The tragic story of the Morro Castle continued.

The Gang’s All Here

There were a large number of Doctors aboard the Morro Castle’s final voyage. As a group, they did not fare well: Doctors Busquet, and Coll were lost ‘though in either case their wives and daughters survived; Dr Strauch of Donora Pennsylvania was lost, along with his wife; DeWitt VanZile, the ship’s doctor broke his neck jumping for his life wearing one of the cork life preservers; Dr Borrell lost his wife Henrietta when they were separated by the panicked crowd at the stern, only to find her ashore in one of the temporary morgues, while Dr Charles Cochrane (died 9/9/1959) lost his sister Catherine. Doctors Phelps, Vossler and Lerner were fortunate in comparison to their peers; none in their respective parties perished. A partial account written by Dr Samuel Lerner follows:

My wife, Rose, and I were awakened at 3AM, not by any member of the crew, but by the passengers. They told us the boat was on fire. Mrs. Lerner and I rushed out to the deck: we were on A Deck, the top deck. Flames were beating all around. There were no ships officers in sight and what members of the crew there were around did not seem to know what it was all about, or what to do.

The men tried to calm the women, and we all sang “Hail, Hail , The Gang’s All Here.”

I ran around looking for one of the ship’s officers and I couldn’t find one. When I came back to Mrs. Lerner the flames had driven the people on that deck to the rail. The cables on a number of lifeboats had burned through and the boats were dropping off into the water with no one in them.

The men and women started jumping off. Mrs. Lerner and I had our lifebelts on and we jumped. It must have been almost 60 feet to the water- I was pretty nearly knocked out. I looked around to try and find my wife, and called, but didn’t get an answer.

 

Dr. Francois Busquet of Havana was traveling to New York with his wife, and daughter Ofelia, 16 when they found themselves trapped aboard the burning liner. Mrs. Busquet composed a brief account of their experience a few days later:

The three of us jumped together, Dr. Busquet, I and Ofelia. We hit the water so hard that the lifebelts smashed against our heads with such force that we were practically knocked out for several minutes. When it was obvious we’d be in the water a long time we held hands.

After riding the waves together for many hours, my husband suddenly gasped “I can’t go on!” It was terrible. Shortly after he was swallowed up by the sea, the City of Savannah loomed upon the horizon.

Dr. S. Joseph Bregstein, (1899-1972) a dentist from Brooklyn, remains one of the best known of the Morro Castle survivors. Interviewed late in life, he recounted that his purpose for being aboard the ship was to discuss his pending remarriage with his 8 year old son, Mervyn, in a pleasant environment. According to Dr. Bregstein, the environment was less than pleasant – a crew member slipped a nail into a lamb chop Dr. Bregstein had custom ordered for his son on the last evening – and the father son talk did not take place. Mervyn died in the disaster, and his was one of the 40 or so bodies never recovered.

Mervyn Bregstein

Joseph Bregstein

I was awakened in my cabin on D Deck around 4 o’clock by the pounding of someone on the door. “Fire!” they were shouting “get up and get out!” I took it lightly at first, but I roused my boy, putting on a topcoat over everything else, and giving him a raincoat. We dressed quickly and went up to C Deck where there was water three or four inches deep.

I had forgotten to take lifebelts. I was about to return when the lights went out. Everyone was rushing, and in the dark I was afraid we’d be killed.

On C Deck men were fighting the fire with a hose. We were warned the deck was not safe, and we went back to D Deck. Anyway, by now the flames were creeping down the stairs.

By 5:15 the pressure from the hose stopped.. I got up on deck, higher up, and we were cut off by the flames. You know what happened then.

What happened then, was that Dr. Bregstein was approached by an onboard acquaintance known to him as “Florence.” She was going to attempt to swim to safety, and persuaded Dr. Bregstein to allow her to take Mervyn overboard; assuring him that she was a strong swimmer. The father told his son not to be afraid and to hold on to the lady with the lifebelt, and the two went overboard around 6:15 AM.

Joseph Bregstein returned to his 4^th Avenue home, where he awaited news of Mervyn. “He cut short all callers with a brusque ‘there might be a call from my boy!’ ” What came, instead was a phone call, and in person visit, from Miss Ethel Knight of Shrewsbury Massachusetts. Ethel had read of Dr. Bregstein in the newspapers and believed that she was the “Florence” to whom Mervyn had been entrusted:

Miss Knight said she swam around in the water, the boy with her. She grew exhausted. She had a vague recollection of feeling that she couldn’t continue any longer. Others were swimming near her. Somebody, she recalled, “took the boy away from me.” Then she lost consciousness and was picked up by a lifeboat and brought to shore. She divined who the father of the boy was through newspaper stories.

However, as it developed, the child whom the Knight sisters took overboard with them was not Mervyn Bregstein, but Benito Rueda, the son of Mrs Julia Rueda of New York City and Havana. A reunion was staged between the Rueda child and his rescuer, and the boy made a hit with the press by saying that he would grow up to marry her out of gratitude. Initial accounts were in agreement that it was Benito and Dickie Rueda with whom the sisters swam, and it was only after Ethel ‘recognized’ herself as Dr. Bregstein’s Florence that Dickie vanished from the narrative.

Ethel Knight married William Celatka, only to die of a heart attack within the month. She and her sister Gladys are still remembered as the women who tried to save Mervyn Bregstein and failed.

A Family Torn Apart

12. A Family Torn Apart

Mary Lione, of Sunnyside, Queens, was carried off of the Monarch of Bermuda on a stretcher, suffering from immersion, burns and deep shock. A harrowing photograph of the injured woman, in close up profile was widely run in the press following the disaster: Mrs. Lione probably never saw it; she was in the hospital, recovering, and coping with the loss of half of her family during the days when it ran.

Robert Lione

69 years after the fire, Anthony Cunningham and I found Robert Lione, Mary’s younger son, still living in the New York area and one of the final Morro Castle survivors. The Lione family graciously shared their information with Anthony for his book: Robert, who was 4 at the time of the fire, remembers little of the event other than hanging on the end of the rope by which he was lowered from the ship, but sent this moving clipping from 1934 which tells the story of the destruction of his family:

DEATH TAKES HALF OF FAMILY Ship Fire Victims’ Coffins Tragic Anniversary Finale Two flower-bedecked coffins side by side in the living room of their home in Sunnyside Queens yesterday were the mute finale to a joyous wedding anniversary that ended in the flaming ruins of the Morro Castle. For ten years, Anthony and Mary Lione had worked hard to maintain their home and bring up two husky boys. They decided to take a vacation: they and the children, Raymond,9, and Robert, 4. Two of them came back from that trip – Bobby who still prattles innocently at the home of a relative, unmindful of the tragedy, and the mother, suffering the pain of a flame seared body at Flower Hospital, and the deeper anguish of her double loss. Her husband and other son will be buried tomorrow. Mrs. Lione’s story vividly caught the horror of it all.“We rose at the sounds of alarm’ she said. “I did not stop to dress, but clothed the two boys. We were on deck about an hour and a half. Then I saw my husband and Raymond lowered over the side. They let Bobby down next, and I lost sight of him until we were carried aboard the Monarch of Bermuda. The last the mother heard of any of them was the voice of Raymond crying as he went over the side. “They’ve got to save me! I don’t want to die!” But his body was one of those taken ashore at Sea Girt. He was to have entered school yesterday as a fourth grade student. His father, Anthony, 34, a year older than his wife, was a salesman in the Jamaica office of an insurance company. He had been an architect and previous to that an orchestra leader. The two will be buried in Calvary Cemetery tomorrow, following a mass in St. Teresa’s Church where Lione was an usher. Meanwhile, the bodies lay together at home, lights from candles in front of the crucifixes flickering on the faces of the father and of Raymond, the boy who did not want to die.

Robert Lione recalls that the trip was his father’s reward for being named “Salesman of the Year.” He also opines that his father, a strong swimmer, may have been drowned by others clinging to him.

Raymond Lione’s death was later described by Frank Dittman, 16. He gave several accounts of the disaster to the press in 1934, and was interviewed by Hal Burton decades later. Although there are minor differences between his various accounts, the details remain consistent:

I was returning home on the Morro Castle from a summer of exploring craters in Guatemala and Mexico.

I was asleep in my stateroom on “C” Deck when somebody shook me. I woke up and smelled smoke and saw flames out of the porthole. I looked at my watch, and it was then 3:40 a.m. Saturday.

I put on my lifebelt immediately and went out on deck, going to the back of the boat. I tried to get to “D” Deck but the companionway was in flames and I could not make it.

Before I got very far toward the back of the boat a woman stopped me. She said she didn’t have a life preserver and she asked me for mine. Well, I gave it to her just to do something for the cause.

When I got to the starboard side I saw a lifeboat being lowered. I saw it was filled with crew members and there was not a single passenger in it. I though this was unusual, for I had been taught the crew was supposed to worry first about the passengers.

I couldn’t see anything except confusion. Nobody seemed to know what they wanted to do. A boy about 12 years old- he said his name was Raymond- came up to me and asked me to hold on to his hand. He couldn’t find his father.

The flames were getting so bad we couldn’t stand it any longer and so I just took the boy in my arms and we dived overboard.

I told Raymond to hang on to my back and I swam without a life preserver. Then a corpse floated by and I took the life preserver off it and put it on, but I had a tough time of it because the boy was still with me.

We drifted toward shore. I swam for seven hours – maybe six and a half- with Raymond on my back. Once he went to sleep and slipped off, and to bring him to consciousness again I almost bit his ear off.

We drifted into a crowd. Maybe twelve. And we all prayed there in the water. An aged woman, maybe 60, was the liveliest one of the lot. I would say she was pretty much all right. She was advising everybody what to do; how to keep their heads up.

A lifeboat with not many people in it went past us. They didn’t give us a tumble. Then another lifeboat came along when we were near shore. There were five live ones and five corpses in the boat. Somebody took the boy, Raymond, off my back and put him in the boat. Then a big wave hit the boat, and Raymond fell and smashed his head against the bottom of the boat. He was unconscious and may be dead.

When the boat landed on the Jersey Coast, I tried to find Raymond and take care of him. But there were police around and doctors and they forced me into an ambulance and took me to a hospital.

I wish I knew where Raymond was and if he is alive. He was the kind of kid it is easy to get attached to.

Frank Dittman was a cadet at the Taft School. He was widely hailed as one of the few outstanding heroes of the disaster, and was officially honored by the school later in 1934. The detail of his finding Raymond Lione aft on C Deck does not jibe with Mrs. Lione’s account of lowering him overboard. A second account, not written by Dittman, does correspond with Mrs. Lione’s story. The details coordinate with the above account except that the author quoted Dittman as saying that he first encountered Raymond Lione in the water about 100 feet from the ship. The probable cause for the discrepancy in the otherwise identical accounts is that Frank probably forgot, in the first case, to tell where and when he met Raymond and an editor created a believable meeting for the two to keep the narrative flow intact.

Mary Lione died in March 1970. She was buried in Calvary Cemetery with Anthony and Raymond. Anthony Lione was recorded as Andrew Lione in the cemetery records- whether that was a transcription error in 1934 or his real first name remains to be determined.

We’ll all meet at the Roosevelt Hotel

We’ll all meet at the Roosevelt Hotel

17 year old Ethel Hassal of Forest Hills, Queens, New York entered her neighborhood druggist’s store on the afternoon of September 8^th, intent on quickly completing an errand. The proprietor greeted the normally cheerful young girl with enthusiasm, jibing “Guess you’re overjoyed to be going back to school!” When Miss Hassal muttered a brief response, the puzzled shopkeeper tried again with “Guess your sister will be going back to college soon.” Ethel bit her lip before quietly replying “My sister may never go anywhere again. We were passengers on the Morro Castle.” The druggist later recalled “You could have knocked me over. I knew something was wrong with her, because she was normally so full of fun, but I had no idea they’d been on the Morro Castle.”

The ‘full of fun’ Ethel would later be remembered as having been the girl who after joining a group of survivors clinging to one another in the water spent the next few hours joking and keeping up the spirits of those who seemed about to give up. But Ethel Hassal would never remember anything amusing about the time she spent struggling for her life n the storm. “Yes, I suppose I did”, she would say when asked about her efforts to buoy up the others. “I can’t remember anything I said during those hours, but I do remember talking as hard and as fast as I could to keep two of the women who were with me from drowning.”

I jumped from the boat when the deck got so hot, and the smoke got so bad I couldn’t stand it anymore. It was pitch dark and at first I couldn’t see anybody. Then I swam into a man of about 23 or 24 who said his name was John. Presently we met two women. They had lifebelts on, but they couldn’t swim and they were scared. So, I tried to think of things to say to keep their minds off themselves. I told them to keep kicking and I told them that maybe we’d all lose a little weight in the water. I asked them first, of course, what their names were so everyone could be introduced. One woman was named Klintberg. (Caroline Klintberg) I don’t remember what the other one’s name was. I have no idea who John was. It was the first time any of us had met.

Ethel had boarded the Morro Castle with her father, James Hassal, her mother, and her sister Loretta, 20. She became separated from them in the struggle, and did not see any member of her family again until she witnessed her mother being carried off a fishing boat on a stretcher, at Spring Lake, New Jersey. Mrs. Hassal was admitted to Fitkin Hospital suffering from exposure and exhaustion, and Ethel returned alone to Forest Hills where she was reunited with her father who had been rescued by the Monarch of Bermuda. It was not until the following day that 20 year old Loretta, who had been brought back to New York aboard the City of Savannah reached home. The Hassals were one of only a handful of larger families to survive intact.

 

“Now, remember, if we get separated in the water we’ll all meet at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York” said Mrs. Grace Holden of Cincinnati , Ohio, before she, her two sons John (1922-1995) and Reuben, (1918-1995) and husband, Yale tennis player Reuben A. Holden (1890-1967) jumped from the ship together. An article in the Brooklyn Eagle described how they were parted in the water, and how the males of the family were put to bed in three separate locations, none at the Roosevelt Hotel, not knowing that Mrs. Holden’s body had already been identified in New Jersey by the manager of the Monmouth Hotel. Mr. Holden later gave this brief account:

My wife and I were awakened by the commotion in the hallway outside our cabin. Looking out our porthole, we could see the flames. Mrs. Holden and I went across the passageway and got our two sons out of their cabin. We went out on deck and found groups of people huddled about the deck rails by the stern

Reuben Andrus Holden IV graduated from Yale University, Class of 1940. He served as Secretary of Yale during the 1960s, authored several books, and married the cousin of U.S. President George Bush, senior.

 

Marjorie Budlong, 18, the daughter of the Vice-president of Central Vacuum Products Inc., and a student at Greenbriar Junior College later recalled:

“My friend, Doris Wacker, and I were up until 3 O’clock, visiting the stateroom of a shipboard friend, Miss Rosario Camacho. As we left for our own stateroom, we saw flames in the passageway. Doris rushed to her parents (Mr. and Mrs. Herman Wacker) and wakened them. They came back buckling their lifebelts and bringing one for me.

We all went up on C Deck. Everything was confusion there. We couldn’t see to get into a lifeboat. The flames kept advancing toward us. A little knot of people clustered around us. Then I hear a steward say; ’We’d better jump. We’ll all hold hands and jump together.’

We started to go over together, but my foot slipped on the rail and I fell alone. I came up dazed but unhurt and started to swim. The water seemed filled with bodies. They were always bumping into me.

Then after a while I found a young man swimming beside me. He didn’t have any life preserver and he gasped out that he was tiring. I told him to hang on to mine. He did. It dragged me down a little, but I could still keep my head above the water.

I guess that it was about two hours that he clung to me. He kept saying ‘I can’t hold out much longer.’ I kept telling him to hold on- we’d surely be picked up soon.

Lifeboats were passing us. I shouted to those which passed nearest. Most of them kept on going- I guess they couldn’t hear. One came so close that I talked to the people in it and asked them to take us aboard- the man, anyway. But they said they were filled up. They promised to come back.

It was 4 O’clock when we went over the side. It was about six I guess- dawn was just breaking- when the young man, a Cuban I believe, said ‘I’m going. Please send my love to my mother, won’t you?’ I said ‘What it your name?’ but he didn’t seem to hear me. A few minutes later his hand slipped off and down he went.

I kept paddling around. I wasn’t swimming toward any place, but I felt I had to do something to keep warm. About 8:30 a life boat stopped and picked me up, it was from the City of Savannah.”

Miss Budlong’s friends, Mr. and Mrs. Herman Wacker, and their daughter, Doris, remained together in the water, but after some time Herman said ‘Let me go. I’ve had enough,’ shortly after which he died. The two women kept him with them, but were forced to let the body drift away when they were rescued by the Paramount. His was one of the first bodies to wash ashore and be identified, appearing in the short Identifed Victims list made available to the press on the morning after the fire. Doris Wacker Manske and Marjorie Budlong remained in contact with one another for the rest of Marjorie’s life.

The young Cuban whose death Miss Budlong witnessed, was Franz Hoed de Beche, 18, of Havana who was en route to DeWitt Clinton High School in New York City with his friend Joseph Hidalgo (ca. 1916-2005). Two separate excellent accounts, apart from that of Miss Budlong, document the final hour of Hoed de Beche’s life. Joseph Hidalgo later recalled that they were awakened and looked out of their porthole to see flames pouring out of the ship above and forward of their cabin. Franz Hoed de Beche spent his last minutes aboard the liner with a friend from Havana, Miss Rosario Comacho. They were kept away from the railing by a male passenger and in Fire At Sea, (Thomas Gallagher) Miss Comacho’s 1934 account was quoted:

“Because of his height he could lean over the rail and breathe comfortably without abandoning the ship. Our coughing and desperate pulls at his shirt did not and could not dislodge him. Finally, as everything turned black before my eyes and I began losing consciousness, I did what later astounded me. With Franz pushing me and total suffocation only seconds away, I thrust my face with my mouth wide open and, before I knew what had happened, there were my teeth burying themselves in the fleshiest part of that man’s upper back. He turned, and reeled backwards with a loud scream of pain, and it was this clearance that offered us the opportunity to climb the rail, take one deep breath of fresh air and brace ourselves for the thirty foot jump.

Just as we were about to jump a gasping man lost his balance on top of the rail and, colliding with Franz, knocked us apart..I went down screaming Franz’ name…and that was the last I saw of him. “

Marjorie Budlong Vibbert died on October 16, 1998, at her home in Fayetteville, New York.

 

Franz Hoed de Beche was one of the 40 victims whose body was never recovered or identified.

Courtesy of Robert McDonnell, comes this letter written by Joseph Hidalgo a few years before his death:

“I was to return to my sophomore year in college. It was a week earlier than required; another boy, Franz, asked me to share our cabin. So we departed Havana on what was to be an unforgettable night.

I was deep sleeper in those days. At 3 a.m. I heard lots of running outside my door, so I got up to look out of the porthole and saw the sky red. I asked Franz to look out. He didn’t think it was anything. Then, someone knocked at our door. The guy said, “better dress and bring your life preservers. The ship’s on fire.”

Franz and I walked to deck A and we decided to look for Rosario Camacho who we had met the day before and was traveling alone. We found her without a life preserver. We both started to remove our preservers. Franz said, “don’t be ridiculous, you know I am the better swimmer.” I knew Franz competed in swimming races.

We were ordered by the cruise director Robert Smith to the lower deck. After Franz and Rosario passed, Smith said, “let the women and children first.” As the ship kept moving and we were on the aft deck, the smoke made us cough. After awhile, someone shouted that we were going to asphyxiate. This created a panic. Then, “let’s jump.” Before I knew it, my chest was against the rail. Then I saw Franz and Rosario holding hands and jumped from the deck above. I thought I could find them if I jumped about 60 ft.

I swam away from the propellors towards a group that was holding pieces of wood. After 7 hours my eyes started to close. I thought I saw a row boat approaching. I was too weak. I was picked up by the freighter, The City of Savannah. I was unconscious. I was taken to the steamship company in New York City. I was taken by ambulance to the New Yorker hotel. I could not eat. My throat was very sore and my stomach was affected by all the salt water.

I found out that Rosario was in the hospital with thigh burns from the ropes. I went to see her. She talked to me. That Franz tied her to a heavy rope hanging from one of the upper decks and then Franz left to look for help. He never came back and never found his body. Sad to lose such a boy of my age”

Bones and Ashes

Bones and Ashes

Margaret Saenz, of Havana and New York City, boarded the Morro Castle with her daughters, Caina and Marta, and son Braulio Saenz y Aguilera. They were destined for their New York residence in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

None of the Saenz family survived, and the details of what happened to them are a bit cloudy. G.M. Phelps, in his account, describes a Cuban boy suffering from third and fourth degree burns who died in the aft corridor on B Deck. “he was weeping mi madre.mi madre” and cried out ‘”don’t touch me” to his would-be rescuers before dying. This was most likely Braulio Saenz y Aguilera; although a second Cuban boy, Roberto Gonzales, 13, was also lost that night, his body was easily identified at Sea Girt. Margaret Saenz may well have been trapped in her A-Deck cabin- located aft of the lounge well opening, it would have been among the first the fire reached. Steward Charles Wright, and Dolly Davidson, both recalled encountering the badly burned Marta Saenz y Aguilera in the water, wearing a pink night gown and trying to remain afloat; she died while Wright held her upright. Hers was the only body recovered that could be easily identified; Dr. Braulio Saenz eventually chartered a private plane to conduct an aerial search for additional bodies it is possible that none were located. Margaret, Caina and Braulio Saenz-Aguilera appear on the “final” missing list.

Braulio Saenz y Aguilera was pulled through one of these windows but died aft on B Deck of massive burn injuries more…

On September 14, 1934, a detailed list of bodies recovered from within the ship was made available to the press, which raises more questions than it answers about the fates of the missing members of the Saenz family:

• Skull and chest bones of a man found in passage between Cabins A-19 and A-21.
• Bone fragments of a boy found in Cabin A-21
• Pivot tooth, bone fragments, mass of melted coins, hand mirror found in Suite A-3
• Skull of whippet dog found in cabin A-16
• Bone fragments and bones found in Suite H-N.
• Bone fragments found on Promenade Deck, forward by Captain’s bridge.
• Three coccyx attached to a small piece of the right pelvis; left pelvis; several skull fragments; several rib fragments and a quantity of human ash found in Captain’s cabin.
• A quantity of human ash was found in other locations on the ship.

The remains in Suite A-3 were those of the occupant, Catherine Cochrane, who was known to have been asleep in the suite at the time of the fire. The remains found in ‘Suite H-N’ (which does not appear on any deck plan I have seen) were positively identified as Max ‘Monroe’ Berliner and buried in Queens prior to September14th. The whippet that died in Cabin A-16 was the pet of Mrs. Angela D’Orn, of Havana, who survived. The bone fragments on the promenade deck by the bridge were, to the best of my knowledge, never identified. The remains in the Captain’s Cabin were positively identified as Captain Robert Willmott and buried in Brooklyn. Which leaves the remains found in and near cabin A-21, the Boat Deck cabin once occupied by Margaret and Braulio Saenz Y Aguilera. Braulio was known to have been pulled from the burning cabin through the window, and reliably reported to have died aft on B Deck where he was carried by the crew members who removed him from A-21. Perhaps the fragmentary remains of the ‘boy’ recovered from the room were those of Caina Saenz y Aguilera, and the skull and chest bones of the ‘man’ found in the hallway outside of the cabin were those of Margaret. Several articles published on the 12^th mention the body of a boy being found aft on B Deck, and the body of a woman being found forward on the ship lodged in a crevasse where deck plates had bucked. These were most likely Catherine Cochrane who appeared on the list distributed on the 14^th, and definitely Braulio Saenz y Aguilera who did not.

Head Waiter Charles Wright gave this detailed account of his experiences during the disaster, in which he tells of the death of Marta Saenz y Aguilera:

I was asleep when the alarm went off a few minutes after three o’clock. I ran at once to the passengers cabins. The lights of the ship already were failing. I knew some of the passengers by name and that helped me get them out of their cabins and into the passageways.

It was so dark I made them form a chain holding hands. Then the lights went out. A couple of sailors had flashlights and I took one of the passengers by the hand and led the line aft on C Deck.

There were flames and smoke between us and the Boat Deck and I couldn’t get the passengers to go through them to get to the lifeboats amidship. So, we got life preservers and made the passengers put them on. Then we tried to get them to jump, but the deck was over 30 feet above the water and none of them would go over. So we started pushing some of them over and lowering others on ropes. But one old woman got tangled in a rope. She was screaming and Trygue Johnson, a carpenter, climbed down the rope and cut her loose and they both fell into the sea. After that we couldn’t get anyone to go down the lines.

I jumped overboard into the middle of a group of 25 people. We could see the lights on shore- they didn’t seem so far away and that gave us hope.

I saw a little girl, one of the Saenz sisters. She was swimming and I went over and picked her up and put her arms through my lifebelt. Then we saw an elderly woman and we picked her up and she held on to my lifebelt as well.

The three of us kept afloat for about three hours. We picked up a board and that helped. Just about daylight the girl moaned and after that she was quiet and didn’t move. I held on to her for an hour more before I realized she was dead. Other passengers who were in the water around us told me to let the girl go and help someone who was alive, but I didn’t want to. But finally a man and his wife pleaded with me to let the girl go and I did.

Then a girl in a bathing suit and a life preserver came up to us. The girl pointed out the City of Savannah about a mile away. It was nearer than the shore and she suggested that she and I swim to it and get a lifeboat to come back and pick up the others in the water around us. We got to within 500 yards of the ship and then it moved off, away from us. I don’t know how long we were in the water after that before one of the Monarch of Bermuda lifeboats picked us up.

Charles Wright was sparing in his description of the Saenz girl in this written account, but in others he mentioned that she was horribly burned on the face and arms. Several others in the large group of survivors Wright joined spoke of the “badly burned girl in the pink nightgown” who died during the morning hours.

Charles Wright returned to sea and would survive two more shipwreck before January 1935 was over.

 

Eleanor Brennan

Camilla Conroy

Camilla Conroy, of Baltimore Maryland, and Eleanor Brennan of New York, probably did not view themselves as ‘symbols’ of anything, but from a contemporary (2006) viewpoint these two women demonstrate just how far things had progressed for women in the 22 years since the loss of the Titanic. Although both were unmarried and were at what would, in 1912, have been referred to as ” the danger age” the two were are far from Susan Weber, (Titanic’s 30-something ‘spinster’ being sent off to work as the housekeeper for a younger relative for lack of better prospects) as it was possible, in 1934, to get. They probably never met, but the two led parallel lives and died equally lonely deaths on September 8 1934.

Eleanor Brennan was born in Carmel New York, in 1898, the oldest daughter of Thomas and Nora Brennan. The family maintained a home in the town of Carmel as well as a farm residence in the rural district of Secor’s Corners. Eleanor, as often happened at the turn of the last century, was forced to leave school and become the primary caretaker of her younger siblings upon the death of her mother in 1912. But, in post World War 1 New York, this did not guarantee a life of drudgery, and as the children came of age. Eleanor took a job in Macy’s in New York City, commuting at first and, as she began to succeed, moving from rural Putnam County to the Bronx. By 1934 she was the head buyer for the Drapery and Curtain Department of the Herald Square flagship store. Although still unmarried, she did not seem to be suffering for it; in 1933 the Knights of Columbus had elected her Society Sweetheart and awarded her a diamond ring, and the fatal voyage was her second Morro Castle cruise for 1934. ‘Spinster’ was not a term which could be applied to Eleanor Brennan.

Camilla Conroy was, in her own way, as independent and successful as Eleanor Brennan. At 38 she was the secretary to State’s Attorney Herbert R. O’Conor, a position she had held for some time. Coworkers would praise her attributes after her death on the Morro Castle and the words “intelligent” and “competent” were most often used in that context. Pictures show Camilla to have been more stylish than conventionally pretty: her clothing was well tailored, up to the minute in terms of style, and from her posture and carriage in the published photos one senses that she was an extremely confident woman. In one way her life was the total opposite of Eleanor Brennan’s: her father had died after an accident, followed shortly thereafter by her mother who died after a sudden disease. When her brother passed away a few years prior to the Morro Castle disaster, Camilla was left as the sole support of her older, unmarried sisters May and Agnes. Eleanor had raised her siblings and then continued with her life, while Camilla had established a life for herself only to find herself the primary caretaker for her siblings in early middle age.

Eleanor was found the morning of the fire, drifting in her life jacket astern of the Morro Castle. Most likely she had died of exposure and exhaustion as did most of the victims: her doctor later related that she was completely unburned. 2000 friends and coworkers attended her wake in the Bronx, overflowing into the street, and an additional 1000 neighbors, old friends, and coworkers attended her Mass at St. James Catholic Church in Carmel. The church, and burial site at St. Lawrence O’Toole Cemetery in Brewster New York were said to be ‘awash’ in flowers as Eleanor, who may have been unmarried but who definitely was not alone, was laid to rest beside her mother.

State’s Attorney O’Conor took it upon himself to travel to New Jersey to find Camilla and spare her sisters the pain of viewing the bodies in the temporary morgues in Sea Girt and Spring Lake. He located her remains, and was able to learn that she had been found floating face down in her nightgown, without a life preserver, in the water beside the ship. This gives a hint to the probable circumstances of Camilla’s last minutes: crew members watching from the bow described how passengers, trapped in their cabins by fire, were jumping head first, rather than feet first, from their portholes and either knocking themselves out against the side of the ship, or stunning themselves upon impact with the water and drifting astern face down.

Agnes and May, her older sisters and the last survivors of what had once been a large family, were informed of the disaster, and Camilla’s death, by neighbors. They were taken to the home of a friend, where the press found them sobbing hysterically and exclaiming over and over “why did she have to go?”

Left: Eleanor’s grave. Right: The Brennan family town home in Carmel NY, occupied in 1934 by Eleanor’s aunt, Mary Lynch, no longer exists. The structure was cleared soon after it hosted Miss Brennan’s wake and replaced by the town’s first Art Deco diner. The diner, in turn, was supplanted by a gas station. The site was converted after September 2001 to a mini-park commemorating local WTC victims.

Francis Stewart, 34, of Riverdale, New York, considered himself fortunate to be aboard the Morro Castle. The cruise to Havana was his first-ever ocean voyage, and his booking was literally last minute. Employed as a civil engineer in the office of the Borough President in Richmond, Stewart had tried repeatedly to obtain passage aboard the ship to coincide with his week long summer vacation, but nothing was available in his price range. He had abandoned the idea of the Havana cruise, when he was notified by phone of a cancellation shortly before departure. He happily took the booking.

His cabin mate, George A. English of Lynbrook, Long Island, New York, was the last to see Francis alive. Like so many others, the two were awakened by the commotion in the hallway outside of their cabin, and English would later tell Stewart’s parents and brother that, when last seen, he was struggling to pull down his life preserver as smoke poured into the cabin and the hallway outside the door began to ignite.

Stewart, who did not know how to swim, died of exposure while awaiting rescue. The first-time voyager who considered himself lucky, was identified at Sea Girt New Jersey by his close friend Leo McConnell.. He was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Queens following a Mass at the Church of the Visitation in Kingsbridge, Bronx, New York.

 

Charles Graber, of Scarsdale New York, also considered himself extremely fortunate. The New York University student had spent July and August of 1934 working as an elevator attendant aboard the Morro Castle, and had quit after what proved to be the final completed round trip in order to prepare for his sophomore year.

“I finished in the post office Saturday afternoon and went across the street to a store. The radio was going and when they told me it was the Morro Castle, I couldn’t believe it. I knew all those fellows. But, I’m glad my special pal was saved. That was Harry Stamm, telephone operator. He worked in the cabin next to me for six trips. We were great friends.”

Charles Graber’s mother had wanted him to make one final trip before returning to college. “If I’d had my way, he’d have been on the boat Saturday” she said. “I liked the idea of him sailing, but I am certainly glad I did not have my way!”

September 8 ^th 1934 should have been a day of excitement for bath steward Rene Olavarria of New York City: his wife Dorothy was about to give birth to their child, and had circumstances been different he would likely have been there when Emilia Olavarria (1934- January 2004) was born on September 10^th at Metropolitan Hospital in New York Instead, Rene died of exposure and exhaustion, leaving his widow to support her newborn as best she could. His body was identified at Sea Girt, but the news of his death was withheld from Dorothy until she was considered strong enough to handle it.

The victim who wasn’t

The victim who wasn’t

Mrs. R..A. Sharott of Brooklyn, “the victim who wasn’t” may also have pondered her good fortune over the years following the fire. Although ticketed, and shown on initial passenger listings, Mrs. Sharott did not board the Morro Castle in Havana.. She gave brief interviews to the press in September 1934, stating that she was most definitely still alive and had not been aboard the ship at all: however; she never divulged the reason for her last minute change of plans. Her name ended up on several “final” lists of the missing.

When the Oriente arrived in New York City on September 12, it carried three additional passengers who had missed the departure of the Morro Castle from Havana the previous week. Misses B and D. Werner, and Mr. George Egelhoff, all of Brooklyn, had made the southbound leg of the Morro Castle’s final trip but failed to rejoin her when she set sail for New York. Mrs. Regina Werner, relieved, met her daughters at the Ward Line pier: she had not known for certain until that morning that her girls had not been aboard the Morro Castle. Egelhoff departed for his home in Brooklyn alone, not realizing that his brothers had come to the pier to meet him.

Ward Line Pier 13 (2006)

Otto Dunnhaupt, the Morro Castle’s printer sadly awaited the Oriente’s arrival that Wednesday. His stepson, William Fischer, 29, had also been employed aboard the Morro Castle as an assistant steward. William had fallen ill with an undisclosed ailment and was removed to a hospital in Havana. He died there, after the Morro Castle sailed, and was shipped home aboard the Oriente.Joseph Hellinghauser, conductor of the Maenner Gesang Verein Concordia (Concordia Society) and leader of the Rheinpfaelsmer Maennerchoir was another passenger who missed the Morro Castle in Havana. More than one hundred Concordia members made the voyage, and at least 25 died. How Mr. Hellinghauser came to miss the sailing, or when he returned to New York is not known.

Benjamin Edwards, of Alexandria Virginia, traveled to Sea Girt New Jersey searching for the body of his friend Harry Lipscombe, 54, whom he was sure had been aboard the Morro Castle.

Lipscombe, a conductor on the Southern Railway had been traveling with his coworker, Chief Dispatcher Fred C. Faulconer, 44, also of Alexandria. As employees of an AGWI affiliated railroad they traveled on a pass and therefore did not appear on any of the manifests or published lists. Faulconer was soon found at the morgue at Sea Girt, but of Lipscombe there was not a trace, and there was no immediate evidence that he had been aboard the ship at all.

The story of the missing Mr. Lipscombe faded from the papers after a few days and I’ve found no conclusive article stating that his body was found, or that incontrovertible evidence that he had been aboard the ship surfaced, or that Mr. Lipscombe had not been aboard at all and turned up safe in Alexandria. His name was not included in most of the newspaper lists of the dead or missing, but does appear as a fatality on Gallagher’ s list in Fire at Sea.

 

Father Raymond Egan, of St. Mary’s Church , White Plains Road, the Bronx, remained at the Morro Castle’s stern for as long as he could. Many survivors, not all of them Catholic, later recalled that he heard confessions and offered general absolution to those crowded into the open deck aft on C Deck. He survived, temporarily smoke blinded, and steadfastly refused to allow himself to be called a hero in his presence. Helen Brodie, 21, of Hartford Connecticut, and her cousin Agnes Berry,26, of Springfield, Massachusetts, were among those who Father Egan comforted that morning. Helen was brought ashore unconscious and upon awakening in the hospital immediately asked “Where is Agnes?” Miss Brodie later spoke briefly, but touchingly, about the disaster. She recalled that she and her cousin “drew strength” from Father Egan, and prayer, before they climbed the rail and jumped for their lives.

“A wonderful thing happened at the stern of that ship. A Catholic priest, I think his name was Father Egan, turned his back to the flames that were driving us overboard, held up his hands and calmly said “Let us pray!” Then he gave us general absolution. The flames came nearer and we jumped.

“The sea was lashed by a gale at the time. The waves were tremendous, but we held each other’s hand, swimming as well as we could. We were buffeted around terribly and Agnes became very weak after several hours. Time passed by slowly. Agnes became hysterical when we saw an airplane fly overhead~ the aviator waved to us and we knew he intended directing rescuers to us.

“Just then an especially high wave swept over us, and I felt Agnes’ hand wretched away. I never saw her after that. Five minutes later a pleasure boat came along and picked me up.

Agnes Berry was lost, and accounts differ as to whether or not her body was recovered.

New Jersey Governor Harry Moore may have been the aviator Miss Brodie and the unfortunate Miss Berry saw from the water. He arrived at the disaster scene soon after sunrise, while hundreds of survivors were still in the water, widely spread between the Morro Castle and shore. He remained on the scene for as long as he safely could, and effected rescue for several survivors by circling them with his plane and dipping his wings towards them until rescue craft moved towards in their direction.

Pyromaniac in the radio room

Pyromaniac in the radio room

The Morro Castle, as previously stated, drifted ashore the morning after the fire and burned herself out in full view of thousands who crowded the boardwalk and beach at Asbury Park, New Jersey. The press, shipping lines, airlines and the respective governments of the United States and Cuba made the immediate assumption that the fire was an act of terrorism aided, no doubt by the coincidental outbreak of fire aboard several other ships that night, the most serious being aboard the Grace Line’s Santa Rita. Airline service between Havana and New York was suspended, security was “stepped up” at the piers in New York City, and for several days after the fire shrill articles about “arson plots” were a feature of the tabloids and to a lesser extent, the more traditional papers. In Havana, twenty-five Radicals were rounded up as ringleaders and implementers of the plot and then, as quickly as it came, the terrorism angle faded away from the pages of the press. The cause of the fire, at least in the minds of the general public, was accepted as “unfortunate accident.” and three the matter rested until the 1950’s and the publication of Thomas Gallagher’s Fire at Sea, which first put forth the possibility that career criminal and known arsonist George White Rogers, radio man from the Morro Castle’s fatal voyage, started the fire intentionally in the linen storage locker in the liner’s Writing room. Gallagher, and later Hal Burton in his book The Morro Castle were careful to present the Rogers angle as speculation, but subsequent authors have not equivocated in establishing Rogers’ guilt and he has, posthumously, become the mass murderer in the radio room.

The terrorism angle, however, remains as interesting a possibility as the pyromaniac in the radio room. The fire came one year to the day after the Valentino look-alike bent on assassinating Machado’s ‘butcher’ Ludao was apprehended aboard the liner, and just a few days short of the anniversary of the day when the US Government had to intercede to prevent an angry mob from storming the ship and dragging United Fruit’s Molamphy ashore after rumors of his involvement in the murder of a female union organizer became widespread in Havana. One can speculate that it would be considerably easier for a revolutionary willing to- possibly- die for the cause, to enter the liner’s writing room unnoticed and set the fire than it would be for the hulking crewman Rogers to do so, and one could also speculate on symbolism of the date for members of the ABC revolutionary group but, as with Rogers, the evidence to elevate terrorism beyond speculation to fact is simply not there.

In late 1934, the Morro Castle was the subject of a folk ballad. The tradition of commemorating and preserving topical events through song was on the wane during the depression years, and “The Morro Castle Wreck” was then, and remains, an obscurity;

Cries of ‘Fire!’ filled the air,
mad’ning scenes were everywhere,
the flame swept decks were far beyond control.
In a cabin overhead,
lay the Captain who was dead,
while Death took charge, demanding his great toll.

And all around, ocean waves
Carried poor humans to their graves.
Surely Angels way up there
wept for loved ones way down here.
Beseeching God for mercy on their souls.

Many hundreds made the trip
on the Morro Castle ship.
Bidding good-bye to loved ones that were dear.
And the proud ship sailed along
With its happy, merry, throng.
And none imagined death was hov’ring near.

But all around, ocean waves,
waited to carry souls to graves.
Surely God in Heav’n above
in His mercy, filled with love,
bade angels charge to lost souls in their care.

Three’s no doubt that something failed
When the Morro Castle sailed.
Perhaps t’was carelessness upon that deep sea.
They’ll investigate, they’ve said,
but it won’t restore the dead,
the innocent ones of that tragedy.

And all around, ocean waves,
carried poor humans to their graves.
But the guilty ones shall pay
on the last great Judgment Day,
When God shall judge each soul in His glory.

The song, more factually accurate than many of its genre, exists on at least one 78 RPM record, released by Roy Whitely on the Melotone label. It has a haunting tune and, unexpectedly for a country record of the 1930s, the performer comes close to emulating an Argentine tango singer on the chorus. Listening to it one can easily call to mind a frightened pretty girl in pajamas who lost her chance to live when she hesitated to run into smoke and flames with her traveling companions, a little boy dressed in a raincoat entrusted to strangers who could not save him, a woman without a lifejacket thrown overboard by well intentioned souls bent on saving her, and the 131 or so others who died lonely deaths that September morning a lifetime ago.

Rescue of Radio Operator Rogers