On November 12, 1928, the SS Vestris slipped beneath the gray Atlantic roughly two hundred miles off the Virginia Capes. She had sailed from New York two days earlier, overloaded and poorly maintained, bound for Buenos Aires on what should have been a routine voyage. Instead, she became a floating indictment of negligence and pride. The captain delayed his distress call, the crew mishandled lifeboats, and “women and children first” turned into a bitter joke as every child aboard was lost.
The tragedy shocked the world and forced long-overdue reforms to maritime safety. It also revealed unlikely heroism, most notably from Lionel Licorish, a young Barbadian quartermaster who saved as many as twenty lives. In this episode of Dave Does History, we return to that storm-tossed morning when the Atlantic taught another lesson about human failure, courage, and the high price of ignoring simple truth.
