SS Morro Castle (1930)

SS Morro Castle was an American ocean liner built for the Ward Line, the New York and Cuba Mail Steam Ship Company, and is remembered for the fire that destroyed her in September 1934. She was built at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, where work began in January 1929 under a federal loan scheme that helped American shipping companies replace old ships. She was christened in March 1930 with her sister ship Oriente following in May. Each ship was 508 feet long, measured 11,520 gross register tons, had turbo-electric transmission with General Electric turbo generators driving motors on twin propeller shafts, and carried 489 passengers with 240 officers and crew. Morro Castle began her maiden voyage on 23 August 1930 and worked the Havana to New York run, helped by Prohibition. On the morning of 8 September 1934, after her captain had died the evening before, a fire broke out in a storage locker and she ran aground off Asbury Park with 137 passengers and crew lost. The cause was never established, and the ship was scrapped at Baltimore in 1935.