January 2010 – Cruising The Past Website Of The Month – THE WARD LINE
We applaud Michael Andelson’s THE WARD LINE terrific website!
The Ward Line is best remembered for the ill-fated Morro Castle of 1930.
Andelson’s site not only explores the Morro Castle disaster but gives you a unique history of The Ward Line.
Footage from the fire of 1934 to the aftermath of the Morro Castle luxury liner.
The turbo-electric liners Morro Castle and Oriente were the largest and finest Ward Line ships ever built, though hardly the most successful.
Launched in the early stages of the Great Depression, the so-called “millionaire’s yachts” were fast, well-appointed, and safer than most ships of their era.
On the Oriente in 1939 – The bar of the Oriente of 1930 was one of the few shipboard locations that betrayed her Art Deco origins. All in all, the interiors of the Morro Castle and Oriente were quite traditional.
But a strange series of circumstances led to the Morro Castle’s destruction by fire in September 1934, resulting in the loss of 134 lives– the largest loss of life at sea in peacetime in U.S. history.
This tragedy has been the subject of many articles, books, and television programs, so this page is dedicated solely to images and memorabilia related to the Morro Castle and her sister.
Hopefully, these images give a better insight into the ship before her tragic loss– the “feel” of the ship, how she was advertised, and life onboard the Ward Line’s most infamous liner.
The Morro Castle, like the Titanic, was a scene of great tragedy.
