Video: 'The General Slocum Disaster'

(Wednesday, June 15, 1904, 10:00 a.m. local time) — More than 1,000 people died today when fire erupted aboard the steamboat General Slocum in New York’s East River.

At the time of the accident, she was on a chartered run carrying members of St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church (German Americans from Little Germany, Manhattan) to a church picnic. An estimated 1,021 out of the 1,342 people on board died.

Video: 'Ship Ablaze, The General Slocum'

The General Slocum disaster was the worst maritime disaster of the 20th century until the Titanic surpassed it eight years later in 1912.

It remains the worst maritime disaster in New York City history, and the second-worst on United States waterways, after the explosion and sinking of the steamboat Sultana, and until the September 11 attacks in 2001 was the deadliest manmade disaster of any sort in the New York area.