70 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • APRIL 2020
REAR VIEW
1892 CHOLERA PANDEMIC
SHOWDOWN AT THE SURF HOTEL
BY ANNIE WILKINSON
The deadly disease originated in Asia,
roared through Eastern Europe, and
killed nearly half of those affected. But
officials downplayed the danger and the
voracious germ shadowed everyone,
rich or poor. Still, people kept traveling.
This isn’t yet another rehash of the early
stages of the novel coronavirus in China
and how world governments handled —
or mishandled — what rapidly became
a pandemic. It’s the older story of how
travelers, including immigrants bursting
with hope for new lives, boarded
steamships bound for New York City
in 1892 but fell ill en route and died.
The cause: the bacterial pandemic
cholera. As panic overtook compassion,
armed Long Island residents and baymen
stormed Fire Island’s Surf Hotel to
block the passengers’ death ship from
docking.
SILENT STOWAWAY
In late August 1892, five ships sailing
from Hamburg, Germany were part
of America’s great immigration wave
between 1880 and 1930 — more than 27
million people. Seeking work, fleeing
famine and religious oppression, they
were desperate to escape Europe’s fifth
cholera pandemic.
Many of the immigrants on those ships
were crammed into overcrowded lower
class steerage, while Americans and
others luxuriated in upper-class cabins.
But none of them realized that a highly
infectious silent stowaway was sharing
their quarters. During the journey,
passengers showed symptoms — watery
diarrhea, vomiting, and low blood pressure
— caused by the Vibrio cholerae
bacterium found in water contaminated
with feces.
There was no treatment and no cure
for the scourge that thrived on overcrowding,
poverty, and inadequate
sanitation facilities. Like today’s
coronavirus pandemic that stranded
infected cruise ships at sea, cholera
left 19th-century steamships anchored
off coasts, denying them entry to port,
or forced them to dock with afflicted
passengers aboard.
When New Yorkers
learned that five steerage
and first-class passengers
had died aboard the disease
ridden Normannia
which planned to dock
on Sept. 3, they panicked.
Public health officials
knew that those with
symptoms needed isolation,
so they moved afflicted
passengers — mostly
steerage immigrants — to
Lower New York Bay’s
Swinburne Island’s hospital
tents.
The people with no symptoms,
mostly the wealthy,
were to be quarantined
on board for 20 days. But
when several of the ship’s
steam-boiler stokers
contracted cholera, the
wealthy cabin passengers
rejected quarantine on the
pest ship. The solution?
Move them into a oncegrand,
sprawling Fire
Island hotel.
The 500-room hotel was
originally opened in 1858
in Kismet by New York
City hotelier David S.S.
Sammis, hosting the rich
and famous and their yachts during the
Gilded Age, but within three decades it
had deteriorated. Its isolated location
convinced officials to buy it to quarantine
healthy passengers.
Long Islanders trying to block the quarantining Europeans
on Fire Island during a cholera outbreak was the
cover of the Sept. 24, 1892 issue of Harper’s Weekly.
New York State Democratic Gov.
Roswell P. Flower put down $50,000
of his own money and the hotel was
purchased on Sept. 10 for $210,000. The
next day, cabin-class passengers were
transferred to the pleasure boat the
Cepheus. Destination: the Surf Hotel
on the South Shore near Islip, just a few
hours away.
As journalist Abraham Cahan wrote,
“For the rich first-class passengers they
bought a hotel, and for the paupers, they
put up military tents on a field in which
they set up beds.”
NIMBYS REVOLT
The trip took nearly three days, with
more than 500 passengers stuck on an
overcrowded day boat lacking sleeping
quarters and food. What caused the
delay?
Fear. Islip residents, dubbed “clam
diggers” by the press, worried about
cholera’s spread. Baymen feared
for their livelihood after
standing orders of the Great
South Bay’s fish and oysters
were cancelled. Supporting its
citizens, Islip officials secured
a court injunction to block the
health department from using
Fire Island for quarantine.
But there was more to the
uprising than fear of disease.
The late 19th century’s mass
influx of people who brought
in unfamiliar languages, customs,
and religions — and competition
for jobs — led to widespread
distrust of immigrants
by native-born Americans,
stoking the fires of prejudice
against those perceived to be
a threat: foreigners.
Many harbored the belief
that immigrants and disease
were linked. Correspondent
Casper Whitney, on board the
Cepheus to chronicle events,
expressed what many thought:
“Let there be a suspension of
immigration,” in the ending
of his Harper’s Weekly essay.
Angry, armed with clubs and
shotguns, at least 100 fearful
citizens and baymen from Islip,
Bay Shore, and Babylon crossed
the bay in boats. They formed a mob
around the hotel pier, shouting “Go
back to Europe!” to prevent the quarantine
ship from docking.
On Sept. 13, Gov. Flower dispersed
the mob by threatening to dispatch
the infantry and naval reserves. A
few days later, the injunction against
the ship’s landing was dissolved by
a higher court ruling: The state’s
authority prevailed in matters of
public health.
During quarantine at the hotel, two
cases of cholera were reported. They
turned out not to be cholera, but the
hotel never recovered from its ordeal.
In 1908, the hurricane-ravaged
hotel became the first state park;
today it is part of Robert Moses State
Park.
“For the rich first-class passengers they bought
a hotel, and for the paupers, they put up military
tents on a field in which they set up beds,”
wrote Abraham Cahan.
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
