The great ship was docked for the night at Pier 9 in Toronto Harbour.
On board were hundreds of people who had been enjoying a pleasure cruise through Lake Ontario and Lake Erie.
She had left Detroit two days earlier, on a journey that would take her to Prescott, Ontario, through the Thousand Islands and down into Sarnia where she was to remain for the winter.
It was a journey she had made many times over the last 30 years.
That night the only sound in the cabins was the sound of soft breathing from the sleeping passengers.
But in a locked linen closet on C Deck…disaster loomed as smoke began to sneak out into the corridor.
Hours later, as the sun spread its rays over Toronto it shone a light on one of the city’s most horrific scenes.
I’m Craig Baird, this is Canadian History Ehx and today I bring you the story of the SS Noronic Fire.
When you hear of ships on the Great Lakes, most people immediately assume it’s a great cargo vessel criss-crossing for the sake of international trade.
But there was a time when ships cruised for pleasure, not for commerce.
Passengers were treated to some of the most beautiful vistas in the world as they enjoyed a vacation in their own backyards.
For decades, cruise ships were a common sight on the Great Lakes, but one event signaled the beginning of the end of that era.
It all began in front of an immense crowd.
10,000 people watched as a new ship was launched from Port Arthur, Ontario on June 2, 1913.
Mrs. Edmund Bristol of Toronto smashed a bottle over the bow, and the crowd erupted into a cheer at the christening of the SS Noronic.
The name was a combination of two companies t Northern Navigation Company and Richelieu & Ontario Navigation Company.
They merged to form Canadian Steamship Lines, and it birthed The Queen of the Lakes, as the ship was known.
It quickly became a source of pride for the company.
Built for passenger and freight service on the Great Lakes, she was a sight to behold.
110 metres in length, she weighed 6,000 gross register tons and had five decks capable of accommodating 800 passengers and 200 crew.
She was the largest and fastest ship on the Great Lakes when she first touched the water.
Noronic was the luxury cruise ship of her day.
She was powered by two 500 kilowatt engines, had her own ice plant, wireless telegraphy and bandstands.
The decks were lined in mahogany and lounge chairs were upholstered with Spanish leather.
With the tragic maiden voyage of Titanic still fresh in everyone’s mind from the previous year, the Noronic was equipped with 14 lifeboats in case of emergency.
Most didn’t expect her to ever need it.
They said she was unsinkable, and she proved that throughout her years of service.
But being unsinkable didn’t keep disaster at bay.
She might’ve been unsinkable, but she still had several problems during her first 30 years of service.
The engine failed on an early voyage, and she was too tall and needed to have her hull width expanded to improve the ballast.
After that she was known as “The Pregnant Lady of the Lakes”.
And earned a seedy reputation as a place businessmen took women who were not their wives.
In 1946, the ship was attacked by strikers angry about the use of temporary workers during a labour dispute with the operators of the Welland Canal.
Despite various troubles and that unsavory reputation, Noronic was still plying the waters of the Great Lakes at the end of the 1940s.
Which brings us to today’s story?
On Sept. 14, 1949, the Noronic was scheduled to leave the dock in Detroit at 1 p.m. to begin her seven-day pleasure cruise through Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
On board were 524 passengers, the majority of whom were American.
Catering to passengers were 171 all Canadian crew.
The journey would take them east to Cleveland, Ohio to pick up passengers.
She would then head north through the Welland Canal to Toronto, then over to the Thousand Islands region and then back all the way to Sarnia where she was to dock for the winter.
In all, it was to be a 1,600 kilometres journey.
Louisa Dusten was one of the passengers onboard.
She was the paymistress in the accounting department of the Canada Steamship Lines office.
After spending 30 years with the company, she had been rewarded with a ticket on the ship for a small vacation.
Always committed to her work, she took payroll ledgers with her to keep them up to date.
In command of the ship was Captain William Taylor. He began sailing47 years earlier as a fresh-faced 19-year-old working on the St. Clair River.
Now, he was in his mid-60s overseeing happy passengers on a luxurious boat.
It was a quiet cruise to Toronto. Many of the passengers stood on the decks watching as the setting sun sparkled off the city skyline.
At the time, the city had much to celebrate.
It was booming after the Second World War, and many were still celebrating the fact that a few months earlier the Maple Leafs had won their third consecutive Stanley Cup.
A week before the Noronic arrival, Toronto had celebrated a groundbreaking ceremony. On Sept 8 the city prepared for Canada’s first subway.
Everyone aboard was buzzing with excitement as the ship docked.
Louisa Dusten and her friend Nellie Burr left the Noronic to visit the nearby passenger ship Cayuga to visit fellow Canadian Steamship employee Nick Nicholson.
Captain William Taylor, and Josephine Kerr, a passenger, left the Noronic to attend a party at the home of an Imperial Oil executive.
The ship was in fine form resting on the water at Pier 9 as they left.
It wouldn’t be in a few short hours.
By1 a.m., many of the passengers who had left the ship to visit clubs and restaurants in the city were back on board.
Captain Taylor was in his cabin at 1:25 a.m., ready to turn in for the night.
Some passengers would later claim he was intoxicated when he arrived, but the cab driver who dropped him off stated he was sober.
Taylor would testify he had only one Scotch as his diabetes prevented him from drinking more.
Sometime around 2:30 am Don Church, a passenger was still up and heading back to his room from the lounge.
He worked as an appraiser for a fire insurance company. As he walked. through the starboard corridor on C Deck in the aft part of the ship he found a strange haze in one of the corridors.
It smelled something familiar and unexpected in that part of the ship.
Smoke.
He followed the smell to a locked linen closet near the women’s washroom.
Church realized that something was seriously wrong.
He ran down the corridor and came across bellboy Earnest O’Neill.
Rather than sound an alarm, O’Neill ran to the Steward’s Office one deck below on D-Deck and retrieved the keys to the closet, along with a fire extinguisher.
The two men ran back to the linen closet.
O’Neill put the key into the lock and turned it until he heard the familiar click as it unlocked.
And then…he opened the door.
Before I continue, we need to talk about chemistry.
Fire cannot exist without oxygen.
Oxygen is required because it chemically reacts with flammable materials to release heat and energy.
In a confined space, say like a linen closet, if the oxygen is depleted or low, a fire will eventually go out.
But if there’s a rush of oxygen the fire will expand quickly as it’s fueled.
If you’ve seen the 1991 blockbuster by Ron Howard starring Kurt Russell, you know that this phenomenon is called a backdraft, and it is extremely dangerous.
And on the
Noronic, the Bellboy Earnest O’Neill, had no idea what would happen when he turned the doorknob to open the linen closet.
He believed the fire could be controlled and be easily put out with the extinguisher he had in hand.
But then when he opened the door the sudden influx of oxygen made what was a small smoldering fire a raging monster ready to consume everything in its path.
To make matters worse O’Neill pointed the fire extinguisher and pushed the lever, but nothing came out.
He then ran to the nearest hydrant on the ship.
He turned it on only to discover there was barely a trickle of water coming out.
The fire spread quickly over the oil-polished wood-panelled hallway.
The ship had no fire detection system, nor heat-sensitive sprinklers, to trigger an alarm.
Everything had to be done manually.
Church and O’Neill were joined by another passenger and bellboy who attempted to fight the flames with fire extinguishers, all of which didn’t work.
The fire was spreading fast.
Church immediately ran to his cabin on D deck, grabbed his wife and children, and fled the ship.
Who can blame him.
At the same time, O’Neill ran to the officers’ quarters and woke Captain Taylor to tell him what was going on.
Passengers were woken up by the crew pulling fire alarms, and blaring horns.
When First Mate Gerry Wood pulled the whistle cord to alert those on shore, it jammed, and the whistle drowned out the fire horns on the ship.
Dazed and confused passengers woke up, scared.
For hundreds their fates were sealed before they had even stepped out of their beds.
Josephine Kerr, who had joined Captain Taylor at the Imperial Oil party, walked out of her cabin to find flames in the corridor.
She grabbed her nieces Barbara and Kathleen and escaped the ship.
Her nephew and the children’s parents were sadly left behind.
At 2:38 a.m., only eight minutes after the fire started, half of the decks were on fire.
A short distance away, 27-year-old Donald Williamson was coming off his shift at the Goodyear Tire plant.
He had spent years working on lake freighters and was looking forward to seeing the ship known as the Queen of the Lakes for himself.
As he approached the docks, he was first greeted by the smell of smoke and the blaring of the ship’s whistle.
He got closer and saw that something was definitely wrong.
The ship was an inferno on water as the blaze lit up the sky above the harbour in a sickly orange glow.
He heard people screaming for help and Williamson sprang into action.
He took a painters’ raft that was floating nearby, stepped onto it and released it.
He guided the raft towards the ship as people leapt from the Noronic, Williamson pulled them from the water.
Meanwhile, Constables Ronald Anderson and Warren Shaddock were responding to what they believed was a routine call at the harbour.
That was quickly shattered when they turned a corner and their cruiser was surrounded by people, soaking wet and in shock.
Behind the crowd, the Noronic was burning out of control.
Constable Anderson immediately took off his uniform and jumped into the water to help Williamson’s rescue efforts. Soon after, fireboats arrived to offer assistance from the water.
Officials with St. John’s Ambulance set up a first aid post.
Within minutes, their station turned into a temporary morgue.
The SS Kingston was at the dock and put a gangway over to the Noronic to help passengers escape.
It soon had to be removed as drifting embers threatened to burn the ship.
On the Noronic it was complete pandemonium.
There were only 15 crew members onboard when the fire broke out.
The rest were ashore enjoying the night or visiting family.
Louisa Dusten and Nellie Burr were alerted to the fire by their coworker Sam Graham, who had escaped in such haste that he arrived at the Cayuga pantless.
Dusten realized that the payroll ledgers were still on the ship, while Burr’s only thought was for her daughter Iva who was asleep in their cabin.
The women raced back to the ship and boarded it as others jumped to safety.
On the upper decks, the crew failed to do a sweep up to alert passengers and most woke up to the sounds of people screaming.
Men, women and children ran out to discover the fire and all escape routes blocked by the raging inferno.
Some were lucky enough to have cabin portholes smashed by fire crews outside. They were dragged to safety.
Unlucky ones either suffocated to death or were burned alive.
In corridors, people were trampled as passengers in a blind panic searched for an escape.
Those who made it to the top deck jumped off the ship.
Some landed safely in the water, with minor injuries, others crashed onto the pier and were killed.
Many who jumped were on fire and screaming.
Andre Cinq-Mars was passing when he saw the fire.
He said,
“It was a nightmare. There were people hanging on ropes and a lot more screaming from behind a cloud of smoke. I helped an elderly woman and a couple of men to the dock, but it was impossible to reach the people almost enveloped in flames.”
Josephine Kerr’s niece Barbara was unable to climb down one of the cables connecting the ship to the dock by herself.
Arthur Alves, a golfer from Cleveland, grabbed her and put her on his shoulder as he escaped the ship.
Kerr jumped off the ship but hit the anchor cable and injured herself in the fall.
Ross Leitch took his water taxi across to help rescue efforts and as soon as he was spotted, passengers jumped off the ship into the water around his boat.
He told the Toronto Star,
“Some of them landed on the roof of my cabin and broke through it.”
It was a gruesome night and by the end of it, his boat was covered in blood.
Nonetheless, he rescued about 150 people from the water through the night.
(BEAT)
Within 15 minutes of the fire being discovered, a fire truck, pumper truck, hose wagon, aerial truck, rescue squad, fire boat and high-pressure truck all surrounded the ship to put the flames out.
Every ambulance within a 30-kilometre radius was on its way.
Taxi drivers provided free rides to get injured passengers to the hospital.
Before long, every hospital in the city was filled.
Some passengers were taken to temporary aid stations the Royal York Hotel and King Edward Hotel until they could be transported to hospitals.
For those on the pier, the sound of the ship’s whistle and the sirens of emergency vehicles was soon drowned out by the shrieks of those dying on the Noronic.
When the first rescue ladder was extended up to B deck, so many passengers rushed onto it that the ladder broke in half.
Those who fell off were quickly rescued from the water.
By the time fire crews arrived, the hull of the Noronic was burning white hot and decks began to collapse on top of one another as the ship’s support structure melted.
For an hour firefighters drenched the ship with their hoses until she was so full of water that she started to list towards the pier before righting itself
At 5 a.m., the fire was finally extinguished.
Firefighters had poured 6.4 million litres of water on the ship from 37 hoses.
It took an extra two hours for the ship to cool down enough for firefighters to even step foot on it.
What they saw would haunt them for the rest of their lives. It was horrific.
Charred corpses littered the burned-out corridors of the ship.
Many were embracing each other in death.
Some bodies were so burned that forensic dentistry would have to be used to identify remains.
Firefighter Tom Benson said,
“We got aboard at daylight and there were bodies everywhere. Some were cremated with just a skull or backbone remaining. The intensity of the heat was such that human bone was incinerated.”
Every glass window on the ship had melted or been smashed, and every stairwell but one was destroyed.
Toronto Star journalist Edwin Feeney said,
“I saw the blackened bits that were once people. There was a young woman clutching her baby. The remains crumpled when picked up by firemen.”
One person stated that the ship looked as though giants with huge blow torches had been long at work on it.
(BEAT MUSIC TRANSITION)
The final death toll was 118 people; most died from suffocation and burns.
Of all the people who jumped, only one drowned.
In an inverse of many ship disasters like the Titanic, it was those on lower decks who had a better chance of survival thanks to portholes they could get through and into the water.
Of the 281 people with cabins on D-Deck, there was only one death.
Both Nellie Burr and her daughter Iva escaped the ship as did Louisa Dusten, with the payroll ledgers, but she suffered serious burns over 40 percent of her body.
She died three weeks later and was the only casualty employed by Canadian Steamships.
The department stores Eaton’s and Simpson’s both donated clothing to survivors along with donations which poured in from across Canada to the Red Cross.
As families mourned and Canadians read the news in shock, others looked for someone to blame.
On Sept. 25, 8,500 people attended a memorial service at the CNE Coliseum.
Mayor Hiram McCallum read messages from the city councils of Cleveland and Detroit and Michigan governor G. Mennen Williams.
In the House of Commons, an inquiry was launched 11 days after the fire.
A committee led by Supreme Court of Canada Justice R.L. Kellock, interviewed witnesses and looked over the evidence of the disaster over five weeks.
The cause was never discovered.
While some suspected arson, it was deemed the fire was likely caused by a member of the laundry staff carelessly dropping a cigarette in the closet.
Two witnesses saw maids smoking near the linen closet earlier in the day.
Since the closet contained a cardboard box that was used as a garbage bin, it is believed one of the maids threw a still lit cigarette into the box.
Many blamed the crew and called cowards for not triggering the first alarm or calling the fire department before the fire spread.
The interior crew was also blamed, as it oiled wood instead of using fireproof material.
The inquiry was also critical of the fact passengers were never informed of evacuation routes on the ship, which led them to try an exit from the ship from one deck instead of all decks.
Plus, none of the fire extinguishers were working This wasn’t the crew’s fault.
The company had instituted a policy in which only the crew knew fire drill procedures.
Canadian Steamships did not want vacationing passengers to be bothered by fire drills.
After the disaster, new guidelines were put in place for all cruise ships on the Great Lakes.
Most of the ships could not meet the requirements without massive retrofitting.
Rather than deal with the cost, companies laid up their passenger ships and scrapped them.
The last of the Great Lakes passenger ships were retired from service in the late-1960s.
The Noronic was eventually taken apart and its hull was towed to Hamilton where it was scrapped.
Lawsuits from the disaster totalled over $2 million.
As for the whistle on the ship, it was placed in a nautical museum on Toronto’s waterfront.
But what happened to the captain of the ship?
As the fire raged during that horrific September night in year Captain William Taylor ran through the corridors breaking windows to help passengers escape.
He remained onboard until nearly the end and was one of the last crew members to abandon ship.
It took weeks for him to recover from the severe burns he suffered to his hands and face.
At first, many called him a hero.
But public opinion is fickle, and newspapers ran with stories claiming he was drunk, something Taylor denied completely.
When he testified at the inquiry, his hands shook, and he could barely read his notes.
Many witnesses corroborated his statements and asserted that he acted heroically and was not intoxicated.
After the Canadian Department of Transport blamed him for failing to take adequate precautions against the fire, he had his master’s certificate suspended for a year.
Taylor spent the rest of his life working as a desk clerk at a hotel in Sarnia while living in a small apartment.
He never sailed again, haunted by the memories of the tragedy that happened under his watch.
He died on Feb. 17, 1962.
