When the Dancing Stopped: The Real Story of the Morro Castle Disaster and Its Deadly Wake

During the dark days of the Great Depression, thousands of weary souls escaped their bleak lives for a week of paradise aboard the Ward Line's glamorous cruise ship, the Morro Castle. It was the most famous passenger liner of its day, lightning fast, elegantly appointed. It was also a ticking time bomb. It was the summer of 1934. Two sailors joined the Morro Castle crew, one a teenager on his first job away from home, the other a dangerous psychopath. Within two months, they would witness the end of the party in a single night of death, killer storms, and catastrophic fire. And that was only the beginning of a twenty-year-long story. In When the Dancing Stopped, we too walk up the gangplank to that art-deco liner and, at first, enjoy the glamour and the sultry Havana nights. With mounting suspense, we also witness the launch of a mystery that mesmerized the nation and then, in the midst of troubled times, faded away. Award-winning author Brian Hicks, using newly declassified FBI files, thousands of pages of investigation notes, testimony, and new interviews, takes the reader on a mid-century cruise through history, revealing a cold-case file that had been, until now, left unsolved for history. And, as he relates in this work of masterful storytelling, it all began with the last cruise of the Morro Castle.

Author: Brian Hicks
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 05/19/2008
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.01lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.95d
ISBN: 9780743280099

About the Author
Hicks, Brian: - Brian Hicks is the author of Ghost Ship and Raising the Hunley. A senior writer with The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, he has won more than a dozen journalism awards, including the South Carolina Press Association's award for Journalist of the Year. He lives in Charleston with his wife and two sons.