Mohawk (ship, 1926)
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The Mohawk (II) was a 1926 commissioned passenger ship of the US shipping company Clyde-Mallory Line , which was chartered by the Ward Line in 1935 and was to be used in regular service from New York City to Veracruz ( Mexico ). The Mohawk collided with a Norwegian freighter on January 24, 1935 off the coast of New Jersey on her first voyage in service with the Ward Line and sank. 47 people were killed.
The ship
The 5,896-ton steamer Mohawk was at the shipyard Newport News Shipbuilding in Newport News ( Virginia built) and ran on 21 October in 1925 by stack . Godmother was Margaret Denison, daughter of JB Denison, the then Vice President of the Clyde Steamship Company. On January 28, 1926, the steamer was completed, handed over on February 6, and in February 9, 1926 it ran from New York on its maiden voyage to Charleston (South Carolina) and Jacksonville (Florida). The hull was 117.96 meters long and 16.46 meters wide. The steam turbines developed 4200 PSi and accelerated the ship to 18 knots. The Mohawk was the flagship of a new quartet of ships, the so-called Mohawk Class. Her sister ships were the Cherokee (1925, hull number 274), the Seminole (1925, hull number 275) and the Algonquin (1926, hull number 317). All four ships were named after different tribes of North American Indians . They belonged to the Clyde-Mallory Line, based in New York , which was also the home port of the ships.
The sister ships would originally be used for the Galveston - Miami - New York route. The passenger quarters extended over three decks . They varied from luxurious two-room suites with a private bathroom to smaller standard cabins on the lower decks. The ship had a lounge, a large dining room, a smoking room, a veranda café, a winter garden, a hairdressing salon and an extensive sundeck at the end of the A deck. There were also electrically operated elevators .
AGWI (Atlantic, Gulf & West Indies Steamship Lines), the parent company of Ward Line (actually New York and Cuba Mail Steamship Company ), leased the Mohawk from the Clyde-Mallory Line, which was also under it, and handed it over to the battered ward line. This measure was intended to offset the loss of two Ward Line ships, the Morro Castle and the Havana , which she had lost within a few months. The fact that the Ward Line also lost a third ship within a very short time with the sinking of the Mohawk and that even more fatalities were to be mourned caused a great damage to the image of the shipping company in terms of its safety standards and, in the long term, the end of the Ward Line.
Downfall
Departure from New York
On Thursday, January 24, 1935 at 4:00 p.m., the Mohawk with 110 crew members and 53 passengers left New York from the East River Pier of the Ward Line. It was her first voyage on the Ward Line. In command was Captain Joseph Edward Wood, who had been at sea for more than 30 years and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor . In addition, 1,286 tons of cargo were on board. The ship was to make stopovers in Havana ( Cuba ) and Progreso ( Mexico ) and finally arrive in Veracruz, Mexico .
The Mohawk left New York in sub-zero temperatures and in the middle of a violent blizzard . At dusk, it passed the Sandy Hook sandbank on the north coast of New Jersey, which separates Lower New York Bay from the Atlantic Ocean . Here the liner stopped for about two hours to calibrate its radio compass . Dinner was then served. After resuming its voyage, the ship steamed south parallel to the New Jersey coast. The passengers were mostly well-to-do Americans who wanted to spend the cold winter months in warm Mexico or Cuba. But also business travelers and returning Mexicans were on board, as well as a seven-member student delegation from Williams College in Williamstown ( Massachusetts ) on their way to a paleontological research trip through the Mexican peninsula Yucatán . Notable passengers included:
- Professor Herdman Fitzgerald Cleland, American anthropologist , historian, and author ( Our Prehistoric Ancestors , Why Be An Evolutionist? ); Lecturer at Williams College ; Leader of the Yucatán Expedition (died)
- Mary Pillsbury Lord , delegates of the UN General Assembly and later chairman of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights ; Granddaughter of the founder of the Pillsbury Company , mother of the politician Winston Lord (survived)
- Katherine Pillsbury McKee, wife of geologist Elliott Bates McKee, sister of Mary Pillsbury Lord (survived)
- Julian Peabody , well-known New York architect, designed the Westbury Senior High School in Westbury (New York) (died)
- Celestine Hitchcock Peabody, New York society lady, wife of Julian Peabody, daughter of American polo professional Thomas Hitchcock (died)
- Rev. Dr. Francis L. Frost, pastor of St. Mary's Protestant Episcopal Church on Staten Island , New York (died)
- James Gibson, music publishers from Belleville, New Jersey (survived)
- John Telfer, chief engineer of the Mexican National Railway, British Vice Consul- designate in Orizaba , Mexico (died)
- Catherine Butler Telfer, John Telfer's wife (died)
The team consisted of both employees of the Clyde-Mallory Line and the Ward Line. There were also some surviving crew members of the Morro Castle on board, including the chief steward Charles Wright, the deputy paymaster Lester Ariessohn and the stoker Joseph Fernandez. As a ship's doctor was Dr. William Voorhies was appointed as Morro Castle 's surgeon , Dr. DeWitt Van Zile, who had died on her last trip. The new tour guide was Malcolm Luckett, as the tour guide of Morro Castle , Robert Smith, had switched to another shipping line.
Collision and sinking
At around 8 p.m. on January 24th, the Mohawk was sailing down the New Jersey coast about eight nautical miles away. When she reached the spot where the burnt wreckage of the Morro Castle on the beach in Asbury Park to its dismantling waited this made the rounds among the passengers and many had joined up on deck to throw a glance at the accident ship. Around the same time, the Mohawk first saw the lights of an approaching ship in front of her bow . It was about the Talisman , a small cargo steamer of the Norwegian shipping company Wilhelmsen Line, which was under the command of Captain Edmund Wang on a voyage from Brooklyn to Salvador da Bahia in Brazil. Had the Mohawk not had to stop because of its compass, it would have been at least 25 nautical miles ahead of the talisman . Captain Wood did not like the delay, knowing the Ward Line would not be pleased with the failure to meet the schedule.
For about a quarter of an hour the two ships drove parallel to each other until the Mohawk suddenly changed course for no apparent reason: she turned her bow hard to port . With this maneuver, the passenger ship exposed its port side to the sharp bow of the freighter, which immediately turned to port and at the same time reset its engines to "full power". The passengers who were on deck because of the wreckage of Morro Castle saw the other ship approaching with horror. The Mohawk sounded its ship's whistle to warn the Talisman's crew . At 9:30 p.m. the talisman's bow dug into the side of the mohawk almost at a right angle . As soon as the talisman came out of the gaping hole in the Mohawk's hull, seawater immediately began to run into the hull of the ship. The shock was so violent that glass broke in some of the common rooms.
After dinner, a first large gathering of passengers took place in the first class lounge, led by tour guide Luckett. The on-board orchestra was playing the then popular jazz song I Saw Stars by Freddy Martin . Many passengers danced, others played cards or had drinks when the collision occurred. They were almost the same coordinates on which Morro Castle had gone up in flames four months earlier . According to witnesses, panic quickly broke out among the passengers and the evacuation of the sinking ship was chaotic. The passengers, most of them in evening attire, jostled and pushed as they tried to find their loved ones and get to the boats; others jumped overboard in a panic. Officers and stewards handed out life jackets and tried the lifeboats to man properly and abzufieren. Some of the boats were frozen to the deck and had to be hacked free by crew members. Several people were killed by swinging lifeboats. Within minutes the steamer had such a strong list to be to port, it was no longer possible. After a short time the Mohawk seemed to straighten up again, but when she suddenly sagged even further to port, the lights on the ship went out.
Just two minutes after the collision, Captain Wood had the radio operator Russell McDonald called for help. About 40 minutes after the collision, the ship was evacuated and at about 10.30 p.m. the Mohawk went down with the bow first. The SOS signals sent by both the Mohawk and Talisman had been picked up by several nearby ships and the Coast Guard radio station in Cape May . Most of the survivors were taken on board by one of the Mohawk's sister ships , the Algonquin . The United Fruit Company's cargo ship Limon also arrived quickly at the scene of the accident. Many passengers were injured in the collision and the majority were frozen stiff due to the low temperatures and the long stay in the lifeboats. 47 people were killed in the accident (16 passengers and 31 crew members, including Captain Wood). Of the 47 dead, only 33 were recovered. The talisman was damaged and drifted, but did not sink. She did not launch any lifeboats to rescue the Mohawk passengers floating in the water.
The most likely cause of the accident was the failure of the automatic rudder mechanism. Several crew members stated afterwards that the Mohawk's steering gear had already frozen during the previous winter due to low temperatures and was difficult to operate. The rudder was also stiff during the last trip. Surviving helmsman Marty Polander reported that 20 minutes before the collision it was no longer possible to keep the Mohawk on course.
Consequences for the Ward Line
With the sinking of the Mohawk , the Ward Line had lost three ships and nearly 200 lives in four months. The Morro Castle , one of their most important and prestigious ships, caught fire and burned out off the coast of New Jersey on September 8, 1934, killing 137 passengers and crew. On January 6, 1935, another accident occurred when the Havana ran onto a reef off the Bahamas and three passengers died. The ship was only able to resume service after a five-month failure and costly maintenance work.
The Ward Line suffered permanent damage to its image from this series of accidents and received a lot of bad press. The United States Department of Commerce's Bureau of Navigation and Steamboat Inspection , chaired by Dickerson N. Hoover, accused the shipping company of negligence , negligence in its duties and failure to comply with applicable safety regulations in the final report of its investigation . The Ward Line has also been sued for damages by several survivors and bereaved families . Since the name of the shipping company was now only associated with negative things, the Ward Line was renamed the "Cuba Mail Line", but this measure could not stop the decline. Bookings fell and the reputation could not be restored. In 1942 all ships of the Ward Line were requisitioned by the government and converted for war use. It was not until 1947 that the Ward Line was able to resume reduced passenger and freight traffic. This lasted until 1954 when its parent company AGWI was dissolved due to inefficiency.
The wreck of Mohawk is about 25 meters depth six miles before Manasquan (New Jersey) in position 40 ° 2 ' N , 73 ° 52' W . The wreck has been a popular destination for amateur and professional divers since the 1960s .
Web links
- The history of the Morro Castle and the Mohawk and their impact on the Ward Line ( Memento from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- Report of the sinking in Time Magazine, February 4, 1935
- Report on the demise on the Cyber Diver News Network website (with picture) ( Memento from April 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Passenger and crew list of the last trip ( memento from June 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- An illustrated dive trip to the Mohawk wreck
- Photo by Herdman Fitzgerald Cleland
- Photo collage of three passengers on the last trip