Mystery Deepens on Lost Tanker
Sulphur Queen Hearings Go On, But Yield Little By George Horne
Day after day in a hearing room in the Customs House off Bowling Green, Coast Guard officers searching for a clue to the mystery of the missing S. S. Marine Sulphur Queen pursue their inquiries on the ship’s construction, on the properties and behavior of molten sulphur, on a careful retracing of the ship’s full history.
Officials of Marine Transport Lines, which owned her, come and go. Others, including men who helped rebuild the old T-2 tanker into a special carrier also come and go, taking the stand, adding their bit, agreeing to the completeness of the mystery, filling in small pieces. Then they go and others take the witness stand.
Apart from the board of inquiry, only one person remains in the hearing room day after day, never missing a moment of testimony.
She is Mrs. Adam Martin , of Austin, Tex., whose husband was third engineer on the 16,500 ton ship, which vanished one day early in February while on a voyage from Beaumont, Tex., to Norfolk, Va., with a cargo of hot sulphur.
The hearing in New York has been going on for two weeks, and before that it ran for days in Beaumont, Tex. When it is finished here, it will move to Baltimore and then to Washington, as the board under Rear Adm. James D. Craik investigates every possibility of the strange disaster.
Ship and Crew Vanished The Marine Sulphur Queen left Beaumont on Feb. 2. On Feb. 3 a seaman dispatched a personal radio message regarding some stock purchases. This was the last contact. An attempt to send a reply to him on Feb. 3 went undelivered. There was no answer. The ship and her crew of 39 men had vanished.
Several hundred of the T-2 type of tanker were built on a World War II design and did valiant service in the war. In the nature of such production-line ship production there were "bugs." Quite a few of the tankers broke in two. Official records say that ten met such troubles, but in all cases, the halves, or at least one half, remained afloat. Most of the pieces were salvaged.
Search Yields Debris Witnesses and Coast Guard experts have said that it seems impossible that the Marine Sulphur Queen could have disappeared so quickly that no survivers [sic] and no information remained. Off the Florida coast days after widespread air and sea searches had combed vast reaches of the ocean, debris began appearing. Seven life preservers, four life rings, some pieces of a ship’s name board and 40 other items, much of which could not be definitely attributed to the missing vessel, were found and brought ashore.
There was evidence that two of the life rings had been used. A man’s shirt was attached to one.
Mrs. Martin has sat quietly through the hearings. Sometimes, as in periods of minute description of the telltale pieces, tears come to her eyes. She stays.
She knows how the tanker’s specially fitted sulphur tanks were installed on a slot arrangement so they could move when expanding; how men on earlier voyages recalled the disturbing noises of the moving tanks. She knows that chemists who testified said scientists did not believe the cargo could have exploded, even if sea water entered the tanks. She has listened to descriptions of a number of small fires aboard.
Her husband, Adam, 45 years old, was sailing on his first sulphur carrier that day, and both were glad he had the job.
There were only two molten sulphur carriers in the United States merchant marine. Before they came along, liquid sulphur coming out of the earth was dried for transport, and then put into liquid form again for the use of manufacturers.
Early in the hearings, Mrs. Martin said "I do not believe my husband is dead; something else happened."
She and other relatives of crew members for a while believed there was a chance the ship had been seized and taken to Cuba. But this theory has been abandoned.
Now Mrs. Martin, a dark, slender woman who sits almost motionless at the side of the room, says: "I don’t know why I’m here; I keep hoping I’ll hear something good."
One day this week she came in and took a book out of some wrappings and held it up for Admiral Craik to see. He is a tall, distinguished looking man with a quiet voice. He smiled back in recognition. He had recommended the book, "Peace of Mind" by the late Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman. At Admiral Craik’s suggestion, Mrs. Martin is reading a chapter on grief.
Officials of the ship line have announced that another sulphur ship is on order, a converted ship that will use the stern of a T-2 that has been cut in two. But they will not name her the Marine Sulphur Queen.
New York Times, 3 April 1963