The tragedy of Morro Castle: how a terrible fire on a ship turned into a farce of a "horror attraction." Scoundrels and heroes

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 in his hometown cinemas, department stores, port warehouses were on fire. 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, as stated in the brochure. 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 jumped out into the corridor. Acrid black smoke hurt his eyes. The ship's library was on fire. Metal cabinet A strange blue flame was 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 licked through the black curtain of smoke as they licked the door of the adjoining 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. With perplexity, 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 flame 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 some unknown reason, 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 recently had dinner,” 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 kept 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 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 flame 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 of 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 vessel, 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 rapped, "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", he 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. Gasping for breath from coughing, 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"?- asked Worms, 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 path 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 vapors. Choking on the sulfuric vapors and almost losing consciousness, the radio operator found the strength to reach the key again and convey a 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. I can’t transmit anymore. "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.
- You are 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 central US newspapers went out into specials - the focus was on the events last night aboard the Morro Castle. Rogers' last radiogram, typed in bold, was striking. It was she who owed their rescue four hundred passengers of the "safest ship in the world." Below the radiogram were interviews received by reporters from those who first made it to 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 eyewitnesses to the disaster accused Captain Worms and his crew of cowardice. Here is what the son of the famous American surgeon Phelps wrote: “I swam 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. Around her, in the darkness, faces and outstretched hands gleamed, 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 lowered by order of the 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.
134 people were burnt alive in the fire, 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 as a mechanic was taken away 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 movie "I Will 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 naturally shy 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 happily 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 the 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 captain's poisoning, 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 up 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 embarrass 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, on one of the quiet avenues of the sleepy town of Bayonne, an 83-year-old compositor William Hummel and his adopted daughter Edith were brutally murdered. Traces of the crime led the 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 (he received $ 1,175 in insurance claims). ”
Finally, there was a fire at Morro Castle. The life ending of the "hero", arsonist, pyromaniac, was absolutely ordinary: Rogers died in prison from a heart attack.
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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 Indies 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, 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 the last words of 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. He also had a New York Harbor pilotage degree. Worms decided to stay on the bridge until the arrival of the ship in port, as the weather forecast received from the radio indicated that the Morro Castle near the 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 a 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, in panic jumped out into the corridors. 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 thick glass with chairs square portholes jumping down to 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 flame roared 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 of the impending 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 reasons unknown, Worms did not appoint any of his assistants to supervise the extinguishing of the fire. The passengers themselves tried to extinguish the fire. In a 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 changed course every now and then, 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 to transmit a signal SOS Distress 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 a signal SOS Distress signal... The head of the ship's radio station, George Rogers, did not manage to transmit the distress signal to the end - spare acid batteries exploded in the radio room. The deckhouse was filled with acrid vapors. 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 am, the radio operator of the British liner Monark of Bermuda, which was nearby, rattled off a message received through the headphones: “CQ, SOS Distress signal, 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 salvation 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 main 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 "looked like 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 jammed, he told how the liner was still towing the boats behind him, how huge pieces of thick glass from the windows of the saloons, which had burst 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, and when the rescue ship approached the Morro Castle Navy Navy USA "Tampa", 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 liner's tank in order to deliver the burned-out ship to New York. But in the evening the weather worsened 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.

The 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 Ashbari 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 the Ward Line firm refused. She chose to sell the burnt-out Morro Castle, which once 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, and that 103 of the 134 dead were passengers.

In addition to the dead, hundreds of people, having received severe burns, remained disabled for life ... America was shocked by the cowardice, mediocrity of Worms and the meanness of Abbott. 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 described events 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 of the drama at Morro Castle.

In 1936, Rogers left the naval service and settled in his hometown. There he was happily 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 in prison.

The investigation established that Rogers - former employee American police - the most dangerous person for society, a murderer, swindler, thief and 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 fire to the ship with time bombs at two or three locations. He turned off the automatic fire detection system and started up 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 ...

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 Indies 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, 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 the last words of 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. He also had a New York Harbor pilotage degree. Worms decided to stay on the bridge until the arrival of the ship in port, as the weather forecast received from the radio indicated that the Morro Castle near the 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 a 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, in panic jumped out into the corridors. 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 flame roared 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 of the impending 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 reasons unknown, Worms did not appoint any of his assistants to supervise the extinguishing of the fire. The passengers themselves tried to extinguish the fire. In a 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 changed course every now and then, 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 manage to transmit the distress signal to the end - spare acid batteries exploded in the radio room. The deckhouse was filled with acrid vapors. 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 the 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 salvation 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 main 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 "looked like 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 jammed, he told how the liner was still towing the boats behind him, how huge pieces of thick glass from the windows of the saloons, which had burst 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 liner's tank in order to deliver the burned-out ship to New York. But in the evening the weather worsened 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.
The 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 Ashbari 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 the Ward Line firm refused. She chose to sell the burnt-out Morro Castle, which once 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, and that 103 of the 134 dead were passengers.
In addition to the dead, hundreds of people, having received severe burns, remained disabled for life ... America was shocked by the cowardice, mediocrity of Worms and the meanness of Abbott. 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 described events 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 of the drama at Morro Castle.
In 1936, Rogers left the naval service and settled in his hometown. There he was happily 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 in prison.
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 fire to the ship with time bombs at two or three locations. He turned off the automatic fire detection system and started up 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.

In the 1930s, everyone dreamed of getting on this liner, because he sailed straight to a tropical paradise. The fire at Morro Castle was a tragedy for some and a real gift for others. Some have even managed to cash in on the most realistic horror ride in the world.

Attraction

The whole world learned about the events at the Morro Castle on the night of September 7-8, 1934. The tragedy began with the unusual death of the captain. Witnesses say he was poisoned. And at 2:45 am a fire started on the ship in a secluded place. At this time, there were 548 people on board.

Only at 4 am the rescuers reached the smoldering hull of the liner. There were still many people on it. All this time, the Morro Castle drifted on the ocean waves.

Only on the evening of September 8, Morro Castle was finally thrown ashore, 60 meters from the beach Asbury Park(New Jersey). New Yorkers quickly learned about the news. Crowds of curious people began to approach the burned and still smoldering ship. People wanted to see Morro Castle. The day after the tragedy, there was no drive to Asbury Park. 350 thousand people gathered here, and all the roads were clogged with cars.

Local businessmen, sensing the profit, set a payment of 25 cents for the entrance to the park. They say that no other attraction in history has caused such interest. By paying additionally, one could get on the deck of the still smoldering ship. Thrill-seekers were given firefighters' clothing, respirators and flashlights. They were sent to walk along the burned-out skeleton - more than a naturalistic "attraction of horror". Its success was so loud that the Governor of New Jersey even planned to turn the ship's hull into a permanent attraction. But the shipowner was against it and sold the ship entirely for scrap.

Years later it became known that Morro Castle was set on fire by a ship's radio operator-pyromaniac. He poisoned the captain.

Thus ended the story of the Morro Castle liner, which transported Americans who were only
... See also .

11-07-2007

I looked on the net for information about the 1934 fire on the American steamer Morro Castle, described by Skryagin in his book, as promised, dear Editor. Regarding the detective component, no evidence of Skryagin's speculations, except for the usual reporters' lies, was found, and this, however, is completely uninteresting at a level higher than the philistine. Who today is interested in all sorts of dirty tricks of a detective nature that took place seventy years ago?

The captain of the ship was not poisoned, but died of a heart attack, as for arson, there is no convincing evidence of it. The fire broke out in the latrine next to the library, not in the library, and not from a mythical incendiary device, but the devil knows what.

One of the credible articles on Morro Castle can be found on the Passenger Traffic History website http://www.garemaritime.com/features/morro-castle/01.php

In particular, it says:

"Stories of poisoning and intrigue later circulated, but Wilmott" s final recorded words ("could you mix me up an enema?" Delivered by telephone) and the fact that he was found toppled over into his bathtub with his pants around his ankles strongly suggest that he died of a heart attack or a stroke while trying to force a bowel movement; the doctors who were summoned agreed that it most likely was a heart attack ".

(“There were rumors of poisoning and conspiracy, but Wilmot’s last words on the phone,“ Could you get me an enema, ”and the fact that he was found collapsed in the bathtub with his pants down to his knees strongly suggests that he died of a heart attack or stroke while struggling with constipation; the doctors who called, concluded that it was most likely a heart attack. ")

However, interesting information you can learn from the history of the fire at Morro Castle. There are three dubious points in this case: why a passenger ship equipped with "the latest technology" burned down like a sheaf of straw, why a team led by a senior mech escaped from the ship, forgetting about the passengers, and why the passengers behaved in a bestial manner, pushing away from the lifeboats women and children.

As for the fire, there are no special secrets. To some extent, designers are also farmers, since the most important thing in design work is to sell a project. No, they did everything right - both automatic fire extinguishing and alarms, but they "forgot" to tell the customer that all this iron is worthless without constant checks of the operability of fire-fighting devices and without persistent training of the crew on actions in the event of a fire. You can't call a fire train at sea. The phrase "not worth the price" is key here, since they could not evaluate their project with such a sum.

There is an interesting circumstance associated with the assessment by the designers of emergency situations during the operation of the design objects. All such cases are divided into "design" and "beyond design". The instructions describe "design" situations, those that the designers consider more likely, the rest of the situations are considered "beyond design", and the designer is simply silent about them. A beyond design situation occurred at Morro Castle when savvy passengers dropped the windows, creating the conditions for the vessel to be turned into a forge. The secret here is simple, and it lies in the field of black markings (we will call this for short "free market" and "market economy." You can foresee almost everything, but it will cost a lot of money. then this is the tenth thing for a farmer.

It is curious that while reading the descriptions of the death of "Morro Castle" I constantly had associations with the Chernobyl accident. This is far from accidental, almost the same reasons underlie all misfortunes. In Chernobyl, the designers "forgot" to tell the reactor operators that under certain circumstances the reactor could be blown to shreds by an atomic explosion, or, in the language of these shy designers, "an uncontrolled chain reaction on prompt neutrons can occur in the reactor."

There is one more subtlety in the "customer-designer-operator (ship's crew)" relationship. The project is ordered, of course, by the customer, someone sitting in an office, and not on board a ship or at a nuclear power plant. His explosions-fires are of more theoretical interest, he will not have to burn or explode. Designers also rarely die, leaving this honorable right to the operators (team).
There is an unspoken opinion that the one who is the first to die will be able to figure out how this can be avoided. Indeed, where operators are sane, they quite often find and, as they can, correct the mistakes of designers.

Here we come to question number two: what was this team at Morro Castle?

Based on the information gleaned from the network, I believe that the team consisted of people morally decayed, who lost their human appearance due to closeness to the same farts.

Prohibition on the mainland and the absence of it in Cuba, where only the ship went, created a very specific situation. The ship resembled a floating brothel, transporting drink and copulation lovers on the cheap. All-about-all cost $ 75, round trip (excluding gender discourse). Prostitutes were constantly present on the ship, but, mysteriously, they were constantly not included in the passenger list. Moreover, the ship was sailing without interruptions, as required by the laws of fartsovka, and if the sailor (the command staff were allowed leave) wanted to rest or visit relatives, he had to quit. The staff turnover was appalling, so what a fire drill!

Again, I remember Chernobyl, and the stories of one of the station managers about how they had fun organizing cultural trips for the employees to the Black Sea coast, where almost everyone got drunk to a white beast. As for the moral character, the Chernobyl atomic lobbyists dragged everything they could from the station. In June 1986, during the liquidation of the consequences of the accident, I needed metering pumps, which, as I assumed, must have been at the station. After interrogation with passion one of the engineers who had to be intimidated by the KGB, he admitted that he had pulled the motor and gearbox from the dispenser in order to New Year rotate a Christmas tree in your apartment. The investigators could not find the rest of the dispensers in my face.

The Morro Castle crew, from the star mech to the last bilge sailor, were preoccupied with the proceeds of smuggling and the prostitutes they illegally brought aboard the ship in Havana. They had no time for fire training.

The crew of the ship, as well as of the nuclear power plant, must consist of honest people with certain moral principles. otherwise the ship will sink and the station will explode. Not without the help, if not the main role of owners and designers.

Finally, why did the passengers on the Morro Castle act like pigs? The reason here, I think, is clear to everyone - it was mainly the pigs who decided to grunt for cheap, finally realize their American dream.