At about 4pm on June 30, 1900 a
fire started among the
cotton bales stored at Pier 3 in
Hoboken, NJ. Within a few minutes, a strong wind had spread it to four
ocean liners belonging to the
North German Lloyd Steamship Company. Three burned: the
Saale,
Bremen, and Main. The fourth, the
Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, managed to escape the fire. 326 people died.
(this is one of the New Jersey disasters)