The SS Morro Castle was a luxury cruise ship of the 1930s that was built for the Ward Line for runs between New York City and Havana, Cuba. The Morro Castle was named for the fortress that guards the entrance to Havana Bay.
In the early morning hours of Saturday, September 8, 1934, en route from Havana to New York, the ship caught fire and burned, killing a total of 137 passengers and crew members. The ship eventually beached herself near Asbury Park, New Jersey and remained there for several months until it was eventually towed away, dismantled, and sold for scrap.
The devastating fire aboard the SS Morro Castle served to improve fire safety for future ships. Today, the use of fire retardant materials, automatic fire doors, ship-wide fire alarms, and greater attention to fire drills and procedures resulted directly from the Morro Castle disaster.
The Construction of the SS Morro Castle
In the spring of 1928, the U.S. Congress approved a Merchant Marine Act that created a $250 million construction fund that would be loaned to American shipbuilders so that they may replace their old and outdated ships with new ones. Each of these loans, which could subsidize as much as 75% of the cost of the ship, were designed to be paid back over twenty years at very low interest rates. One company that quickly availed itself of this opportunity was the New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company, also called the Ward Line, which had been carrying passengers, cargo and mail to and from Cuba since the mid 1800s. Naval architects were hired by the line to design a pair of cruise and cargo ships to be named the SS Morro Castle (after the stone fortress and lighthouse in Havana) and the SS Oriente (after a province in Cuba).
At the Newport News (Virginia) Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, work was begun on the SS Morro Castle in January of 1929. In March of 1930, the SS Morro Castle was christened, followed in May by her sister ship, the SS Oriente. Each ship was 508 feet long, displaced 11,520 tons, and was luxuriously finished to accommodate 489 passengers in first and tourist class, along with 240 crew members and officers. The cost of each ship was estimated at approximately $5 million.
Four Successful Years
The SS Morro Castle's maiden voyage began on August 23, 1930. She lived up to expectations by completing the maiden 1100+ mile southbound voyage in just under 59 hours, while the return leg took only 58 hours. In the four years that followed, the Morro Castle and Oriente were luxury ship workhorses, rarely out of service and, despite the worsening of The Great Depression, able to maintain a steady clientele. Their success was in part due to Prohibition, as such trips provided an affordable and (more importantly) legal means of enjoying a nonstop drinking party. However, their reasonable rates also attracted Cuban and American businessmen and older couples, making the ship a proverbial microcosm of America. Like cruise ships of today, food on board the ship was both plentiful and diverse.
Disaster Strikes the SS Morro Castle
The SS Morro Castle's final voyage began in Havana on September 5, 1934. On the afternoon of the 6th, as the ship paralleled the southeastern coast of the United States, it began to encounter increasing clouds and wind. By the morning of the 7th, the clouds had thickened and the winds had shifted to easterly, the first indication of a developing northeaster. Throughout that day, the winds increased and intermittend rains began, causing many to retire early to their berths. Early that evening, Captain Robert Willmott had his dinner delivered to his quarters. Shortly thereafter, he complained of stomach trouble and, not long after that, died of an apparent heart attack. Command of the ship passed to the Chief Officer, William Warms. During the overnight hours, the winds increased to over 30 miles per hour as the SS Morro Castle plodded its way up the eastern seaboard.
Shortly before 3 a.m., a fire was detected in a storage locker within the First Class Writing Room on B Deck. Within the next 30 minutes, the SS Morro Castle would be engulfed in flames. As the fire grew in intensity, acting captain Warms attempted to beach the ship off Asbury Park, New Jersey, but the growing need to launch lifeboats and abandon ship forced him to abandon this strategy. Within 20 minutes of the fire's discovery (at approximately 3:10), the main electric cable burned through, plunging the ship into darkness. At about the same time, the wheelhouse lost the ability to steer the ship, as those hydraulic lines were severed by the fire as well. (Burton p. 40) Cut off by the fire amidship, passengers tended to gravitate toward the stern. Most crew members, on the other hand, moved forward to the forward boat deck. (Burton p. 48) On the ship, no one could see anything. In many places, the deck boards were hot to the touch, and it was hard to breathe through the thick smoke. As conditions grew steadily worse, the decision became either "jump or burn" for many passengers. However, jumping into the water was problematic as well. The sea, whipped by the high winds, churned in great waves that made it extremely difficult to swim.
On the decks of the burning ship, there were both gallant heroes and shameless cowards among both the passengers and crew. Some crew members were incredibly brave as they tried to fight the fire. Others tossed deck chairs and life rings overboard to provide persons in the water with makeshift flotation devices. (Burton p. 50) Only six of the ship's 12 lifeboats were launched -- boats 1, 3, 5, 9 and 11 on the starboard side and boat 10 on the port side. Although the combined capacity of these boats was 408, they carried only 85 people, most of whom were crew members. Many passengers died for lack of knowledge on how to use the life preservers. As they hit the water, life preservers knocked many persons unconscious (and would subsequently drown) or broke their necks from the impact (killing them instantly). (Burton p. 58)
The rescue efforts were slow to react. The first rescue ship to arrive on the scene was the SS Luckenbach. Two other ships -- the SS Monarch of Bermuda and the SS Savannah -- were slow in taking action after receiving the SOS, but eventually did arrive on the scene. A fourth ship to participate in the rescue operations was the SS President Cleveland, which launched a motor boat that made a cursory circuit around the Morro Castle and, upon seeing nobody in the water along her route, retrieved her motor boat and left the scene.
The Coast Guard vessels Tampa and Cahoone positioned themselves too far away to see the victims in the water and rendered little assistance. The Coast Guard's aerial station at Cape May, New Jersey failed to send their floating planes until local radio stations started reporting that the dead were washing ashore.
In time, additional small boats arrived on the scene. The major problem was that in the large ocean swells, it was very difficult to see people in the water. A plane piloted by Harry Moore, governor of New Jersey and commander of the New Jersey Guard, helped boats locate survivors and bodies by dipping its wings and dropping markers. (Burton p. 98)
As news of the disaster spread along the Jersey coast by telephone and radio stations, local citizens assembled on the coastline to retrieve the dead, nurse the wounded, and try to unite families that had been scattered between different rescue boats.
In the end, 135 passengers and crew (out of a total of 549) were lost. The ship was declared a total loss, and its burned hulk was finally towed away from the Asbury Park shoreline on March 14, 1935 to be sold for scrap.
Contributing Factors to the Fire
The fire spread rapidly for a number of reasons, as follows:
The design of the ship itself
● The elegant (but highly flammable) decor of the ship -- veneered, wooden surfaces and glued, ply paneling -- helped the fire to burn quickly. (Burton p. 54)
● Although the ship had fire doors, there existed a wood-lined, six-inch opening between the wooden ceilings and the steel bulkheads. This provided the fire with a flammable pathway that bypassed the fire doors, enabling it to spread. (Burton p. 169)
● Whereas the ship had electric sensors that could detect fires in any of the ship's staterooms, crew quarters, offices, cargo holds and engine room, there were no such detectors in the ship's lounges, ballroom, writing room, library, tea room, or dining room. (Burton p. 10)
● Although there were 42 water hydrants on board, the system was designed with the assumption that no more than six would ever have to be used at any one time. When the emergency aboard the Morro Castle occurred, the crew opened virtually all working hydrants, dropping the water pressure to unusable levels everywhere. (Burton p. 44)
● The ship's Lyle Gun, which is designed to fire a buoy to another ship to facilitate passenger evacuation in an emergency, was stored over the Morro Castle's writing room, which is where the fire originated. The Lyle Gun exploded just before 3 a.m., further spreading the fire and breaking windows, thereby allowing the near-gale-force winds to enter the ship and fan the flames. (Burton p. 39)
● Fire alarms on the ship produced a "muffled, scarcely audible ring" according to passengers. (Burton p. 39)
Crew practices/deficiencies
● According to surviving crewmen, painting the ship had been a common practice to keep it looking new and to keep crewmen busy. Unfortunately, the thick layers of paint that resulted from this practice made the ship more flammable and strips of paint broke off during the fire, helping to spread the flames. (Burton p. 50)
● The storage locker in which the fire started held blankets that had been dry cleaned using 1930s technology, which utilized flammable dry cleaning fluids. (Burton p. 32)
● Although the ship had fire doors, their automatic trip wires (designed to close when a certain temperature was reached) had been disconnnected. None of the crew thought to operate them manually at the time of the fire. That said, it really wouldn't have mattered, since the six-inch opening between the wooden ceilings and the steel bulkheads would have allowed the flames to spread even if the fire doors had closed. (Burton p. 151)
● Many of the hose stations on the promenade deck had been recently deactivated in response to an incident on a recent cruise. About a month before its final voyage, a passenger slipped on a deck moistened by a leaking hose station and sued the cruise line. (Burton p. 40)
● Although regulations required that fire drills be held on each voyage, only the crew members participated. Passengers were not required to attend. (Burton p. 18)
● For quite some time after the fire was discoved, the ship continued on its course and speed pointed directly into the wind. This no doubt helped to fan the fire. In an attempt to reach passengers in some suites, crewmen broke windows on several decks, allowing the high winds to enter the ship and hasten the fire's fury. (Burton p. 40)
● Because the wireless operators couldn't get a definitive answer from the captain, the SOS wasn't ordered until 3:18, and wasn't sent until 3:23. Within five minutes, the intense heat of the fire began to distort her signal. Shortly thereafter, emergency generators failed and transmissions ceased. (Burton p. 45)
Aftermath
In the inquiries that followed the disaster, there were criticisms of the response of the first officer's handling of the ship, the crew's response to the fire, and delay in calling for assistance.
Inquiries following the disaster concluded that there was no organized effort by the officers to fight and control the fire or close the fire doors. The crew made no effort to take their regular fire stations. More damning was the conclusion that, with a few notable exceptions, the crew made no effort to direct passengers to safe pathways to the boat deck. For many passengers, the only course of action was to lower themselves into the water or jump overboard. The few lifeboats that were launched carried primarily crew, and no efforts were made by these boats to maneuver toward the ship's stern to pick up additional people. (Burton p. 162)
The newly promoted Captain Warms never left the bridge to determine the extent of damage and maintained the ship's bearing and full speed for some distance after the fire was known. As systems failed throughout the ship because of power loss, no effort was made to use the emergency steering gear or emergency lighting.
In the inquiry that followed the disaster, Chief Radio Operator George Rogers was made out to be a hero because, having been unable to get a clear order from the bridge, he sent a distress call on his own accord amidst life-threatening conditions. Later, however, suspicion was directed at Rogers, when he was convicted of attempting to murder his Police colleague with an incindiary device. His crippled victim, Vincent "Bud" Doyle, spent the better part of his life attempting to prove that Rogers had set the Morro Castle fire as well. In 1954, Rogers was convicted of murdering a neighbor couple for money, and he died three and a half years later in prison. No one can say for sure whether he was an arsonist aboard the Morro Castle.
Officially, the cause of the fire was never determined. A book, Shipwreck, was written about the incident by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts. In 2002, the A&E television network made a documentary about the incident [ISBN 0-7670-0488-4]. The documentary rekindled the speculation that the fire was actually arson committed by a crew member.
Other theories included a short circuit in the wiring that passed through the rear of the locker, the spontaneous combustion of chemically treated blankets in the locker, or an overheating of the ship's one functioning funnel, which was located just aft of the locker. (Burton p. 178)
Despite its cause, the fire aboard the SS Morro Castle served to improve fire safety for future ships. The use of fire retardant materials, automatic fire doors, ship-wide fire alarms, the necessity of emergency generators, mandatory crew training in fire fighting procedures, and greater attention to fire drills and procedures resulted directly from the Morro Castle disaster.
References
- Burton, Hal, (1973), The Morro Castle: Tragedy at Sea. New York: Viking Press. ISBN 0-670-48960-3
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