Damn the torpedoes

since 11-27-02

Heroic ensigns saved lives during infamous Boston blaze

By Robert F. Dorr
Special to NavyTimes
25 November 2002

It has been 60 years since one of the nation’s most catastrophic fires claimed the lives of almost 500 people at a Boston nightclub. The death toll would have been higher, if not for the heroism of two young Naval Reserve officers.  Just after 10 p.m. Nov. 28, 1942, fire broke out at the Cocoanut Grove restaurant and nightclub.

In barely 15 minutes, 492 of the 1,000 people in the club died from heat, flames and suffocation — and from battling each other to escape.A match used to provide illumination to change a light bulb started the fire, igniting decorations and an artificial palm tree. In the first seconds, a young woman raced across the dance floor with her hair on fire. 

A moment later, panic exploded among the crowd. People stampeded. Driving past the club, Supply Corps Ensigns Mac A. Cason and George W. Carlson stopped to help. Though Cason and Carlson arrived only minutes after the conflagration began, the principal means of escape already was denied to those trapped inside.

People were jammed five or six deep at the main revolving door at the nightclub’s corner entrance at 17 Piedmont St., clogging the doorway. Two hundred died at that spot; they might have lived if the door had opened outward.

The blaze then turned inward on itself, doubled back, and destroyed everything inside the building.Most of the men and some of the women inside the Cocoanut Club were military. “The Boston Navy Yard was a very busy facility,” said Andrew F. Antippas, 71, of Fairfax, Va., a history researcher who grew up in Boston and who lost a grammar school teacher in the fire. “Two Army camps were nearby.“Everybody was very conscious that our men were being drafted,”

Antippas said in a telephone interview. “We were learning about our troops invading North Africa that month.” It was about 10:15 p.m. when Cason and Carlson parked their car and rushed to the scene, shortly before fire-fighting vehicles began to arrive.

Seeing flames through cracks in the nightclub’s structure, Cason began moving parked cars that might block firefighters.Each ensign organized a small team of enlisted men from several service branches. Carlson led a group into the nightclub, the first of several forays into the premises.

The officers’ naval training was put to good use. “The response of a Navy person is not to run away from fire but to run toward it,” said John Sherwood, a civilian historian at the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C. “That’s because fire is the most dangerous thing on a ship. Imagine a fire aboard a submarine and you’ll know why sailors have it in their nature to act.”Amid heat, smoke and heavy fumes, Carlson separated the living from the dead and dragged several to safety.

He and his team broke open the cloakroom window to the left of the main entrance and rescued more people. Cason organized a party of eight enlisted men working at a small door on the right side of the big revolving door.

He administered artificial respiration to two victims who had succumbed to fumes. Meanwhile, at Carlson’s suggestion, two other young officers — their identities unknown today — opened the doors to a garage across the street and transformed it into a temporary morgue to which bodies could be carried.

A letter of commendation from the chief of naval personnel later credited this action with “leaving all ambulances available to take first victims who were still alive.” Eventually, Cason worked his way across half the restaurant floor and removed 15 or 16 victims, some still alive.

He did this as long as bodies could be found, then began retrieving coats, hats and other aids to identification. Hundreds of firefighters and ambulances were on the scene, including some from the Boston naval base. For half of those in the club, it was too late.Among the dead were members of the Mickey Alpert band — though Alpert escaped through a basement window — and Hollywood western film star Buck Jones.

One myth about the Cocoanut Grove fire is that exits were chained shut from the outside to prevent customers from gaining entry without paying the cover charge. One exit was locked, but three others simply were difficult to find.  Cason and Carlson received letters of commendation from the chief of naval personnel and went on with their lives.

A document dated Dec. 2, 1940, on file at the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., reveals that Cason was a native of Atlanta and held a bachelor’s degree in architecture; a penciled postscript indicates that Cason became an architect in Montgomery, Ala.

No such biographical information on Carlson appears to have survived. Today, proprietors of buildings frequented by the public must mark exits and install sprinkler systems. Fireproofing is standard in decorative materials (including fake palm trees), and fire codes are rigorously enforced in American cities — all a result of the Cocoanut Grove tragedy.

Robert F. Dorr, a military veteran, lives in Oakton, Va. His e-mail address is robertdorr@aol.com 
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Submitted,
YNCS Don Harribine, USN(Ret)
NCPOA