The Secrets of North Brother Island is about the unsolved disaster in 1904 of the burning and sinking of the pleasure boat General Slocum, the worst nonmilitary disaster in American history before September 11, 2001. It is often called “the forgotten disaster” because of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914. However, nearly 1100 perished on the Slocum, half of them children, in what was to have been a church picnic. The captain ran it aground on North Brother Island despite the fact that the fire broke out beside Rikers Island, equipped with a full fire-fighting brigade. Crane relates it to the Civil War forty years earlier and revenge against General Slocum by one man he caused to be imprisoned in Andersonville. These pyromaniacs are also related to the record-setting fires between 1900 and 1911, such as The Triangle Shirtwaist fire.
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