Fire at Sea: The Mysterious Tragedy of the Morro Castle

On a stormy night in September 1934, the Morro Castle was making its way through heavy seas en route from Havana to New York City. Shortly after 2:00 A.M., while most of the passengers slept, fire suddenly engulfed the luxury liner; within an hour, hundreds were dead or struggling desperately in the water.
The fire's apparently inexplicable outbreak wasn't the only secret that night aboard the Morro Castle. Hours earlier, Captain Robert Wilmott had died in his cabin under suspicious circumstances. Had Wilmott been poisoned? Was the fire accidental, or intentionally set? Drawing from interviews with the survivors, as well as his own in-depth research, Thomas Gallagher skillfully recreates the Morro Castle tragedy, proposing convincing solutions to its myriad mysteries.
In FIRE AT SEA, originally published in 1959, a seasoned reporter's meticulous attention to detail is combined with a novelist's sense of his story's drama. The result is a vivid and unforgettable story of the sea.