This really is where Captain Van Schaick made a terrible mistake in judgment. Since land was near by, all the Captain had to complete was run his ship aground before the flames spread any further. Then he could unload his passengers, mostly woman and children, quickly before there were any fatalities. But for some reason Captain Van Schaick decided to head straight right into a headwind and make an effort to land his boat at North Brother Island, just off the southern shore of the Bronx. Captain Van Schaick would later say the cause of his decision was that he was trying to avoid the fire from spreading on land to riverside buildings and oil tanks. But by entering heavy headwinds, he was really fanning the fire.



Starting in the 1840's, countless amounts of German immigrants began flooding the reduced east side of Manhattan, which is now called Alphabet City, but the thing that was then called the Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany. Just in the 1850's alone over 800,000 Germans arrived to America, and by 1855, New York City had the 3rd largest German population of any city in the world.

Since the boat chugged onward, passengers ran in panic around the deck. Mothers were looking for their children. Father's were trying to find their families. Young boys and girls scrambled onto the deck chairs, waving frantically for help at the crowds who had assembled on the shore. The flames increased by the next, accelerated by the boat's fresh coat of highly flammable paint. To receive added details on 7others please look at 7 Others

Joseph Wedemeyer, Oswald Ottendorfer and Friedrich Sorge were New York City German-Americans who were extremely active in the creation and growth of trade unions. In New York City, German-American clubs, which were called Vereins, were highly involved in politics. Ottendorfer owned and edited the Staats-Zeitung, the greatest German-American newspaper in town. He became this kind of force in politics, in 1861, he was instrumental, through his German Democracy political club, in getting New York City Mayor Fernando Wood elected for his second term. In 1863, Ottendorfer propelled another German, Godfrey Gunther, to succeed Wood as mayor.



Little Germany reached its peak in the 1870's. After that it encompassed over 400 blocks, composed of six avenues and forty streets, running south from 14th Street to Houston Street, and from the Bowery east to the East River. Tompkins Square and it park was look at the epicenter of Little Germany. The park itself was called the Weisse Garten, where Germans congregated daily to go over what was important to the lives and livelihoods.