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Who-Me? The most serious confusion was among high-ranking officers in the pier shed: handsome, urbane Rear Admiral Adolphus Andrews, Commandant of the District (since transferred to command of the Eastern Sea Frontier), the captain of the port, Coast Guard officers, the district material officer. Said the report: "The Commandant did not consider himself either in charge ... or to be the responsible naval officer present. He considered the Normandie to be under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Ships and of the district material officer. . . . He considered the fire department to be in charge of the fire." He considered himself merely an adviser. The district material officer "considered himself also to be acting in an advisory capacity." The Coast Guard "looked to orders from the captain of the port," [who] "considered the Commandant in command."
Blame for the disaster was laid by the committee on carelessness, negligence, indecision, lack of coordination, divided authority. Said the report in its conclusions: "There was much talk of the responsibility of the contractor under his contract.
That is a contractual responsibility within the proper jurisdiction of the courts; but there was a higher responsibility to the nation at large. . . .
"The protection of Government property should always remain in the hands of Government representatives, and no Government representative should feel that he is absolved from the duty of full and entire protection of Government property."
The committee could not quite bring itself to say the words, but the inference was there to read: blame for the shameful disaster to the $60,000.000 Normandie, which still lay like a carcass in the dirty Hudson River, belonged to the U.S. Navy.
But no sooner was the committee indictment out than the Navy chuffed up with its own report. "Direct and sole" cause of the fire, a Navy Court of Inquiry solemnly ruled, was "gross carelessness and utter violation of rules of common sense" by Robins Dry Dock employes. Full responsibility, the Navy grumped, belonged there. Recommendation: to sue Robins for damages to the full extent of liability.
The Navy Court allowed that if any possible blame could possibly be put on Navy men, it belonged, not to brass hats, but to two men far down the line-two lieutenant commanders upon whom Secretary Knox, in an accompanying letter, turned his sternest glare.