Quotes from Gordon Thomas

Dr. Giro was probably the only man on board qualified to recognize Rogers for what he was—the victim of an unusual medical disease, adiposogenital dystrophy, also known as Fröhlich'e syndrome, a pituitary disorder which frequently produces social maladjustment in which intelligence is not impaired, only warped.

Four of the ship's lifeboats were virtually useless because of their position alone. They were the first two forward on either side. In an emergency lowering, they would come down outside the enclosed promenade deck. It might well be impossible, during an emergency, to open the heavy glass windows in order to get into the boats.

The chief engineer was not the only member of the crew who disregarded the safety of the passengers. Of the first eighty people lowered away in lifeboats, seventy-three were crew members.

The seamen who dumped gun and powder barrel into the hiding place Hackney had found carried the apparatus past the wireless room. When Chief Radio Officer George Rogers stopped them to ask what they were doing, they told him the purpose of their mission. He expressed interest, saying he never knew the space existed.

There is one inescapable fact: by the time the SOS was sent, the Morro Castle was beyond help.

solution to the situation; there was every possibility that it might also reflect Batista's wishes. He had quickly accepted the proposal—with one important proviso. He argued that it would be an act of good faith on the part of the Cuban government to allow the passengers

Those millions of sales represented a loss in share value on the New York Exchange alone of some $10 billion. That was twice the amount of currency in circulation in the entire country at the time. Eventually, the total lost in the financial pandemic would be put at a staggering $50 billion—all stemming from a virus that proved fatal on October 29, 1929: the day the bubble burst.

The Ward Line paid the lowest possible wages and drove the crew as hard as it could. Ordinary seamen earned $35 a month; firemen, $52; quartermasters, $55; engine-room oilers, $60.

The ship's officers were in a substantially higher bracket. First Officer Warms earned $180 a month; Captain Wilmott, the princely sum of $300 a month. Chief Engineer Eban Abbott's paycheck was $220 a month. For that salary Abbott was expected to keep the engines running smoothly, and play his part in entertaining the passengers, particularly the women on board.

In the five hours the market had gone mad on October 29, it was later estimated that almost as much money in capital value vanished into thin air as the United States had spent on World War I. The loss was around ten times the budget of the Union in the entire Civil War.

There is strong circumstantial evidence that during the twenty minutes he was taking "a breath of air," George White Rogers prepared an incendiary device—or several such devices—designed to set the Morro Castle on fire and threaten the lives of all its crew and passengers.

Like the fire drills, lifeboat drills had been suspended by Captain Wilmott because the captain insisted they "upset passengers." As a reminder of the potential cruelty of the sea, they were not in keeping with the balmy world of the pleasure cruise.

Chief Engineer Eban Abbott was about to dress for dinner when the engine room called. Assistant Engineer Antonio Bujia reported that one of the battery of fire boilers had a fuel blockage.

At 2:51 A.M. student engineer Tripp wrote in his log: "Night watchman Foersch reported to captain that he had just seen and smelled smoke coming out of one of the small ventilators on the port after side of the fiddley." The fiddley was a galvanized-iron duct supplying fresh air to the first-class writing room on B deck, among other rooms.

Solid-steel fire doors had been built into entrances to the public rooms to deal with just such an emergency. It would have taken Hackney only a few moments to isolate the writing room from the rest of B deck by lowering its fire door. Clarence Hackney did not take that preventive measure. Smoke billowed after him as he ran for the telephone near the door connecting the first-class lounge to the smoking room. He dialed the bridge.

But it was futile. Half a dozen hoses under full pressure would have been required to make an impact on the blaze enveloping the writing room. Even if fire crews had brought hoses to bear on the flames, it would have made little difference: the engine room was unable to provide sustained pressure because of the closed boiler.

Military hospitals had reported that some anaesthetics had made patients speak while under their influence. This had led to a number of attempts to use cannabis as a truth drug. The point Dulles made was that now cannabis was widely regarded as respectable, and that in time the pioneer work of Dr. Cameron would be similarly looked upon," Buckley told the author.

In his first note on the case, Dulles had written: "I had met Olson on several occasions. He was the last person I expected to commit suicide. This was the makings of a serious problem.

Acting Captain Warms' reasons for not requesting help from the cutter are equally unsatisfactory. He had not anticipated that the Tampa would carry such gear. Even so, he declared later, it would not have been feasible to ferry it across in such weather.

Acting Captain Warms' first terrible miscalculation came when he executed the textbook turn into the wind to meet the storm squall.

The "sporting goods" shipments—kegs of high explosives, drums of gunpowder, cannon powder, smokeless powder, belts of machine-gun ammunition, cartridges, bullets, and shells—continued. In one month, August 1934, the Morro Castle transported over one hundred crates of assorted weapons to Havana. This arsenal was always unloaded at night by soldiers of the Cuban Army; often a convoy of trucks was needed to carry away the crates.

The Morro Castle traveled 3.1 miles head on into the storm at a speed of 18.8 knots for over ten minutes. In that time, the wind, gusting at over 20 knots, had acted as a giant bellows, fanning and speeding the flames the length of the ship.

The three volumes on the case compiled by Police Captain Vincent Doyle and exhaustive investigations by Captain Wilmott's lifelong friend Captain George Seeth provide further evidence. As far as is known, Doyle and Seeth never met. Neither was even aware of the other's existence. Yet, somewhat astonishingly, both came to the conclusion that Rogers poisoned Captain Wilmott as a deliberate act of retaliation.

One of them, in 1925 the newly elected Finance Minister, Anatole de Monzie, when making his inaugural speech forthrightly declared: "Gentlemen, the treasury is empty." It was a mistake. De Monzie survived this spark of lucidity by only a few hours; that afternoon he found himself removed from office.