The Halifax Explosion, December 6, 1917, One Hundred Years Ago Today

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Halifax Explosion

The Halifax Explosion was a maritime disaster in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on the morning of 6 December 1917. SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship laden with high explosives, collided with the Norwegian vessel SS Imo in the Narrows, a strait connecting the upper Halifax Harbour to Bedford Basin. A fire on board the French ship ignited her cargo, causing a large explosion that devastated the Richmond district of Halifax. Approximately 2,000 people were killed by the blast, debris, fires or collapsed buildings, and an estimated 9,000 others were injured. The blast was the largest man-made explosion before the development of nuclear weapons, releasing the equivalent energy of roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT (12,000 GJ).

Mont-Blanc was under orders from the French government to carry her cargo of high explosives from New York via Halifax to Bordeaux, France. At roughly 8:45 am, she collided at low speed, approximately one knot (1.2 mph or 1.9 km/h), with the unladen Imo, chartered by the Commission for Relief in Belgium to pick up a cargo of relief supplies in New York. The resulting fire on board the French ship quickly grew out of control. Approximately 20 minutes later at 9:04:35 am, the Mont-Blanc exploded.
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Explosion

At 9:04:35 am (almost 20 minutes after the collision), the out-of-control fire on board Mont-Blanc set off her highly explosive cargo. The ship was completely blown apart and a powerful blast wave radiated away from the explosion at more than 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) per second. Temperatures of 5,000 °C (9,000 °F) and pressures of thousands of atmospheres accompanied the moment of detonation at the centre of the explosion. White-hot shards of iron fell down upon Halifax and Dartmouth. Mont-Blanc's forward 90 mm gun, its barrel melted away, landed approximately 5.6 kilometres (3.5 mi) north of the explosion site near Albro Lake in Dartmouth, while the shank of her anchor, weighing half a ton, landed 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) south at Armdale.

A cloud of white smoke rose to over 3,600 metres (11,800 ft). The shock wave from the blast travelled through the earth at nearly 23 times the speed of sound and was felt as far away as Cape Breton (207 kilometres or 129 miles) and Prince Edward Island (180 kilometres or 110 miles). An area of over 160 hectares (400 acres) was completely destroyed by the explosion, while the harbour floor was momentarily exposed by the volume of water that vaporized. A tsunami was formed by water surging in to fill the void; it rose as high as 18 metres (60 ft) above the high-water mark on the Halifax side of the harbour. Imo was carried onto the shore at Dartmouth by the tsunami. The blast killed all but one on the whaler, everyone on the pinnace and 21 of the 26 men on Stella Maris; she ended up on the Dartmouth shore, severely damaged. The captain's son, First Mate Walter Brannen, who had been thrown into the hold by the blast, survived, as did four others. All but one of the Mont-Blanc crew members survived.

Over 1,600 people were killed instantly and 9,000 were injured, more than 300 of whom later died. Every building within a 2.6-kilometre (1.6 mi) radius, over 12,000 in total, was destroyed or badly damaged. Hundreds of people who had been watching the fire from their homes were blinded when the blast wave shattered the windows in front of them. Stoves and lamps overturned by the force of the blast sparked fires throughout Halifax, particularly in the North End, where entire city blocks were caught up in the inferno, trapping residents inside their houses. Firefighter Billy Wells, who was thrown away from the explosion and had his clothes torn from his body, described the devastation survivors faced: "The sight was awful, with people hanging out of windows dead. Some with their heads missing, and some thrown onto the overhead telegraph wires." He was the only member of the eight-man crew of the fire engine Patricia to survive.
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The death toll could have been worse had it not been for the self-sacrifice of an Intercolonial Railway dispatcher, Patrick Vincent (Vince) Coleman, operating at the railyard about 750 feet (230 m) from Pier 6, where the explosion occurred. He and his co-worker, William Lovett, learned of the dangerous cargo aboard the burning Mont-Blanc from a sailor and began to flee. Coleman remembered, however, that an incoming passenger train from Saint John, New Brunswick, was due to arrive at the railyard within minutes. He returned to his post alone and continued to send out urgent telegraph messages to stop the train. Several variations of the message have been reported, among them this from the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic: "Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye boys." Coleman's message was responsible for bringing all incoming trains around Halifax to a halt. It was heard by other stations all along the Intercolonial Railway, helping railway officials to respond immediately. Passenger Train No. 10, the overnight train from Saint John, is believed to have heeded the warning and stopped a safe distance from the blast at Rockingham, saving the lives of about 300 railway passengers. Coleman was killed at his post as the explosion ripped through the city. He was honoured with a Heritage Minute in the 1990s and inducted into the Canadian Railway Hall of Fame in 2004.
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Legacy

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In 1918, Halifax sent a Christmas tree to the City of Boston in thanks and remembrance for the help that the Boston Red Cross and the Massachusetts Public Safety Committee provided immediately after the disaster. That gift was revived in 1971 by the Lunenburg County Christmas Tree Producers Association, which began an annual donation of a large tree to promote Christmas tree exports as well as acknowledge Boston's support after the explosion. The gift was later taken over by the Nova Scotia Government to continue the goodwill gesture as well as to promote trade and tourism. The tree is Boston's official Christmas tree and is lit on Boston Common throughout the holiday season. In deference to its symbolic importance for both cities, the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources has specific guidelines for selecting the tree.

[applegrove]

1. And then a huge snow stormed happened hurting the as yet to be rescued

people even more. My grandmother was singing morning hymns in the auditorium of the Halifax Ladies School. The Windows burst.

Many Doctors and nursing came from Boston to help and developed pediatric medical techniques because of all the patients they treated. To this day Nova Scotia sends a Christmas Tree to Boston as thanks, 100 years later.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. Thanks. I just added the paragraph in the Wiki about that.

Boston Christmas Tree

[Sneederbunk]

2. Read The Curse of the Narrows by Laura MacDonald for

the full story. The city of Boston did honorable relief work.

[likesmountains 52]

3. Curse of the Narrows is an excellent book about this..fascinating story.

[applegrove]

4. "Barometer Rising" is a great novel written based on the explosion and

aftermath.

[OnDoutside]

6. My Granduncle was killed in the explosion. He was one of

Seven iirc, sent from HMS Highflyer to investigate the smoke coming from the ship. 5 were killed outright, my granduncle died of the shock later and one man lived having swum back to shore in the freezing water. His name was Joe Murphy.

[applegrove]

8. I knew the grandson of one of the captains. The Captain got in a rowboat and made it to safety.

I told my grandmother that and she curtly said 'I bet he got to shore'. I've never seen her express a anger before. Didn't know the guy very well. How brave of your granduncle who went towards the fire while others were saving their own asses. And great that you remember him today.

[OnDoutside]

9. He was on duty that morning, and they probably didn't know

what was on the ship, but my grandaunt always spoke about Joe, even "seeing" him the day before she died in 1975. He joined the Royal Navy in Feb 1909, on his 18th birthday, for 12 years, so only had 4 years to serve and one year of WWI. His father was a docker who was tragically killed in 1898 as he unloading stuff from a ship, and Joe was spilt from the rest of his siblings as his mother had little money. It was tough back then.

PS. His other sister, my grandmother married my grandad , who himself had lost a brother on the Titanic 5 years before. 2 lost in the same area of the North Atlantic.

[applegrove]

10. Tragic. What tough lives people lived. My grandmother had an aunt Hattie

who was told by her sea captain husband not to take in any more children when he went to sea. A neighbour died and she took in 3 more children which was a surprise to her husband when he got home from sea. Such was how life was lived back then. Great sacrifices were made. Government did little when compared to today.

[OnDoutside]

11. What a great woman. Yes families were sent to whoever

would take them, or be sent to one of the many Church run industrial schools, which were often quite brutal

[SonofDonald]

7. There is a TV movie about the explosion

I saw it a few years back, what a nightmare, there have been more since then, Texas City Texas comes to mind, an ammonium nitrate explosion, the Arizona's one million pounds of gunpowder going off during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that was filmed.

A munition ship explosion in a south sea harbor during WWII and another in California while loading or unloading munitions at a dock near the end of the war.

I have the account of the South Sea harbor munition ship explosion written by a survivor, no holding back or punches pulled about it's aftermath, the most brutal true story I've ever read.

In the early 90's in Dutch Harbor I worked at a fuel dock, the one seen in the Deadliest Catch series, we were unloading a fuel barge with over one million gallons of gasoline and Avgas (high octane aviation gasoline) when a 120 foot Crab Boat came cruising over to get fuel.

The captain lost his steering right after gunning the main engines to make a port turn to come on the inside of the dock, he ran into the barge at nearly 7-8 knots, he scraped along the barge causing damage to both vessels and luckily not breaching one of the barges tanks.

But for a couple of seconds there it got really exciting, I was running flat out to get to the shore end of the dock to shut off the pipeline valves in case the dock dissapeared so the tank farm wouldn't end up draining into the harbor making everything ten times worse.

They were only 400 feet from the barge, if it had gone up I wouldn't have made it in time.

[Ilsa]

13. The big explosion onboard ship in the California port killed

around 300 people, IIRC, and most of them were African Americans, given the most hazardous duty in the Navy of loading munitions. The technique and tools for the big job were insufficient. Black sailors went on strike until the conditions were improved to make the job less risky.

Still, many of the strikers were court martialed and sentenced to hard labor. Truman pardoned and released them. Shortly thereafter, the Navy became the first branch of the military go integrate.

All of this is from a history channel program I watched last weekend.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

12. The Halifax Explosion: This Day in Workplace Safety and Health

The Halifax Explosion: This Day in Workplace Safety and Health

December 6, 2017

On Dec. 6, 1917 at 9:04 a.m., one hundred years ago today, the munitions ship Mont-Blanc, carrying nearly 3,000 tons of munitions and explosives exploded in Halifax Harbor in Nova Scotia, Canada, “with the force of one fifth of the power of the atomic bomb that would destroy Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War.”

As John U. Bacon, author of “Great Halifax Explosion” described in an NPR interview:

This thing shot up a two-mile-high mushroom cloud, probably the world’s first. And it was just an unbelievable cataclysm – one-fifth the power of the atomic bomb. A one-ton anchor flew four miles. A one-ton cannon flew three miles the other direction. Human beings were flown half a mile in all directions. Half of Halifax is gone – 25,000 are homeless, 9,000 are wounded and 2,000 are dead in that split second.

And from a story on CBC radio :

The force of the blast knocked down houses and smashed in windows, sending glass spears into the eyes of people watching the burning ship from behind windows.

The explosion was followed by a tsunami that roared onto shore and then dragged victims into the harbour where they would drown. Fires broke out around the city as wood burning stoves toppled and set houses alight.

The explosion wiped out 325 acres, obliterating the Richmond neighbourhood and leaving 25,000 people — almost half the city — homeless. The explosion levelled most of the city, killing 2,000 and injuring 9,000.

“A reporter from the Toronto Star, who was dispatched to Halifax, reported in one of his stories that usually when he went to a disaster area, there was something to describe,” says Cuthbertson. “In this case, there was nothing to describe. It was simply acres and acres of burning wood and rubble. There was nothing to describe.

The CBC article also has links to some fascinating video of witnesses.