The Morro Castle fire: Tragic accident or mass murder?

摘要

Dr. DeWitt Van Zile raised his glass in a sardonic salute to the officers of the cruise ship Morro Castle. "Here's to death," he toasted. As the ship's doctor, it had fallen to him to wrestle the body of Capt. Robert R. Wilmott from a bathtub and pronounce him dead ― apparently of a heart attack ― just after 1900 on Sept. 7, 1934. "Which one of us will be next?" he asked, with a bitter grin, no doubt. He got his answer early the following morning, as Morro Castle lay smoldering on the beach at Asbury Park, N.J. Of the 318 passengers and 230 crew who had sailed from Havana two days before, 133 were dead. Most were incinerated in their cabins. The rest lolled lifelessly in stormy seas, drowned in attempts to escape the inferno.