Here is an excerpt from the article I wrote called: “ Maritime Disasters Through the Ages” You can read the entire article  (which covers other centuries) at; Vol. 32  No.2,  Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce page  215 (April 2001).  Maritime College’s library has a copy. I delivered the full paper at various venues in the U.S. and abroad.  It was well received – the reason is simple – these sea stories are compelling.                                                        The 20th Century       High-speed luxury liners and mammoth cargo vessels dominated this century. Rapid improvements in technology no doubt improved vessel safety. Yet, the century witnessed the greatest maritime disasters.          Risk of fire has remained impossible to eliminate entirely. Fire was, of course, commonplace on wooden ships. However, even the adoption of steel hulls have not eliminated fire risk. Vessels continue to carry large amounts of flammables, whether as cargo, or  fuel for main propulsion.   The twentieth century also witnessed the development of modern navigational  devices. Echo sounders, Radar, Loran, Decca,  GPS, among others, have no doubt reduced, but have in no way entirely eliminated, strandings and  collisions.  Human error will usually defeat the safeguards provided by the most sophisticated pieces of equipment. Lastly, no marine disaster has captured  the  public’s  attention more  then a massive oil spill, and the environmental degradation that arises. A.   General Slocum This vessel was the subject of one of the worst marine disasters in history, yet the story does not have the popular appeal of  Titanic or other well-known sea tragedies. The General Slocum burned with the loss of over one-thousand people, mostly women and children. It was 1904, and the small paddle steamer had just departed on a Sunday school  picnic on New York’s East River.  Fire was discovered onboard which rapidly consumed the wooden vessel.  Panic and hysteria spread among the passengers. Much of the ship’s firefighting gear was inoperable. The life preservers onboard were rotted and inadequate. The Master, despite being close to Manhattan Island,  sought refuge on  Brother Island, a small piece of land in the middle of the River. This further delayed the vessel’s abandonment. She was finally beached near  Brother Island,   where many passengers jumped for their lives, only to drown. The gross violations of safety rules and inoperable firefighting gear  shocked the public.  The Captain was arrested, as were many others including crewmen, and company officials.  President Theodore Roosevelt personally participated in the firing of many marine inspectors. A full investigation and report was made.  That report largely placed fault on the steamboat inspectors of the United States Steamboat Inspection Service.  General Slocum, as well as several hundred other steamboats trading at the time, were totally unsafe. Yet, the Steamboat Inspection Service had passed them. Standards for steamboats and their inspections were upgraded and improved each year thereafter. Fireproof bulkheads, fire hoses with interchangeable couplings, and life belts for all onboard, would soon become routine. B.   The Jason The Norwegian ship Jason ran aground in the summer of 1904 while carrying some twelve-thousand bags of sugar from Cuba to New York. She was by all accounts a seaworthy vessel, properly manned, equipped and supplied. However, the Master had made a navigational error and she stranded on the South Coast of Cuba. Some two-thousand bags were jettisoned in order to refloat the vessel. That sacrifice was successful and the vessel completed her voyage to New York where the balance of her cargo was discharged. General average was declared.   The contract under which Jason’s cargo was carried contained a “general average negligence” clause which protected the shipowner’s right  to seek general average contributions from cargo interests under very broad circumstances, including  a  sacrifice made necessary by the Master’s navigational error. The validity of that clause was tested in the famous U.S. Supreme Court decision involving the Jason.   The court opined that federal law had abolished the public policy against contractual stipulations relieving the ship from the consequences of her errors in navigation or management. Thus, a bill of lading’s provision protecting a shipowner’s right to seek general average even when made necessary by crew negligence, was no longer objectionable.       Variations of the clause, now boilerplate in virtually all bills of lading, are  commonly referred to as “Jason Clauses”.    A small ship, and relatively minor tragedy,  created a Supreme Court decision that is now required reading for any student of maritime law.   C.    R.M.S. Titanic The Titanic, a British Steamship, sailed from Southampton, England on her maiden voyage from New York. On April 14, 1912, she collided with an iceberg on the high seas about ninety-five miles south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.  The much heralded “unsinkable” vessel, the pride of the White Star Line, sank the next morning, with the loss of many lives, a total loss of the vessel, her cargo, personal effects, mail, and everything connected with the ship except certain lifeboats. Some fifteen-hundred passengers  were lost that night. The Titanic disaster had many legal consequences. Subsequent investigations found that the ship was steaming to fast in dangerous waters, that lifeboat space had been provided for less than three- fourths of the passengers and crew, and that the S.S. Californian, close to the scene, had not come to Titanic’s rescue because the radio operator  was off duty and asleep.  The international community has since sponsored many international conventions that deal with ship safety and collisions at sea. At the center of this vast body of law is the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) Convention.  SOLAS was a direct consequence of Titanic. A version of SOLAS was first signed in 1914. However, the first world war delayed its implementation. A second version was finally signed in London on May 31, 1929.  Eighteen nations, including the United States, were officially represented at the Convention.  The U.S. Senate consented to its ratification in June, 1936 and with only minor reservations it became part of U.S. maritime law.       SOLAS made many reforms, such as lifeboat space for every person on a ship, lifeboat drills, and the maintenance of a full time radio watch while at sea. SOLAS was also an effort to standardize construction devices for safety, such as watertight subdivision of ships, bulkheads, etc.   A North Atlantic ice patrol was also created.  In fact, much of SOLAS was a direct response to the Titanic disaster. D.  The Burning of Morro Castle Morro Castle was the flagship of the Ward Line and operated principally between  New York and Havana. She was elegantly appointed and her owners took great pride in the vessel’s decorative woodwork. She was a fairly new liner, built in 1930 at a cost of just under five million dollars.   Her fire fighting apparatus was state of the art. She had fire alarms built into every stateroom. There were fire doors every one hundred-thirty feet. There was also an adequate supply of  hoses and extinguishers. The vessel was also fast. On her 1930 maiden voyage she made the New York / Havana run in just under fifty-nine hours, an average speed of twenty and one half knots.    Yet, this vessel was also tragically flawed. Morro Castle sailed from Havana in September, 1936 under the command of Captain Robert Wilmott. She carried  over five hundred people including officers and crew.  Captain Wilmott died mysteriously onboard the vessel. The  vessel’s First Officer took command. In the early morning of September 8, just hours from New York City and while off of Asbury Park, a fire was reported in the vessel’s writing room. Efforts to contain the fire failed. Terror and pandemonium followed.  The acting Master was useless. Some passengers managed to reach the boat deck, and a few lifeboats were launched. However, they were launched under capacity.  The ship lost power and was anchored seven miles off of the shore. Many jumped off the vessel’s stern, only to drown in the cold water. Rescue ships in the area were quick to respond. A Coast Guard Cutter attempted to tow the hulk but the towline broke, and the vessel drifted onto the beach at Asbury Park for all to see.   Spectators came by the thousands to witness the carnage. Many died that day. The nearby beach was used as an outdoor morgue. This disaster changed U.S. maritime law. While Morro Castle’s construction was much the same as other vessels of her time, it became quite evident that the practice of filling a large vessel with very flammable woodwork was not a safe practice. Her interior compartments were partitioned with wood. Plywood had been used extensively in the construction of staterooms, lounges and other public rooms. In addition, all of her stairways between decks were open and lined with combustible material.  Better construction methods and the use of non-combustible materials were necessary.   E.    Normandie The French liner Normandie burned and sank at her New York City pier on Feb. 9, 1942. The vessel was over  one thousand feet long.  At that time, she was also the heaviest vessel, at 27,657 tons. On her  maiden voyage, Normandie  set a world record by traveling over seven-hundred -forty   nautical miles in a single day, an average speed of about thirty knots.  This earned her the famed Blue Ribbon, for the fastest Atlantic crossing. Her passenger service was discontinued at the onset of the Second World War.  She was seized by the U.S. government for conversion and use as a troop transport. She would not see war time service.   On Feb. 9, 1942, sparks from a blowtorch set fire to a pile of life preservers on deck. The fire spread quickly. Unfortunately, the ship’s impressive fire fighting systems had been discontinued during the conversion  process. Nearby fireboats converged on the vessel. Huge quantities of seawater were pumped onboard in an effort to quash the blaze. The vessel became top heavy and capsized, despite warnings from her designer who was on scene and  advised Navy authorities to open the seacocks and let her settle on the bottom.       Questions remain as to whether this was an act of wartime sabotage. Some believe it was. Others, a simple act of negligence. Regardless, Normandie was not fully removed from her resting- place for some time, and then went to the breakers. F.   The Grandcamp (Texas City Explosion) In 1947, a cargo of volatile ammonium nitrate fertilizer  caught fire in the holds of the S.S. Grandcamp while docked in Texas City.  Firefighting efforts failed and a massive explosion obliterated the vessel and large parts of Texas City.  A second explosion occurred onboard the nearby S.S. Highflyer, also laden with ammonium nitrate. The Texas City disaster killed over five- hundred people.  Some three thousand plus were injured.   G.   Andrea Doria / Stockholm Collision On July 25, 1956, the Italian liner Andrea Doria, named after the famous 16th century Genoese Admiral,  collided with the Swedish liner Stockholm just off of Nantucket Island.  Intense fog and reduced visibility were caused by the meeting of the warm Gulf Stream Current and cold northern waters.   Both vessels were equipped with working radars.  However, the radars displayed the relative positions of nearby ships and not their true course and speeds. Bridge officers on both ships had to determine true course and speed by vector analysis. There was opportunity for error. When the radars indicated that the vessels were only about two miles apart, the Stockholm’s Third Officer turned the vessel to starboard. However, the Andrea Doria was turned to port.  Unbelievably, maneuvers designed to avoid collision had actually  placed both vessels directly on a collision course.   Stockholm’s ice reinforced bow struck the right side of Andrea Doria and created a hole in excess of thirty feet. Andrea Doria began to list and her lifeboats became unusable. Distress messages brought several vessels to the rescue including the French liner  Ile de France.   Fifty-two people died in the collision. Andreas Doria sank the next morning in over two hundred feet   of water. She remains a popular dive sight today. H.  Torrey Canyon The Torrey Canyon impaled herself on a granite reef just sixteen miles off of the Southwest corner of England. She was a huge ship for her time, with a deadweight of about 120,000 tons.    Her passage from the Persian Gulf via the Cape of Good Hope was routine. On the afternoon of March 14, 1967,  the vessel’s course was set to approach Bishop’s Rock. The Master received a cable informing him that he must make the evening tide at Milford Haven by March 18 , or the vessel would have to wait days for the next favorable tide.       The Master ordered a course that took the vessel between the Scilly Islands and Seven Stones Reef,  uninhabited rocks that lie just northeast of the islands. This was a foolish thing to do. It was common knowledge that large vessels should pass east of Seven Stones, in the wide channel between the reef and Land’s End. An even safer passage could be found to the west of the Scillys.    The wreck of the Torrey Canyon had a catastrophic impact on the environment. Vessels had run aground before Torrey Canyon.  However, this disaster  brought to the world’s attention, essentially for the first time, the enormous sizes that tankers had achieved and their potential to destroy the environment. It also raised questions concerning the legitimacy of offshore vessel ownership, flags of convenience, and what a coastal nation can legitimately do to protect its shores from  a foreign vessel that poses a danger to the environment. I.    Mary A. Whelan Certainly the crew of the Mary A. Whalen were not aware that their small ship would be the force behind a Supreme Court decision that changed maritime law in the United States. The Mary A. Whalen was a coastal tanker that was owned by the Reliable Transfer Company. She was loaded with a cargo of fuel oil bound for a port in New Jersey. She stranded on a sandy bottom off of Rockaway Point, just outside New York Harbor. The reasons for the stranding were twofold. First, a breakwater light was improperly maintained by the United States Coast Guard. The Master had been deceived by her signal. Second, there was navigational fault. The Master of the Mary A. Whelan had carelessly relied on a sole aid to navigation. No prudent mariner does this.   Therefore, the Court allocated seventy -five  percent of the fault to the vessel and twenty-five percent to the U.S. Coast Guard. Nevertheless, the longstanding rule under U.S. law at that time was that property  damage arising out of a “both to blame” casualty was to be divided equally.  The legal rationale was that navigational safety would be enhanced if  all parties involved in a marine casualty were made equally responsible for the damage, even though individual  fault may have varied. The Supreme Court rejected that reasoning and reversed over one hundred years of judicial precedent. The rule henceforth would be in line with the rest of the seafaring world. Where two or more parties have contributed by their fault to cause property damage due a collision or stranding, the responsibility for the damage is to be allocated in accordance with each vessel’s  comparative degree of fault. It was only where it could be ascertained that both parties were equally to blame, that liability was to be so allocated. J.    The Edmund Fitzgerald The  Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Nov. 10, 1975 in the eastern part of Lake Superior, while carrying a full cargo of taconite pellets.  No distress message was received from the vessel. Much debris, including lifeboats, rafts and other floatsam were discovered. The vessel radioed the nearby cargo vessel Arthur M. Anderson that her radars were not working and asked the Anderson to assist in her navigation.  Both vessels were headed towards the Lake Huron locks when the Edmund Fitzgerald disappeared from the Anderson’s radar screens.  No further visual or radio contact was made. The vessel was later located in more than five hundred feet of water.   More than half of all losses on the Great Lakes are caused by violent  weather.  Serious wind shifts, terrifying speeds and intense temperature drops can create a maelstrom. Waves on the Great Lakes have a much shorter frequency than their ocean counterparts. A ship may be attacked by different waves at once, from different directions.  Small ships can become airborne, held up over a steep trough by two or more crests. Ships that lose steerageway can broach sideways and be pounded within the  deep troughs. The exact cause of the vessel’s sinking cannot be determined. The most probable cause, according to the Coast Guard’s investigation,  was loss of buoyancy and stability resulting from a massive flooding of a cargo hold. The flooding may have been caused  due to ineffective hatch closures. The flooding  progressed as the weather worsened. The crew of twenty - nine were lost. A song, now famous, recounts the tragedy: The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee The lake it is said never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy With a load of iron ore, 26,000 tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed when the gales of November came early.          From The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot. K.   The Amoco Cadiz The stranding of the 228,513 deadweight ton Amoco Cadiz just east of Ushant on the night of March 16, 1977 was an environmental disaster of proportions unknown at the time. The tragedy also underscores the risks associated with a Master’s indecision.   The vessel lost her steering and was drifting dangerously towards the coast.  The Master of the vessel had been asked by the nearby salvage tug Pacific whether it would agree to salvage services in accordance with the “No Cure – No Pay” provisions of Lloyd’s Open Form. The Master, perhaps fearing the potential size of the salvage award, and the wrath of his employers, negotiated with the salvor for a towage rate, all the while seeking instructions from the  home office via satellite.  The “open form” was eventually signed. However, much needed time was lost. The supertanker, despite twice having been passed a towline, grounded on the French coast. The damage to the coast due to the spill was immense. L.     The Steamship Poet The S.S. Poet suffered a sudden and catastrophic accident sometime between 1200 GMT on October 25 and 1200 GMT on October 26, 1980, approximately five-hundred miles east of Delaware Bay. She was carrying a cargo of grain to Egypt as part of the U.S. State Department’s Food for Peace Program. No distress signal was heard. Not a trace of the vessel’s thirty-four man crew or her cargo were found. Based on assumed sea conditions, the ship’s speed, and heading,  it is believed that the vessel may have capsized quickly due to synchronous rolling. However, that remains a conjecture. Perhaps the hatches gave way. The delay until November 3 by her owners in reporting the loss probably  contributed to the loss of life. This incident is not the first, nor likely to be the last, of a large vessel disappearing at sea without a trace. M.    Herald of Free Enterprise The Herald of Free Enterprise, a passenger Ro-Ro, had successfully crossed the English Channel many times before her tragic crossing on March 6, 1987.   The weather was very cold, clear and dry. Visibility was good. The ship completed her cargo work. Some one-hundred-thirty vehicles and over  five- hundred people were loaded onboard. The crossing from Zeebrugge to Dover was expected to be routine. The vessel departed Zeebrugge and proceeded to sea. She passed the inner harbor breakwater in the early evening. Unfortunately, her bow door had not been closed. Seawater rushed into the vessel. Almost instantly, the vessel listed thirty degrees to port. Water continued to flood the vessel at the rate of two-hundred tons per minute. Exactly twenty-three minutes after her departure, the vessel capsized on a sandbank less than a mile from the harbor. Only her starboard side remained above water. Her crew and passengers were left to fight for their lives.   The speed of the disaster left no time for preparation. There were no warnings, no announcements, and no time to locate a lifeboat. This was not the first time (nor the last) that a Ro – Ro had capsized. However, the casualty left a strong impression on a shocked public and the international legal community. N.    M.V. Summit Venture On May 9, 1980,  the M.V. Summit Venture allided with the Skyway Bridge in Tampa, Florida causing massive property damage and considerable loss of life. The vessel entered Mullet Key Channel early on May 9 with a local pilot onboard. The Master was also on the ship’s bridge. The pilot directed the vessel on an eastward course towards the Skyway Bridge at full speed ahead. There was some slight rain. From 0715 onwards the rain increased in intensity but was intermittent. At 0721, the vessel was reduced to half speed, that is, between nine and  ten knots. At 0723, as the vessel was passing channel marker 16, the rain became extremely intense and visibility was reduced to less than five hundred feet. At this time, visual contact was lost with the next set of buoys and the bridge. Despite this reduced visibility, the pilot continued to navigate the vessel at nine to ten knots.   The pilot later admitted that the vessel  should have been anchored.  Basic seamanship dictates that a moderate speed should allow the vessel to be stopped within half of her visibility. In addition, navigation solely by reference to radar is unsafe. All conditions had existed to stop the vessel, long before she tore down the bridge.   O.   The Exxon Valdez On March 24, 1989, the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, resulting in the largest oil spill in North American history.  The vessel released more than eleven million gallons of North Slope crude oil that inundated a vast area of  Alaska.   Alyeska, the company that operated the loading terminal, had found itself woefully unprepared to respond. The Coast Guard boarded the ship a few hours after the accident and found the Captain on the bridge, standing near a window and looking out. He was drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. He had his hand over his mouth, as if trying to cover up something.  When asked what had caused the accident, the Captain replied “you are looking at it”.         Exxon Shipping Company’s policy of forbidding alcohol by crew was not consistently enforced.   For that matter, drinking onboard ship was pervasive in the merchant marine.         The disaster, however, had more pronounced causes. The Alyeska contingency plan was outdated and unable to respond to a spill of this size. Crew sizes onboard tank vessels were becoming dangerously small.  Local vessel control systems were inadequate.  The complete breakdown of the system and a catastrophic spill were merely a question of time. The legacy of the Valdez spill remains today. The environmental damage resulting from the spill has had long term affects on local communities that are dependent upon the  natural resources of the area. Extensive federal legislation and regulations rapidly followed the spill. There have been vast improvements in pollution  response systems,  vessel training, and preparedness. The liabilities arising out of pollution incidents  have increased dramatically.                However, perhaps the most underestimated impact of the spill was its indelible mark on the human conscience. No other topic related to ocean transportation has sustained as much attention as the Exxon Valdez spill. The incident raised politically sensitive questions about the environment, national energy politics, the roles of multinational corporations within the environmental context, and personal responsibility.