The Errol Flynn Blog

Some Gruesomel Clues from the News:

“Mutinous murder and a piratical five-day reign of terror on the high seas aboard the blood-soaked pleasure schooner were disclosed by harrowed survivors.”

“A terrifying tale of piracy and murder was related Friday by 17-year-old Lillian Morgan, an expectant mother. Mrs. Morgan told federal agents investigating two deaths aboard the yacht that her husband, Jack Morgan, shot Dwight L. Faulding, Santa Barbara hotel owner and master of the yacht, and then took I over the ship. “He (Morgan) was crazy,” she said. “He shot Faulding and turned the wheel over to me. I was sure I would die too if I crossed him in any way.”

“Mrs. Morgan told how she was forced to hold other passengers at bay while her husband slept. “He cursed me, thrusting a gun in my hand and telling me what awful things he would do to me if, while he slept, I failed to keep the yacht on its course or allowed the other passengers or crew to get out of hand, as he called it. “I had no part in my husband’s crack-brained scheme but I was afraid he’d awake any minute and shoot me just like he did Faulding, If he felt like it.””

“Morgan forced George Spernak and Robert Horne, members of the crew, to wrap the body in an old rug, lash it to the ship’s 250-pound anchor and lower it over the side. The end of Morgan’s reign of horror came on Christmas Eve, according to the federal agents. The agents said Horne picked up a martin spike and struck Morgan on the head. Without ascertaining if Morgan was dead or only stunned, Horne and Spernak tossed him overboard.”

“Others aboard the yacht were Mrs. Gertrude Turner, fiancee of the slain Paulding; Mrs. Turner’s 8-year-old son, Robert; and Miss Elsie Berdan, a nurse employed by Morgan to care for his wife during the cruise. Officers speculated on the likelihood that Morgan, with a queer twist in his brain, planned to take the yacht, with its six remaining adults and a boy, to the South Seas and establish a colony where he would be ruler and king and found a new race.”

“The yacht was found drifting off the Mexican coast, with SOS painted on the sails. Morgan planned piracy in the South Seas, and imprisoned in the cabins all except
his wife, to whom he handed a gun to guard the prisoners. He released two of the crew later, and forced them to tie a heavy anchor to Faulding’s body and throw it overboard.”

“The 58-foot yacht was towed into San Pedro, 10 days after she departed under full sail, ostensibly for a two-day holiday cruise around Catalina Island. The young would-be pirate was identified as Jack Morgan, 28-year-old Los Angeles houseboy.”

“The survivors threw Morgan to the sharks as a defense measure to save their own lives and those of three women and a child aboard the ill-fated schooner.”

You are astonishing, Barb!!! It was the Aafje. What a crazy history she has had. Here’s the Flynn connection you accurately recounted:

January 10, 1938

Harrison Carroll
LA Evening Herald Express

Hear that Errol Flynn will bid on the yacht Aafje, scene of California’s recency pirate murder. The melodramatic history of the craft appeals to his sense of adventure.

There’s no topping Tom McNulty, Barb. ‘The Life and Career of Errol Flynn’ is a masterwork, the crème de la crème of Errolographies. Like Flynn himself, it’s a gift that keeps on giving.