SS Morro Castle Disaster - Asbury Park NJ скачать в хорошем качестве

SS Morro Castle Disaster - Asbury Park NJ

At around 2:50 a.m. on September 8, while Morro Castle 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 thirty minutes, the ship 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 his plan. Within twenty minutes of the fire's discovery (at about 3:10), the fire had burned through Morro Castle's main electrical cables, plunging the ship into darkness. As all power was lost, the radio stopped working, so only a single SOS signal was sent. At about the same time, the wheelhouse lost its ability to steer the ship, as the hydraulic lines were severed by the fire as well. Cut off by the fire amidships, passengers tended to move toward the stern. Most crew members, on the other hand, moved to the forecastle. In many places, the deck boards were hot to the touch and breathing was difficult in the thick smoke. As conditions grew steadily worse, the decision became either "jump or burn" for many passengers. However, jumping into the water was problematic, as high winds churned up great waves that made swimming extremely difficult. Passengers and crew exhibited the full range of reactions to the disaster at hand. Some crew members were incredibly brave as they tried to fight the fire. Others tossed deck chairs and life rings overboard to provide persons in the water with makeshift flotation devices. Only six of the ship's twelve lifeboats were launched: boats 1, 3, 5, 9, and 11 on the starboard side, and boat 10 on the port side. Although the combined capacity of these boats was 408, they carried only 85 people, most of whom were crew members. Many passengers died because of a lack of knowledge of how to use the life preservers. As they hit the water, life preservers knocked many persons unconscious, leading to subsequent death by drowning, or breaking victims' necks from the impact, killing them instantly. As telephone communication and radio stations spread the news of the disaster along the New Jersey coast, local citizens assembled on the coastline to assist the injured, retrieve the dead, and try to unite families that had been scattered among different rescue boats that landed on the beaches. By mid-morning, Morro Castle was totally abandoned and its burning hull drifted ashore, coming to a stop late that afternoon in shallow water off Asbury Park, at almost the exact spot where the New Era had wrecked in 1854. Fires continued to smolder on board for the next two days and, in the end, 137 passengers and crew (out of a total of 549) were lost. Morro Castle 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 and had to be refloated. (Other accounts have it that the ship was towed without any issues). Regardless, it was towed to Gravesend Bay and then to Baltimore on March 29, 1935, where it was scrapped. In the intervening months, because of its proximity to the Asbury Park Boardwalk and the adjacent 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.