May
Concatenation of Events
There are situations where several events come together to create a significant event. Part of the contributing factors are outside circumstances and part are a sequence of incidents. All contribute to the situation. No one alone causes it, and all seem to be necessary to it.
A friend is a local historian. One of Gary’s favorite topics is the Morro Castle ship disaster. He gives presentations on the Morro Castle’s unfortunate demise in 1934. I spent the last few days reformatting a small book he wrote on the subject.
The Morro Castle disaster occurred in September of 1934. The ship was returning from Cuba. Its captain wanted to outrace a coming tropical storm. On September 7th, the captain felt ill. The doctor came to check on him at 7:45 and found him dead. A fire started on board seven hours later. Between the acting captain’s hesitancy in calling for help, running right into a nor’easter, and years of neglect and corner cutting due to lack of funds caused by the Depression, the disaster erupted. Problems were compounded by half the crew abandoning ship, leaving many passengers to fend for themselves. 143 people died that night. The situation had gotten so out of control that these losses occurred in spite of numerous rescuers sailing out to help.
The Morro Castle came to rest alongside Asbury Park’s convention center. Fire continued to burn for eight days. Substandard materials and delayed maintenance joined with crew unrest, bad weather, bad command decisions and various other factors to make the disaster such a horror. In hindsight, it looks as if everything were done to make disaster almost inevitable.
Could it have been prevented? Would it have been prevented?
Was it human error, Wyrd, nature, or a combination?
Did the owners of the Morro Castle use up their quotient of “luck” by delaying maintenance using substandard materials and allowing poor labor practices?
The Morro Castle disaster is one of those events where everything seems to point to disaster. There have been many others. Perhaps a few of them give us a clue to the operation of Wyrd. We can only find out by asking the right questions.
