The tragedy of Morro Castle: how a terrible fire on a ship turned into a farce of a "horror attraction." Mysterious tragedy of the passenger ship "SS Morro Castle

“On September 8, 1934, 137 passengers and crew were killed in a fire on board the Morro Castle. Sudono was returning from Havana (Cuba) to New York. It was one of the worst maritime disasters in US history. "

The liner "Morro Castle", the liner of the "Ward Line" company, was the latest word in science and technology. Its turbo-electric installation provided an economical speed of 25 knots. "Morro Castle" could easily compete with the German liners "Bremen" and "Europa" - winners of the "Atlantic Blue Ribbon". The owners of the Ward Line hoped that the new ship would bring them good profits on the so-called New York-Havana drunk line. Thousands of Americans, burdened by Prohibition, flocked to Cuba with its almost free rum and affordable women. The famous cabaret "La Tropicana" and the three thousand bars scattered throughout Havana were especially popular with them.
From January 1930 to the fall of 1934, Morro Castle made 173 super-profitable flights to Cuba. Every Saturday afternoon, a thousand passengers left New York Harbor. The liner headed for Havana and after exactly two days of sailing and 36 hours of stay in the Cuban port returned to New York again. Such a traffic schedule for four years has never been disrupted even by the famous West Indian hurricanes - the true scourge of navigation in the Caribbean.

On that voyage, the liner was commanded by the most experienced captain of the "Worl Line" company - Robert Wilmott, who has faithfully served its owners for three decades.
On the evening of September 7, 1934, the Morro Castle was completing its 174th voyage from Havana to New York. In five hours, abeam the Ambrose Lighthouse, he would be on a new course and approach the Ward Line pier. But first, the captain had to give a traditional banquet for passengers in honor of the end of the merry voyage.
However, Wilmott did not honor the passengers by his presence in the cabin at the captain's table. “Duty officer! Let it be announced at the banquet that the captain is not feeling well and apologize. I’ll serve supper in my cabin. Call when we are abeam Scotland. "
These were last words Robert Wilmott. An hour later, the ship's doctor De Witt van Zijl declared his death from poisoning with some strong poison ... The captain was found half-naked in the bath.
The news of the captain's death spread throughout the ship. The music stopped, the laughter and smiles on their faces disappeared. The banquet was canceled, and the passengers began to disperse to their cabins.
The first mate, William Worms, took over as captain. For 37 years spent at sea, he went from cabin boy to captain. In addition, he held a New York Harbor Pilot Diploma. Worms decided to remain on the bridge until the ship arrived in port, as the weather forecast received from the radio indicated that Morro Castle near Scotland Lighthouse would enter an eight-point storm and encounter two or three strong squalls from the mainland.
The ship's clock was 2:30 am when John Kempf, a 63-year-old firefighter from New York, woke up to the smell of burning. He jumped out into the corridor. The premises of the ship's library were on fire. The metal cabinet where the writing utensils and paper were kept was engulfed in a strange blue flame. Kempf tore off the carbon dioxide fire extinguisher hanging from the bulkhead, unscrewed the valve and sent a stream of foam into the open cabinet door. The flame, changing color, burst from the cabinet, singing the fireman's eyebrows. Then Kempf rushed to the nearest hydrant, rolled out the hose and unscrewed the valve, but there was no pressure in the line. Kempf rushed to wake the sleeping second-class passengers. The lower deck corridor was also engulfed in flames. The fire always spread from bottom to top, but here, on the ship, it almost instantly rushed down ...
The silence of the night was suddenly broken by heartbreaking screams. People, suffocating from the smoke, jumped out into the corridors in panic. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the cabins, where the smoke had not reached, were still asleep. And when fire alarms sounded on all the decks of the liner, it was already too late - the corridors and passages were engulfed in flames. The exit from the cabins was cut off by a curtain of fire. Those who did not have time to leave their cabins unwittingly found themselves in the saloons, the windows and portholes of which looked out onto the bow of the liner.
The fire continued to pursue those who were driven into the saloons of decks "A", "B" and "C". The only chance to escape is to break the windows and jump onto the deck in front of the ship's superstructure. And people smashed the thick windows of the square windows with chairs and jumped down onto the deck.
The Morro Castle continued to race at twenty knots. The longitudinal corridors of both sides of the liner now looked like a wind tunnel. Twenty minutes after the start of the fire, the flames were buzzing throughout the liner.
The ship was doomed. But this was not yet understood on the navigating bridge and in the engine room. For unknown reasons, the fire detection system and the automatic fire extinguishing system did not work. Although Captain Worms was immediately alerted to the fire, he thought more about the upcoming difficulties of mooring in the cramped harbor of New York and was confident that the fire would be extinguished.
For the first half hour of the fire, Worms was in a state of some strange numbness, and only the failure of the autopilot forced him to change the course of the vessel and turn away from the wind.
A court report on the Morro Castle fire, which was later heard in New York, noted that the behavior of Captain Worms and his assistants resembled the play of tragic actors who created panic and confusion by their actions. It was also strange that Chief Engineer Abbott, who had been called from his cabin by telephone, did not appear on the bridge. They did not see him in the engine room either. It turned out that he organized the descent in those minutes lifeboat from the starboard side. In it, the journalists saw him (albeit with a broken arm), when a few hours later the boat reached the shore.
For unknown reasons, Worms did not appoint any of his assistants to supervise the extinguishing of the fire. The passengers themselves tried to extinguish the fire. In panic, they rolled out hoses, opened hydrants, and poured water into the smoke. But the fire was coming - people had to look for salvation. Thus, almost all the hydrants were open, and although the mechanics had already turned on the pumps, there was almost no pressure in the main fire line. There was nothing to put out the fire with.
Meanwhile, Worms was transmitting commands to the mechanics by machine telegraph. For ten minutes, the Morro Castle kept changing course, zigzagging, circulating, spinning in place, until the wind turned the fire into a giant raging fire.
After the last command, the diesel generators were stopped, and the liner plunged into darkness ... The engine room was filled with smoke. It was no longer possible to stay there. Mechanics, minders, electricians and lubricants left their posts. But few of them managed to find salvation on the upper decks of the ship ...
Worms ordered an SOS signal only fifteen minutes after he was informed that the fire could not be extinguished. At this time, Morro Castle was twenty miles south of Scotland Lighthouse, about eight miles offshore.
The assistant chief of the ship's radio station, George Alagna, rushed into the radio room, which was not far from the ship's bridge. But the flame blocked his path, then Alagna shouted through the open porthole of the wheelhouse to the radio operator to send an SOS signal. The head of the ship's radio station, George Rogers, did not have time to transmit the distress signal to the end - spare acid batteries exploded in the radio room. The deckhouse was filled with acrid fumes. Choking on the sulfuric vapors and almost losing consciousness, the radio operator found the strength to once again reach for the key and transmit the coordinates and a message about the tragedy unfolding in the sea.
At 0326 hours the radio operator of the nearby British liner Monark of Bermuda tapped out a message received through the headphones: “СQ, SOS, 20 miles south of Scotland Lighthouse. I can’t pass it on anymore. There is a flame under me. Help immediately. My radio is already smoking. "
Alagna managed to get into the burning radio room. Both radio operators made their way through the half-burnt bridge and went down the right ladder to the main deck. From there, the only way to escape was the way to the tank. It was already cramped there: almost all the officers and sailors of the Morro Castle were looking for salvation there. Among them was Captain Worms ...
The next day, September 8, 1934, the major US newspapers went into specials, focusing on the events of the previous night aboard the Morro Castle. Sailor Leroy Kesley spoke of helpless passengers who "resembled a line of blind people desperately looking for a door." Kesley explained to reporters why on many boats during the descent from the Morro Castle the hoists were stuck, he told how the liner still underway towed the boats behind him, how huge pieces of thick glass from the windows of the saloons bursting from the heat fell into the water with a hiss, very close to him, how they cut the people in the boat in half ...
Later the sailor recalled: “From the boat I saw a terrible sight. The burning ship continued to leave ... Its black hull was engulfed in orange flames. Women and children, huddled closely together, stood at its stern. We heard a cry, plaintive, full of despair ... This cry, similar to the groan of a dying man, will be heard to me until my death ... I could catch only one word - "goodbye."
Eyewitnesses of the disaster from among the rescued passengers wrote that those of them who took refuge at the stern of the ship had no chance to leave the burning liner in boats. Only those who looked down without fear, where, 10 meters below, the cold ocean water boiled, could escape.
During the investigation, it turned out that about twenty people managed to escape from the burning liner by swimming, having overcome 8 nautical miles of the raging sea. A sixteen-year-old Cuban ship boy did it without a life jacket.
By dawn on September 8, a small group of crew, led by Captain Worms, remained on the already completely burned out and still smoking liner. Rogers was there with his deputy, the second radio operator, George Alagna.
To stop the ship's drift into the wind, the starboard anchor was given up, and when the US Navy rescue ship Tampa approached the Morro Castle, the towing had to be abandoned. Only by 13 o'clock those who remained on the liner were able to saw through the anchor-chain link with a hacksaw. Captain of the third rank Rose ordered a tugboat to be put on the tank of the liner to deliver the burned ship to New York. But in the evening the weather deteriorated sharply, and a northwestern storm began. Soon the towing line snapped and wrapped around the Tampa's propeller. Morro Castle began to drift into the wind until it was run aground off the coast of New Jersey, three dozen meters from the beach at Ashbury Recreation Park. This happened on Saturday, at 8 pm, when there were a lot of people.
News of the tragedy has already spread throughout New York and its suburbs, and the latest news broadcast on the radio attracted thousands of people to this unusual incident. The next morning, 350,000 Americans gathered in Ashbury Park, all highways and country roads clogged with cars. The park's owners charged $ 10 for the right to board the still smoldering liner. Thrill-seekers were given respirator masks, flashlights and fire boots so that they "risk-free" could enjoy visiting the burned-out Morro Castle.
The Governor of New Jersey was already making plans to turn the ship's wreck into a permanent "horror attraction." But Ward Line responded with a categorical refusal. She chose to sell the burnt-out Morro Castle, which at one time cost $ 5 million to build, for $ 33,605 to a Baltimore firm for scrap.
The investigation into the death of Morro Castle, conducted by experts from the US Department of Commerce, who published 12 volumes of this case, established the following: the first three boats launched from the burning ship could take more than 200 passengers. These boats were to be operated by 12 sailors. In fact, there were 103 people in them, of which 92 were crew members. It was reliably known that the liner left Havana with 318 passengers and 231 crew members on board, that of the 134 dead, 103 were passengers.
In addition to the dead, hundreds of people, having received severe burns, remained disabled for life ... America was shocked by Worms's cowardice, mediocrity and Abbott's meanness. The new captain of "Morro Castle" Worms lost his navigational license and received two years in prison. The mechanic Abbott was deprived of his mechanic diploma and sentenced to four years in prison.
For the first time in the history of American shipping, a court sentenced the indirect culprit of the fire, a man who was not on the ship. It turned out to be the vice-president of the Ward Line, Henry Kabodou. He received a year of probation and paid a $ 5,000 fine. According to the claims of the victims, the owners of Morro Castle paid 890 thousand dollars.
But this tragic story also had its own heroes - the sailors of the steamers Monark of Bermuda, City of Savana and Andrea Lakenbach, the tugboat Tampa, and the boat Paramont, who rescued about 400 people. And, of course, the main character of the events described was the radio operator George Rogers. In his honor, the mayors of the states of New York and New Jersey gave sumptuous banquets. The US Congress awarded Rogers the Gold Medal for Bravery.
In the homeland of the hero - in small town New Jersey State Bayonne - On this occasion, a parade of the state military garrison and the police took place. Hollywood is thinking about the script for the movie "I'll Save You People!" Rogers has traveled triumphantly across many states, where he spoke to American audiences with stories about the drama at Morro Castle.
In 1936, Rogers left the naval service and settled in his hometown... There he was gladly offered the position of head of the radio workshop in the city police department.
Nineteen years later, Rogers was again the number one sensation. In July 1953, former Morro Castle radio operator George Rogers was arrested by police on suspicion of the brutal murder of 83-year-old typist William Hummel and his adopted daughter Edith. Hero of America ended up in the investigation cell of the prison. After 3 hours and 20 minutes of deliberation, the jury found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The investigation established that Rogers, a former American police officer, is the most dangerous person for society, a murderer, a swindler, a thief and a pyromaniac. During the investigation, facts suddenly came to light that shocked not only the inhabitants of Bayonne, but the entire United States. It turned out that the "national hero" was now attributed to the poisoning of Captain Wilmott and the arson of the Morro Castle.
During the investigation of the case, after analyzing a number of circumstances preceding the fire, interviewing witnesses and eyewitnesses, the experts recreated the picture of the Morro Castle disaster. An hour before the liner left Havana, Captain Wilmott, seeing the head of the radio station carrying two bottles of some kind of chemicals, ordered him to throw them overboard. The police learned that Wilmott and Rogers had long had a feud. The fact that the captain was poisoned did not raise doubts among the experts, although there was no direct evidence (the corpse burned down during the fire).
Shipbuilding experts and chemists have suggested that Rogers set the ship on fire with time bombs at two or three locations. He turned off the automatic fire detection system and started the gasoline from the emergency diesel generator tank from the upper deck to the lower ones. That is why the flame spread from top to bottom. He also took into account the storage location of signal flares and missiles. This explained the rapid spread of fire on the boat deck. The arson scheme was thought out professionally, skillfully ...
On January 10, 1958, Rogers died in prison of myocardial infarction.

One of the most mysterious disasters at sea is the fire on the Moro Castle on September 8, 1934.
"Moreo Castle" is a tourist liner from New York to Havana. Wealthy citizens went to Cuba to drink (the dry law, however, it was already abolished in 1934), to have fun in other ways (Cuba of the 30s is a "brothel island"), and also to have abortions (with them in the USA of the 30s was problematic).

A story full of blatant negligence, deadly coincidences and human stupidity began with the death of Captain Robert Wilmott. Wilmott died suddenly, a few hours before the fire, and some circumstances resembled poisoning, which after the fire was no longer amenable to verification.

First mate William Worms took over as captain, who, by the first order, lowered the water pressure in the ship's water supply: one of the engines was junk.

At about three o'clock in the morning, near the ship's library, a fire was discovered in a closet with papers, the causes of which (in a closed and insulated closet) are still unknown. They extinguished it with a fire extinguisher, so deftly that the fire engulfed the entire room.

The captain, who was quite far from the fire, did not delve into the situation for a long time and did not give any intelligible orders, despite the fact that the radio operator "Moreo Castle" Rogers diligently kept the frequency for transmitting the SOS signal.

Meanwhile, the fire covered a significant area, and due to the fact that a flammable polish was used to polish the wooden cladding of the passenger decks, it began to spread not up, but down to the cabins. By order of the captain, the passengers began to gather at the stern of the ship, which was going against the wind, that is, all the fumes and smoke flew towards them. Some could not stand it and jumped into the sea.

By this time, two things had become clear. First, the abruptly deceased Captain Wilmott was carrying a smuggled shipment of calf skins, the smell of which spread throughout the ship on fire alarms. Therefore, Wilmott ordered her to be blocked and during the fire she did not turn on.

Secondly, because of Worms' first order, the water pressure prevented the use of fire hoses.

In addition, while Worms was thinking how to get out of the situation, the fire damaged the ship's wiring and the burning ship was in darkness.

Chief Engineer Abbott, who was supposed to be in charge of the rescue work, did not like Worms and therefore gave up on his duties, put on a white uniform, ordered the lifeboat to be lowered and waved his hand to everyone. He also became famous for dumping passengers trying to get into the boat into the sea.

And only the radio operator Rogers, already losing consciousness from the smoke, managed to fight off the SOS in this mess. And the passengers continued to rush from bow to stern.

And when the ship approached to tow the burning Moro Castle to the shore, which was in line-of-sight, it turned out that, among other things, Worms ordered an anchor, and due to the lack of electricity, it could not be raised. And the team, including the captain, began to saw the anchor chain. For a long, long time, they sawed, already all the survivors were even evacuated, and they sawed everything.

In total, more than 130 people died during the fire, and only the hull remained from the ship. The investigation revealed a huge number of oddities and creepy details (for example, there was evidence that some people deliberately killed passengers and crew members, including with firearms).

Until now, the causes of the fire and death of Wilmott are unknown (except for him, under the same strange, similar to poisoning, circumstances, another member of the team, very young, also died).
To date, the most popular (but not proven) version is the pyromanic inclinations of the heroic radio operator Rogers, in whose biography there were a lot of strange incidents, up to murder (this was discovered only in the 50s, Rogers did not arouse suspicions from the Commission of Inquiry).

And according to the link (there is the most detailed analysis of this story in Russian), they put forward a version that this is all a terrorist attack by the agents of the Comintern. Read it if you're interested, the version was clearly pulled over the ears for greater originality, but the details of the disaster are better than on many English-language sites.

UNUSUAL FIRE

He put out fires all his life. For John Kempf, this was a profession. He worked as a firefighter in New York. During his 63 years, he went out hundreds of times in single combat with fire, when cinemas, department stores, port warehouses burned in his hometown. After 45 years of honest service, spent on night shifts, emergency trips into smoke and flames, the New York City Firefighters Union awarded Kempf a ticket to the Morro Castle - the safest and most comfortable ship in the world, according to the flyer. For the old man, it was a kind of benefit before retiring to a well-deserved retirement.
(At 2:30 am John Kemshf woke up from the smell of burning. His professional instinct told him that something was burning somewhere. Instantly dressed, Kempf rushed out into the corridor. Acrid black smoke hurt his eyes. The ship's library was on fire. Metal cabinet the stationery and paper were engulfed in a strange blue flame, and Kempf tore off the carbon dioxide fire extinguisher hanging from the bulkhead, unscrewed the valve and sent a stream of foam through the open cabinet door.
The flame went off, changed color, spurted out of the closet, singing the fireman's eyebrows. Kempf dropped the fire extinguisher and, covering his mouth with a handkerchief, rushed to find the nearest hydrant. Outside the library, orange flames shot through the black curtain of smoke as they licked the door of the adjacent room. The firefighter unrolled the hose and unscrewed the hydrant valve. But instead of a powerful jet, several rusty drops fell on the rubber track of the corridor ... There was no pressure in the highway. Swearing, the old man rushed to drum on the doors of the cabins. He woke the sleepy second-class inhabitants. After running a good hundred meters along the corridor, Kempf rushed to the lower deck in order to go down into the car from there and tell the mechanics that it was necessary to connect the fire pumps and pressurize the main line. Perplexedly, the veteran of the fire battles saw that the corridor of the lower deck was also engulfed in flames. This was contrary to common sense, contrary to the professional experience of firefighting foreman Kempf. The fire always spreads from bottom to top, but here, on the ship, it rushed down almost instantly ...
As time went. The silence of the night on the Morro Castle had already been broken by heartbreaking screams. People, panting from the smoke, fell and went mad with horror. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the cabins, where the smoke had not yet reached, continued to sleep. And when fire alarms sounded on all the decks of the liner, it was already too late - the corridors were engulfed in flames. The exit from the cabins was cut off by a curtain of fire. Those who managed to run out into the corridor in time were confused in its numerous passages and branches, in the end the fugitives were trapped in the saloons, the windows and portholes of which looked out onto the bow of the liner. The only chance to escape is to break the windows and jump onto the deck in front of the ship's superstructure. Thus, almost all of the windows were knocked out. The Morro Castle continued to race at twenty knots. The corridors of both sides of the liner looked like a wind tunnel. In 20 minutes. after the start of the fire, the flames hummed throughout the ship, like a blowtorch.
John Kemgaf, without having made his way through the fire to the engine room, looked at what was happening with detachment. He knew the ship was doomed ...

CATASTROPHE.

Unfortunately, this was not known either on the bridge or in the engine room. For unknown reasons, the vaunted fire detection system and automatic fire extinguishing system did not work. Although Captain Worms was immediately notified of the fire, he had no idea that something serious was going to happen. He thought about the upcoming difficulties of mooring in the cramped New York harbor and was quite confident that the fire would be extinguished.
A court report on the Morro Castle fire, which was heard in New York, noted that the behavior of Captain Worms and his aides resembled those of tragic actors, embodying panic and confusion. Was Worms influenced by the death of Captain Robert Willmott? Five hours before the fire, the captain of the Morro Castle was found half-naked in a bathtub. His uniform jacket lay on the bedroom carpet. Convulsions cramped his blue face, his head hung helplessly on his chest. “The captain is dead. Obvious signs of poisoning with some strong poison, ”the doctor stated. “He had dinner recently,” said the steward who served the captain. “About an hour ago, I brought a tray of supper here, but I haven't had time to put it away. No one of our people dares to come here except me, but there is no tray ... ”Yes, it was a strange, unexpected death, and the chief mate had, according to the charter, to take control of the ship.
It was also strange that Chief Engineer Abbott, who had been called from his cabin by telephone, did not appear on the bridge. They did not see him in the engine room either. It turned out that he organized the launch of a lifeboat on the starboard side. In it, the journalists saw him (albeit with a broken arm), when a few hours later the boat reached the shore.
For unknown reasons, Worms did not assign any of his assistants to extinguish the fire. The passengers themselves tried to extinguish it. In panic, they rolled out hoses, opened hydrants, and poured water into the smoke. But the fire was coming, they had to look for salvation. Thus, almost all the hydrants were open, and although the mechanics had already turned on the pumps, there was no pressure in the line. There was nothing to put out the fire with. Meanwhile, from the navigating bridge down through the seven decks, Worms used the machine telegraph to transmit commands to the mechanics. According to the routine, they were entered into the machine log in the same way as they do now. This is what Captain Worms did in the Morro Castle engine room log:

3 hours 10 minutes - full forward with the right car.

3 hours 10.5 minutes - small forward right.

3 hours 13 minutes - full forward left.

3 hours 14 minutes - full forward to the left.

3 hours 18 minutes - full back right.

3 hours 19 minutes - full forward right.

3 hours 19.5 minutes - middle forward left.

3 hours 21 minutes - middle back right.

For ten minutes, the Morro Castle was constantly changing course, zigzagging, spinning in place. This was enough for the wind to turn the fire into a giant raging bonfire.
Later, one of Morro Castle's minders wrote:

“I, having changed at midnight from the watch, lay down on the sofa in the cabin of junior mechanics. I was awakened by cries for help. When I woke up, I felt smoke in the cabin. I opened the door and saw that everything was on fire. Three times I tried to climb up the ladder, and three times I was pulled by the legs by those who, like animals, fought in the narrow passage leading to the boat deck. From the port side, the flames raged, in my opinion, stronger. For some reason, there were many women there. I saw them die in the fire. There was no way to get to them because of the terrible heat from the fire ... "

MY RADIO IS ALREADY SMOKING ...

As soon as a fire alarm sounded on the ship, the third radio operator of the liner, Charles Mickey, ran to the cabin where the ship's radio station chief George Rogers and his assistant George Alagna lived. Both were fast asleep. Upon hearing the message about the fire, Rogers said in a calm, firm voice:
- Return to your post immediately. I'll get dressed and come.
He sent a second radio operator to the bridge to find out the captain's decision about sending a distress signal on the air. It has long been at sea that the supply of "SOS" is the prerogative of the commander of the ship, and only he alone has the right to do so.
Rogers sat down at the switched on transmitter.
About three minutes later Alagna ran into the radio room. “They went crazy there on the bridge. They are fussing and no one wants to listen to me, ”he said.
Rogers turned on the receiver. The crisp Morse code of the steamer Andrew La Kenbach asked the coast station: "Do you know anything about the burning ship at Scotland Lighthouse?"
The answer came: “No. Heard nothing. " Rogers put his hand on the key and tapped, "Yes, this is Morro Castle on fire." I'm awaiting an order from the bridge for an SOS. But there was still no order. Alagna ran to the captain for the second time. Rogers, without waiting for his return, at 3 o'clock. 15 minutes to "clear the air", sent an emergency signal - "CQ" and KGOV - radio call sign "Morro Castle".
After 4 min. after that, the radio was de-energized, and the lights on the ship went out - it was the diesel generators that stopped their work. Rogers, without wasting a moment, turned on the emergency transmitter and ordered Alagna:
- Run to the bridge again and do not return without permission to "SOS" 1
The flames were already surrounding the radio room, approaching the bridge, shrouded in smoke. Choking on his cough, Alagna shouted in Worms's ear:
- Captain! Listen! What about SOS? Rogers is already dying there. The radio room is on! It won't last long. What should we do? - Is there still a possibility to send "SOS"? Worms asked, without taking his eyes off the crowd of people rushing on the deck. - Yes!
- So pass it on faster!
This phrase was uttered by Worms exactly a quarter of an hour after he was informed that the fire could not be extinguished.
Finally, having achieved an answer, Alagna ran to the radio room. And although the wheelhouse was not far from the navigating bridge, he did not have time: tongues of flame blocked the way to the door from all sides. Through the curtain of fire, Alagna shouted into the open porthole of the wheelhouse:
- George! Come on "SOS"! Rogers, covering his face with his left hand, tapped the key.
He did not have time to convey the message to the end - spare acid batteries exploded. The deckhouse was filled with acrid fumes. Choking on the sulfur vapors and almost losing consciousness, the radio operator found the strength to reach the key again and convey the message about the tragedy unfolding in the sea.
At exactly 3 o'clock. 26 minutes the radio operator of the nearby British liner "Monarch of Bermuda" tapped out a message received through the headphones: "СQ" SOS "20 miles south of the Scotland lighthouse pt I can’t transmit any more pt Flame pt under me Immediately help. "SOS". My radio is already smoking. "
Alagna somehow miraculously made his way into the burning cabin. Rogers was unconscious. When Alagna began to shake him by the shoulders, he quietly said:
“Go to the bridge and ask if the captain has any other orders.
- Are you crazy! Everything is on fire! Let's run! - shouted the assistant chief of the radio station. It was only when Alagna said that Worms had given the order to leave the ship that Rogers agreed to leave his post. He could not run - his legs were covered with blisters from the burns. Yet Alagna managed to drag Rogers out of the burning radio room.

NEGODY OR HERO?

The next day, September 8, 1934, the major US newspapers went into specials, focusing on the events of the previous night aboard the Morro Castle. Rogers' last radio message, typed in bold, was striking. It was she who owed their salvation to the four hundred passengers of the "safest ship in the world." Below the radiogram were interviews received by reporters from those who first reached the coast from the floating hell.
There was also an interview with the sailor Leroy Kesley:
“From the boat I saw a terrible sight. The burning ship continued to leave. Its black hull was engulfed in orange flames. Women and children, huddled closely together, stood at its stern. We heard a cry, plaintive and full of despair ... This cry, similar to the groan of a dying man, will be heard to me until my death. I could only catch one word - "Goodbye."
Many witnesses to the disaster accused Captain Worms and his crew of cowardice. Here is what the son of the famous American surgeon Phelps wrote: “I floated under the stern of the ship, holding on to a rope hanging from the side. Paint burned overhead. It was bubbling, making some kind of terrible squelching sound. The falling pieces burned her neck and shoulders. Every now and then in the darkness there were splashes of people falling into the water. Then suddenly I saw a lifeboat. She quickly moved away from the side of the liner. Faces and outstretched hands gleamed around her in the darkness, pleas for help were heard. But the boat swam right over the heads of the drowning people. There were only eight or ten sailors in it and one officer with chevrons on his sleeves. " It was a lifeboat, which, as it turned out, was launched on the orders of Chief Engineer Abbott, who shamefully abandoned the ship to its fate.
The Morro Castle investigation found that the first three boats launched from the burning ship could accommodate more than 200 passengers. These boats were to be operated by 12 sailors. In fact, there were only 103 people in them, of which 92 were crew members of the liner.
America was shocked by the cowardice, mediocrity and meanness of Worms and Abbott.
In the fire, 134 people were burnt alive, and hundreds of people, having received severe burns, remained ugly for life.
The new captain of "Morro Castle" Worms lost his navigational diploma and received two years in prison. Abbott's diploma was taken away as a mechanic and he was sentenced to four years in prison. For the first time in the history of American shipping, a court sentenced the indirect culprit of the fire, a man who was not on the ship. It turned out to be the vice-president of the Ward Line, Henry Kabodou. He received a year of probation and paid a $ 5,000 fine. The US Senate fined the owners of Morro Castle $ 10,000. They paid 890 thousand dollars on the claims of passengers.
But in this tragic story were the heroes of the sailors of the "Monarch of Bermuda", the steamers "City of Sazan", and "Andrea Lakenback", the tugboat "Tampa", the boat "Paramont", who saved 415 people. And of course, George Rogers became the main character of the events described. Let's face it, he became the No. 1 sensation and the country's national hero. In his honor, the mayors of the states of New York and New Jersey gave sumptuous banquets. The US Congress awarded Rogers the Gold Medal for Bravery.
In the homeland of the hero - in a small town in the state of New Jersey - Bayonne, the parade of the state garrison and the police did not take place on this occasion. In Hollywood, they began to think about the script for the film "I'll save you people!". Rogers traveled in triumph to many states, where he spoke to the American public with stories about the drama Morro Castle.
This triumph lasted more than a year. But, being inherently humble and shy, Rogers was apparently tired of journalists and filmmakers. In 1936 he left the naval service and settled in his hometown. There he was gladly offered the position of head of the radio workshop in the city police department.
On this, in fact, one could end this story. But...

SECOND SIDE OF THE MEDAL

On March 16, 1938, Rogers was arrested by the police for ... deliberately blowing up his close friend, Police Lieutenant Vicent Doyle, with a homemade bomb.

It turned out that more than once Rogers said to Doyle: “Yes, in the world, except me, no one knows and will never know the true cause of the death of Morro Castle. The liner was destroyed by a fountain pen, which was a bomb ... "
The policeman was alert, he recalled the former radio operator's constant hobbies for chemistry. In the archives of his office, he found an old case of Rogers related to various explosions and fires, where the latter figured as an eyewitness. In turn, Rogers realized he had been exposed. One day, Milking, who was an avid hunter, received a parcel in the mail — a homemade hand warmer. The package included a letter: “Dear Vicent! This is a hunting warmer for you. It can operate on both battery and mains power. Plug in to check. " And Milking plugged the homemade product into the network. The lieutenant's thigh was crushed and three fingers were torn off on his left hand.
During the investigation of the case, after analyzing a number of circumstances preceding the fire at Morro Castle, interviewing witnesses, the experts recreated the picture of the disaster. An hour before the liner left Havana, Captain Willmott, seeing the head of the radio station carrying two bottles of some kind of chemicals, ordered him to throw them overboard. It became known to the police that Willmott and Rogers had their own personal accounts for a long time. The fact of the poisoning of the captain, although his corpse burned down during the fire, did not raise doubts among the experts, although there was no direct evidence here.
Experts in shipbuilding and chemistry have made a very compelling case that Rogers set fire to the ship with time bombs in two or three places. He turned off the automatic fire detection system and started the gasoline from the emergency diesel generator tank from the upper deck to the lower ones. That is why the flame spread from top to bottom. He also took into account the storage location of signal flares and missiles. This explained the rapid spread of fire on the boat deck. The arson scheme was thought out professionally, skillfully ...
The "national hero" went to jail.
The case became scandalous. The Americans did not want to disgrace the whole world, and soon, thanks to the efforts of Rogers' influential friends, the case was hushed up.
Rogers became the ship's radio operator again. After the end of the war, he returned to Bayonne, where he opened a private radio workshop.
Fifteen years have passed. In the hot July summer of 1953, an 83-year-old compositor William Hummel and his adopted daughter Edith were brutally murdered on one of the quiet avenues of the sleepy town of Bayonne. Traces of the crime led police detectives to the house next door where former Morro Castle radio operator George Rogers lived (motive for the murder was Rogers' $ 7,500 debt). He again ended up in the investigation cell of the prison. A jury found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to life in prison. During the investigation, facts suddenly began to creep out that shocked not only the inhabitants of BayO "Nna, but all the states. Newspapers published the full" track record "of the" radio hero "who turned out to be a criminal.
The investigation established that George Rogers is the most dangerous person for society: a pyromaniac, a murderer and a thief. Here are some excerpts from the biography of the “national hero” compiled by the investigators: “He is an abnormal criminal who has committed all sorts of atrocities for 20 years. Endowed with a remarkable intelligence, he was a brilliant expert at juggling facts. Despite the long list of crimes, it remained unblemished for many years. Since childhood, Rogers has read many serious scientific journals. Knowing perfectly well chemistry, electricity and radio engineering, he experimented more than once with time bombs, all kinds of "hellish machines", acids and gases.
At the age of 12, he was already involved by the police for lying and theft. In 1914, he was convicted of stealing a radio in Oakland and bailed.
After graduating from technical school, Rogers went to serve as a radio operator in the Navy. In 1923 he was dismissed from service for stealing radio tubes. Rogers has repeatedly witnessed major explosions and fires, the causes of which have remained unclear. These include the bombing of the Newport navy base in 1920, the great fire of the radio company building in New York in 1929, and the fire in Rogers' own workshop in 1935 (and he received $ 1,175 in insurance indemnity). ”
Finally, there was a fire at Morro Castle. The life ending of the "hero", an arsonist, a pyromaniac, was absolutely ordinary: Rogers died in prison from a heart attack.
Photo gallery:

The American liner was set on fire by a pyromaniac and burned to the ground off the coast of New Jersey. 134 people were killed.

The Morro Castle, the Ward Line liner, was the latest in science and technology. Its turbo-electric installation provided an economical speed of 25 knots. "Morro Castle" could easily compete with the German liners "Bremen" and "Europa" - winners of the "Atlantic Blue Ribbon". The owners of the Ward Line hoped that the new ship would bring them good profits on the so-called New York-Havana drunk line. Thousands of Americans, who suffered from Prohibition, flocked to Cuba with its almost free rum and affordable women. The famous cabaret "La Tropicana" and the three thousand bars scattered throughout Havana were especially popular with them.

From January 1930 to the fall of 1934, Morro Castle made 173 super-profitable flights to Cuba. Every Saturday afternoon, a thousand passengers left New York Harbor. The liner headed for Havana and after exactly two days of sailing and 36 hours of stay in the Cuban port returned to New York again. Such a traffic schedule for four years has never been disrupted even by the famous West Indian hurricanes - the true scourge of navigation in the Caribbean.

On that voyage, the liner was commanded by the most experienced captain of the "Ward Line" company - Robert Wilmott, who faithfully served its owners for three decades.

On the evening of September 7, 1934, the Morro Castle was completing its 174th voyage from Havana to New York. Five hours later, abeam the Ambrose Lighthouse, he was to take a new course and, breaking through the congestion of the steamboat on the East River, approach the Ward Line pier. The captain was already awaited in the cabin by the passengers who had gathered for the traditional "captain's banquet" in honor of the end of the merry voyage.

But Wilmott did not honor the passengers by his presence in the cabin at the captain's table.

“Duty officer! Let it be announced at the banquet that the captain is not feeling well and apologize. I’ll serve supper in my cabin. Call us when we are abeam Scotland. "

These were the last words of Robert Wilmott. An hour later, the ship's doctor De Witt van Zijl stated his death from poisoning with some strong poison ... The captain was found half-naked in the bath.

The news of the captain's death spread throughout the ship. The music stopped, the laughter and smiles on their faces disappeared. The banquet was canceled, and the passengers began to disperse to their cabins.

The first mate, William Worms, took over as captain. For 37 years spent at sea, he went from cabin boy to captain. He also had a New York Harbor Pilot Diploma. Worms decided to stay on the bridge until the arrival of the ship in port, as the weather forecast received on the radio indicated that Morro Castle near the Scotland lighthouse would enter the belt of an eight-point storm, encounter two or three strong squalls from the mainland.

The ship's clock was 2:30 am when John Kempf, a 63-year-old firefighter from New York, woke up to the smell of burning. He jumped out into the corridor. The premises of the ship's library were on fire. The metal cabinet where the writing utensils and paper were kept was engulfed in a strange blue flame. Kempf tore off the carbon dioxide fire extinguisher hanging from the bulkhead, unscrewed the valve and sent a stream of foam into the open cabinet door. The flame, changing color, burst from the cabinet, singing the fireman's eyebrows. Then Kempf rushed to the nearest hydrant, rolled out the hose and unscrewed the valve, but there was no pressure in the line. Kempf rushed to wake the sleeping second-class passengers. The lower deck corridor was also engulfed in flames. The fire always spread from bottom to top, but here, on the ship, it rushed down almost instantly ...

The silence of the night was suddenly broken by heartbreaking screams. People, suffocating from the smoke, jumped out into the corridors in panic. Meanwhile, the inhabitants of the cabins, where the smoke had not reached, were still asleep. And when fire alarms sounded on all the decks of the liner, it was already too late - the corridors and passages were engulfed in flames. The exit from the cabins was cut off by a curtain of fire. Those who did not have time to leave their cabins unwittingly found themselves in the saloons, the windows and portholes of which looked out onto the bow of the liner.

The fire continued to pursue those who were driven into the saloons of decks "A", "B" and "C". The only chance to escape is to break the windows and jump onto the deck in front of the ship's superstructure. And people smashed the thick windows of the square windows with chairs and jumped down onto the deck. Thus, almost all of the front windows were knocked out. The Morro Castle continued to race at twenty knots. The longitudinal corridors of both sides of the liner now looked like a wind tunnel. Twenty minutes after the start of the fire, the flames were buzzing throughout the liner.

The ship was doomed. But this was not yet understood on the navigating bridge and in the engine room. For unknown reasons, the fire detection system and the automatic fire extinguishing system did not work. Although Captain Worms was immediately alerted to the fire, he thought more about the upcoming difficulties of mooring in the cramped harbor of New York and was confident that the fire would be extinguished.

For the first half hour of the fire, Worms was in a state of some strange numbness, and only the failure of the autopilot forced him to change the course of the vessel and turn away from the wind.

A court report on the Morro Castle fire, which was later heard in New York, noted that the behavior of Captain Worms and his assistants resembled the play of tragic actors who created panic and confusion by their actions. It was also strange that Chief Engineer Abbott, who had been called from his cabin by telephone, did not appear on the bridge. They did not see him in the engine room either. It turned out that at that moment he organized the descent of the lifeboat from the starboard side. In it, the journalists saw him (albeit with a broken arm), when a few hours later the boat reached the shore.

For unknown reasons, Worms did not appoint any of his assistants to supervise the extinguishing of the fire. The passengers themselves tried to extinguish the fire. In panic, they rolled out hoses, opened hydrants, and poured water into the smoke. But the fire was coming - people had to look for salvation. Thus, almost all the hydrants were open, and although the mechanics had already turned on the pumps, there was almost no pressure in the main fire line. There was nothing to put out the fire with.

Meanwhile, Worms was transmitting commands to the mechanics by machine telegraph. For ten minutes, the Morro Castle kept changing course, zigzagging, circulating, spinning in place ... and the wind turned the fire into a giant raging fire.

After the last command, the diesel generators were stopped, and the liner plunged into darkness ... The engine room was filled with smoke. It was no longer possible to stay there. Mechanics, minders, electricians and lubricants left their posts. But only a few of them managed to find salvation on the upper decks of the ship ...

Worms ordered an SOS signal only fifteen minutes after he was informed that the fire could not be extinguished. At this time, Morro Castle was twenty miles south of Scotland Lighthouse, about eight miles offshore.

The assistant chief of the ship's radio station, George Alagna, rushed into the radio room, which was not far from the ship's bridge. But the flame blocked his path, then Alagna shouted through the open porthole of the wheelhouse to the radio operator to send an SOS signal. The head of the ship's radio station, George Rogers, did not have time to transmit the distress signal to the end - spare acid batteries exploded in the radio room. The deckhouse was filled with acrid fumes. Choking on the sulfuric vapors and almost losing consciousness, the radio operator found the strength to once again reach for the key and transmit the coordinates and a message about the tragedy unfolding in the sea.

At 3:26 a.m. the radio operator of the nearby British liner Monark of Bermuda tapped out a message received through the headphones: “CQ, SOS, 20 miles south of Scotland Lighthouse. I can’t pass it on anymore. There is a flame under me. Help immediately. My radio is already smoking. "

Alagna managed to get into the burning radio room. Both radio operators made their way through the half-burnt bridge and went down the right ladder to the main deck. From there, the only way to escape was the way to the tank. It was already cramped there: almost all the officers and sailors of the Morro Castle were looking for salvation there. Among them was Captain Worms ...

The next day, September 8, 1934, the major US newspapers went into specials, focusing on the events of the previous night aboard the Morro Castle. Sailor Leroy Kesley spoke of helpless passengers who "resembled a line of blind people desperately looking for a door." Kesley explained to reporters why on many boats during the descent from the Morro Castle the hoists were stuck, he told how the liner still underway towed the boats behind him, how huge pieces of thick glass from the windows of the saloons bursting from the heat fell into the water with a hiss, very close to him, how they cut the people in the boat in half ... Later the sailor recalled: “From the boat I saw a terrible sight. The burning ship continued to leave ... its black hull was engulfed in orange flames. Women and children, huddled closely together, stood at its stern. We heard a cry, plaintive, full of despair ... This cry, similar to the groan of a dying man, will be heard to me until my death ... I could catch only one word - 'goodbye'. "

Eyewitnesses of the disaster from among the rescued passengers wrote that those of them who took refuge at the stern of the ship had no chance to leave the burning liner in boats. Only those who looked down without fear, where, 10 meters below, the cold ocean water boiled, could escape.

During the investigation, it turned out that about twenty people managed to escape from the burning liner by swimming, having overcome 8 nautical miles of the raging sea. A sixteen-year-old Cuban ship boy did it without a life jacket.

By dawn on September 8, a small group of crew, led by Captain Worms, remained on the already completely burned out and still smoking liner. Rogers was there with his deputy, the second radio operator, George Alagna.

To stop the ship's drift into the wind, the starboard anchor was given up, and when the US Navy rescue ship Tampa approached the Morro Castle, the towing had to be abandoned. Only by 13 o'clock those who remained on the liner were able to saw through the anchor-chain link with a hacksaw. Captain of the third rank Rose ordered a tugboat to be put on the tank of the liner to deliver the burned ship to New York. But in the evening the weather deteriorated sharply, and a northwestern storm began. Soon the towing line snapped and wrapped around the Tampa's propeller. Morro Castle began to drift into the wind until it was run aground off the coast of New Jersey, three dozen meters from the beach at Ashbury Recreation Park. This happened on Saturday, at 8 pm, when there were a lot of people.

News of the tragedy has already spread throughout New York and its suburbs, and the latest news broadcast on the radio attracted thousands of people to this unusual incident.

The next morning, 350,000 Americans gathered in Ashbury Park, all highways and country roads clogged with cars. The park's owners charged $ 10 for the right to board the still smoldering liner. Thrill-seekers were given respirator masks, flashlights and fire boots so that they "risk-free" could enjoy visiting the burned-out Morro Castle. The Governor of New Jersey was already making plans to turn the ship's wreck into a permanent "horror attraction." But Ward Line responded with a categorical refusal. She chose to sell the burnt-out Morro Castle, which at one time cost $ 5 million to build, for $ 33,605 to a Baltimore firm for scrap.

The investigation into the death of Morro Castle, conducted by experts from the US Department of Commerce, who published 12 volumes of this case, found the following: the first three boats launched from the burning ship could take more than 200 passengers. These boats were to be operated by 12 sailors. In fact, there were only 103 people in them, of which 92 were crew members. It was reliably known that the liner left Havana with 318 passengers and 231 crew members on board, that of the 134 dead, 103 were passengers. In addition to the dead, hundreds of people, having received severe burns, remained disabled for the rest of their lives ...

America was shocked by Worms' cowardice, mediocrity and Abbott's meanness.

The new captain of "Morro Castle" Worms lost his navigational license and received two years in prison. The mechanic Abbott was deprived of his mechanic diploma and sentenced to four years in prison. For the first time in the history of American shipping, a court sentenced the indirect culprit of the fire, a man who was not on the ship. It turned out to be the vice-president of the Ward Line, Henry Kabodou. He received a year of probation and paid a $ 5,000 fine. According to the claims of the victims, the owners of Morro Castle paid 890 thousand dollars.

But this tragic story also had its own heroes - the sailors of the steamers Monark of Bermuda, City of Savana and Andrea Lakenbach, the tugboat Tampa, and the boat Paramont, who rescued about 400 people.

And, of course, the main character of the events described was the radio operator George Rogers. In his honor, the mayors of the states of New York and New Jersey gave sumptuous banquets. The US Congress awarded Rogers the Gold Medal for Bravery.

In the homeland of the hero - in the small town of Bayonne, New Jersey - a parade of the state military garrison and the police took place on this occasion. Hollywood is thinking about the script for the movie "I'll Save You People!" Rogers has traveled triumphantly across many states, where he spoke to American audiences with stories about the drama at Morro Castle.

In 1936, Rogers left the naval service and settled in his hometown. There he was gladly offered the position of head of the radio workshop in the city police department.

Nineteen years later, Rogers was again the number one sensation.

In July 1953, former Morro Castle radio operator George Rogers was arrested by police on suspicion of the brutal murder of 83-year-old typographer William Hummel and his adopted daughter Edith. Hero of America ended up in the investigation cell of the prison.

After 3 hours and 20 minutes of deliberation, the jury found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

The investigation established that Rogers, a former American police officer, is the most dangerous person for society, a murderer, a swindler, a thief and a pyromaniac.

During the investigation, facts suddenly came to light that shocked not only the inhabitants of Bayonne, but the entire United States. It turned out that the "national hero" was now attributed to the poisoning of Captain Wilmott and the arson of the Morro Castle.

During the investigation of the case, after analyzing a number of circumstances preceding the fire, interviewing witnesses and eyewitnesses, the experts recreated the picture of the Morro Castle disaster. An hour before the liner left Havana, Captain Wilmott, seeing the head of the radio station carrying two bottles of some kind of chemicals, ordered him to throw them overboard ...

The police learned that Wilmott and Rogers had long had a feud. The fact that the captain was poisoned did not raise doubts among the experts, although there was no direct evidence (the corpse burned down during the fire).

Shipbuilding experts and chemists have suggested that Rogers set the ship on fire with time bombs at two or three locations. He turned off the automatic fire detection system and started the gasoline from the emergency diesel generator tank from the upper deck to the lower ones. That is why the flame spread from top to bottom. He also took into account the storage location of signal flares and missiles. This explained the rapid spread of fire on the boat deck. The arson scheme was thought out professionally, skillfully.

"MORRO KASL"