The Great Sin Ship

He lived his last years in obscurity, and when he died last week, at 64, poisoned by fumes from a gas heater in a seedy Long Beach, Calif., apartment, few could even recall his name. But for eight heady days in 1924, Sanford Jarrell had brightened New York with the wildest news paper hoax of the jazz age.

Jarrell was known as "an industrious .and reputable reporter" when the New York Herald Tribune sent him to check a tip that a seaworthy saloon was operating off Long Island, outside the twelve-mile limit. Three days later, Jarrell filed a tale that sent thirsty New Yorkers, along with Treasury agents and every competitor in town, scrambling for small boats. Said an enticing, front-page headline on Aug. 16: WINE, WOMEN, JAZZ AND REVELRY TURN NIGHT TO DAY ON MYSTERY SHIP FLYING THE BRITISH FLAG.

The 17,000-ton ship, wrote Jarrell, lay 15 miles off Fire Island, awash in millionaire yachtsmen, bubbly flappers, lush chorines, and "revels de luxe." His reporting was meticulous: the cutlery and napery, he wrote, bore the name of "the Friedrich der Grosse, a former North German Lloyd liner." One redhead stood on the dance floor shouting: "This is an epic lark!"

For two more days, Jarrell spun out his yarn, embroidering it with hints that the vessel might even be the mother ship of a vast fleet of coastal rumrunners. When rivals found nothing but salt water, and questioned Jarrell's story, the Trib replied by comparing him to Christopher Columbus. "It has been the lot of the pioneer ever to find on his return from a successful quest that those who remained at home the while were seeking to belittle his discovery," said a Trib editorial. But even the Trib was getting nervous. Jarrell left the office, sent back a messenger with his confession. The belittlers, he admitted, were not the only ones who had stayed at home. He himself had never left shore. "Mr. Jarrell," blushed the Trib, a week after it had trumpeted the hoax, "has been dishonorably dismissed."

Seven papers quickly offered Jarrell jobs, but after his offbeat triumph he could not seem to settle down. He worked for a series of more than 30 papers until a heart condition forced him to become a freelancer. The day his death was announced, the New York Daily News ran one of his last short stories: Lovers' Quarrel, a fanciful tale of an estranged couple's reunion amid the ruins of the Aztec pyramids in Mexico.

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