No. 3

Down Manhattan's East River one icy afternoon last week sailed S. S. Mohawk, 6,000-ton Clyde-Mallory liner, with 54 passengers bound for Cuba and Mexico. The Mohawk was making her first voyage under charter to New York & Cuba Mail Steamship Co. That company, known as the Ward Line, had hired her because its own S. S. Havana had grounded on a coral reef off the Bahamas three weeks before.

Captained by a Clyde-Mallory skipper, staffed by a mixed Clyde-Mallory and Ward Line crew--both lines are subsidiaries of Atlantic, Gulf & West Indies Steamship Lines--the Mohawk passed Sandy Hook at dusk, stopped shortly after to calibrate a new radio compass. During the two hours she was hove to, several vessels passed her, including the Norwegian freighter Talisman out of Brooklyn to South America. By the time the Mohawk got under way again it was a bright starlit night, crisp and cold (5DEG). The sea was smooth, the wind moderate.

Heading down the New Jersey coast, about five miles offshore, the Mohawk had just passed the charred hulk of the T. E. L. Morro Castle when she picked up the Talisman's lights about half a mile off her port bow. The two vessels ran almost abreast for about 15 minutes, with the Mohawk gradually creeping ahead. Then something very strange happened. Without warning, the Mohawk veered sharply to port, bore down swiftly on the freighter, while her whistle tooted a desperate warning. The Talisman swung hard to port, sent her engines full speed astern, but it was too late. The Mohawk crossed directly in front of the freighter's bow, was knifed at right angles. When the vessels pulled apart the Mohawk's side gaped with a deadly wound. Several seamen had been crushed to death in the forecastle. Two minutes later her captain flashed an SOS.

The Mohawk's passengers were neither confused nor panic-stricken. Some were not even surprised. In the lounge the orchestra played "I Saw Stars." In the smoking room four Williams College students playing bridge slapped down their cards, roared with laughter as one said: "Well, boys, here it is!" In a few minutes officers & crew herded shivering passengers to the boat deck, saw that they all had lifebelts, began lowering them in boats. Some of the boat falls, encrusted with ice, jammed and had to be hacked free. Within 40 minutes the captain was satisfied that all the passengers and most of the crew were overside.

Ten minutes later the $2,000,000 nine-year-old vessel upended and went down by the bow, her dripping bronze propeller glittering in the light of the moon which had risen since the collision. On her bridge as she plunged was the lone, gallant figure of her skipper, Captain Joseph Edward Wood, who had spent 30 years in the Clyde-Mallory service and held the Congressional Medal for bravery. Thus had his grandfather and his great-grand-father died before him.

Most of the Mohawk's survivors were taken aboard the Clyde-Mallory liner Algonquin. Many were frozen numb after drifting hours in the open sea in near-zero weather. Scores of seamen had the flesh torn from their hands when salt spray froze them to the oars.

Into Manhattan's gloomy Bellevue Morgue the following night crowded friends & relatives to identify their dead. Moving about among the sheet-covered bodies Dr. Charles E. Norris, the city's longtime Chief Medical Examiner, lifted a sheet, quickly put it down again. "My God!" cried Dr. Norris. "It's Mrs. Peabody. I knew her well." Few minutes later Mrs. Peabody's brother, famed Poloist Tommy Hitchcock Jr., claimed her body and that of her husband, Manhattan Architect Julian L. Peabody. Other notable victims: Professor Herdman Fitzgerald Cleland of Williams College, in charge of a student paleontological expedition to Yucatan; three Williams seniors, including Manhattan Socialite William Dwight Symmes; Rev. Dr. Francis L. Frost, longtime rector of St. Mary's Protestant Episcopal Church, Staten Island. Notable survivors included two daughters of Charles Stinson Pillsbury, Minneapolis flour tycoon.

Score: dead & missing, 45 (15 passengers, 30 crew).

Because it was not merely a shipwreck but the culmination of a series of disasters to Ward Line ships, the sinking of the Mohawk last week left the country aghast. Only five months ago the Morro Castle, her captain mysteriously dead, caught fire and burned with a loss of 124 lives (TIME, Sept. 17). Last week she was still beached off Asbury Park. N. J. Last month off Florida the Havana for no good reason went aground 20 miles off her course (TIME, Jan. 14). That a third major disaster should befall the Ward Line last week was regarded as almost incredibly fantastic.

It seemed no less incredible to the Mohawk's surviving officers. Chief Officer Pedersen, who had been below when the vessels struck, told a Federal Steamboat Inspection Board in Manhattan: "I've been thinking and thinking and thinking, and I can't explain it."

Equally baffled was Chief Engineer Martin: "I simply can't account for it."

Conflicting testimony was offered as to whether the Mohawk's automatic steering mechanism had failed. Chief Officer Pedersen said Captain Wood told him it had. Chief Engineer Martin said this was news to him. Quartermaster Mardy Polander said that not only had the wheel been "tough to handle," but that 20 minutes before the collision "it was impossible to keep the Mohawk on her course." Against this Deck Engineer Snyder reported he had tested the steering mechanism ten minutes before the crash, and again after it, that on both occasions he found it "a little stiff, but all right in every way." Second Assistant Engineer Parry testified that the Mohawk's steering motor had frozen during cold weather a year ago, forced the helmsman to bring her into port with the emergency hand steering gear. But he was sure it had not frozen last week.

With Captain Wood dead, it began to look as if the secret of the Mohawk disaster would remain buried with him in twelve fathoms off Seagirt, N. J.

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