were invented in 1872, so engineers and builders were familiar with them. But as the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) was still in its infancy, having been formed in 1896, it is possible that local building codes of the time did not require sprinkler systems when these warehouses were initially constructed.
The new facility after the fire had a sprinkler system.
Has me thinking of the Iroquois Theater Fire...... That deserves to be remembered
I like your cat's portrait. My dog has a similar one in the spirit of Queen Elizabeth I.
Lest we forget.... RIP
I believe that Hoboken has often been described as a horror. And other less complementary terms
It's hipster heaven today. Lots of bars, restaurants and expensive condos along the Hudson River.
@@okjoe5561 So a diffrent kind of horror, like Williamsburg.
@@Ideo7Z Now you understand.
Get off that shit. I remember Hoboken when it was run down as all hell and was more or less defeated as a town, Just walking through it was somewhat of a challenge. I was working in there in the early 90s when things really began changing there (and in nearby Pavonia) and it's a hell of a place to be now. A lot of dumb shits bitching about places like that ought to take a good hard look at what was there after the industrial prime was done and gone. It sure as hell wasn't a pretty picture.
@@jpjpjp453 I remember it as well and it was as you described, it's where I'm originally from. Me and my brother and parents moved from there in 1973 when I was 13.
Never heard this before... good job 👍
The PTSD the survivors suffered must have been enormous and terrible!
People weren't snowflakes back then
@@samjohnstone7535 , *you're* the one being triggered here, by someone else's expression of empathy. Who is really being the "snowflake" in this situation? Anyway, if someone isnt haunted by even the thought of having seen people unable to be rescued and overcome by smoke and flames, that person likely has something wrong with them.
Many of those docks were the eastern terminus of the railroad which brought fresh produce from the west to the New York markets right across the Hudson river from the “Washington street market”. This was the precursor to the Hunts Point Market. The largest produce market in North America, and the second largest wholesale market in the world.
Hope we enjoyed!? Certainly not, but it was moving and memorable. Foibles of human nature and of construction standards, among other issues, show up time and again - even today (collapse of Florida Condo tower the latest.)
The tribute to Generalissimo Historico Gato was much appreciated.
Interesting. We recently visited Hoboken but there was nothing on this topic. Will return to Hoboken on our next trip East
I’m glad that something changed as a result of this horror. The size of portholes being one of them. (Seems that would have been common sense…)
Ship engineers complained that larger portholes could compromise hull integrity, and that the purpose was light and ability to move air rather than egress.
How many of us today could fit through a 13" porthole? I remember when the sests at La Scala were widened from 12" to accomodste modern behinds.
@@erynlasgalen1949 I was visiting a zoo with my grandchildren and was stunned with the amount of human obesity. Not "overweight", but obese. Most were middle aged, many in electric carts. One look at portion sizes in the past half century would attest to this.
Obese or not, I won't be going through any 13 inch portholes without leaving both arms behind.
@@johnstevenson9956 Yeah, same. I might be a tad overweight, but my quite broad shoulders would be a bigger issue than my belly.
LOVE your voice and your cadence
very nice way to end the evening
Amazing video sir
Have you done a segment on the Morro Castle? If not, would you be interested in doing one. I think your take on the event would be interesting.
The entire 4th floor of the industrial plant i was working on lit on fire a few days ago. Nobody was seriously hurt, despite most of my crew being doused in diesel at one point. These things still happen, its just usually not so horribly lethal, because we have fewer people present, better technology, and better procedures.
Procedures they say, that are written in blood.
A few years ago a coal processing building i work on blew up into a 200M tall fireball, launching the roof half a kilometer away. There were four men present, and all made it out in good shape. 2nd degree burns. There are still heat warped signs, and caramelized insulation in the building, reminding me of what can happen.
Neither incident made more than the local news, as no one was really hurt.
Seems new Jersey always has had a...interesting reputation.
Tony Soprano says forget about it.
Yes and we are proud of it....both the good and the bad.
There was also the Black Tom Island explosion during WW 1.
@@billsanders5067 You can find The Black Tom Explosion on "The History Guy" channel. He is quite interesting.