1930 — June 10, steamer Fairfax & oil tanker Pinthis collide in fog, fire, off Scituate, MA-50

Blanchard note on fatalities: Though we show fatality numbers ranging from a low of 42 to a high of 51, we take the U.S. Steamboat Inspection Service 1930 Annual Report to be authoritative as to 50 deaths, given not only the source, but the detailed breakout of fatalities by ship and type.

–51 Hall, Thomas. Shipwrecks of Massachusetts Bay. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2012, 102.
–50 Steamboat Inspection Service. Annual Report…Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1930. 1930, p3.
–19 Pinthis (all), p. 16.
–31 Fairfax, p. 16.
–14 passengers
–17 crew
–49 Coronado Eagle and Journal, CA. “Seeking to Lessen the Menace of Fogs.” 9-17-1930, p7.
–48 UPI. “48 Die as Vessels Crash and Sea Becomes…Inferno…” San Pedro News Pilot, 6-11-1930, 1.
–26-27 Fairfax
— 11 passengers
–15-16 crew
— 19 Captain and crew of 18.
–47 National Fire Protection Assoc. Spreadsheet on Large Loss of Life Fires (as of Feb 2003).
–47 Northern Atlantic Dive Expeditions, Inc. Shipwrecks of Massachusetts Bay. “Pinthis.”
–47 Snow, Edward Rowe. Storms and Shipwrecks of New England. Yankee Pub. Co., 1943, 172
–46 Lowell Sun, MA. “Captain of the Fairfax Charged With Negligence,” June 12, 1930.
–45 NFPA. “Fires Causing Large Loss of Life.” Handbook of Fire Protection (11th Ed.). 1954.
–42 Snow, E. R. Marine Mysteries and Dramatic Disasters of New England. 1976, p. 148.
–23 Fairfax. Snow. Marine Mysteries…Dramatic Disasters…New England. 1976, p.156.
–12 passengers “in the sea…”
–11 crewmen “leaped to their death.”
–19 Pinthis. Snow. Marine Mysteries…Dramatic Disasters…New England. 1976, p.148.

Fairfax
–23 Fairfax. Snow. Marine Mysteries…Dramatic Disasters…New England. 1976, p.156.
–12 passengers “in the sea…”
–11 crewmen “leaped to their death.”

Pinthis
–19 Snow, E. R. Marine Mysteries and Dramatic Disasters of New England. 1976, p. 148.
–18 Time Magazine. “Catastrophe: Fairfax & Pinthis,” June 23, 1930.
–18 Workers of the Writers’ Program Boston Looks Seaward…1630-1940. 1941, p. 245

Snow, E. R. Marine Mysteries and Dramatic Disasters of New England. NY: Dodd, Mead, 1976.

Narrative Information

Steamboat Inspection Service: “On June 10, 1930, a collision occurred between the passenger steamer Fairfax and the tanker Pinthis in the waters of Massachusetts Bay, resulting in the loss of the lives of 50 persons. The Supervising Inspector General proceeded to Boston and counseled with the local inspectors at that port, who investigated the disaster, with a view to det4rmining what constructive suggestions could be made so as to reduce such disast4ers to a minimum. In a general report covering the matter, the Supervising Inspector General suggested –

1. I recommend that you call a conference of the shipowners for the purpose of working out a plan for establishing passing lanes in coastwise waters. The necessity for this has been established in Massachusetts Bay, but my thought is, while the conditions there may be met by establishing passing lanes, to also give attention to the same problem in other waters were it may be necessary.
2. The law is strict with reference to the transportation of dangerous articles on steamers carrying passengers. Gasoline as cargo would not be permitted to be transported on a steamer carrying passengers, but here we have a disaster where a vessel that is forbidden by law to carry gasoline as cargo is the victim by fire, and lives are lost, as a result of a collision with a vessel which is permitted by law to carry gasoline as cargo. While there is no violation of any legal rule in the transportation of gasoline as cargo in a ship not carrying passengers navigating crowded waters in a fog, there is, I submit, a question as to the moral right to do this thing, and I recommend that you call a conference of the owners and operators of tankers with a view to working out a plan by which there may be an understanding that these vessels shall anchor in time of fog in waters where there will be no danger of collision with passenger ships.

“The conferences recommended have been agreed to, and they will be held some time in the early fall of the present calendar year. At that time the shipowners will collaborate with this service in working out plans for securing greater safety, this service approaching the problem with the object in view to securing remedial measures through the cooperation of those at interest rather than through legislation.” (pp. 3-4)

Steamboat Inspection Service: “On June 10, 1930, the steamer Fairfax, 5,649 gross tons, collided with the motor ship Pinthis, 1,111 gross tons, in the vicinity of No. 4 Gas Buoy, Massachusetts Bay, resulting in an explosion on the Pinthis and her immediate sinking with all hands (19) on board. A fire then broke out on the steamer Fairfax, as a result of which 14 of her passengers and 17 of her crew were lost. The fire was later extinguished. The case is under investigation by the local inspectors at Boston, Mass.” (p. 16.)

(Steamboat Inspection Service, U.S. Dept. of Commerce. Annual Report of the Supervising Inspector General, Steamboat Inspection Service, Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1930. 1930.)

Workers of the Writers’ Program: “…the year 1930 wrote the tragic story of a horrible sea disaster. An impenetrable fog hung over the waters of the bay on June 10, when the Mer¬chants & Miners’ Fairfax left Boston, bound for Norfolk, Vir¬ginia, with 71 passengers and a crew of 70. On the same day the Mallory oil tanker Pinthis departed from Fall River with 12,000 barrels of gasoline, bound for Portland, Maine. While the oil tanker nosed her way through the Cape Cod Canal and then across the bay, the passenger ship crawled along at half-speed, her whistle breaking through the fog with a lugu¬brious blast once every minute. About 23 miles from Boston Harbor, off Scituate, the Pinthis suddenly appeared 150 or 200 feet off the bow of the Fairfax. One shrill scream came from the whistle of the Pinthis and was followed by a quick reversing of the Fairfax engines. But it was too late; collision occurred, and a moment later the gasoline in the tanker burst into a roaring geyser of flame. Burning gasoline shot high over the masthead of the Fairfax and showered her with a cloudburst of fire. Flames swept the port side of the Fair¬fax, and the surface of the ocean blazed up like an inferno. The Pinthis had disappeared beneath the waves, but floating fires, fed continually by oil which welled up from her shat¬tered hull, marked the grave of the tanker and her crew of 18 men.

“Meanwhile order was gradually achieved on the Fairfax. The deluge of fire had ignited the clothing of some of the crew and they and a few frenzied passengers rushed to the rail and jumped into the burning sea. Heroic seamen fought their way through smoke and flame to the lifeboat stations and succeeded in getting the women and children into boats on the side of the ship farthest from the fire. Another group of crew members hastily repaired the burned antenna and an SOS was radioed. As the ship pushed her way out of the flaming oil, a lifeboat was lowered to search for survivors among those who had jumped overboard, but none was found. Three hours later, the Gloucester, another Merchants & Miners’ ship, arrived in response to the call from the Fairfax and took off the remaining passengers.” (Workers of the Writers’ Program. Boston Looks Seaward – The Story of the Port: 1630-1940. 1941, p. 245.)

Time Magazine: “In a fog which last week shrouded the Atlantic seaboard, the 5,600-ton packet Fairfax of Merchants & Miners Transportation Co. groped out of Boston Harbor, Baltimore-bound. Turning down the coast past Scituate, Mass., she quickened her pace. Just at dusk her 76 passengers, including Vice President D. R. McNeil of the company, and the crew of 80, felt her swerve, stagger. Rushing on deck they saw a horrifying fiery geyser — “like an umbrella of flame”; — rise skyward at the bow, found themselves enveloped in it. Their vessel had rammed 504,000 gal. of high-test gasoline, cargo of the Pinthis, owned by Lake Tankers Corp. (Mallory Lines subsidiary).

“For a roaring moment the two craft locked, then the Pinthis sank with her crew of 18. The Fairfax was doused in flame. Human torches rushed about, dove vainly for relief into the blazing sea. Down came the lifeboats, their ropes burned away; down came the radio antenna, before an SOS was sounded. On the top deck Mrs. Neil A. Dayton, Wartime Red Cross nurse in the Army service, wife of the director of Massachusetts’ Department of Mental Diseases, breathed hot fumes, fell prostrate. When revived, she tried to escape by swinging over the side to the deck below. The hot rail seared her hands. “Just as she let go,” said a letter from her husband last week. “. . . [a man named] Redmond grasped her by the ankles and she fell downward, striking against the steel plates . . . with terrific force. . . . Although the shock nearly dragged him [Redmond] overboard, he was pulled back by two of his companions.”… Bruised and scorched though she was, Mrs. Dayton joined Ship’s Nurse Dorothy Mannix in treating the wounded, many of whom died in her arms from lung burns or ghastly body burns. Vice President McNeil said to Mrs. Dayton: “You are the heroine of this disaster. We will never forget what you have done. You will hear from us later.”

“Other women aboard the flaming Fairfax congregated astern. Some prayed, some sang the University of Maine’s “Stein Song.” Finally the holocaust was quenched, the radio repaired, help obtained from S.S. Gloucester of the same line, which hurried passengers to Boston hospitals. Leaving a pool of fire fed for hours by the submerged Pinthis, the Fairfax limped in under her own steam.

“At the investigation by Federal steamboat inspectors, cowardice was charged on the part of the crew, negligence on the part of Capt. Archibald H. Brooks and Chief Wireless Operator J. Wesley Geweken. Chief Signalman George Farrell of the Navy’s airplane carrier Lexington, member of a group of sailors and marines returning to Norfolk from leave, said: “All members of the crew seemed to lose their heads. . . . Navy men aboard manned the hoseline and extinguished the fire.” Also, when the repaired radio worked, Operator Geweken sent no more SOS calls, refused aid from the Coast Guard cutter Tampa, 15 min. away, communicated only with the Gloucester, four hours away. Testimony showed that many of the Pinthis crew were not burned but drowned. Captain Brooks said the Tampa would have been of no use: “The sea was on fire for a mile around.” He also said: “I never saw a cooler crew in my life”.” (Time Magazine. “Catastrophe: Fairfax & Pinthis,” June 23, 1930.)

Newspapers

June 11, UPI: “Boston, June 11. – An oily Inferno which engulfed a passenger steamer and an oil tanker off the southern Massachusetts coast last night appeared today to have taken a toll of approximately 48 lives. Of 71 passengers aboard the Fairfax when the 7,000 ton craft left early last night on its first trip of the season to Norfolk and Baltimore, 11 were reported missing today. All were believed to have leaped into the sea either when their clothing caught fire, or when they became numbed with fright. Officials of the Merchants and Miners line estimated that 16 to 15 members of the Fairfax’s crew of 70, are believed to be negroes, also had plunged over the ship’s rail and drowned. Fire enveloped both the Merchants and Miners Transportation company’s steamship Fairfax and the Shell Eastern Petroleum Products corporation’s tanker Pinthis after the passenger vessel had rammed the smaller oil craft amidships in a thick fog off Scituate.

“Captain, crew perish. The tanker, carrying 12,000 barrels of gasoline, sank almost stonelike in a fiery sea. Its captain and crew of 18 men were believed to have gone down with their ship. Caught momentarily in the hole it had cut in the middle of the oil craft, the Fairfax was held helplessly while oil fed flames streamed over its decks. But the Fairfax, managed to ride out her difficulties, and steamed into this port under her own power at 10:15 today. There was a gaping hole — 6 feet long and two feet wide in her prow. As the survivors came into port, some aboard the rescue vessel Gloucester, which was near the scene of the accident and also aboard the crippled Fairfax — they told of the few minutes frenzy after the Fairfax crashed into the tanker. All the terrors of the sea were crowded into those few minutes. There was a dull thud of the crash, the muffled explosion and then the bursting flames that lighted the entire area. Oil spread over the water. Flames leaped from the sinking tanker to the Fairfax. Some passengers who had pressed forward on the Fairfax to see what had happened soon were screaming along the deck, their clothing aflame. It was these passengers who leaped overboard and apparently were lost. Some of the crew…were stricken with fear and also leaped into the sea. ‘I actually saw four persons leap over the side of the Fairfax, one wearing no lifebelt,’ Sergeant Harry E. Kipp of the marines, a passenger on the Fairfax said. ‘Flames covered them and they were shrieking. Maybe some of them were burned to death before they hit the water.’ ‘Negro members of the crew caused more panic than any others aboard, including women.’ Lifeboats were launched from the Fairfax but the tradition of the seas — that women and children go first — was observed carefully. ‘Men passengers made no attempt to rush for the lifeboats and went to them only in their turns,’ said Joseph Armstrong, a Fairfax passenger. ‘When we (Armstrong and his friends) got out on deck, efforts already were being made to launch the lifeboats. This was impossible at first because fire was sweeping the deck.’…lifeboats launched were pulled safely away from the fire zone, remained there for some time and then passengers were taken back aboard the Fairfax. Four or five nurses were the heroines of the disaster. Unmindful of their own safety, they worked furiously to assist the burned and injured. administering skillful first aid at a time when it seemed almost certain that the Fairfax would follow the tanker to the bottom. Survivors brought here later were almost as one in paying high tribute to the courageous services rendered by the nurses, a marine among the passengers remarking that ‘they deserve medals.’” (United Press International, Henry Minott. “48 Die as Vessels Crash and Sea Becomes Flaming Inferno.” San Pedro News Pilot, CA, 6-11-1930, p. 1.)

June 12: “The list of dead or missing in Tuesday night’s fatal collision of a Merchants and Miners passenger laden boat and an oil tanker off Scituate, was set early today at 46 lives….Oil on the surface of the ocean burned all day yesterday off the Scituate shore, a grim memorial of the tragedy.” (Lowell Sun, MA. “Captain of the Fairfax Charged With Negligence,” 6-12-1930.)

Sep 17: “The necessity for farther safety at sea by strengthening the rules governing the movements of Vessels in the comparatively congested coastwise waters of the United States is evidenced in recommendations arising out of the investigation by Dickerson N. Hoover, supervising inspector-general of the Steamboat Inspection Service, of the recent collision between the passenger steamship Fairfax and the tanker Pinthis in a fog off the Massachusetts coast in which the tanker was sunk with forty nine fatalities.

“Although the master of the Fairfax is charged with reckless navigation in a dense fog, the report to Robert P. Lament, Secretary of Commerce, goes further than a mere attempt to place any personal responsibility for the accident. As a means of minimizing the menace of coastwise navigation in fog, the inspector-general recommends a conference of ship owners with a view to establishing clearly defined lanes for the passing of ships in coastal waterways. He also recommends that vessels transporting cargoes of gasoline be required to anchor during fog in waters outside those frequented by passenger vessels.

“The importance of Mr. Hoover’s recommendations is clearly apparent. The plan for a conference of shipowners, however, obviously will consume considerable time. But the restriction of gasoline tankers from routes traveled by coastwise passenger vessels in time of fog is a far more wieldy undertaking and one which would practically eliminate the risk of collision. If Mr. Hoover’s plans are carried out, the Fairfax-Pinthis disaster may be cited as the starting point of two highly essential steps in furthering safety at sea.” (Coronado Eagle and Journal, CA. “Seeking to Lessen the Menace of Fogs.” 9-17-1930, p. 7.)

Sources

Coronado Eagle and Journal, CA. “Seeking to Lessen the Menace of Fogs.” 9-17-1930. Accessed 10-13-2021 at: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=CJ19300917.2.103&e=——-en–20–1–txt-txIN——–1

Federal Writers’ Project. Boston Looks Seaward. The Story of the Port, 1630-1940. Compiled by Workers of the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration in the State of Massachusetts. Boston: B. Humphries, Inc. 1941.

Hall, Thomas. “Pinthis-Fairfax.” Shipwrecks of Massachusetts Bay. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2012, 101-103.

Lowell Sun, MA. “Captain of the Fairfax Charged With Negligence,” 6-12-1930. Accessed at: http://www.newspaperarchive.com/FullPagePdfViewer.aspx?img=56343231

National Fire Protection Association. “Fires Causing Large Loss of Life.” Handbook of Fire Protection (11th Ed.). Boston, MA: NFPA, 1954, pp. 33-36.

National Fire Protection Association. Spreadsheet on Large Loss of Life Fires (as of Feb 2003). (Email attachment to B. W. Blanchard from Jacob Ratliff, NFPA Archivist/Taxonomy Librarian, 7-8-2013.)

Northern Atlantic Dive Expeditions, Inc. Shipwrecks of Massachusetts Bay. “Pinthis.” Accessed 5-3-2009 at: http://www.northernatlanticdive.com/shipwrecks/pinthis/pinthis.htm

Snow, E. R. Marine Mysteries and Dramatic Disasters of New England. NY: Dodd, Mead, 1976.

Snow, Edward Rowe. Storms and Shipwrecks of New England. Boston: Yankee Pub. Co., 1943.

Steamboat Inspection Service, U.S. Department of Commerce. Annual Report of the Supervising Inspector General, Steamboat Inspection Service, Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1930. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1930. Accessed 10-13-2021 at: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Annual_Report_of_the_Supervising_Inspect/3fTirApEmkoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=1930+fairfax+tanker+pinthis+collision+investigation+report&pg=PA3&printsec=frontcover

Time Magazine. “Catastrophe: Fairfax & Pinthis,” June 23, 1930. Accessed 10-12-2021 at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,739605-1,00.html

United Press International, Henry Minott. “48 Die as Vessels Crash and Sea Becomes Flaming Inferno.” San Pedro News Pilot, CA, 6-11-1930, p. 1. Accessed 10-13-2021 at: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=SPNP19300611.2.20&e=——-en–20–1–txt-txIN——–1