On the 13th of November, 1965, the SS Yarmouth Castle - an American passenger
steamship - was sailing from Miami to Nassau, when a fire broke out on board.
On another ship this might have been a minor incident, but due to the condition of the Yarmouth
Castle and the actions of those on board the fire spread until it endangered the entire ship.
Six hours after the fire began, the vessel sank with the loss of 87 lives. It was the worst
disaster in North American waters in 15 years, and it was - it emerged - entirely preventable.
By the time of its sinking the Yarmouth Castle already had a long history. It was launched in
1927 as the Evangeline, and served routes between New York and Boston and Yarmouth in Nova Scotia.
In its heyday it was a grand vessel, with an onboard library, a writing room, a music room,
a glassed-in promenade deck, a smoking room, two social halls, and a dancing saloon.
As grand as she might have been when she was first launched, the years were not kind to the
Evangeline. During the Second World War she was pressed into service as a troop transport, and
once the war was over she changed hands several times, spending years at a stretch out of service.
She was refitted at least once during this time, but it was only a partial refit.
Fully modernizing her would have made her too heavy, and so she was allowed to keep most of
her original superstructure even though it was made from outdated materials like canvas and wood.
It was also during this time that the Evangeline was renamed, becoming the Yarmouth Castle.
By 1964, slightly battered and shabby, she ended up in the hands of Yarmouth Cruise Lines,
who used her for pleasure cruises between Miami and Nassau.
The Yarmouth Castle was sailing this route when, on the 13th of November,
1965, a fire began at approximately midnight. The exact cause of the fire has never been determined,
but it started in Room 610, which was being used for storage, and as such was
full of flammable materials including wooden furniture, spare mattresses and tins of paint.
This room was lit by a bare lightbulb suspended from a jury-rigged cable. It is thought by many
that this bulb or the wiring supporting it might have been what started the fire.
Whatever the cause, the flames quickly took hold. Smoke was carried by the ventilation
system of the Yarmouth Castle from the room where the fire began to elsewhere in the ship.
Between midnight and 1:00am, several crew members and passengers smelled or witnessed this smoke,
but could not find the source - not straight away, at least. At one stage the Master,
the Chief Mate, the First Assistant Engineer, the Cruise Director, the Switchboard Operator,
the Gift Shop Manager and several passengers were all involved in the search for the fire.
By the time they did eventually locate the fire it was already
very well established. As the door to Room 610 was opened,
flames burst out into the corridor and began spreading with astonishing rapidity. All attempts
to subdue them with fire extinguishers failed, and the crew in the vicinity were forced to flee.
At this point in time a general alarm should have sounded. At least one passenger had activated a
manual fire alarm point, and the captain had given the order for an alarm to be raised.
However, no alarm sounded throughout the ship. It is theorized that the fire had
already damaged the single electrical circuit which controlled the alarm system, rendering it
inoperable. Some passengers were awakened by the shouts of crew members in the corridors,
or by frantic pounding on the doors of their staterooms. Others, fortunately, were still
awake in the bar area following the conclusion of the evening's entertainment. They were alerted to
the fire only when a screaming passenger ran into the room, followed shortly by a badly burned man.
Chaos ensued. Passengers scrambled for lifeboats, in several instances struggling to launch them.
In many cases smoke and flames forced passengers to jump over the side of the ship,
plummeting into pitch-black water several storeys below. When passengers were too afraid to jump,
crew members assisted by equipping them with life jackets and then throwing them bodily overboard.
As this chaotic scene unfolded, no SOS had been sent. The radio operator had found the
radio room full of choking black smoke, and had been unable to access emergency equipment.
Luckily there were other ships nearby: the Finnpulp and the Bahama Star.
Crew on board these ships sighted flames on the deck of the Yarmouth Castle and sent out a call
for help. They then converged on the Yarmouth Castle to offer what assistance they could.
You might wonder where the captain was during all of this. As it transpired, far from going
down with the ship he had been among the first to escape, piling into a lifeboat along with several
members of the crew. Once in the water they made a beeline for the nearby Bahama Star. The captain
didn't receive a warm welcome when he got there. By some accounts the crew of the Bahamas Star
refused to take him on board, directing him instead to return to his ship and do his job.
The Bahama Star approached the blazing Yarmouth Castle,
pulling up so close to it that passengers on the Bahama Star could feel the heat of the flames.
Survivors were pulled from the water until no more remained. At around 6:00am the Yarmouth Castle
rolled over in the water and sank beneath the waves, finally extinguishing the flames.
When the fire began there had been 552 people on board the Yarmouth Castle. 87
did not make it off the ship alive.
An investigation was launched into the disaster, revealing a catalogue of errors - many of them
egregious. There should have been a working sprinkler in Room 610, but the sprinkler there
had not been maintained. A patrolling crewman should have discovered the fire much earlier,
but he had patrolled only some of the areas he was supposed to. A general alarm would
have alerted passengers and given them a chance to evacuate, but the alarm system consisted of only
a single electrical circuit and could easily be destroyed by fire. Firefighting equipment
should have allowed crew to hold back the flames while an evacuation took place, but the equipment
was poorly maintained and, in fact, contributed to the sinking by flooding parts of the ship.
The captain should have remained on board the vessel, or returned to it as soon as possible if
forced off by flames so that his knowledge of the ship could be put to use evacuating passengers.
Passengers should have been able to escape (in extremis) through the windows of their cabins,
but these had been poorly-maintained and often would not open. Lifeboats had been stacked on
the deck, making them difficult to access, and some fastenings had been painted over,
delaying the deployment of lifeboats. Inflatable lifeboats were missing, no fire or evacuation
drill had been conducted, life jackets were not available in every cabin, and lastly and
most decisively the Yarmouth Castle was fitted out with wooden fixtures and a wooden superstructure.
The sheer flammability of the vessel, more than anything else, allowed the fire to spread quickly.
This laundry list of obvious safety issues is so comprehensive that you might wonder why the
Yarmouth Castle was allowed to sail at all. While maritime safety standards in 1965 weren't what
they are today, they were still relatively strict, and ships were subject to frequent inspections.
However inspections of the Yarmouth Castle were more relaxed than passengers might have realized.
The ship, despite having owners based in the US, was registered in Panama. This was not
an uncommon practice, and was known as "sailing under a flag of convenience".
From a ship owner's point of view, using a flag of convenience conferred a number of benefits.
Register your ship in Panama and you'd be able to enjoy reduced tax liability and more relaxed
labor laws... and of course you'd have much less safety legislation to be compliant with.
In the wake of the Yarmouth Castle fire safety standards outlined by the
Safety Of Life At Sea convention were increased across the board.
Vessels carrying more than 50 passengers on an overnight trip can no longer be constructed from
combustible materials. Fire drills are mandatory, and fire safety inspections are more rigorous.
Moreover these changes apply to ships registered in almost any country in the world.
99% of merchant ships are now subject to these regulations. The practice of
sailing under a flag of convenience does, however, still exist. Several popular flag of
convenience states have opted out of the Safety Of Life At Sea convention. For ship operators,
these states offer the opportunity - still - to sacrifice safety in favor of convenience.