"INTO THIS STREET OF FIRE, BETWEEN THE TWO PIERS, STEAMED
THE BIG FIRE-BOAT, STRAIGHT IN, WITH FOUR STREAMS PLAYING TO PORT AND
FOUR TO STARBOARD, ALL DOING THEIR PRETTIEST."]

If ever fire-boats proved their value, it was that night in May, 1900,
when Pier 19, East River, caught fire, with all its length of
inflammable freight. Close to three o'clock in the morning it was, and a
hurricane from the northeast was driving the flames toward land. Before
the engines could start, a fire-wave had leaped across South Street and
was raging down the block. And another fire-wave had leaped across the
dock between Pier 19 and Pier 20, setting fire to a dozen barges and
lighters moored there, and to the steamship _Neuces_ of the Mallory
line. And presently all these were blazing, some with cargoes of cotton
and oil, blazing until the lower end of the island looked out of the
night in ghastly illumination, a terrible picture in red and black.
They say it was bright enough that night half a mile away for a man to
pick up a pin.

There is no harder problem for the engines than these fierce-driven
water-front fires that sweep in suddenly shoreward, for they must be
taken head on, with all the smoke in the firemen's faces, and water
often lacking, strange to say, although the river is so near. For the
fire-boats, however, the advantage is the other way; they attack from
the rear, where they see what they are doing, and can pump from a whole
ocean. Besides that, they attack with so formidable a battery that no
hook-and-ladder corps is needed to "break open" for them. The three-inch
stream from Big Daddy alone will tear off roofs and rip out beams like
the play of artillery; and if that is not sufficient, the boys have only
to hitch on the four-and-a-half-inch nozzle and set the two pumps
feeding it five thousand gallons a minute, or twenty tons of water.
Under that shock there is no wall built of brick and mortar that will
not crumble.

When the _New-Yorker_ came up on this memorable night the fifth alarm
had sounded and things were looking serious. Piers 19 and 20 were in
full flame, and every floating thing between them. Into this street of
fire steamed the big fire-boat, straight in, with four streams playing
to port and four to starboard, all doing their prettiest. She went ahead
slowly, fighting back the flames foot by foot, on pier and steamship and
kindling small craft that drifted by in fiery procession. And the air in
the me