Postcards & Penny Presses: How One New Jersey City Profited from the Morro Castle Disaster

The SS Morro Castle, flagship of the Ward Line, caught fire on September 8, 1934. The Coast Guard attempted to tow the stricken liner but was unsuccessful. The Morro Castle broke free. Onlookers ashore reportedly cheered when the tow line snapped, and the smoldering ship started drifting. She ultimately came to rest on the Jersey Shore at Asbury Park. Onlookers flocked to the shoreline to gaze up at the smoking steel behemoth that had washed ashore. The Morro Castle would keep burning for days afterwards.

In any other maritime disaster, this might be considered the end. But the next chapter in the Morro Castle story was just beginning. With a 508-foot burning shipwreck on their hands, the residents of Asbury Park had to deal with the influx of sightseers coming to see it. This was when things took a rather macabre and tactless turn. Dark tourism had come to the Jersey Shore.

Dark Tourism

What exactly is dark tourism?

Simply put, it refers to visiting places associated with death, tragedy, and human suffering. Think of places like Gettysburg, Dealey Plaza, Dracula’s Castle, the Tower of London, the Hindenburg crash site, and the Lizzie Borden House. The phrase was coined in 1996 by Professor J. John Lennon at Glasgow Caledonian University. It can also be referred to as macabre tourism, black tourism, and grief tourism. There’s even a travel website that has a comprehensive list of over 1,000 dark tourism sites worldwide (it’s pretty cool so definitely check it out).

But while the name is relatively new, the phenomenon itself isn’t. It seems that we humans have always been fascinated by death and tragedy. It’s human nature. We’ve also been flocking to the places where terrible things have happened for centuries. Consider the crowds that gathered at the Coliseum in Ancient Rome to watch gladiators fight it out, or that gathered in the 16th century to watch public executions. Some people supposedly watched the Battle of Waterloo unfold from their carriages, while picnickers actually enjoyed their lunches as the First Battle of Bull Run descended into chaos (for the Union anyway).

It was only inevitable, then, that people should flock to Asbury Park to catch a glimpse of the Morro Castle wreck.

“Asbury Park needs a shipwreck”

In 1884, the Daily Spray featured an editorial by William K. Devereaux with the heading, “Asbury Park needs a shipwreck.” He then expanded on this:

Why? To make Asbury Park a famous winter resort. She should strike head-on, and we could accommodate her all winter. A pontoon or suspension bridge could be built from the pier so the ship could be used as a casino. Atlantic City would then yield place to Asbury as a peerless winter resort. We need a shipwreck.

Now, 50 years later, Asbury Park had one.

The day after the Morro Castle arrived, the tiny city was crowded with over 10,000 tourists. Many of them crowded on the beach and were eager for a look at the wreck. Others played miniature golf or rode paddleboats while they waited their turns. Calliope music could be heard all around, and vendors were selling saltwater taffy, popcorn, and hot coffee. It felt like the Fourth of July. Shops, movie theaters, restaurants, rides, shooting galleries reopened to accommodate the masses. By that afternoon, hawkers were selling souvenir photos of the Morro Castle for 50¢ to $1 apiece. Later, people with enough money were even allowed onto the still-smoldering hulk.

Traffic was backed up all the way to New York City’s Holland Tunnel: 60 miles away from Asbury Park. One sightseer said it was the worst traffic jam in East Coast history. To help with the congestion, the Asbury Park Police Department came up with a solution: they established the first one-way streets in the United States. Any and all available space, including front yards, became parking spots.

Although the 1934 summer season had ended the previous week, Asbury Park had sprung back to life overnight. Business had been lackluster but this more than made up for it.

Postcards & Penny Presses

Tourists are going to want souvenirs. I think that must be a universal law or something. Even 90 years later, there are still a lot of Morro Castle souvenirs to be found on eBay and in antique stores. I started collecting them a few months ago after I finished reading Brian Hicks’ When the Dancing Stopped: The Real Story of the Morro Castle Disaster and Its Deadly Wake. Penny presses also appeared along the city’s boardwalk. I still marvel at how quickly this must have happened in order to meet demand.

A souvenir pressed penny featuring the Morro Castle. Author’s collection.

Asbury Park businesses produced postcards with many different views of the ship, which undoubtedly sold well. One of the more popular ones (below) shows crowds standing on the beach and looking at the Morro Castle. The Asbury Park Convention Hall is just to the right of the image. It was from here that a breeches buoy — a bucket that looked like a personal flotation device that traveled on cables to carry people between the ship and shore — was rigged up to allow investigators onboard the wreck.

Perhaps the most popular Morro Castle postcard. Author’s collection.

The Convention Hall was where another very popular image was taken. It shows the fire-damaged hull in great detail. Two men are huddled together as if one of them is about to get into the breeches buoy. I often wondered what they were doing.

Another popular postcard of the wreck. Author’s collection.

Upon closer examination, however, it appears that the men are attaching a small box to the breeches buoy. Was something sent over to them from the shore? Or are they getting ready to send it back from the ship?

The postcard below gives a rather grim clue. It shows what appears to be that same box is being brought ashore: a suitcase containing the remains of the Morro Castle’s late master, Captain Robert Renison Willmott.

Possibly one of the most macabre postcards ever made. Author’s collection.

The date was September 11, 1934. And naturally photographers were on hand to capture the moment. Rumors about the captain’s alleged poisoning were swirling around, and so naturally finding his body was big news. Photographers captured the suitcase’s progress across the breeches buoy. In the days that followed, shops started selling postcards with these images on them. I maintain that these are probably some of the most macabre postcards ever made.

Captain Robert R. Willmott. Courtesy Green-Wood Cemetery.

Captain Willmott’s charred remains had been located the night before by Asbury Park firefighters. Fire Chief William F. Taggart said that he found them in a room that had “a safe and a radio and a bunch of keys on a ring. The legs of the bed had melted off.” Captain Willmott’s body had been all but cremated in the Morro Castle inferno – it was said that there was only enough to fill two shoeboxes. The remains were put into a suitcase and sent ashore. An autopsy was immediately ordered to look for traces of poison. None was found.

The End of the Morro Castle

The Morro Castle remained at Asbury Park for six months. During that time, a plan was hatched by the city government to buy the wreck from the Ward Line. The press got wind of the plan. Asbury Park officials quickly backtracked by saying they wanted to see if the lower hull could be salvaged as a jetty. Few believed them.

As time went on, however, the Morro Castle came to overstay its welcome. The stench from the burnt-out liner became intolerable. People got into trouble for trying to get aboard. One man was fined for selling pictures of the ship without a license. The Morro Castle had become a nuisance to the residents of Asbury Park.

The Morro Castle was finally towed away for scrap on March 14, 1935. It arrived in Baltimore 15 days later where it was subsequently broken up.

Looking at Things a Different Way

The Morro Castle is an example of dark tourism at its finest. Sightseers came from all over to catch a glimpse of the wreck and satisfy their morbid curiosity. Honestly, I probably would have done the same thing myself. It’s probably why I have a collection of Morro Castle postcards and a pressed penny to boot. I’ve always been fascinated by this sort of stuff.

Asbury Park has often been condemned for profiting from the Morro Castle disaster. But, as J. John Lennon and Malcolm Foley noted in their book on dark tourism, “tact and taste do not prevail over economic considerations.” Remember that the Great Depression was in full swing, and that the 1934 summer season had been a bust. Lennon and Foley go on to say that “blame for transgressions cannot lie solely on the shoulders of the proprietors, but also upon those of the tourists, for without their demand there would be no need to supply.”

Perhaps as atonement for what happened in 1934, the Asbury Park Historical Society dedicated a memorial on the 75th anniversary of the disaster. It’s located near the Convention Hall, where the Morro Castle came to rest that terrible morning on September 8, 1934. It features an engraving of the smoldering ship and a summary of what happened all those years ago.

The Morro Castle Memorial in Asbury Park. Courtesy Pelle Svensson.

Tourists are still drawn to the site, though not quite as many as in 1934. There’s still something about the Morro Castle disaster that captivates people to this day. It must be that innate fascination we, as people, have with death and tragedy.

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