asbury park cruise ship fire

SS Morro Castle burnt and shipwrecked off the coast of New Jersey, 1934

By mid-morning, the ship was totally abandoned and its burning hull drifted ashore, coming to a stop in shallow water off Asbury Park, New Jersey.

The SS Morro Castle, named after a fortress that guards Havana Bay, was a luxury cruise ship of the 1930s that was built for the Ward Line for runs between New York City and Havana.

On the morning of September 8, 1934, en route from Havana to New York, the ship caught fire and burned, killing 137 passengers and crew members.

At around 2:50 a.m. on September 8, while the ship was sailing around eight nautical miles off Long Beach Island, a fire was detected in a storage locker within the First Class Writing Room on B Deck. Within the next 30 minutes, the Morro Castle became engulfed in flames.

As the fire grew in intensity, acting Captain Warms attempted to beach the ship, but the growing need to launch lifeboats and abandon the ship forced him to give up this strategy.

Within 20 minutes of the fire’s discovery (at about 3:10), the fire burned through the ship’s main electrical cables, plunging the ship into darkness.

Coast Guard members rush to haul in a survivor from the surf in Spring Lake, New Jersey.

Despite attempts to tow her to a safer location, the ship continued to drift toward the shore. As telephone calls and radio stations spread the news of the disaster along the New Jersey coast, local citizens assembled on the coastline to nurse the wounded, retrieve the dead, and try to unite families that had been scattered among different rescue boats that landed on the New Jersey beaches.

By mid-morning, the ship was totally abandoned and its burning hull drifted ashore, coming to a stop in shallow water off Asbury Park, New Jersey, late that afternoon at almost the exact spot where the New Era had wrecked in 1854. The fires continued to smolder for the next two days, and in the end, 135 passengers and crew (out of a total of 549) were lost.

The ship was declared a total loss, and its charred hulk was finally towed away from the Asbury Park shoreline on March 14, 1935. According to one account, it later started settling by the stern and sank while being towed up the river.

In the intervening months, because of its proximity to the boardwalk and the Asbury Park Convention Hall pier, from which it was possible to wade out and touch the wreck with one’s hands, the wreck was treated as a destination for sightseeing trips, complete with stamped penny souvenirs and postcards for sale.

Irrespective of 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.

Due to the great loss of life the disaster caused, many reforms in the licensing of merchant marine officers occurred, such as the establishment of the United States Merchant Marine Academy.

Survivors are treated in the Spring Lake, New Jersey firehouse.

Smoke billows from the burning midsection of the ship as it drifts toward shore.

The ship comes to rest on the beach at Asbury Park, New Jersey.

Firefighters work to extinguish the still-smoldering wreck.

New York Daily News photographer Larry Froeber is brought back to shore after collapsing and burning his hands while shooting the fire.

Men climb aboard the wreck to search for bodies.

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.

The deluxe staterooms on B Deck.

The inquiries concluded that there was no organized effort by the officers to fight and control the fire or close the fire doors. 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.

SS Morro Castle.

The wreck of the Morro Castle in the process of being pushed out to sea by salvage engineers.

The wreck is towed away to be scrapped, six months after the fire. March 14, 1935.

(Photo credit: National Archives / Library of Congress).

Updated on: November 19, 2021

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The SS Morro Castle

The first-ever commemorative monument to the ill-fated SS Morro Castle was dedicated by the Asbury Park Historical Society in 2009, the 75th anniversary of the maritime disaster.

The black marble monument, funded through donations and fundraisers, is on a grassy strip just south of Convention Hall and is the first-known monument erected to commemorate this important maritime disaster.

The SS Morro Castle was a luxury cruise ship from the 1930s that made runs between New York City and Havana, Cuba, and was popular with tourists both young and old.

In the early morning hours of Saturday, September 8th, 1934, en route from Havana to New York, the ship caught fire on the coast of the New Jersey shore; a total of 137 passengers and crew members were killed in the fire.

First-responders from southern Monmouth County responded to the event and helped rescue survivors from rough seas, and also brought the dead to shore. The still-burning ship eventually beached near the Convention Hall in Asbury Park, and became a major tourist attraction until it was towed away for scrap several months later.

The devastating fire aboard the Morro Castle was a catalyst for improved shipboard fire safety. Today, the use of fire retardant materials, automatic fire doors, and ship-wide fire alarms is a direct result of the Morro Castle disaster. The incident also led to greater attention being placed on fire drills and life boat procedures.

There is much more material on the Morro Castle online, and we urge you to learn more about this historic event.

Check out this video to learn more.

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Monmouth Timeline

SS Morro Castle: An Inferno at Sea, a Burning Hulk on the Beach, and Many Unanswered Questions

On September 8, 1934, the luxury passenger liner SS Morro Castle caught fire and burned during a raging storm off the coast of New Jersey, killing 137 passengers and crew members.  The ship, en route from Havana to New York City, eventually drifted ashore at Asbury Park after a Coast Guard towline broke, and remained on the beach for several months until she was towed off and scrapped.  The cause of the fire remains unknown, but most historians now believe it was arson.

The SS Morro Castle was a ship of the Ward Line, running between Havana and New York City. She was 480 feet in length and could carry 489 passengers and 240 crew.  A sister ship, the SS Oriente , worked the route in the opposite direction. Transporting wealthy travelers to an exotic tropical resort destination was only one part of the Ward Line business model.  The Morro Castle also carried cargo of all kinds each way, but most lucrative was the government contract to carry mail to and from Cuba on a precise schedule.

The Morro Castle came into existence during troubled times for the host nations of its ports of call of New York City and Havana.  The ship was launched during the Great Depression, and during its years in service, traveled to Cuba when that nation was in a time of great political upheaval, with rebels and nationalists operating in violent and unpredictable ways.

Coming out of the Roaring Twenties, the Morro Castle seemed like a sure bet.  It was during the time of Prohibition, but passengers could enjoy fully legal liquor aboard ship.  Sailings featured gourmet meals, and entertainment coordinated by a cruise entertainment director.  And Havana at that time was one of the most exotic cities in the world, known for hedonistic entertainment and adventurous intrigue.  And yet, due to the Depression, the Morro Castle sailed on most occasions with about half as many passengers as she could carry.  And although jobs were scarce, the Morro Castle also routinely sailed without a full crew. 

A Catastrophic Cataclysm

The first sign of trouble was when the captain came down sick, thought by observers to have been food poisoning.  Hours later, he was dead.  Then, after the fire started, everything that could go wrong, did. The Chief Officer who took over after the captain died made the critical error of steering the ship into the 30-knot winds, forcing the fire to move rapidly through the ship from bow to stern. The crew used the lifeboats for themselves, or not at all. Fire extinguishers failed to work. Life preservers failed or caused injuries, as passengers jumping from upper decks were hurt by the hard cork of the preservers upon impact with the water.  The Coast Guard response was delayed and ineffective.  No one knew who was in charge once the ship ran aground on the beach.  Evidence that might have explained what happened was destroyed by the first people to board the vessel.

The intrigue surrounding the Morro Castle disaster is the stuff of Agatha Christie novels.  Virtually everyone associated with the Morro Castle came under suspicion.  The captain would have been an obvious suspect, but he died under mysterious circumstances just hours before the fire started.  The other officers were suspects.  The crew was full of suspicious characters.  Even the passengers came under scrutiny.  Here are just some of the subplots investigators grappled with as they tried to determine what happened on that fateful night:

Was the captain murdered?   Robert Renison Willmott was a seasoned seaman and ship’s officer who captained the Morro Castle starting with its maiden voyage, and he was at the helm for all 174 of the ship’s sailings.  He was known as someone more interested with keeping the passengers happy than with troublesome details such as fire drills.  He often turned smoke detectors off when the ship was carrying animal hides north from Cuba, as they gave off fumes that sometimes triggered the alarms.  He insisted on having the ship’s superstructure repainted regularly, which gave the vessel a beautiful sheen, but when it caught fire, those layers of paint proved highly flammable and deadly. 

Willmott had little use for the constantly-changing crew and was uninterested in their complaints about long hours, poor working conditi0ns, low pay, and illegal activities supposedly taking place aboard ship.  No one knows when Willmott came to the conclusion that someone on the ship wanted to murder him, but when the Morro Castle arrived in Havana for the last time, he shared that fear with his officers.  He did not say if he knew who it was that he suspected.

On the afternoon of September 7, Willmott complained of stomach pains. Hours later, the ship’s doctor sent a telegram to the Ward Line offices stating that Captain Willmott was dead as of 7:45 p.m., cause of death: “acute indigestion.”  Willmott’s remains were never found, so no autopsy was performed, and the cause of his death remains unsolved.

Was the ship sabotaged by a member of the crew?  The ship was routinely understaffed when she embarked, and many of the crew members were inexperienced seamen.  On any given trip, about half the crew were Americans who spoke little or no Spanish, and the other half were Cubans or others from Latin America, who typically spoke little or no English.  Bigotry and language barriers created an atmosphere of constant conflict and complaints about the poor working conditions.  It was rumored that the Morro Castle often carried guns and ammunition south, for illegal sale to Cuban nati0nalist or rebel factions, and crew members allegedly smuggled marijuana and heroin north to the U.S. 

There were clearly suspicious characters among the crew, people who may have been capable of violent sabotage.  But the problem with the theory that a passenger sought to sabotage a ship while at sea is that person has no better chance of survival than the intended victims. It would be almost suicidal. Who would take that kind of risk, and why?

Was the ship sabotaged by one of the passengers?   People on opposing sides of the political upheaval in Cuba traveled to and from the U.S. aboard the Morro Castle on the same sailings, and someone may have seen an opportunity to eliminate a key leader or contributor to the opposing side.  It was also rumored that the Morro Castle regularly had stowaways or illegal passengers aboard, people seeking asylum in the U.S., or escaping persecution in Cuba.  After the disaster of September 8, 17 of the bodies of those who died were never identified or claimed, so we do not know even know for certain who was aboard the ship on that trip.  But no evidence was ever found to support the theory that a passenger may have been involved.

The radioman did it. The radio operators aboard the Ward Line ships were not crew members, nor were they employees of the Ward Line.  They were employees of an independent company that provided certified radio operators to shipping companies.  Three men were aboard the Morro Castle on September 8 as radio operators.  Even just this small group struggled with their own dramas and problems.  One of the three was considered an agitator, someone who constantly harped about working conditions and complained to the ship’s officers about every little thing.  This man was to have been replaced upon arriving in New York City, and so he was among the immediate suspects for having had a motive to sabotage the ship. 

The man on duty in the radio room that night was George Rogers.  Unbeknownst to anyone at the Ward Line, Rogers had lived a life of juvenile delinquency, sexual deviance and assorted crimes throughout his life.  And wherever George Rogers was, suspicious fires tended to occur.  In those days, companies like the Ward Line and the company that provided radio operators made no effort to vet potential employees. 

Rogers was throughout his life a surly and unlikable person by all accounts, including his wife.  On board the Morro Castle , he liked to play the other radio operators against one another, creating stress and arguments, which he then used to position himself to ship’s officers as the superior man.  They didn’t like him either. 

After the fire was detected, Rogers sought permission to issue an SOS signal, as per standard procedure.  Only the captain could approve an SOS signal.  But the captain was dead, and the ship’s officer who assumed control proved to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the gale-force storm that buffeted the huge ship as the fire burned out of control.  Eventually, Rogers issued the SOS signal without permission.  Even while suffering serious burns, Rogers remained at his station, sending out SOS signals.  He would be among the last survivors taken from the ship.  In the days immediately following the disaster, he was heralded as a hero, and was of such a celebrity status that he was booked for a tour of vaudeville theaters, where he regaled audiences with the “real” story of what happened to the Morro Castle .  Sadly, accounts about what happened on September 8 began to tell a different story, and people quickly tired of Rogers, and the tour was cancelled.

In 1938, Rogers worked for a Bayonne Police Department official, installing radios on squad cars.  Rogers revealed his fascination with incendiary fuses and timing devices, and said that the fire aboard the Morro Castle had been started with a timing device hidden in a pen in a waiter’s coat in a locker.  The police officer knew this was information that had never come to light before, and he informed his superiors.  Rogers responded by attempting to murder the officer using a firebomb with a timer hidden in a fish tank water pump.  He was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 12 to 20 years in Trenton State Prison, but he was set free after only four years, accepting an offer to join the military during World War II, when experienced radiomen were urgently needed.

Years later, Rogers found himself back at Trenton State Prison after being convicted of murdering his neighbors whom he had bilked in an investment scam.  He died in prison proclaiming his innocence and never admitted any guilt or culpability regarding the Morro Castle . 

Historians succeeded in obtaining FBI and other government records for George Rogers in 1999, but many of the files are heavily redacted or illegible.  To this day, the U.S. government continues to keep information about George Rogers secret.  Some have speculated that he became some sort of informant, but he remains mostly a mystery.

The question arises once again, why would George Rogers sabotage a ship, knowing that his chances of survival were no better than anyone else’s?  Why not use one of his timing devices to create a fire after he was safely away?  Here, the opinions of experts on arsonists tend to agree that people who are obsessed with starting fires often fail to consider their own safety when following their urges, and often after the fire is set, become passive and just watch things unfold. 

The investigation ultimately concluded that the fire started in a locker in a room used by passengers for writing letters.  The cause was determined to be either arson, or spontaneous combustion. 

The Morro Castle was built according to the most modern standards for safety, and had passed all safety inspections.  Much of her design was informed by lessons from previous disasters like the RMS Titanic . And yet after the fire, experts realized that standards and practices for fire safety on passenger ships was still woefully inadequate.  New regulations emerged from the Morro Castle disaster that made traveling by sea much safer to this day.

Many unanswered questions remain: What caused the death of the captain, just hours before the fire? Why weren’t all the lifeboats used? Was George Rogers a hero, or a villain, possibly responsible for starting the fire in the first place? And why does the U.S. government continue to keep facts about George Rogers secret after all these years? 

Burton, Hal. (1973). The Morro Castle: Tragedy at Sea. The Viking Press, New York, N.Y.

Coyle, Gretchen F., & Whitcraft, Deborah C. (2012). Inferno at Sea: Stories of Death and Survival Aboard the Morro Castle. Down The Shore Publishing, West Creek, N.J.

Gallagher, Thomas. (1959). Fire at Sea: The Story of the Morro Castle. Rinehart & Company, New York, N.Y.

The Morro Castle Remembered. (1984). Press Staff Report, Asbury Park Press, Asbury Park, N.J., September 9, 1984, P. I-8.

Thomas, Gordon, & Morgan-Witts, Max. (1972). Shipwreck: The Strange Fate of the Morro Castle. Stein & Day, Inc., New York, N.Y.

Image Credit: International News Photos, Inc. – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3b14818.

Morro Castle postcard scans: Public domain.

Reader Interactions

August 30, 2023 at 12:42 pm

As you noted, fire drills were unheard of aboard this ship. So were lifeboat drills. Capt. Willmott’s insistence on constant repainting had gummed up the davits so badly that many boats were unusable.

As to whether Willmott’s remains were found or removed from the wreck, sources differ. Apparently there wasn’t enough left of the body to permit an autopsy.

Dislike of the skipper was widespread among the crew, and it’s far from impossible someone might have poisoned his food or drink. But I don’t think it was Rogers, who encouraged Willmott’s suspicion of sparks George Alagna so Rogers would be promoted to chief radioman.

Rogers, unliked and unlikable, clearly had a desire to make himself some kind of hero. Why, then, did he refuse to send a distress message until ok’d by the hopelessly overwhelmed CO Warms? Did he underestimate the extent of the fire? Or was the firebug in him determined to let things get really bad before the would-be hero in him took over?

And what of those heavily redacted federal files? Was Rogers an FBI informant, and if so, did he hope to play hero on a national scale – either for the US or for Cuba? It is confusing but tempting to speculate what sort of secrets about George Rogers might still be considered incriminating 60-70 years later – and to whom.

August 30, 2023 at 2:49 pm

Prescient observations and valid questions all. The many mysteries of the SS Morro Castle are likely to be a subject of fascination and speculation for many years to come. I’m surprised you didn’t bring up the curious aspect of the USS Tampa, the USCG ship that essentially chose to stand by and not offer assistance nor attempt to try and avoid the ship grounding on shore. The radio messages are a matter of public record, the Tampa stood down and was never called out for it.

September 23, 2023 at 12:54 am

Correction: It is not the SS Titanic, it is actually the RMS Titanic.

September 23, 2023 at 9:03 am

Good catch! It has been fixed, thanks!

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The Chilling Tale Of The Ill-Fated SS Morro Castle, New Jersey's Ghost Ship

Kristen is a writer, editor, and social media maven who loves her state. Born and raised in New Jersey, sharing all it has to offer is her passion. After attending Montclair State University, she continued her education online, obtaining certifications in social media management.

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On September 8, 1934, the SS Morro Castle (an American ocean liner) caught fire and was beached along the shore of Asbury Park. Over 130 passengers and crew members died on that fateful day but there’s more to the story than a fire on a boat.

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The charred boat remained for months until finally being hauled away in March of 1935. It became something of a morbid tourist attraction. It drew significant attention for several reasons. First, the series of tragedies surrounding the ship. Second, the mysterious circumstances behind the captain’s death and the fire. Third, the fact that the ship beached in nearly the exact same spot as the New Era wrecked in 1854. Hundreds also died in that disaster. Today, visitors still flock to the spot where the ship hit the shore. Some report hearing screams, shadowy figures in the sand, and spotting a ghost ship in the water. If you want to learn more about the SS Morro Castle, visit the New Jersey Maritime Museum . It offers the largest collection of Morro Castle information and memorabilia, among other unique artifacts.

OnlyInYourState may earn compensation through affiliate links in this article. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

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Sean Munger's History and Culture Dispatches

Fire on the beach: Asbury Park, NJ and the S.S. Morro Castle disaster.

How a tragic ship fire disaster became a temporary boom for one of the jersey shore's most iconic 20th century destinations..

Eighty-seven years ago yesterday, in the predawn hours of September 8, 1934, a small fire broke out in the first class writing room of an ocean liner, the  SS Morro Castle , which was headed for New York from Havana. The ship was then about eight miles off the coast of Long Island. The fire tore through the ship quickly, fueled by flammable paneling and many old coats of paint on its surfaces, and within 20 minutes had knocked out power all throughout the vessel. Panicked passengers ran screaming toward the stern through clouds of billowing smoke. Crewmen trying to fight the blaze opened all of the  Morro Castle's fire hydrants at once, which, due to a design flaw in the fire control system, caused water pressure to fall to zero and made the hydrants unusable. To make matters worse, a gale was blowing up at the time, fanning the flames considerably, and the ship's command structure was in chaos—the  Morro Castle's captain, Robert Willmott, had died in his cabin hours earlier from causes unrelated to the disaster. It was a perfect storm of incompetence and bad luck.

Although the ship was near the shore, rescue attempts were slow, botched and ineffective. The poorly-trained crew for the most part abandoned the  Morro Castle's passengers to their fate, escaping in lightly-loaded lifeboats that could have carried hundreds more people. Other ships and shore stations, including aircraft and the Coast Guard, were slow to respond and many couldn't see people floundering in the dark waters through the ferocious gale. Within hours, everyone who was going to make it had been rescued, leaving 135 dead—burnt to crisps aboard the ship itself, or dead in the water from various causes. Bodies began washing up on the nearby shores. The  Morro Castle herself blazed brightly throughout the day of September 8. Taken into tow by a Coast Guard ship, the tow rope broke in the storm. The death ship, now a deserted flaming hulk, began drifting toward shore—specifically toward the beaches of Asbury Park, New Jersey.

Horrific as the  Morro Castle disaster was on a human scale, the ship's appearance off the beach was something of a divine deliverance for Asbury Park. This beachside community got going in the Gilded Age as a day-trip vacation destination for wealthy New Yorkers, fueled by (what else?) railroad connections and increased affluence in the decades following the Civil War. The usual accouterments of East Coast beach resorts followed: big wooden hotels in Gothic and wedding cake styles, boardwalks, amusements, and a somewhat seamy underside of traveling carnivals, pickpockets, petty crime and not-so-petty corruption. By the 1920s Asbury Park was booming, especially with a new convention center right on the water. That all came to a crashing halt when the Great Depression hit. In the early 1930s Asbury Park was something of a sad and depressed place, still a tourist beach town, but with an air of decay about it. Then, on September 8, 1934, the Morro Castle drifted into view, its decks still smoldering.

Morro Castle eventually grounded on a sandbar just yards from the Asbury Park Convention Hall. The next morning, September 9, a Coast Guard official and Asbury Park's city engineer ventured over to the smoking hulk in a boat and began implementing a scheme to attach ropes from the ship over to the Convention Hall. What they eventually established was a breeches buoy, a kind of lifeline where people could traverse the water on a pulley. The efforts to reach the  Morro Castle were publicized in real time across the town and the area, because there was a radio station inside the Convention Hall. Firemen and other first responders used the lifeline to get to the ship and see if anyone was still left alive aboard her. No one was, and there was virtually nothing of value left to salvage: the intense fire had left  Morro Castle a blistered, empty derelict.

Despite the tragedy of the disaster, there was obviously a macabre fascination with the  Morro Castle , which remained wedged on the sandbar just off the Asbury Park beach for several months. Once investigations were complete and grisly human remains were removed from the ship, the breeches buoy leading from the Asbury Park Convention Hall to the  Morro Castle wreck began to result in some economic gains for the Depression-wracked town. Tourists were charged $5 a trip to squeak aboard the vessel and gaze at its gutted rooms and pitted bulkheads. It was so close to the beach that tourists could wade out into the surf, or go out in small boats, and actually touch the lopsided wreck. Spectators lined the boardwalk to get a look at the wrecked ship, bringing some much-needed revenue to local shops and attractions.

The ruined ship remained off Asbury Park for several months. In March 1935 she was finally floated off the sandbar and towed toward Gravesend Bay, New York to be broken up for scrap. What happened to the ship after that is unclear. In one report I read, she sank while under tow; in another, she wound up at a scrap yard in Baltimore. Whatever happened, it was a sad end for the ship itself, only four years old at the time of the disaster, to say nothing of the 135 people who died needlessly in a completely preventable tragedy.

The story of the  Morro Castle and its encounter with Asbury Park resonates with me. In the early 2000s I had occasion to visit Asbury Park, just for one day, and I found it a curiously haunting place, full of decaying memories of those glory days in the early part of the 20th century. Faded advertisements for ice cream and children's attractions still adorned wind- and sand-blasted walls. The boardwalk seemed dilapidated and sagging under the weight of history. Everywhere there was the sense of lost childhood and faded innocence. The moldering hulk of a burnt-out ocean liner, hovering like a ghost just off the shore, would've been a perfect addition to this scene.

Since I was there, it's my understanding that Asbury Park has been undergoing a renewal. The old boardwalk I saw has been replaced and new businesses are opening up there. Still, there's something haunting about the memory of the  Morro Castle disaster that happened here almost 90 years ago. Echoes of tragedy resonate through a place long after its physical constitution changes.

The  Morro Castle postcard is owned by C.V. Norris and is used under GNU Free Documentation License. All other images are in the public domain.

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The Morro Castle Disaster

On 8 September 1934, Ward Line’s Morro Castle caught fire on a stormy night off the New Jersey coast as she was returning to New York from Havana. The blaze claimed the lives of 137 of 549 passengers and crewmembers.

The cause of the fire was never definitively determined, abut arson has long been suspected (although never proved). There’s no doubt, however, that some strange things happened on board Morro Castle during the hours leading up to the disaster—such as Captain Robert Willmott suddenly dying after complaining about a “nervous stomach.”

According to William Warms, the chief officer who assumed command after Willmott’s death, the captain told him the on day of the fire that, “I’m afraid something is going to happen tonight, I can feel it.” Willmott also supposedly told several of his officers that someone was out to both murder him and damage or destroy the liner. He allegedly told them that he suspected assistant radio engineer George Alanga, whom he is said to have described as “a dangerous radical,” was behind the plot.

This much we know: the blaze, which began in a utility closet, quickly spread out of control. Wooden fixtures and fittings fueled the inferno, as did multiple layers of paint covering deck railings and other exterior surfaces. Confusion reigned as a crew largely untrained in emergency procedures either fled the vessel in panic or responded haphazardly or counterproductively. Only six of the ship’s 12 lifeboats were launched. Bodies washed ashore at several points along the New Jersey coast.

The Furness liner Monarch of Bermuda, which raced at full speed through the storm in a Carpathia-like race to reach Morro Castle’s side, later brought 70 survivors and one body into New York.

The still-burning liner eventually beached herself near the Convention Hall in Asbury Park, New Jersey. The wreck became a major tourist attraction until it was towed away for scrap several months later.

Incidentally, if you ever wondered why United States was designed with virtually no wood fittings or trim (other than a single piano), look no further than Morro Castle.

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MORRO CASTLE

A 1934 FIRE AT SEA SPARKS CONTROVERSY SEVENTY YEARS LATER In 2003 my mother died at the age of 100. While close-mouthed and proper to the extreme most of her life, she told me in her last decade that she saw the “Morro Castle” on fire from the Atlantic City Boardwalk. Could this be true?

Nothing could have been more terrifying than being a passenger or crew member aboard the “Morro Castle” in the early morning hours of September 7, 1934 when fire erupted in two places on the 508’ long, 11,250 gross tons of elegant ship. Just hours after Captain Robert Willmott had been found dead in his stateroom of strange circumstances. “Acute indigestion” according to the ship’s doctor Dr. DeWitt Van Zile.

Adding to the disaster was the fact that the ship was facing into the wind – a Northeasterly 30 mph blow – with a number of officers and crew bordering on incompetent. Starting in the First Class Writing Room, the midship flames were fanned by the wind and a temporary ship’s captain who froze under the tragedy, never leaving the bridge to assess the damage. Probably the “Morro Castle” was doomed at the first sign of smoke.

During the Great Depression it was a rare luxury for people to afford a cruise on luxury liners, yet over 72,000 people took cruises in 1934. Built in 1929 – 1930 at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in Virginia, the “Morro Castle” and her sister ship “Oriente” were part of a congressional bill that loaned $250 million to American ship builders. Taking advantage of such an opportunity was the Ward Line, a mail and cargo line whose main route was back and forth to Cuba.

Costing $5 million, the “Morro Castle” was named after the fortress and lighthouse in Havana. For four years the ship made its way back and forth from Cuba usually half to completely full of passengers. While it was routinely maintained, and glossed over, the “Morro Castle” had never been pulled.

Paint covered everything (a detail that would only compound the tragedy), and drills and safety instructions were largely ignored. The crew changed hands routinely. Most were paid less that the government Civilian Conservation Corps workers, surly and inefficient. With a government contract to deliver mail and other goods between the U.S. and Cuba, punctuality was first and foremost in the Ward Line officials’ minds.

“The ship’s Art Deco inspired profile, seen daily in advertisements of the New York papers, attracted passengers from a variety of social tiers … the Ward Line knew its clientele and catered to them shamelessly,” wrote Brian Hicks in his 2006 book When the Dancing Stopped: The Real Story of the ‘Morro Castle” Disaster and Its Deadly Wake. “(The) crew was divided into two camps: those simply happy to have a job and others outraged by the way the Ward Line treated them.”

Unhappiness and major grievances cast a pall on the last few months of the ship’s existence. Agitators, Communists, discontents, and maybe even murderers, were part of the general mix. George Alagna was a radio operator who vocally expressed opposition over how most of the crew was treated to all who would listen. His fellow radio operator George Rogers turned out to be even more mysterious and sinister. Captain Willmott had major problems with his officers as well as the crew.

With all of the above turmoil in mind, hindsight shows the “Morro Castle” a disaster waiting to happen. According to William Warms, Chief Officer who took over the ship after the undetermined death of the captain, Captain Willmott told him the day of the fire, “I’m afraid something is going to happen tonight, I can feel it.”

Moving ten miles off the coast of Delaware Bay “The ship looked like a photograph from a travel agent’s brochure come to life … an outpost of paradise, an oasis at sea,” Brian Hicks visualized. Dodging both the northeaster and a hurricane coming up the coast, the officers of the “Morro Castle” just wanted to get inside the safety of Sandy Hook, the entrance to New York Harbor by early the next morning.

A last night fancy ball was cancelled after Captain Willmott’s demise. Passengers and crew became on edge. At 3:00am a fire erupted in a closet off from the Writing Room. Almost simultaneously another erupted elsewhere. Flames quickly engulfed the ship. A small number of the crew tried to put out the fire, while at the same time telling two young ladies who wanted to sound the alarm to be quiet lest they wake other passengers up.

Both officers and crew were paralyzed with fear and indecision, the result being a fire that quickly engulfed the ship. No order was given to stop or turn the “Morro Castle” around. Consequently, the blaze burned everything back through the stern in quick order. Although only a few fire hydrants were used, water pressure became extremely low.

In flames the ship proceeded out of control up the coast a few miles off shore. Panic ensued among passengers and crew. Many of the crew looked out for themselves as they dropped lifeboats and filled them. They did not direct terrified passengers who had received no life vest and lifeboat drills at sea. Although the ship had more than enough lifeboats – a rule enacted after the “Titanic” disaster – they were not filled. Some of the lifeboats were literally painted in place and could not be lowered.

More afraid of being burned to death than being in the water, many people jumped into the Atlantic Ocean. No one was told that cork life preservers needed to be held upon descent or they could cause injury such as broken necks or unconsciousness. No doubt this added to the fatalities.

The ornate wooden interior on the ship just added to an out of control raging fire. Cleaning fluid exploded, as did the Lyle Gun stored over the Writing Room, designed to attach its line to another ship to start evacuation. A SOS was oddly enough first heard by radio station WCS in Tuckerton, NJ. After a questionable sequence of events and time enacted by the radio operators, the word was spread.

Ships and local boats from the coastal Asbury Park area headed to the scene, rescuing a number of people in the water. Others had died from their fall, being crushed by the ship’s propellers, or drowned during a night of high seas and bad weather.

The final tally was disastrous: six out of twelve lifeboats only were lowered, a total of 137 people died. Investigations took place after the ship had beached itself off the oceanfront Convention Hall at the summer resort of Asbury Park. Lawyers, passengers, crew, the FBI under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover and his brother, and the Ward Line all conducted inquiries into the tragedy. Testimony was conflicted and self-serving in cases.

The “Morro Caste” became an attraction seen by thousands over the ensuing months – first a smoldering hull, later a charred remains. Summer businesses extended their season well into the fall, making for the best season they had in years. Souvenirs were sold; hotels, boarding houses and restaurants did a brisk business.

Brian Hicks puts together now unclassified testimony and numerous information on radio operator George Rogers, who at first emerged as the hero of the “Morro Castle.” Now revealed as a psychopath, liar, and murderer, Rogers is clearly shown for what he was – not the dependable radio operator who stayed by his post trying to raise a signal from another ship. He was a pyromaniac who, through his extraordinary knowledge of explosives and radio devices, managed to take down a large liner.

While hindsight draws many conclusions, one young seventeen year old on board as the third purser spent years telling groups of people that not all the crew was negligent. Some helped passengers and their fellow crew members. Tom Torresson testified, “When I first saw the beautiful ‘Morro Castle’ I fell in love with it.” He went on to graduate from Norte Dame, the Army Air Corps, and became a flight instructor.

According to Hicks book, Torresson “had indefatigable energy … For most of his life he kept alive the notion of a grand cruise ship in its final glory days.” “It’s all baloney,” Hicks quotes Torresson as saying after finding out the rumor for the high death toll was largely due to the crew. Tom Torresson died in 2005 at the age of eighty-nine, close to the seventy-first anniversary of the disaster.

The “Morro Castle” remained on the beach off Asbury Park for a few months in the fall of 1934. It was then towed to Baltimore, taken apart, and sold as scrap.

Neither the circumstances of Captain Robert Willmott’s death nor the actual cause of the sinking of the “Morro Castle” have ever been officially determined.

To answer the question of whether my mother saw this ship burning from the Atlantic City Boardwalk: After a night of partying might she have seen a red glow in the distance and not known what it was? Or maybe she meant she saw the hull of the “Morro Castle” from the boardwalk in Asbury Park?

Could she have made up the whole thing? I will never know.

SIDEBAR: For more information on the “Morro Castle” disaster read: When the Dancing Stopped: The Real Story of the ‘Morro Castle’ Disaster and Its Deadly Wake by Brian Hicks. Gretchen F. Coyle

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Cruising The Past Cruise News

Coulter’s steamlined modern department store miracle mile los angeles, september 8, 2009 marks the 75th anniversary of the luxury liner morro castle disaster..

Posted by: Michael Grace September 8, 2009

Today, marks the 75th Anniversary of the luxury liner SS Morro Castle disaster.

This is highlighted by recently found home movie footage.

These great cruise history videos have never been seen before.  They show the September 8, 1934 fire aboard the cruise ship. (Photo credits caremaritime.com and wardline.com.)

The 16mm film shows aftermath of fire aboard Ward Line steamship that offered weekly service between New York and Havana, Cuba.

Recently discovered 75 year old home movie footage of the Morro Castle fire and loss.  Click here to read the story behind the film.

Morro Castle: The darker side:  The ship was know as the “Havana Ferry Boat” or the “Floating Whorehouses”!  There was a dark undercurrent beneath the glamorous and placid surface presented by Ward Line publicists: rumors abounded regarding drug and alcohol smuggling; illegal alien importation; gun running and gambling.

The “Havana Ferryboats” were referred to, not affectionately, by longshoremen and NYC waterfront police as “The Floating Whorehouses” because of the alleged presence of not-on-the-passenger-list call girls who worked the liners during peak convention and charter season. Particularly during her final year, enough of the Morro Castle’s misadventures appeared in the press to make the other rumors seem plausible.

Despite attempts to tow her to a safer location, the ship continued to drift toward shore. By 7:30 pm, she came to rest on the beach at the foot of Sixth Avenue in the summer resort town of Asbury Park, N.J. Carl Nesensohn, N.Y. Times Wide World photographer (who took above photo) arrived with other news cameramen in the late afternoon. They made photos of the victims and the burning hulk. Early the next morning, Nesensohn decided to board the smoldering ship.

The first class dining room aboard the Morro Castle. (Gare Maritime)

Onboard the Morro Castle, the steel deck plates were still hot. Flames, noxious gases, smoke, minor explosions and charred corpses surrounded him. He took the first photos of the burned-out interior of the Morro Castle for two and a half hours, after which he returned to shore, his clothing torn, his shoes almost burnt through and his face covered with soot.

Officially, the cause of the fire was never determined, but the design of the ship, the materials used in its construction, questionable crew practices and mistakes escalated the on-board fire to a roaring inferno that eventually destroyed the ship. The fire, however, was a catalyst for improved shipboard fire safety–the use of fire retardant materials, automatic fire doors, ship-wide fire alarms, and fire drills were direct results of the Morro Castle disaster.

A terrific website dedicated to the Morro Castle and the Ward Line can be found by clicking here.   Visit wardline.com for historical information and excellent images.

TRAGEDY OF THE MORRO CASTLE

The rain battered the New Jersey shore along southern Monmouth County in the early morning hours of September 8, 1934. With winds approaching 60 miles per hour, it would take a brave or foolhardy person to challenge the weather in a storm like this. Yet the few daring souls that did choose to go out in those pre-dawn hours were greeted by a sight they would never forget. Offshore in the distance, the clouds glowed an eerie red, as if lighted by some vast inferno.

The Morro Castle had been launched just four years earlier with much fanfare. It had been built with help from the United States government in an effort to modernize our aging maritime fleet and to compete with the newer and more reliable foreign liners that American travelers preferred. Operated by the Ward Line, it immediately began making regular voyages from New York City to Cuba. The company’s advertising brochure boasted, “During its 50 years of continuous service, the Ward line has lost but two ships, and it has never lost a passenger.” They would not be so fortunate this time.

The round trip from New York to Havana, Cuba took the Morro Castle about a week, and it had made the voyage over a hundred times by 1934 with few problems. Most of the passengers were vacationers, but the ship also delivered mail and cargo. The fare was very inexpensive, even by those Depression standards. It cost just $75.00 for a round trip which included meals and a two night stay in Havana. The trips were often referred to as “whoopee cruises” because of the non-stop drinking that some passengers imbibed in once the ship was outside the three mile territorial limit of the still prohibition laden United States.

But drinking and revelry did not stop once the ship landed in Havana. It continued in this exotic port where things were so much more liberating and open than the vacationers’ homes. Liquor was cheap and legal and there was a host of new experiences for the middle-class voyager. On the trip back the partying continued and often reached its zenith on the last night before the ship reached port in New York. After all, any liquor purchased legally in Cuba had to be dispensed of before the ship landed, so all night parties were the rule for many passengers. Not all of the travelers, of course, behaved like this. There were also many business travelers and social clubs that made the voyage.

The captain of the Morro Castle from its very first voyage was Robert Wilmott, a veteran old salt who had been with the Ward Line for over 25 years. After operating many older ships over the years he was thrilled to be put in command of the line’s newest liner, which was built with both comfort and safety foremost in mind. Upon taking command of the ship Wilmott was asked what would happen if the Moro Castle was ever taken away from him. He answered jokingly that, “In that case, I’ll take here with me.” Those words would seem prophetic years later.

Captain Wilmott was a personable and respected officer. He liked to mingle with the passengers and was considered a fair boss, if not a bit stern, by the crew. His second-in-command, First Officer William Warms, though competent was the opposite of the captain in many respects. He was virtually unknown to the passengers and unfamiliar to many in the crew. Warms never initiated any actions on board, he simply followed orders. Like most of the officers on board, he was qualified to command a ship, but the Depression had made such opportunities rare, and officers had to sign on to whatever position was available.

When the Morro Castle departed New York on September 1, 1934, few expected anything out of the ordinary. In fact, the voyages had become so routine that the ship was often referred to by sailors as the “Havana Ferryboat.” Some of the crew did notice a change in Captain Wilmott’s personality over the previous months. Perhaps it was overwork or stress, but he became less outgoing and gregarious. There was also a rumor that the ship was secretly smuggling arms to the Cuban dictatorship and had become a target to Communist insurgents on the island.

On this latest voyage the captain still ate dinner with the passengers, but was otherwise rarely seen by them. By the time the return trip started on September 6, 1934, he became even more hostile and suspicious. Some crew members blamed his demeanor on an upcoming storm, but others sensed a more serious cause. The captain had confided in some officers that he had was convinced that someone was out to murder him and damage or destroy the ship. Whether he suspected communist guerillas or a disgruntled employee, he did not say. However one crew member fit both descriptions in the mind of the Captain Wilmott. He confided in Warms and Chief Engineer Eban Abbott that he suspected George Alanga, an Assistant Radio Engineer, was, in his opinion, a “dangerous radical”.

The radio operators aboard the Morro Castle, like all radio operators at the time, were not employees of the Ward Line, but were hired and assigned by the Radiomarine Corporation (now RCA). Each passenger ship was required to have three on board, one for each shift. On this cruise Bayonne resident George White Rogers was the Chief Engineer and George Alanga was one of the assistants. On an earlier voyage Alanga had tried to organize a strike against the shipping line for better conditions but was unsuccessful. He had earned the undying hatred of Captain Wilmott and the Ward Lines for his effort, and in fact had already been notified that he was being dismissed when the ship returned to New York.

George White Rogers was someone who warranted suspicion. It was not just his unusual appearance (he was well over six feet tall and weighed over 250 pounds), but his unusual demeanor. There were times Rogers could be a bundle of energy, and other times when he would nod off in mid-conversation. His rotund, flabby body and extremely pale face did not portray a seaman, and he had no friends on the crew. In fact, no one really knew much at all about the man, except that he exuded an air of discomfort to those around him.

The passengers awakened on the morning of September 7th to a miserable and wet day. The approaching storm had finally arrived and activities on the ship would be confined to indoors. Cruise Director Robert Smith would have his hands filled keeping the travelers entertained. As Cruise Director, Smith acted as the liaison between the crew and the passengers and he was very good at his job. Whatever the vacationers needed, Smith did his best to accommodate them. He was the representative of the line to most passengers and the only officer on the ship they would get to know during the cruise. One of the activities Smith was planning for the day was a new game he had thought up called “life boat”. On a signal, all the passengers would rush to their cabins, put on their life jackets and report to their assigned lifeboats. The first team to accomplish this would be given prizes at the final dinner onboard that night. Smith, like First Officer Warms, was concerned by the lack of fire drills, and thought this might be a good way to practice without alarming the passengers. Captain Wilmott thought it was the silliest idea he had ever heard and refused permission.

Captain Wilmott, besides his growing paranoia, was now suffering from stomach cramps. He spent most of the day in his cabin as the weather worsened. His discomfort was matched by many of the passengers who were becoming seasick as the ocean waves became rougher and rougher. The final dinner onboard the Morro Castle before docking in New York was a highlight of the trip. Called the “Captain’s Dinner”, it was one of the few times when most of the officers, especially the captain, were present to entertain the guests. Therefore, it came as a shock to the passengers when Captain Wilmott did not make an appearance. What the guests did not know was that the commander of the ship had just been found dead in his cabin.

The ship’s doctor made a perfunctory examination of the body, and declared the captain had died of a heart attack and “nervous stomach”. Three other physicians traveling onboard concurred, but with reservations. An autopsy was impossible given the current situation, but one would be possible once the ship landed in New York. First Officer Warms assumed command and each officer below him advanced one grade. This may have been customary, but it put each man in a position he was unfamiliar with, a liability if an emergency situation occurred.

Warms assumed control of the bridge and began to plot a course to battle the now fierce storm. The rain was coming down in sheets and the wind was gusting to near hurricane force. The passengers were informed of Captain Wilmott’s death, and assured that the current officers in charge were more than capable of bringing the ship home. They should feel sadness, not worry. Some of the passengers were not so sure. The captain was dead, they were battling a storm, and many now regretted the lack of fire and safety drills.

Upon finding the fire the crew made the first of many mistakes. Instead of seizing all available nearby fire extinguishers and immediately fighting the fire, they reported back to the bridge and wasted precious seconds. By the time they began attacking the fire, it had spread too far. They then made their second mistake by not closing the fire proof doors to isolate and at least slow down the fire’s spread. The bridge was notified of the crew at hand’s lack of progress with the flames and the fire alarm was sounded.

It must have seemed to Acting Captain Warms that all the fates were conspiring against him. First Captain Wilmott had died and now he had to worry about a fire as well as the storm. The untrained crew rushed as best they could to their fire stations and began to uncoil the hoses and open the valves of the fire hydrants. What they did not know, but would have had they been properly drilled, is that the ship was designed to provide maximum water pressure to only six hoses at a time. When the crew opened more hoses (some by accident), the water pressure dropped and the hoses proved useless in fighting the spreading conflagration. Warms, believing the fire was being brought under control, proceeded at top speed through the gale force winds which only helped to fan the flames and spread the fire which was being fed by the wood paneling, carpets and the flammable décor throughout the passenger areas.

George Alanga, who was on duty in the radio room, smelled the smoke and immediately wakened George White Rogers. Rogers took command of the radio and ordered Alanga to the bridge to see if Warms wanted him to transmit an SOS. Alanga fought through the smoke and flames and finally made his way to the bridge where confusion reigned. The wheel had stopped responding and the ship was now at the mercy of the waves and wind. Warms was shouting at Chief Engineer Abbott to go below and keep the boilers running to provide water pressure to the hoses as his duties dictated. Abbott kept muttering, over and over, “It’s too late now!” Alanga tried to get Warms’ attention, but the acting captain seemed to not recognize him. Finally Alanga gave up and made his way back to the radio room.

By now the radio room was beginning to fill with smoke and the heat was becoming unbearable. It was now past 3:15am and the fire had been raging for over 25 minutes and still no SOS had been sent. Rogers could hear other ships in the area radioing the Coast Guard on the Jersey shore to ask if a ship was on fire because they could see the glow. Batteries which powered the receiver exploded, spilling sulfuric acid onto the floor. The transmitter still was functional and Rogers held his ground. Finally Alanga arrived with Warms okay and Rogers began to transmit the call for help. When a wire became disconnected from the generator which powered the transmitter Rogers calmly felt his way across the room through the smoke and ignoring his blistering hands reattached it and continued transmitting. Even Alanga, who distrusted and disliked the creepy chief, was impressed by his calmness and devotion to duty. However, a full half-hour was wasted waiting for the order to transmit. That half-hour delay would prove deadly to many passengers as they awaited rescue.

By now the fire was spreading to where the remaining passengers were huddled at the rear of the ship. The heat and smoke were unbearable as the flaming deck began to blister their feet through their melting shoe soles. Shrapnel from exploding windows and port holes was a constant danger. Finally those on board could wait no longer and they began to jump. Warms for the first time made his way towards the back of the ship to see how far the fire had spread. He was dumbfounded to see blackened figures going over the side. “They’re jumping back there,” he told his fellow officers on the foredeck, unable to believe his own eyes.

Unlike Smith, Chief Engineer Eban Abbott’s base conduct was the most shocking among the officers on board, even to his own shipmates. After not reporting to the engine room as his position required, and cowering on the bridge unable to follow orders, he jumped into a lifeboat and ordered it lowered. As Warms shouted for them to not lower the boat Abbott kept ordering it lowered. It went down the lines and into the water. The lifeboat held sixty-three, but only thirty were aboard. Twenty-seven were crew members. “It was a moment of shame for all those who believe in the tradition of the sea,” Warms said later. The lifeboat commandeered by Abbott immediately made its way to shore, not bothering to pick up any of the many people helplessly floating and drowning in the water. He ripped off his epaulets and gold braid identifying him as an officer and mumbled, “I’ll go to jail for this.”

By the time Acting Captain Abbott gave the official order to abandon ship, almost everyone still alive was gone. Following the tradition of the seas, he stayed aboard along with thirteen other crew members including Rogers and Alanga until the very end. The ship floated as helpless as the people below struggling to survive in the high waves and chilly Atlantic waters. Only six of the Morro Castle’s twelve lifeboats made it into the ocean, and with a total capacity of 408, only eighty-five seats were filled, most by crew members. The unfortunate people left to founder for themselves waited helplessly for aid to arrive. For many it never would.

The first rescue ship to arrive was the Andrea S. Lukenbach, a freighter with only two lifeboats to send out for the rescue effort. It was quickly followed by the Monarch of Bermuda, a British passenger liner, and the City of Savannah, another liner, whose crews acted with incredible bravery and efficiency to save as many of those still living as possible. As the magnitude of the disaster became known to those on shore, dozens of private fishing and pleasure vessels joined Coast Guard boats and battled the rough seas and high waves of the storm to pluck from the water both the living and the dead. Those they were unable to rescue washed up onshore. The living were treated in rescue stations set up in numerous towns from Manasquan to Sandy Hook. The dead were brought to a makeshift morgue assembled at Camp Moore, the National Guard Training Center. The final death toll was eight-six passengers (29%) and forty-nine crewmembers (18%).

The Morro Castle was still not ready to join many of its unfortunate passengers in death. It continued to drift northward along the Jersey shore, its anchor unable to hold it against the gale force winds. An effort to tow the still burning craft into New York harbor failed when the tow line broke. The disaster was a media sensation as every newspaper and radio station rushed reporters, cameramen and soundmen to the scene. Radio led the coverage and thousands of people drove to the area after listening to the reports and followed the smoking wreck north along the old Shore Highway as it drifted. At about 7:30pm, Tom Burley of radio station WCAP broadcasting from Convention Hall in Asbury made a startling announcement, “She’s here! The Morro Castle’s coming right toward the studio!”

The Morro Castle ran aground less than three hundred feet from where Tom Burley sat. The public and journalists followed in the thousands. Entrepreneurs charged the curious twenty-five cents for good viewing spots. The local fire department charged reporters and VIP’s five dollars for transportation to what remained of the twisted and burnt liner. Serious consideration was given to staking a claim to the once great liner to keep the remains in Asbury Park as a tourist attraction, but more judicious and sober thoughts prevailed. Eventually she was towed south and converted to scrap.

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Asbury Park’s Twin Tragedies

80 years ago, an off-shore disaster in asbury park made national headlines..

The fire started at 3 am, just hours after the captain of the SS Morro Castle had died on board of a probable heart attack. The cruise ship was plunged into darkness, and passengers struggled to escape. Many jumped overboard, but the rough seas made it difficult to swim. Only six of the ship’s 12 lifeboats were launched.

The date was September 8, 1934. The Morro Castle was on its way back to New York from Havana, Cuba, when, just off Asbury Park, it mysteriously caught fire. Reaction to the disaster was slow. The Coast Guard station failed to send float planes until local radio stations reported that bodies were washing ashore on beaches from Point Pleasant to Spring Lake.

As news spread by telephone and radio, Shore residents assembled on the coastline to nurse the injured and retrieve the dead. The disaster left 137 passengers and crew members dead. The burned-out hull of the ship eventually ran aground near Asbury Park’s Convention Hall. It remained there for several months, becoming a macabre tourist attraction before it was towed away.

The disaster prompted the use of fire-retardant materials on ships, and fire alarms and fire drills were made mandatory.

Remarkably, a shipwreck had occurred 160 years earlier in the same location. In that tragedy, the sailing ship New Era ran aground on November 13, 1854, killing about 250 people, mainly immigrants from Germany. The hull of the ship is believed to be buried in the sand nearby.

The Asbury Park Historical Society will acknowledge both disasters with its annual Morro Castle commemoration at 10 am September 8 near the Morro Castle memorial just south of the Paramount Theatre (In the event of bad weather, check the organization’s website for cancellation information.)

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How 2 Firefighters Died in a Blaze They Were Ill-Equipped to Face

The fire broke out on a ship carrying more than 1,000 vehicles, owned by an Italian company and anchored at Port Newark.

By Tracey Tully ,  Mike Ives and Elise Young

The 9:30 p.m. call for help came from a place where firefighters from Newark are seldom sent: Port Newark, one of the busiest shipping hubs in the country, and one that operates largely as a world unto itself.

A fire had erupted late Wednesday on an Italian cargo ship carrying 1,200 new and used automobiles headed for West Africa. Firefighters who raced to the scene from Engine 16 quickly learned that their standard, 2.5-inch hose lines would not connect to the equipment on the European-built ship, the Grande Costa d’Avorio.

They were forced to use the vessel’s one-inch firefighting hoses, Newark’s mayor, Ras J. Baraka, would later explain.

“Less water, less volume, less penetration,” said Anthony Tarantino, president of the Newark Fire Officers Union, “and less protection for the guys.”

The first mayday call came from Augusto Acabou, a nine-year fire department veteran known for his big heart and brawny hugs, Newark fire officials said. Soon after, Wayne Brooks Jr., a 49-year-old with 16 years on the job, sounded a second call for help.

Neither man would survive the blaze that eventually spread to three decks of the towering ship. The fire was still burning Thursday evening, and the sky was filled with heavy smoke.

“Our members went in, like we always do, to try to make a bad situation better,” Newark’s fire chief, Rufus Jackson, said at a somber Thursday morning news conference marking the first line-of-duty fire deaths in 16 years in Newark, New Jersey’s largest city.

“We think, and we hope, that each day we go out, that we return,” he added. “This is an ultimate sacrifice.”

Mr. Acabou, who was 45 and known as Augie, was discovered pinned between two flaming vehicles by his cousin, who is also a Newark firefighter, said his sister-in-law, Marlie Acabou.

“He had a heart of gold,” she said of Mr. Acabou from his home in Newark, where relatives had gathered after learning of his death. The mayor had just left, she said.

Hours later, probationary firefighters would arrive at Mr. Brooks’s house in Union County, N.J., in a red school bus. They formed lines in the middle of the street, hands raised to their temples in a silent salute as friends recalled Mr. Brooks’s devotion to his family and his love of barbecued crab cakes cooked slowly on a smoker.

“He loved his job,” Mr. Brooks’s cousin, Roger Terry Jr., said. “More importantly, he loved his family.”

The unusual nature of the fire — on board a ship loaded with vehicles — made it exceptionally challenging to fight, Chief Jackson said.

“I saw the kinds of acts of bravery and camaraderie today that’s unparalleled,” Mr. Baraka said. Later, he would note that neither of the fallen firefighters had hesitated before racing onboard to fight the fire on the high sea’s equivalent of a skyscraper — “something that they had not trained for.”

The ports in New Jersey and neighboring New York State are owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which does not maintain its own fire department. A spokesman said he was unable to comment on the differently sized hose equipment, pending the outcome of an investigation, or why the port was so reliant on a department untrained in fighting fires there.

Three other Newark firefighters were taken to area hospitals with injuries that included burned feet, exhaustion and difficulty breathing. Two members of the Elizabeth Fire Department, one of the many agencies that responded to a call for mutual aid, were hospitalized for smoke inhalation, the authorities said.

The ship was filled with more than 1,000 new and used cars, vans and trucks and 157 containers, according to the Grimaldi Group, the vessel’s owner. The fire began on the ship’s 10th deck as crew members and local stevedores were loading vehicles, according to Grimaldi.

The company said there were no electric cars or hazardous cargo on the ship, which generally operates between the United States and West Africa, nor was it spilling fuel or in danger of sinking.

Throughout Wednesday night, as the fire grew, the New York Fire Department and the United States Coast Guard joined the effort along with several departments in New Jersey.

The blaze initially engulfed between five and seven vehicles on the 10th deck, Chief Jackson said, but the flames quickly extended to the 11th and 12th decks.

“Shipboard firefighting is a unique skill,” he said, “and this is not a common fire for the city of Newark and the Newark firefighters.”

Firefighting was a second career for both Mr. Acabou and Mr. Brooks.

Mr. Acabou had worked for 20 years as a hospital security guard before joining the Newark department. Mr. Brooks worked first for United Airlines at Newark Liberty International Airport towing aircraft into position, said Mr. Terry, a retired police officer from North Plainfield, N.J.

“We watched those TV shows in the ’70s where everyone was a cop or firefighter,” Mr. Terry said, “and that’s what he wanted to do.”

Mr. Brooks is survived by his wife, Michele, a daughter and a stepdaughter, both in their 20s, relatives said. Mr. Acabou leaves behind a longtime girlfriend, Cynthia, and a large extended family.

João Acabou said his brother, the oldest of three sons, never thought twice about going out of his way for those he cared for. “It’s true what they say,” he said, “that God picks the best ones to go first.”

Before boarding the ship, he hugged his fellow firefighters, as was his custom, the family was told.

“Literally, he’s the guy — was the guy — who would take the shirt off his back,” Ms. Acabou, João’s wife, said.

The Grande Costa d’Avorio operates with 28 crew members who activated the ship’s “onboard fire suppression procedures” and called local firefighters for help, the company said. There is no indication that any crew member was trapped or injured in the fire.

Ms. Acabou questioned why firefighters were sent onto a ship carrying only cargo.

“Why would you send men to protect these cars?” she asked. “It’s material stuff.”

Officials with Grimaldi said it was unclear what had caused the fire. A full investigation, “in close cooperation with all relevant authorities,” would be completed, the company said.

Freddy Bundy, 65, works at the port inspecting cars as they are unloaded from cargo ships. The vehicles, he said, are driven on and off the ship and hold oil and at least some gasoline.

“If you don’t know the ship’s layout, you’re in a dangerous place,” Mr. Bundy said. “There are hatches and stairs.”

Grimaldi, the ship operator, is based in Naples, Italy, and has 130 vessels and 17,000 employees, according to its website . The company describes itself as Italy’s largest ship-owning group.

Last year, a ferry owned by Grimaldi caught fire off the Greek island of Corfu on its way to Italy, killing 11 people. Hundreds of others were rescued.

Port Newark Container Terminal, as the port is officially called , is 272 acres, or about a third the size of Central Park in Manhattan. In January 2022, a fire at a scrap metal recycling facility there produced smoke that wafted through Manhattan and Brooklyn.

A spokeswoman for the Port Authority, Amanda Kwan, said that firefighting is handled by the local fire department at all of its facilities that are not airports. The Port Authority, she said, provides “support and assistance in these efforts including regular classroom and on-site shipboard orientation training.”

As of last year, the Port of New York and New Jersey was the second-largest container port by cargo volume in the United States — just behind the Port of Los Angeles and slightly ahead of the Port of Long Beach, also in California, according to Port Authority figures.

Of the $271 billion worth of goods that moved through the Port of New York and New Jersey in 2022, furniture was the top commodity import; vehicles and their parts were the top export.

Elisabetta Povoledo , Derrick Bryson Taylor and Erin Nolan contributed reporting and Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

Tracey Tully covers New Jersey. She joined The Times in 2018 as a senior editor. She previously covered city and state government at The Daily News, the Albany Times Union and the Jersey Journal. More about Tracey Tully

Mike Ives is a general assignment reporter. More about Mike Ives

Passengers furious about how Carnival cruise ship fire was handled

FLORIDA — Midway through a five-day cruise in March, the tail of the Carnival Freedom cruise ship caught fire.

Passengers chronicled the drama that played out on board in hundreds of social media posts. They showed flames shooting from the tail, water leaking from the 5th-floor interior, and shuttered areas like pools, sports venues, and restaurants.

For 9-year-old Katherine Drey and her family, it marked the beginning of the end of what had been a great getaway.

“We couldn't swim, we couldn't eat, we couldn't do water slides, we couldn't go to the sports area,” Katherine recalled.

Katherine's mom, Kelly Booth, said many of the venues on the back half of the ship, including the pool and restaurants, shut down for the day. Some closed for the remainder of the cruise. The main dining room opened that same night, but several on board described waiting in line for up to four hours for dinner.

Passenger Gemma Phillips is one of several who told ABC Action News that Carnival brushed them off when her family asked for cruise credit or some sort of compensation for the trip’s interruption.

“The second that happened, like, vacation was no longer a vacation,” she said.

Phillips created a Facebook page for Carnival Freedom passengers. It has more than 280 members from the nearly 3,000 that were on board the full-capacity ship.

Many of the people posting in the group are outraged that Carnival isn't offering a partial cruise credit or anything else to make up for the stress and inconvenience.

A Carnival spokesperson said in a statement:

Any venues that were temporarily closed because of lightning in the area, or from the brief cleanup after the fire was extinguished, were reopened by the late afternoon/early evening.

Veteran travel agent Tammy Levent, owner of Elite Travel, said there is no regulatory agency to advocate on passengers’ behalf when things go south on board. She recommended cruisers purchase travel interruption insurance, which could apply in cases where part of a trip is interrupted.

Gemma Phillips said this was her tenth cruise on Carnival and likely her last.

“I don't want to break up with Carnival," she said. "But I feel I have no choice by the way they are handling this.”

And Kelly Booth, a three-time Carnival cruiser, said she's already canceled a future Carnival trip and booked with one of their competitors.

“The way Carnival has handled this and the way Carnival has treated the guests that were on board has ruined what I think of them as a company,” she said.

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Jersey Shore day cruises: Your guide to scenic adventures and delicious meals

If you are looking to set sail and escape for a day, the Jersey Shore and nearby locales have got you covered with different cruises that can be done in a day. Here are some of the most popular one-day cruises at the Shore.

Cape May Sunset Buffet Dinner Cruise

• Where: 1218 Wilson Drive, Cape May
• Duration: 2 hours
• Price: $55 for adults, $30 for child 12 and under, $20 for wine tasting

Step aboard The Spirit of Cape May for a dinner cruise that promises breathtaking sunset views of the Delaware Bay and Cape May Lighthouse. There's a chance you also spot some dolphins swimming along the ship as the captain or naturalists on board provide you with some educational facts. Guests are guaranteed memorable mammal sightings.

Cornucopia Cruise Lunch Buffet

• Where: 401 Riverview Drive, Perth Amboy
• Price: $67.95 for adults, $50.96 for kids 3-12

The Cornucopia’s Princess sets sail from Perth Amboy-Raritan Bay for a lunch or dinner cruise, offering stunning views of the Raritan Bay and New Jersey's inland waterways. Enjoy a meal and craft cocktails during this 2 ½ to 3-hour experience

Cape May Whale and Dolphin Cruise

• Where: 1213 Wilson Drive, Cape May
• Departure Time: 1 p.m.
• Duration: 3 hours
• Price: $55 for adults, $40 for children 7-12

Experience the thrill of whale and dolphin watching aboard the Cetacean Spectacular, a three-hour cruise offered by The Cape May Whale Watcher. Led by Captain Jeff Stewart, this cruise ventures into the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic Ocean for some marine life sightings. Throughout the journey, the captain will share some local history with passengers.

Gambler Fishing Cruise

• Where: 59 Inlet Drive, Point Pleasant Beach
• Duration: varies
• Price: from $90 to $395 per person

Based in Point Beach, The Gambler is a family-owned business operating since 1949. It offers popular fishing trips with a variety of lengths in the spring, winter, and summer.

Fluke trips are 12 hours from July to Labor Day and 6 hours from Labor Day through mid-September. The golden and blueline tilefish are 24 hours and depart at 11 p.m. Trips includes bait; fish tackles are available for purchase or rent. Staff on board offers assistance and instruction on filleting fish at the end of the trip.

Jersey Shore Pirate Adventure for kids

• Where: 281 Princeton Ave., Brick
• Departure: multiple throughout the day
• Duration: 75 minutes

Embark on a 75-minute pirate adventure departing from the marina near Windward Beach in Brick. Designed for pirates aged 3 to 10, this cruise is enjoyable for the entire family.

The young will get the opportunity to dress up like pirates, get their faces painted and get some pirate tattoos. On the ship, they'll take part in an interactive treasure hunt, following the Sea Gypsy's rules, reading maps, finding a secret message in a bottle, and working together to defeat a rival pirate using water cannons.

Atlantic City booze cruise

• Where: 800 North New Hampshire Ave., Atlantic City
• Departure: 12 p.m., 3 p.m., 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.
• Price: $45 per person. Drinks are not included

It's always party time in the Atlantic City Tiki boat. Enjoy a ride along Atlantic City coastline while you sip drinks from the bar. Guests cannot bring their own booze, and the bar onboard only takes cash payments.

BBQ and steel drums with Classic Boat Rides

• Where: 8 Simon Lake Drive, Atlantic Highlands
• Departure: Some Sundays around 5 p.m.
• Price: $68 for adults, $58 for kids 12 and under

Experience a getaway with live steel drum music aboard the Navesink Queen. Enjoy a laid-back atmosphere on this family-friendly cruise along calm waters in Atlantic Highland. You can eat BBQ chicken, pulled pork and all the typical fixings. Alcoholic beverages are available.

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Cruise ship passengers left terrified after fire breaks out on £850million Queen Mary 2

• Stephen Moyes , Associate News Editor
• Published : 16:00 ET, Apr 5 2024
• Published : Invalid Date,

PANIC-struck cruise ship passengers were confined to their cabins when a fire broke out on the £850million Queen Mary 2.

They were woken by alarms at 6am as crew tackled the blaze below their accommodation.

Travellers were ordered to stay in their cabins but could still smell smoke — sparking fears of an inferno at sea.

Although crew dealt with the blaze quickly, a source said: “Fire at sea is about the worst scenario for holidaymakers. It has left everyone freaked out.

“Passengers could smell smoke in their cabins so the panic felt by some was totally understandable.”

Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 — the world’s longest, tallest and most expensive cruise ship — was heading to Mauritius when the fire broke out on Thursday morning.

It had been at sea for four days since leaving Colombo in Sri Lanka on April 1.

The Sun understands the fire started when a compressor overheated in an area containing the ship’s engines, pumps, compressors, sewage and electrical tanks.

Our source said: “At first, everyone thought it was a practice drill. But it was far from that. The blaze was beneath the accommodation areas and the alarm was raised at 6am. It was chaos.”

But they added: “Emergency protocol kicked in and worked a treat with the crew behaving calmly and professionally.”

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Queen Mary 2, which can take up to 2,600 passengers, docked in Port Louis, Mauritius, yesterday ahead of its voyage to Southampton on April 28 via South Africa, Spain and Portugal .

 It is mandatory for staff to contact the authorities about such incidents on board.

Cunard yesterday confirmed to The Sun that there was a small fire that was extinguished immediately.

It insisted no guest services on board were affected.

The 150,000-tonne, 1,132ft ship was built in 2004.

Two nights in its luxury suites cost £549 a person.

• The Sun Newspaper

Carnival Cruise Ship Catches Fire for Second Time in 2 Years After Passengers Report Lightning Strike

The incident marks the second time in two years this particular ship has caught fire. It has caused the cancellation of two upcoming voyages

A Carnival cruise ship’s exhaust funnel caught fire on Saturday during a trip to the Bahamas, causing the company to cancel its next two voyages.

This is the second time in less than two years that the Carnival Freedom, based in Port Canaveral, Fla., has been impacted by a fire.

"Regrettably, the damage is more than we first thought, and will require an immediate repair to stabilize the funnel, resulting in the cancellation of the March 25 and March 29 cruises from Port Canaveral," Matt Lupoli, Carnival Cruise Line's senior manager of public relations, told Florida Today in a statement. "The funnel has been stabilized for the ship’s return to Port Canaveral overnight to disembark guests, and then it will go to the Freeport shipyard on Monday afternoon to begin the required repairs."

PEOPLE has reached out to Carnival, but did not immediately hear back.

While the cause of the fire is still being investigated, Carnival noted in a post on X Saturday that eyewitnesses reported the possibility of a lightning strike.

One of the cruise’s passengers, Heath Barnes, posted footage of the incident on Facebook Saturday afternoon.

In a statement to TMX, Barnes said it had been storming on and off and he was on one of the ship’s upper decks when he experienced “the loudest thunder and lightening [sic] I have ever heard.”

After he returned to his cabin for about 15 minutes, his nephew and two friends came to tell him the ship was on fire.

“I thought they were giving me a hard time but I got up and went out on the balcony and sure enough the flames and smoke was pouring out of the tail,” he continued, adding that he took the videos from his balcony before travelers were asked to stay indoors.

Related: Carnival Cruise Ship Catches Fire During Visit to Turks and Caicos Islands

Carnival's brand ambassador John Heald addressed the incident on Facebook, acknowledging that those impacted by the cancellations “will be feeling very disappointed.” 

“And I want to add my apologies and my assurances that when you rebook using your full refund and your 100% future cruise credit, that the crew will be standing by to give you all the Fun you deserve,” he added.

Related: 2 Holland America Line Crew Members Killed During Onboard 'Incident' in the Bahamas

In May 2022, the Carnival Freedom caught fire during a five-day cruise to Turks and Caicos.

At the time, Carnival Cruise Line verified that a fire broke out in the funnel of the ship while it was in Grand Turk.

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The company said its "emergency response team quickly activated and extinguished" the flames.

"All guests and crew are safe, and the ship's guests were cleared by local authorities to go ashore," Carnival added.

The 948-foot Carnival Freedom, built in 2007, can hold just over 3,500 passengers, according to Cruise Mapper .

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Man arrested for allegedly taking a decommissioned NYC fireboat for an overnight cruise

FILE - The fireboat John J. Harvey passes the Statue of Liberty, Oct. 28, 2011, in New York Harbor. A man was arrested Thursday, April 11, 2024, for allegedly taking the decommissioned New York City fire boat for an overnight cruise on the Hudson River, before becoming stuck and jumping ship. He then boarded a second stolen vessel, police said, which he sailed roughly one nautical mile (1.8 kilometers) south until he was taken into custody on its deck. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — A man was arrested Thursday for allegedly taking a decommissioned New York City fireboat for an overnight cruise on the Hudson River, before becoming stuck, jumping ship and stealing another vessel, police said.

He was charged with two counts of grand larceny, officials said. He had not been arraigned as of Thursday afternoon and it was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.

The man commandeered the fireboat, known as the John J. Harvey, by untying it from its mooring at Pier 66 off the west side of Manhattan, according to authorities. The 130 foot (40 meter) long vessel, which now serves as a museum, earned local acclaim after it was used to evacuate survivors of 9/11.

Once aboard the fireboat, the man was able to drift a short distance into the Hudson River, police said, but quickly got stuck. He leapt overboard, plunging into the frigid waters and later emerging on a second stolen vessel, according to police.

He navigated that sailboat toward Pier 51, roughly 15 blocks south of the original location, police said. The department’s Harbor Unit responded to a 2:30 a.m. call about a stolen boat and arrested the man on the sailboat’s deck.

A spokesperson for the Hudson River Park Trust, which oversees Pier 66, said the fireboat is secure and being assessed for damage.

Built in 1931, the Harvey assisted in several dramatic marine rescues, helping to put out a potentially catastrophic fire aboard the El Estero, a munitions ship docked in the New York Harbor during World War II.

It was retired in 1994, but was called back into service on the morning of 9/11 to help pick up survivors and to pump water onto the site.

The boat’s caretakers offer occasional free public cruises along the Hudson River.