(3 of 5)
Soon after the fire alarm had sounded. the port side of the ship was like the inside of a Bessemer converter. Astern, cut off from ship's officers by the fire, frightened passengers in night clothes prayed, shrieked, sang "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here." A young Catholic priest walked calmly around giving all comers final absolution. Eight of the ship's twelve boats were lowered. There was fighting to get into these. "Everybody was pushing and screaming topside." said Seaman Carl Jackson. "The passengers were fighting to get to the lifeboats, but it was no good. They were on fire. I fought and got into a boat. Three women got into the boat, too. The air was so full of smoke it hurt."
Less brutal was the conduct of slangy Able Seaman Jerry Edgerton: "I kept thinking about that poem 'The Boy Stood On The Burning Deck.' Finally my bunk pals shook me out of it and we decided to go overboard. A couple of girls came up and asked—polite but excited—if we'd mind their going along with us. I said. 'Sure, help yourself to the Atlantic and jump in.' When we were in the water I don't know what happened to one of the girls but when the other seemed about ready to give up I said. 'Come on. girlie, it's only a short walk.' Then a lifeboat picked us up."
Gouverneur Morris Phelps Jr., son of a well-known Manhattan physician, stood at the rail with his father and stepmother. Plainly visible were the shore lights across the stormy waters. Dr. Phelps turned to his wife and said: "Katharine, that light over there must be Scotland Lisht and that one over there must be Ambrose. That means that the beach over there must be less than seven miles away. I think, dear, our one chance is to go over and try to make the beach on our own. Will you come?" Mrs. Phelps smiled through her tears and nodded. Then Dr. Phelps turned to his son and said: "Govvie, I have all I can do to take care of Katharine. You're a man now. You can take care of yourself. Don't wait too long. . . . Good luck!" And Dr. Phelps lifted Mrs. Phelps over the rail, dropped her into the water and went in after her.
All the Phelpses were saved. "Govvie" jumped off the stern, found a dangling rope, clung to it for six hours. Said he afterward: "I had to watch women I'd met and danced with drop off one by one and hear their desperate and familiar voices pleading. Finally there was a perfect rain of people. A hundred or more came leaping over the side to escape a sudden burst of flames. They hit one another in the descent. Many sank like stones."
At dawn the blazing Morro Castle was surrounded by rescue ships, the great three-funnelled Monarch of Bermuda, the coastwise steamer City of Savannah and the freighter Andrea F. Luckenbach, one of whose officers in a small boat grabbed young Phelps, dragged him to safety. Contorted faces appeared at cabin portholes, trapped, staring out from the red-hot plates. Some cursed and raved. In his own little private hell, one man seemed to smile and wave his hand in farewell.
All day long Coast Guardsmen, fishermen and Jersey boatmen plied the choppy seas, trying to distinguish between the floating bodies of the dead and the floating bodies of the living. The former were left to wash ashore with the tide.