History

Capt. James Dennis

captain, Ocean City Fire Department · active 1929

Commanded the Ocean City Fire Department at the boardwalk fire of 3 September 1929: 'As soon as the blaze was discovered Capt. James Dennis of the Ocean City Fire Department called his men into action, running hose over the boardwalk and throwing water from the Atlantic Ocean.' Two of his men were burned. He is the first Ocean City fire officer this campaign can name since Chief Harry C. Ludlam at the company's organisation in 1903. The Dennis name runs through the town and whether he is kin to Ralph R. Dennis or to Mrs. R. J. Dennis of the Dennis hotel is not established here.

In the record (1)

  1. 1929

    Fire runs a block and a half of the board walk on the night after Labor Day and stops at the wall of the Atlantic Hotel.

    Shortly after midnight on Tuesday 3 September 1929 fire broke out in a store at the southern end of the board walk — the Evening Star's dispatch says a sandwich shop, the Smyrna Times a confectionery conducted by a Philadelphian — and ran through about a block and a half of small frame concession buildings on the western edge of the walk, from about Wicomico Street to South Division Street. It took Playland, an amusement hall owned by Thomas H. Conway of Wilmington, and damaged the Boardwalk Restaurant, a cigar store kept by Jack Burns, a store owned by James Velis and Arthur Monkhouse's restaurant; Conway's Funhouse on Worcester Street was scorched. Sparks showered the Atlantic Hotel, which was full, and its guests fled to the boardwalk and the beach in their night clothes while firemen and some of the guests played the hotel's own hose on it. Capt. James Dennis of the Ocean City Fire Department ran hose over the boardwalk and pumped from the Atlantic Ocean; companies came from Berlin, Snow Hill, Salisbury, Willards and Pocomoke City in Maryland and Delmar and Laurel in Delaware, and bay water was used where hose could not be got to the ocean front. A western breeze carried the flames out to sea and the fire was out after about two hours. It did not reach the Baltimore Avenue buildings behind the walk.

    Three years and eight months after the fire that took the pier, the Casino and the Seaside, Ocean City burned again in the same three blocks — and this time the wind blew seaward and the town lost concessions rather than hotels. The Smyrna Times put it in one line: "Ocean City had a similar fire in December, 1925."

    Ocean City BoardwalkAtlantic HotelOcean City Volunteer Fire DepartmentThomas H. ConwayGeorge Givens

    Source · checked 2026-08-06