really enjoyed this read like a combination of mystery book and disaster movie


( )

Another one from the “disaster response” wishlist. The Ward Line steamship Morro Castle caught fire within sight of Asbury Park, New Jersey, early in the morning of September 8, 1934. The crew didn’t respond very well, and 134 passengers and crew died. That’s what the first half of this book by Brian Hicks is about (Hicks is also author of Ghost Ship, about the Mary Celeste). The second half is Hick’s attempt to explain the fire; its cause was never determined. Hicks claims arson, and has a suspect: Chief Radioman George Rogers.

Like most disasters, the Morro Castle story was greatly embellished and confabulated in subsequent years. She’s usually described as a “cruise ship” or “luxury liner” (in the publisher’s blurbs for this book, for example) but was actually a hybrid; a cargo ship with space for passengers. The Morro Castle had this interesting configuration because she was built under the Jones Act, which provided money to shipping lines for new vessels with the clause that the ships would be taken up by the US Navy as troop transports in time of war. The Morro Castle was therefore unusually fast for a cargo ship (top speed 22 knots) and had a large and well-appointed passenger space (including ductwork throughout the ship that could carry ventilation air into every passenger cabin; not quite air conditioning, but probably quite satisfactory when the ship was moving at cruising speed. The system was described as “Sea Cooling”). However, passenger service was an afterthought; the Ward Line made most of its money from a contract to carry the US Mail from New York to Havana, secondarily from cargo to and from Cuba, and thirdly from passenger fares. The Morro Castle ran a weekly (Saturday to Saturday) schedule to and from Havana, dictated by the mail contract. Most of the passengers were middle class who wanted a “sea voyage”; cabins started at $65. There was only one day for sightseeing in Havana but there were formal dances on board every night; single female passengers generally outnumbered available men and the ship’s officers and petty officers were often pressed into service as dance partners.

Hicks is writing as an “investigative journalist”; hence he has a preconceived idea about the fire and focuses his narrative around it. His suspect, George Rogers, certainly had an odd career before joining the Morro Castle. He came from a broken home and did time in reform school, until getting thrown out for sodomizing a younger boy. Described as an electronics genius, he had a series of jobs in radio shops which had always ended with Rogers being dismissed for stealing (in one case, the store owner was investigating mysterious shortages when the shop burned down). This wasn’t on his Ward Line resume, of course; instead he claimed to have 20 years of experience as a ship’s radio operator, including a stint in the US Navy during WWI. Rogers got his job as Chief Radioman when the previous Chief got a series of anonymous letters claiming he was under investigation by the Federal Radio Commission for participating in a short-lived strike. He left town and Rogers moved into the post.

On the other hand, Hicks defuses his case a little by noting that almost all Morro Castle officers were slightly strange. The Captain, Robert Wilmont, refused to hold lifeboat drills because they disturbed the passengers, had little confidence in his crew, and spent most of his time being congenial to the passengers while leaving the day-to-day operation of the ship to his First Officer, William Warms. The Second Radioman, George Alagna, had instituted the short strike against the Ward Line (the same on that had eventually promoted George Rogers, even though Alagna had seniority). The Third Radioman was a Finn who could barely speak English and couldn’t operate the radios; he was only there because Federal law required three radiomen.

Captain Wilmont began acting stranger and stranger on the Morro Castle’s final voyage. He became convinced that someone had smuggled sulfuric acid onboard, and kept everybody looking for it. He also thought the Second Radioman, Alagna, was planning sabotage and ordered Rogers to lock up the ship’s radio direction finder when it wasn’t in use. No one ever found out why Wimont had these suspicions, since the day before the fire he was found in his cabin bathroom, with his pants around his ankles and bent double into his bathtub. He had apparently died trying to give himself an enema.

That left First Officer Warms in charge (The Chief Engineer, Eben Abbott, was nominally senior but didn’t dispute Warms as Captain). In his first command Warms was understandably nervous; the weather was deteriorating and the Morro Castle needed to get into New York on time to keep to the terms of the mail contract. Warms spent almost all his time on the bridge, not getting much sleep.

The fire apparently started in a small locker in the Writing Room. This is a point where Hick’s narrative gets a little weak; he’s inconsistent when describing what this locker contained. He first described it as containing pens, paper, and “cleaning supplies”; later it contains a waiter’s jacket, turpentine, and paint; finally it has blankets and “flammable polish”. Although the fire was discovered when relatively small, the crew’s attempt to douse it with water buckets was futile; the Morro Castle was steaming at 20 knots into a 20 knot headwind and the “Sea Cool” vents rapidly spread flames throughout the ship. Warms apparently though the fire could easily be controlled; he didn’t go and see it for himself, didn’t reduce speed, and didn’t order an SOS. Smoke began seeping into the engine room and Chief Engineer Abbott appeared on the bridge, explaining the he would just be in the way below. Finally, Warms realized the seriousness of the situation and ordered “Abandon Ship”; by that time some of the lifeboats were on fire, others couldn’t be launched because the winches were jammed by paint, and the crew took off in the rest (including Abbott, who removed all his insignia first). The passengers were left to their own devices; the ones that didn’t burn to death jumped into the Atlantic. Some were killed or knocked unconscious and drowned by the jump; some died from hypothermia (this wasn’t the Titanic’s Atlantic; water temperature was 70°, but that’s still low enough to kill from hypothermia; it just takes longer). Some were picked up by lifeboats from the Morro Castle or other nearby ships; many were saved by a former rumrunner with a fast power boat, and a few managed to swim or float to shore.

Rogers stayed at his radio station as long as he could. The press, looking for a hero among the officers, picked him, and he got a one-week stint on Broadway describing his adventures as the lead-in to an Andy Devine Western. He parlayed that into a radio shop, but it quickly failed. Then he got a job as a radio officer with the Bayonne Police Department. He and his boss, Vincent Doyle, got along well together, swapping stories and fixing radios (although there were a few cases where radio parts disappeared from police stores), until one day Rogers described a time bomb that worked by acid slowly dissolving a barrier until it broke through and ignited a flammable mixture. Rogers said the device could be made as small as a pen and left in the pocket of a waiter’s coat, in a locker for example. Doyle picked up on this pretty quick and asked Rogers why he did it; Rogers replied “Because the Ward Line stinks and the skipper was lousy”. Doyle unaccountably kept this information to himself. Some time later (Hicks doesn’t detail when this conversation occurred) Doyle found a package for him; in it was a short length of pipe attached to an electrical cord. A typewritten note explained that this was a fish tank heater and asked Doyle to install a switch on it. Doyle didn’t think much of it; other officers routinely left stuff for him to repair. He plugged it into the wall and woke up in the hospital with most of his left hand missing and a shrapnel chunk in his leg. Rogers was convicted on circumstantial but compelling evidence and got 25 years in Trenton; he was, however, paroled a few years later after WWII started and served as radioman on a Liberty ship. He went through a series of jobs until he was eventually reduced to poverty as an itinerant radio and TV repairman. He did manage to strike up a friendship with his elderly next door neighbor, who shared his interest in electronics. One day the neighbor and his daughter turned up sledge hammered to death; Rogers suddenly had money again, and a lot of the neighbor’s equipment was found in Rogers’ house. This time he got life; he was apparently a model prisoner and revamped the prison radio system until dying from a heart attack in 1958.

I have to say I find Hicks’ case against Rogers fairly convincing. Rogers was certainly the classic psychopath; someone who can appear friendly and innocent on the surface but who has absolutely no compunctions about harming others, and also someone who believed he was too smart to be caught even while leaving obvious clues at most of his crimes. He had the opportunity to burn the Morro Castle, although what his motive might have been is unclear. The problem is that Hicks’ protests too much; every single odd thing that Rogers ever did is brought up, and he’s made into sort of a criminal mastermind. Hicks also doesn’t tie things together; I’ve already mentioned the inconsistent contents of the Writing Room locker, but he also doesn’t speculate on Captain Wilmont’s fear that sulfuric acid had been smuggled on to the ship; he insinuates that Rogers poisoned Captain Wilmont but never explains how it was done; he cites evidence that gasoline was siphoned from a piece of ship’s equipment but doesn’t follow up with claims that it was used to accelerate the fire; he mentions a piece of “charred paper” in the hold that was supposed to be a second starting point for the fire, but never goes further with it; he doesn’t say how the “pen time bomb” was supposed to work; he never tells us why Vincent Doyle never went public with Rogers’ confession; and he even hints at vague government conspiracies: the Morro Castle was inspected by the Federal Steamboat Inspection Service shortly before the fatal cruise; the inspector only stayed for two hours and somehow didn’t notice that the lifeboats were painted into their davits. The Assistant Director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection Service was Dickerson Hoover, who just happened to be J. Edgar Hoover’s brother. It’s implicit that one or both of the Hoovers “covered up” the cause of the Morro Castle fire to avoid having attention drawn to the incompetence of the Morro Castle inspection, but Hicks never states that explicitly.

The book is interesting as a “True Crime” study, as a profile of a psychopath, and even for my original interest as a disaster response account (mostly for What Not To Do If Your Ship Is On Fire, though). Unfortunately I have to give it a mixed review; there’s just a little too much “investigative journalism” and not enough actual investigation. I will say that Hicks has included extensive references, so you can track down all his sources if you want. ( )

There are usually three types of crime layouts for books:

1. The author decides he/she knows what was in a criminal's head and spends the entire book spinning the spin.

2. The author writes a thesis but neglects to keep the reader involved due to the fact that it's really just a thesis.

3. The author throws everything at the reader from the beginning, so the rest of the book is a letdown.

Thankfully, this book is none of the above. Brian Hicks crafts a tale that leads the reader into a just-one-more-page-even-though-it's-2AM spellbinding journey to discover the cause behind one of the greatest maritime disasters of the 20th century. Hicks has done his research homework, to the point where he even throws off newspaper facts from the 19th century, all to support his findings on the psychopath who is really the center of the story.

We don't know this, of course, because we think we're going to read a book about a ship, but it's so much more than that. I love authors who do their homework and don't just guess, and that's why this book merits the highest marks. Engrossing and gruesome.

Book Season = Autumn (because that's when the nuts thrive) ( )

4286. When the Dancing Stopped The Real Story of the Morro Castle Disaster and Its Deadly Wake, by Brian Hicks (read 18 Mar 2007) I have long known of the Morro Castle fire, which occurred on Sept 8, 1934, altho I do not remember hearing of it when it happened--hey, I was only 5 then. This book tells the story of the disaster well and then tells of the amazing life of George White Rogers, chief radioman on the cruise ship. There were 318 passengers and 231 crew, of whom 134 died, meaning 415 survived. Hicks is not a felicitous writer, but his research is good and the account was good reading. ( )