PHOTOS COURTESY OF GARY CRAWFORD Above: Spectators flocked to the beach in Asbury Park to view the hulk of the Morro Castle. Left: One hundred and thirty-seven passengers died in the fire that consumed the cruise ship in 1934. OCEAN TOWNSHIP — Seventy-five years ago the cruise ship Morro Castle, on its way to New York from Havana, Cuba, caught fire and grounded along the Asbury Park beachfront near Convention Hall, claiming 137 lives.
To commemorate the event and the lives of those lost, local historian and author Gary Crawford presented a lecture discussing the tragic circumstances of the Morro Castle’s final cruise.
Held at the Old Oakhurst School on Aug. 18, the lecture gave attendees an opportunity to relive the events that took place onboard the ship when it burst into flames on Sept. 8, 1934.
Originally interested in historic railroads, Crawford said he became interested in the Morro Castle disaster after listening to his grandfather talk about it.
“My grandfather always talked about this, so I did research and just gathered all of this information up over periods of time,” he explained.
In total, Crawford has pored over 20 years of research into the Morro Castle.
What drew him and many others to the story are the mysterious circumstances surrounding the fire that decimated the ship and the seemingly unending misfortune that crew members and passengers faced as the ocean liner burned off the New Jersey coast.
According to Crawford, the two competing theories concerning the fire are that it was caused by some form of mechanical failure or that it was deliberately set.
The two theories have been discussed and debated for years, but neither has been proved.
But Crawford’s interest in the disaster goes deeper than the lure of the unexplained and deadly fire. Several of his family members were involved in the rescue effort, and he also happens to be the descendent of one of the first men accused of starting the ship blaze.
“My grandfather and his three brothers were on the beach in Belmar bringing in victims, survivors. And my great-aunt, my grandfather’s sister, was married to George Alagna, who was the first one accused of setting the fire. So, there is a family interest in there, too,” Crawford explained.
Insulators recovered from the Morro Castle were among the artifacts on display at the lecture at Old Oakhurst School in Ocean Township. A radio operator on the Morro Castle, Alagna was also a labor agitator. Because the ship sailed during the Great Depression, the company that owned the cruise liner, Ward Line, cut back on many necessities in order to reduce costs, including wages and the number of crew members that staffed the ship. According to Crawford, the company also fed the ship’s crew rotten food.
Angered by the treatment of the Ward Line’s employees, Alagna encouraged the Morro Castle’s crew to strike to prevent the ship from sailing.
“He had sit-down strikes and he took key people with him in the strike, and they couldn’t sail the ship without these people, so they saw him as a trouble maker,” Crawford explained. “So when something went wrong, they pointed the finger at him.”
Despite the accusations, Crawford said there was no real evidence that linked Alagna to the fire.
The reason the actual cause of the fire has not been proved after all these years is due to the conditions on the ship prior to and immediately following the outbreak of the inferno, he said.
Before the fire started, the ship’s captain, Roger Willmott, fell ill and requested that he be served his dinner in his private quarters. Shortly thereafter, Willmott was found dead, the victim of an apparent heart attack.
Following the chain of command, the ship’s first officer, William Warms, took command of the ship. However, Warms had also been awake for some 30 straight hours before Willmott’s death, due to cutbacks in the number of crew on the ship.
After learning of the fire, which started in the ship’s writing room located near the bridge toward the forward area of the ship, Warms ordered the crew to open all of the ship’s hydrants.
Unfortunately, Crawford explained, many of the hydrants were broken. Those that did work and were operating at the same time quickly caused the pressure in the system to drop, rendering them nearly useless.
Compounding the situation was the fact that many of the hydrants had been wrenched tightly because someone had slipped on a wet area and had broken his ankle a few weeks earlier, Crawford explained.
Weather conditions also impacted the fate of the Morro Castle. Following the ship from the south as it steamed toward New York from Havana was a dangerous tropical storm.
The storm, Crawford said, also caused a nor’easter to develop directly ahead of the ship’s path.
With the storm chasing the ship, Warms ordered the ship full steam ahead, believing he could still make it to New York safely.
He ordered the Morro Castle to turn into the wind, which, according to Crawford, was standard practice at the time. However, the cruise ship’s wide, open windows, designed to catch tropical breezes, allowed the wind into the ship, further fueling the raging fire.
“The middle of the ship was in flames, cutting off access from bow to stern,” Crawford said.
In an effort to save the ship, Chief Radio Operator George Rogers sent Alagna to Warms to request permission to send an S.O.S. re- questing assistance, and had to send him three times before Warms finally gave the go-ahead, Crawford explained.
“The fire was discovered at approximately 2:45 a.m. and the S.O.S. was sent at 3:23 a.m., 38 minutes later,” Crawford said.
Eventually the fire burned through the ship’s electrical hydraulic lines, plunging the ship into darkness and leaving the crew with no means to steer the burning behemoth.
According to Crawford, one of the major contributors to the many deaths and total chaos on the ship during the fire was the crew’s inability— and in some cases, refusal — to assist passengers.
As a result, many were either consumed by the flames or died trying to leap from the ship into the ocean.
Rescue boats eventually reached the ship and managed to take on some survivors. The rescue boats also attempted to tow the powerless ship to New York. However, the line used to pull the ship snapped north of Asbury Park, sending the Morro Castle barreling toward the shoreline and Convention Hall.
The ship eventually came to rest dangerously close to the building, after the surge from the tropical storm following it and the nor’easter ahead of it forced the Morro Castle high onto the beach, where it sat and continued to burn for weeks.
Of the 549 people on board the ship, 137 died; most were passengers.
The tragedy of the Morro Castle was a major event for those living along the Jersey Shore at the time. Some of those who came to hear Crawford’s lecture have vivid recollections of being at the scene.
Ocean Township resident Dot Stazyn, who was a 6-year-old living in Asbury Park at the time of the disaster, said she can still remember the utter devastation of the ship and the excitement that surrounded its beaching in the Shore town.
“It was the biggest thing at that time that had happened [where we lived],” Stazyn said. “We’d go to Asbury every weekend, and every weekend you’d see it. It burned for a hell of a long time.
“The beach was crowded and Convention Hall was crowded. Everyone went down to see it for months, because she was sitting there for months before they got her out,” she said.
“I never forgot the Morro Castle.”
Following the disaster, Warms, ship Chief Engineer Eban Abbott and Ward Line Vice President Henry Cabaud were indicted on charges related to the fire. The men were found guilty, but later their convictions were overturned on appeal, Crawford explained.
In recent years, Rogers’ name has been bandied about as the man responsible for starting the fire.
According to Crawford, Rogers was distrusted by many of the ship’s crew. Yet, Rogers was never convicted of the crime.
Following the disaster, Rogers became a police officer but was later convicted of attempting to murder one of his fellow officers with an incendiary device, according to Crawford.
Further suspicion was cast on Rogers after he was also convicted of breaking into a neighbor’s home and murdering the homeowner and his daughter over a gambling debt, Crawford said. Despite those suspicions, however, no one has ever been held responsible for the fire.
The horrifying events surrounding the Morro Castle disaster sparked a movement dedicated to improving fire safety protocols on ships. While the cause of the Morro Castle fire eludes historians, those who lost their lives on the ship are not forgotten.
On Sept. 8 the Asbury Park Historical Society is expected to unveil a monument dedicated to the 137 lives lost on the Morro Castle. An educational program will follow on Sept 12. It is expected to be the most extensive educational program ever presented to the general public about the disaster, according to a press release from the society.
For more information on the dedication service and educational program, visit www.asburyparklibrary.com.
Contact Daniel Howley at
dhowley@gmnews .com.