I lived in Manhattan for six years and remained only vaguely aware that the East River is not a river. It is a tidal race, the southern arm of the Sound that defines Long Island. And I was completely oblivious that where I drank my Sunday morning coffee, in Carl Schurz Park (at 86th street & East End Avenue), overlooks the birthplace of the United States Army Corp of Engineers. Without their skill and brains (and the largest man made planned explosion of the 19th century) New York would have remained a second class harbor… and a thousand women and children might have been spared a terrifying and painful death.
A few minutes after 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday June 15, 1904 “The General Slocum”, a 235 foot long, 37 foot wide side paddlewheel steamship built for passenger excursions around New York, left the dock at East Third Street carrying 1,300 German Lutheran emegrants (mostly women and children) to a picnic on Long Island.
The “Slocum’s” three decks were barely half full, and the children waved to the people on shore as 68 year old Captain William Van Schaick guided her from atop the pilot house up the East River at 16 knots toward the Hells Gate.
Every high tide that pours into the bay of New York swirls around Manhattan and produces a titanic struggle in a rock garden between Astoria Queens, on the Long Island shore, and Wards Island. Eighteenth century New York City resident Washington Irving described the Hells Gate this way; “…as the tide rises it begins to fret; at halftide it roars with might and main, like a bull bellowing for more drink; but when the tide is full, it relapses into quiet, and for a time sleeps as soundly as an alderman after dinner. In fact, it may be compared to a quarrelsome toper, who is a peaceable fellow enough when he has no liquor at all, or when he has a skinful…plays the very devil.” And, because of the delay in the tide coming down Long Island Sound, there are four high tides a day, each pair separated by two hours, keeping the Hells Gate in perpetual motion. That made the glacier scared bottom of the East River a deadly obstacle course.
“Three channels existed…the main ship channel to the north-west of the Heel Tap and Mill Rocks; the middle channel between Mill Rocks and Middle Reef; and the east channel between the Middle Reef and Astoria, from which Halletstts Reef projected; and vessels having traversed one…had to avoid Hogs Back and several smaller reefs…(and avoid) Heel Tap Rock…Rylanders Reef, Gridiron Rock of the Middle Reef .” (p.264. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Leveson Francis Yernok-Hartcourt 1888) By the late 1840’s a thousand ships a year were running aground in the Gate, ten percent of the ships which entered.
Every high tide that pours into the bay of New York swirls around Manhattan and produces a titanic struggle in a rock garden between Astoria Queens, on the Long Island shore, and Wards Island. Eighteenth century New York City resident Washington Irving described the Hells Gate this way; “…as the tide rises it begins to fret; at halftide it roars with might and main, like a bull bellowing for more drink; but when the tide is full, it relapses into quiet, and for a time sleeps as soundly as an alderman after dinner. In fact, it may be compared to a quarrelsome toper, who is a peaceable fellow enough when he has no liquor at all, or when he has a skinful…plays the very devil.” And, because of the delay in the tide coming down Long Island Sound, there are four high tides a day, each pair separated by two hours, keeping the Hells Gate in perpetual motion. That made the glacier scared bottom of the East River a deadly obstacle course.“Three channels existed…the main ship channel to the north-west of the Heel Tap and Mill Rocks; the middle channel between Mill Rocks and Middle Reef; and the east channel between the Middle Reef and Astoria, from which Halletstts Reef projected; and vessels having traversed one…had to avoid Hogs Back and several smaller reefs…(and avoid) Heel Tap Rock…Rylanders Reef, Gridiron Rock of the Middle Reef .” (p.264. Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Leveson Francis Yernok-Hartcourt 1888) By the late 1840’s a thousand ships a year were running aground in the Gate, ten percent of the ships which entered.In 1850 Monsieur Benjamin Maillefert was paid $15,000 to remove Pot Rock - “rising like a rhinoceros horn from a depth of thirty feet to within eight feet of the surface...right next to a shipping lane” near the Queens shore. Maillefert lowered a canister of black powder on a rope and the resulting explosion managed to chip four feet off the horn. Two hundred and eighty-three explosions later and Pot Rock was safely 18 feet below the surface. Similar attacks on the Frying Pan and Ways Reef dismantled the great whirlpool which had spun south of Mills Rock for five thousand years. But the start of the American Civil War in April of 1861 gave the merchants of New York more pressing and profitable places to invest their money. Hells Gate remained closed to all but the bravest and most foolish captains.
1904: Just before ten o’clock a boy told deck hand John Coakley he had seen smoke in a forward stairwell. Coakley, who had worked on the General Slocum for all of 17 days, found the source of the smoke to be a storage room. He then made two crucial mistakes. He opened the door, which fed air to the smoldering fire. And when he ran for help, he left the door wide open behind him. Crewmembers rushed to pull down a fire hose, but none of the hoses onboard had been inspected since the Slocum had been built, twelve years before. At the first surge of water pressure the fire hose split apart. The crewmen then ran for another but they had to search, since they had never had a fire drill. Meanwhile the fire was drawn through the open door and sucked up the chimney of the three-decker stairwell.
Captain Van Schaick was informed of the fire seven minutes after crewman Coakley had discovered it. Van Schaick had never lost a passenger and he decided now to steam into the Gate, heading, he said later, for North Brother Island, three miles ahead. There was a hospital there and a gentle shoreline where the passengers could safely wade ashore. However, as he rang up for more power from the engine room, Van Schaick could not see he was fanning the hungry flames behind him, trapping the terrified passengers at the stern. When they reached for life jackets, visible in racks all over the boat, passengers found them tied down with wires to prevent theft. Those who managed to break the wires and free the preservers found they crumbled in their hands. “The hard blocks of cork inside them were reduced to find dust with the buoyancy of dirt. Most people jumped (over board) without them, but some people actually put them on, plunged over the side and went straight to the bottom.” Some of those who managed to stay afloat were mauled by the paddle wheels, still driving the General Slocum through the Hells Gate.
1871: This year General John Newton of the United States Army Corps of Engineers took over the work of rendering Hells Gate a safe passage. His first target was Hallet’s Point Reef, “, a three-hundred-foot rocky promontory that reached out from Astoria…” And this time General Newton intended to perform the entire task by a process he described as “subaqueous tunneling”. A cofferdam was constructed extending the Astoria shore, and digging with pick and axe and shovel from this extension the reef was under-mined with four miles of tunnels.
1904: Just before ten o’clock a boy told deck hand John Coakley he had seen smoke in a forward stairwell. Coakley, who had worked on the General Slocum for all of 17 days, found the source of the smoke to be a storage room. He then made two crucial mistakes. He opened the door, which fed air to the smoldering fire. And when he ran for help, he left the door wide open behind him. Crewmembers rushed to pull down a fire hose, but none of the hoses onboard had been inspected since the Slocum had been built, twelve years before. At the first surge of water pressure the fire hose split apart. The crewmen then ran for another but they had to search, since they had never had a fire drill. Meanwhile the fire was drawn through the open door and sucked up the chimney of the three-decker stairwell.Captain Van Schaick was informed of the fire seven minutes after crewman Coakley had discovered it. Van Schaick had never lost a passenger and he decided now to steam into the Gate, heading, he said later, for North Brother Island, three miles ahead. There was a hospital there and a gentle shoreline where the passengers could safely wade ashore. However, as he rang up for more power from the engine room, Van Schaick could not see he was fanning the hungry flames behind him, trapping the terrified passengers at the stern. When they reached for life jackets, visible in racks all over the boat, passengers found them tied down with wires to prevent theft. Those who managed to break the wires and free the preservers found they crumbled in their hands. “The hard blocks of cork inside them were reduced to find dust with the buoyancy of dirt. Most people jumped (over board) without them, but some people actually put them on, plunged over the side and went straight to the bottom.” Some of those who managed to stay afloat were mauled by the paddle wheels, still driving the General Slocum through the Hells Gate.1871: This year General John Newton of the United States Army Corps of Engineers took over the work of rendering Hells Gate a safe passage. His first target was Hallet’s Point Reef, “, a three-hundred-foot rocky promontory that reached out from Astoria…” And this time General Newton intended to perform the entire task by a process he described as “subaqueous tunneling”. A cofferdam was constructed extending the Astoria shore, and digging with pick and axe and shovel from this extension the reef was under-mined with four miles of tunnels.It took seven years. Then, 30,000 lbs of nitroglycerine – the most powerful explosive available at the time – were set off on September 24, 1876. The explosion threw up a 123 foot plume of water. And the reef was gone.
1904: A witness at 138th street told the “Brooklyn Eagle” the General Slocum appeared in a cloud of smoke and fire, its whistles screaming, trailed by tugs, launches and even rowboats, all trying to help. “The stern seemed black with people…some were climbing over the railings…the shrieks of the dying and panic stricken reached us in an awful chorus…One by one, it seemed to me, they dropped into the water. As the Slocum preceded, a blazing mass, I lost sight of her around the bend, at the head of North Brother Island”
1877: Next General Newton built a sea wall around Flood Rock and another 70 foot deep shaft was dug, followed by the now standard shafts and gallerys. At the same time a similar process was underway at Mill Rock. It took nine years to undermine these obsticles, and on October 10, 1885 General Newton’s daughter, Mary, pressed a key that simultaneously set off both sets of the charges. It was, “The greatest single explosion ever produced by man (intentionally)”. Nine acres of East River bottom were pulverized. Columns of water rose 150 feet into the air. In that instant the Hells Gate became a safe passage for all ships, even excursion boats.
1904: Captain Van Schaick failed in his attempt to run the General Slocum onshore on North Brother Island, instead grounding on a rock in eight to ten feet of water. To people who did not know how to swim, and who were wearing layers of heavy wool clothing, anything over six feet of water was a near certain death sentence. The fire still raged, the upper decks collapsing into the hull, but eventually the semi-circle of boats that had followed the Slocum upstream realized the cries for help from the water had gone still.
1904: A witness at 138th street told the “Brooklyn Eagle” the General Slocum appeared in a cloud of smoke and fire, its whistles screaming, trailed by tugs, launches and even rowboats, all trying to help. “The stern seemed black with people…some were climbing over the railings…the shrieks of the dying and panic stricken reached us in an awful chorus…One by one, it seemed to me, they dropped into the water. As the Slocum preceded, a blazing mass, I lost sight of her around the bend, at the head of North Brother Island”1877: Next General Newton built a sea wall around Flood Rock and another 70 foot deep shaft was dug, followed by the now standard shafts and gallerys. At the same time a similar process was underway at Mill Rock. It took nine years to undermine these obsticles, and on October 10, 1885 General Newton’s daughter, Mary, pressed a key that simultaneously set off both sets of the charges. It was, “The greatest single explosion ever produced by man (intentionally)”. Nine acres of East River bottom were pulverized. Columns of water rose 150 feet into the air. In that instant the Hells Gate became a safe passage for all ships, even excursion boats.1904: Captain Van Schaick failed in his attempt to run the General Slocum onshore on North Brother Island, instead grounding on a rock in eight to ten feet of water. To people who did not know how to swim, and who were wearing layers of heavy wool clothing, anything over six feet of water was a near certain death sentence. The fire still raged, the upper decks collapsing into the hull, but eventually the semi-circle of boats that had followed the Slocum upstream realized the cries for help from the water had gone still.Only the crackle of flames and the lapping of bodies against the shore of North Brother Island could be heard. New York City would run out of coffins for all the dead. In the final insult to the dead and dying, the Captain jumped to a tugboat as soon as his ship grounded. He did not even get wet.
Seven people were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury. Officers of the Knickerbocker Steamship Company were indicted but never charged and the company paid a small fine for falsifying inspection records. Shortly there after the owner sold off his ships and walked away very wealthy. Trials for the inspectors who had failed at their jobs resulted in mistrials. Only Captain Van Schaick was convicted, two years after the disaster, of criminal negligence. He was sentenced to ten years in Sing Sing prison, but was paroled under President Howard Taft in December of 1911, and he died in 1927, at the age of 91.
The burned out hulk of the General Slocum was converted into a coal barge and renamed the "Maryland". She sank in a squall south of Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1911. In 1997, ninety years after the Slocum disaster, 104 year old Catherine Connelly told a reporter, “If I close my eyes, I can still see the whole thing.”
“Yes, sir. Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualities. And most heart rending scenes…Not a single life boat would float and the fire hose all burst…Graft, my dear sir. ..Where there’s money going there’s always someone to pick it up.” James Joyce, “Ulysses”.
Seven people were indicted by a Federal Grand Jury. Officers of the Knickerbocker Steamship Company were indicted but never charged and the company paid a small fine for falsifying inspection records. Shortly there after the owner sold off his ships and walked away very wealthy. Trials for the inspectors who had failed at their jobs resulted in mistrials. Only Captain Van Schaick was convicted, two years after the disaster, of criminal negligence. He was sentenced to ten years in Sing Sing prison, but was paroled under President Howard Taft in December of 1911, and he died in 1927, at the age of 91.The burned out hulk of the General Slocum was converted into a coal barge and renamed the "Maryland". She sank in a squall south of Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1911. In 1997, ninety years after the Slocum disaster, 104 year old Catherine Connelly told a reporter, “If I close my eyes, I can still see the whole thing.”“Yes, sir. Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualities. And most heart rending scenes…Not a single life boat would float and the fire hose all burst…Graft, my dear sir. ..Where there’s money going there’s always someone to pick it up.” James Joyce, “Ulysses”.- 30 -
Immediately after the battle the military judgments were fairly unanimous. President Grant, who had been elevated to the White House based on his record as a military commander, told a reporter, “I regard Custer’s massacre as a sacrifice of troops brought on by Custer himself,…(which) was wholly unnecessary – wholly unnecessary.” General Philip Sheridan, the man who had lobbied for Custer’s inclusion on the expedition considered the disaster primarily Custer’s fault. “Had the Seventh Cavalry been held together, it would have been able to handle the Indians on the Little Big Horn."
Having dismissed Custer, the army also dismissed his 34 year old widow. Barely a month after her husband had died amid the Montana scrub brush, “Libby” Custer was forced to leave Fort Abraham Lincoln. As a widow Libby had no right to quarters on the post, and so lost the social support of her Army life and friends. Her income was immediately reduced to the widow’s pension of $30 a month; her total assets were worth barely $8,000, while the claims against Custer’s estate exceeded $13,000. And then, in her hour of need, Libby received support from an unexpected source.
His name was Frederick Whittaker, and he scratched out a living as a writer of pulp fiction and non-fiction for magazines of the day, “…about the best of its kind”. He had met Custer during the Civil War, and the General’s death inspired him to write a dramatic eulogy praising the fallen hero in Galaxy Magazine. Whittaker also mentioned Custer’s “natural recklessness and vanity”, but Libby immediately contacted him. Libby provided Whittaker with the couple’s personal letters, access to family and friends, war department correspondence and permission to use large sections from Custer’s own book, “My Life on the Plains.”
This time there was no hint of faults in Custer. Instead the blame was laid elsewhere. Of Custer, Whittaker wrote; “He could have run like Reno had he wished...It is clear, in the light of Custer’s previous character, that he held on to the last, expecting to be supported, as he had a right to expect. It was only when he clearly saw he had been betrayed, that he resolved to die game, as it was too late to retreat.” 
All but a few professional soldiers admitted that Whittaker had gotten it wrong. In fact one of the most serious charges laid against Custer was that at the Washita he had, in fact, deserted a junior commander and his men. But those same officers withheld their criticism of Whittaker to avoid being forced to also criticize Custer's widow. Reno (above) eventually was forced to ask for and received a Court of Inquiry (not a Court Martial) on his conduct at Little Big Horn, which cleared his name and revealed the character of the people Whittaker had relied on for his version of the battle, but it made little difference to the general public who declared the Inquiry a whitewash.
Elizabeth Custer went on to support herself comfortably by writing three books; “Tenting on the Plains”,"Following the Guidon” and “Boots and Saddles”. In each her husband was idolized and lionized. In 1901 she managed to squeeze out one more, a children’s book, “The Boy General. Story of the Life of Major-General George A. Custer”: “The true soldier asks no questions; he obeys, and Custer was a true soldier. He gave his life in carrying out the orders of his commanding general… He had trained and exhorted his men and officers to loyalty, and with one exception they stood true to their trust, as was shown by the order in which they fell.” By the time Libby died, in 1933, at the age of ninety-one, her vision of Little Big Horn was set in the concrete of the printed page.
The first who endorsed Libby's view was Edward S. Godfrey, who had been a junior officer at the Little Big Horn and a Custer “fan” from before the battle. His 1892 “Custer’s Last Battle” was unequivocal. “...had Reno made his charge as ordered,…the Hostiles would have been so engaged… that Custer’s approach…would have broken the moral of the warriors….(Reno’s) faltering ...his halting, his falling back to the defensive position in the woods...; his conduct up to and during the siege…was not such as to inspire confidence or even respect,…” .” These attacks on Reno continued for most of the 20th century. The 1941 movie staring Errol Flynn as Custer displays Libby's view of Reno as well as any tome, echoed even by respected historians such as Robert Utley who in the 1980’s described Reno as "… a besotted, socially inept mediocrity, (who) commanded little respect in the regiment and was the antithesis of the electric Custer in almost every way.”
So for over a century Marcus Reno was reviled and despised as the coward who did not charge as ordered, instead pleading weasel-like that Custer had not supported him as promised. It would not be until Ronald Nichols biography of Reno, “In Custer’s Shadow” (U. of Oklahoma Press, 1999) that Reno received a fair hearing.
About the same time the Indian accounts of the fight began to finally be given a serious consideration by white historians, including the story told to photographer Edward Curtis in 1907 by three of Custer’s Indian scouts. The three men said they watched amazed as Custer stood on the bluffs overlooking Reno’s fight in the valley, a story supported by some soldiers in the valley fight who reported seeing Custer on the bluffs. (Most historians had always assumed they were imagining things.)
And it did. But sure was a long time coming.
So within days of ascending to the Throne of Horus, Thutmose III (above) ordered the head of his army, Thanuny, to gather troops and supplies at the border fortress of Tjaru by the last week August, 1458 B.C. Clearly Thutmose intended to march into Canaan, and that meant trouble for the kingdom of Kadesh, a Canaaite kingdom in what is today western Syria, which had paid homage to Egypt for the last century. But while Hatshepsut was slowly dying the kings of Kadesh had taken the opportunity to realign themselves with Mittani, a kingdom to their north. And the Mittani kingdom paid homage to the powerful Hittites, centered in Turkey. So in reality this was a high stakes poker game between the Hittite and Egyptian super powers, using the client states of Canaan and Mittani as chips. And Thutmose intended to show the Hittites that he was not bluffing. 
There was a delay in gathering the army, and Thutmose did not leave Tjaru until February of 1457 B.C. His Egyptian army was mostly infantry, perhaps 10,000 men, divided into platoons of six to ten men each, consisting of bowmen and lancers. The mobile force of two-horse chariots were not built for long distance travel, and on the march the chariots had to be light enough for each to be carried by their shield men. On this march across the Sinai (the Red Deseret) skirmishers advanced to the front while raiding parties ranged along the flanks, gathering cattle, grain and water for each night’s camp. Behind came the baggage train of ox carts carrying supplies, repair tents and blacksmiths, soothsayers, priests and musicians.
These people were used to walking, and never rode on horseback, so the army reached the Philistine fortress of Gaza (“The key to Syria”) by mid-March. After another 11 days marching up the coastal plain Thutmose’s army entered the port of Jamnia, near present day Tel Aviv. Here he rested his men and scouts brought word that the Canaanite armies were awaiting him on the Plain of Esdraelon, in front of the hill fortress of Megiddo. So in early May, with his communications back to Egypt secured by his navy, Thutmose swung inland, to the small village of Yaham.
In front of him now rose a line of low hills, stretching from the northwest (Mt. Carmel at 1,740 feet) to the southeast (Mts Tabor & Gilboa, 1,929 feet). Megiddo and the Canaanite army were on the northern flank of these hills, and his generals told Thutmose there were only two roads. The most direct route headed due north from Yaham and then turned northwestward on the Via Maris (sea route) to the village of Taanakha, before reaching Megiddo. The longer path headed northwest from Yaham along the flank of the mountains before crossing the hills to reach the Via Maris at the village of Yokneam. From there it was an easy backtrack southeastward to Megiddo. The Canaanite army had divided their infantry, with almost half guarding Taanakha and the other half Yokneam. Stationed at Megiddo (in the center) were the Canaanite chariots with some infantry support, ready to fall upon either approach the Egyptians made.
However there was also a third choice. On the road north toward Yokneam there was a cutoff, a path less traveled, that ran through the village of Aruna and then through a narrow defile, so narrow that the army could pass through only single file, before debauching onto the Plain directly in front of Megiddo. It was the most direct route, but Thutmose’s men would arrive piecemeal, where they could be destroyed “in detail”, one unit at a time. But this route also offered an opportunity.
It seems that Thanuny feinted toward the two main roads, using perhaps two thirds of the army. But before dawn Thutmose sent his spearmen and shield men through the pass, single file; perhaps 3,000 men in all. When they stepped out of the pass it was about 1:00 p.m., May 9th , 1457 B.C. The Canaanite chariots, surprised at their enemies sudden appearance, hastily charged at the Egyptian spearmen, and let loose a barrage of arrows. But defended by their shield men, the Egyptian formations stood firm. And then, as the Canaanites withdrew to reform and attack again, the Egyptian ranks opened up and from the defile appeared Egyptian chariots, carried through the pass and reassembled. Now like a whirlwind they fell upon the Canaanite chariots.
“Even when moving at a slow pace, …(the Egyptian war chariot) shook terribly, and when driven at full speed it was only by a miracle of skill that the occupants could maintain their equilibrium…the charioteer would stand astride the front panels, keeping his right foot only inside the vehicle…the reins tied around his body so he could by throwing his weight either to the right or left…pull up or start his horses by a simple movement of the loins…he went into battle with bent bow, the string drawn back to his ear…while the shield-bearer, clinging to the body of the chariot with one hand, held out his buckler with the other to shelter his comrade.” (History of Egypt Chakdea, etc. G. Maspero. Groilier Society)
The Canaanites panicked at the sudden Egyptian charge, and their causalities tell the story; just 83 killed, but 240 taken prisoner and 924 chariots and 2,132 horses captured. The Canaanite infantry on the wings, now divided by the Egyptian army, abandoned Megiddo and scattered in retreat. And although the fortress held out for seven months before finally surrendering, from the moment Thutmose III reached the Plain of Esdraelon, he had ensured his capture of the hill fort of Megiddo, or, in the Canaanite language, Armageddon. And thus ended the first battle recorded in detail in history.
