The Greater Astoria Historical Society teamed up with the Partnership
for Parks for a Halloween Walking Tour and Concert on Saturday, October
30, 1999. This event closed the highly successful "Living on the
Edge" summer and fall cultural program focusing parks on the Astoria-Long
Island City waterfront.
Tour guide Bob Singleton, who was dubbed "The Hell Gate Kid"
by Parks Commissioner Henry Stern, along with Debbie Van Cura of the historical
society, along with Andrea Malloy from the Partnership led a group of
about 50 people along a two hour tour of murder, mayhem and mystery along
the Queens waterfront.
Starting at the Hell Gate Bridge, Singleton talked of the time when the
Hell Gate (which came from Dutch words meaning either "bright passage"
or "hell passage)" was a place of treacherous rocks and dangerous
reefs that claimed many lives and property.
Perhaps the most famous sinking was in the in the fall of 1780, when
the British ship "Hussar," with $15,000,000 in gold for paying
British troops in Newport Rhode Island, struck a rock, drifted to the
Bronx shore and sank with all hands. Over 150 men and several American
prisoners drowned only 50 yards of Randall's Island.
Hundreds of vessals met a similar end at the Hell Gate until it was tamed
by engineer Benjamin Maillefert in the late 1800s. Over several years,
he blasted out the rocks with a series of massive explosions. One effort,
which set off the largest detonation in the world at the time, could be
heard in Newark.
The Hell Gate was also the setting for one of the worst disasters in
American maritime history, the wreck of the General Slocum . Named after
a Civil War general, the paddle-wheeled vessel carried groups on excursions
in the New York area. On June 14, 1904 the boat took on 1,331 passengers,
mostly women and children, to an outing sponsored by St. Mark's Lutheran
Church near Tompkins Square.
As the boat entered the Hell Gate, fire was discovered. Because of the
strong tide under her stern, a stiff breeze over the bow, and rocks on
either side, there was no room for Captain Van Schaick to maneuver. Seeking
a place to beach the vessel, the captain steamed through the Hell Gate
for another mile and a half. By the time the vessel ran ashore in the
Bronx, at least 1,021 people were burned, drowned, or mangled in the ship's
paddles wheels.
