The Great Halifax Explosion

by John U. Bacon

  Freeman understood Le Médec and Mackey were eager to get safely into Bedford Basin, however, so he instructed them: “Stay at the anchorage until morning and then proceed up the harbor at the usual time if you do not hear from me.” To be sure Mont-Blanc could get into Halifax Harbour at the first opportunity, Freeman gave Le Médec and Mackey a code number to be used to expedite entry into the harbor the next morning.

  Mackey ate his dinner with Le Médec in the captain’s cabin, and when they finished, the two men sat and talked as best they could with the language barrier between them. Mackey offered a cigar to the captain, but Le Médec just shook his head. When Mackey lit a match, Le Médec said, “In here it is all right to smoke, but nowhere else. It is even prohibited to carry matches in your pocket when on deck. On this voyage, a fire or a big bump and the whole damned Mont Blanc is no more!”

  The captain and crew settled in for their fourth night of fitful sleep. They would not need alarm clocks to roust them.

  Noble Driscoll was watching the harbor that morning before school, and could tell something was a little off. From his house perched on the high ground of Richmond, Noble could clearly make out Imo, and noticed a lot of men walking on her deck, so he presumed the ship was getting ready to sail and would be gone before he returned home. That disappointed him, because he wanted to see the big ship sail past their house.

  But when Driscoll came home from school that afternoon, he was pleasantly surprised to see Imo still anchored in Bedford Basin. When he saw a much smaller boat tie up alongside Imo and unload tons of coal, Noble told his brother, “That would be the problem. I bet it held them up. We’ll see it leave after all. I expect they’ll want to get away first thing in the morning.”

  Noble Driscoll went to bed that night with something to look forward to the next morning.

  While harbor pilot Francis Mackey spent a nervous night on Mont-Blanc, Ernest Barss spent another evening at his childhood home in Wolfville. He had plenty to think about, and thanks to his shell shock–induced insomnia, lots of time to do so. His long list of worries included the outcome of the war, the December 17 election, and what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Having decided against businessman, soldier, pastor, and grocer, what did that leave? What was he qualified to do? What did he want to do? And who would hire an invalid with a severe limp and shaky hands? That would bring him to his biggest question: With his relationship with Eileen broken off, would he ever again believe he was worthy of a good woman?

  It was more than enough to keep him up at night—and if it wasn’t, he could count on his sleep being shattered by nightmares of trench warfare, with bagpipes playing in the background.

  The Orr family had another night to themselves in their new home, because their younger son, Archie, was still recovering from the whooping cough. While Barbara and most of her siblings getting antsy from cabin fever and were anxious to get back to school, Ian looked forward to another day of ship watching with his binoculars through the bay windows.

  With less than three weeks to Christmas, the kids in Halifax were already talking about what they hoped to find under the tree. This was the era that commercialized Christmas, after all, by purchasing teddy bears, Lincoln Logs, and Erector Sets, all available in stacks at a new institution called the department store—Eaton’s in Canada, and Sears, Roebuck in the United States. If you couldn’t get to one of their stores in person, you could use their great innovation, the catalogue, from which you could order almost everything—even a house. All their products also came with another innovation: fixed prices.

  The Reverend William J. W. Swetnam, pastor of the Kaye Street Methodist Church just a few blocks away, and his wife, Lizzie Louise Swetnam, were putting their son, Carmen, and daughter Dorothy to bed. Carmen’s wish had come true: he had been cleared to get out of quarantine the next night to participate in their church’s Mission Concert. Carmen’s mother promised to practice with him one more time the next morning before school.

  While the parishioners of Grove Presbyterian were celebrating the retirement of the loan for building their church, children anxiously awaited the arrival of the Ringling Brothers Circus, and the soldiers and sailors a few blocks to the south pursued their own pleasures. The alehouses, the speakeasies, the bootleggers, and the brothels—and the complete darkness of Garrison Hill—all beckoned them for another night of revelry. With hundreds marked for transport the next day, they always knew each night could be their last—and if nothing worked out, they could always start a fistfight on “Knock ’em Down Alley.”

  Others went on formal dates. With orders to ship out imminent, it might be their last chance to see their beaus or meet a new one for months, if not forever. Ethel Mitchell, the nineteen-year-old pianist hoping to go to the Halifax Conservatory of Music, knew she wanted to see the strapping young officer from HMS Highflyer again, and she sensed that he might feel the same—but she could ponder that tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep with her cat at her feet.

  It had been a long, glorious night.

  Chapter 14

  A Game of Chicken

  Thursday, December 6, 1917

  The next morning, Thursday, December 6, dawn came at 7:36 a.m., offering a clear winter day, the kind that makes everything look a little sharper. The snow would soon blanket the colors, but on this morning you could still see the green grass and dirt roads, and smell the horses and their hay wagons headed for market day—the kind of peaceful morning that made it easy to get started.

  The warm air from the night before was blowing out to sea, but Haligonians knew the weather that time of year could be much worse. A light haze descended on the harbor, as it did most mornings, but the rising sun promised to burn it off, and visibility was already quite good. Of all forms of weather that could threaten a ship, sailors feared fog the most, because it forced them to steer blind. But that would not be a factor on this day. The winds were so slight that chimney smoke lingered lazily over houses.

  Back at the Mitchells’ home in Dartmouth, Ethel was still groggy from her late night spent on HMS Highflyer, but she got up when her alarm clock went off at 8:00 a.m. so she could put in her scheduled one hour of piano practice before breakfast. She knew that was the kind of dedication it would take if she was going to get into the Halifax Conservatory of Music. When her mother heard her practicing, she suggested Ethel could skip this one rehearsal and sleep in. Ethel quickly agreed and slipped back under her blankets.

  Unlike Ethel Mitchell, the people aboard Mont-Blanc did not need an alarm clock to get them going that morning. A few minutes before 7:30 a.m., Captain Le Médec and Pilot Mackey climbed onto Mont-Blanc’s bridge to ensure they were ready when the examination tugboat started the process of getting Mont-Blanc inside the harbor. The tugboat did not disappoint, sending Mont-Blanc her first light signal at 7:30 sharp.

  Mackey read Le Médec the message: “Mont Blanc. Hoist identification. Proceed Bedford Basin to await further orders.”

  Pleased and relieved, Le Médec repeated the command to his crew and handed one of his officers a slip of paper with the code number Lieutenant Freeman had given him the night before to signal to the examination tugboat. The officer nodded, turned to go deliver the message, and then stopped to ask, “The red flag for explosives also, sir?”

  The question surprised the captain. Raising the red flag outside the gates would have been as foolhardy as waving a red cape before an angry bull. Once inside the harbor, however, Mont-Blanc was more likely to be struck by another ship than a German torpedo, so raising the red flag to warn other captains to steer clear was not an unreasonable idea, though no longer required during the war years.

  Captain Le Médec looked at his officer as though he was considering the idea, then shook his head.

  “No,” he finally decided. “It is not necessary.”

  At 7:50 a.m., Mont-Blanc lifted anchor and started slowly for the outer gate attached to the north end of McNab’s Island. Captain Le Médec and Harbou
r Pilot Mackey had her cruising at a calm, conventional 4 knots, or about 5 miles per hour. At that rate, it would take her about ninety minutes to get to Bedford Basin and anchor for the day, but there was no reason to hurry, and 6 million reasons not to.

  Mont-Blanc got in line to enter Halifax Harbour, the second of dozens of ships that were expected to come and go that day. When Mont-Blanc passed the harbor’s threshold at the edge of McNab’s Island, where the outer antisubmarine gate had just been pulled back, Captain Le Médec and crew were safer than they had been since boarding Mont-Blanc five days earlier in New York. After enduring their fearful, four-day journey up the East Coast, they had reached what would surely be the easiest leg of their journey.

  Most of the crew went below to eat breakfast, leaving four crewmen on deck and Captain Le Médec and Francis Mackey at the helm. Le Médec still exercised great caution, cutting his speed in half when his ship approached the ferryboats making their morning shuttles between Dartmouth and Halifax and ordering the engines stopped altogether when a small boat crossed Mont-Blanc’s bow.

  Captain Le Médec would not be rushed.

  Mont-Blanc eased toward the inner gate, maintaining a generous gap between her and the SS Clara, an American tramp steamer piloted by Edward Renner, who saw Mont-Blanc running behind him.

  At the same time Clara and Mont-Blanc started coasting into Halifax Harbour, Imo was preparing to pull up anchor at the other end of the harbor, on the western side of Bedford Basin closest to Africville. Harbour Pilot William Hayes had gotten a good night’s sleep at home and then hopped aboard Imo Thursday morning for an early start.

  When the guard ship hoisted the signal flags that gave Imo permission to depart the basin, Captain From and Pilot Hayes pulled up the anchor to head out, the only ship to leave the basin that morning. But no one in the CXO’s office seemed to know about Imo’s leaving, and Imo didn’t know anything about Mont Blanc’s arrival.

  With both ships now in motion, it’s worth asking who knew what.

  The list was quite small. The only people who definitely knew Mont-Blanc was loaded down with 6 million pounds of high explosives were the men on the ship, including Harbour Pilot Francis Mackey, and four harbor officials not on board: CXO Evan Wyatt; examiner Terrance Freeman; Rear Admiral Bertram Chambers, who organized the convoys; and his second assistant, Lieutenant Commander James Murray, a sea-transport officer who received the same telegram.

  A few others that morning would catch wind of Mont-Blanc’s dangerous cargo, but not through official channels, and not until later. The telegram listing the cargo also went to three other officials, but there’s no evidence they ever read the information or understood its import.

  The few who did know of Mont-Blanc’s manifest did not communicate with each other, and certainly not with other ships in the harbor, least of all Imo’s Captain From. If they had—or if Captain Le Médec had put up the red munitions flag once safely in the harbor—the day likely would have unfolded without incident, just like the others before it.

  With the war so far away, Haligonians probably thought the odds of anything going wrong at home were quite long. And yet, with several crucial safeguards having been removed one by one—from loading a single ship with 6 million pounds of high explosives to carelessly stacking the benzol at the last minute to relaxing the harbor’s rules on munitions, to using old, slow ships led by captains with no experience with explosives to the breakdown of the chain of command in Halifax Harbour and the miscommunication and countless shortcuts that followed—the odds were getting shorter and shorter, because every day the people in charge put the war effort overseas ahead of safe practices at home.

  To guard against lapses would require constant vigilance by individuals relying increasingly on their own judgment instead of the comforting protocols that had been established over the years and were still in place just three years ago. If it wasn’t these people on this day, it could just as easily have been another group the next day. Throw the dice enough times and your number is bound to come up.

  And this is where the unraveling accelerated.

  All ships in the harbor operated under the international code of seamanship called the Collision Regulations. You could almost boil them all down to one simple rule: stay to the right of all oncoming boats, just as cars in North America stay to the right today.

  When the channels were running normally, communication was easy. That was especially important in 1917, when ships communicated mainly through steam-powered whistles loud enough to be heard over the wind and the waves, ships’ engines, and the area’s trains and factories. When a ship wanted to let another ship know it was sticking to the right side, or starboard, it gave a single short blast on the whistle. (Here’s a simple mnemonic device: starboard, with two “r”s, means “right.” Port, with one “r,” means “left,” and both have four letters.)

  If a ship planned to make an exception and veer to the port, or left, side, it gave two short blasts on the whistle. Still, so long as the other ship understood the signal and could provide the space needed for a safe maneuver, it wasn’t a problem.

  If a ship decided it needed to go into reverse, or “astern,” it gave three short blasts on the whistle. When it did so, the stern would typically swing to the port side, while the bow would swing out to starboard—so the decision to throw the engines into reverse, or “transverse thrust,” could affect other ships nearby. Again, so long as the oncoming ship understood the signaler’s plan and had time and space to maneuver safely, even a transverse thrust wouldn’t create trouble.

  These three signals—one short whistle for right, two for left, and three for reverse—were also used to “claim” a channel. When a captain asserted his plans first, using only his whistle, he was claiming that channel for his ship, with the expectation that other ships in the area would accede to his wishes—essentially calling dibs. For example, if a ship gave two blasts on her whistle, it meant, “I know I’m coming down the wrong side of the channel, but I have good reason for my course, and I’m now claiming the right to take it.” If the second ship replied with two whistles, it meant the second captain understood the first captain’s decision to cut across his bow, and had no problem accommodating him.

  But all these scenarios assumed everyone was navigating as they should be. As Donald A. Kerr writes in Ground Zero, however, the rules are “made for mariners, not mathematicians, so there are exceptions.” This was particularly true in Halifax Harbour during the Great War, where the pilots had taken the Admiralty’s rules and bent them as they saw fit.

  Because Imo was anchored on the western side of the basin, just to get to the mouth of the Narrows she had to zigzag around a handful of ships anchored in her way. This meant she could go only a couple of knots, and would end up veering farther to the left than she would have if the basin were clear. Instead of starting her journey through the Narrows on the far right side, hard by Richmond’s factories, railyard, and piers, she was pointing toward the center of the Narrows.

  After Imo had cleared all boats anchored in the basin, Captain From ordered the chief engineer to run the engines full speed ahead. She was running about 7 miles per hour, or about 50 percent faster than the other ships in the harbor, including Mont-Blanc, and climbing. By the time Imo approached the Narrows, Captain From had crossed the imaginary center line of the Narrows, with the Imo running closer to the Dartmouth side than the Halifax side, where she should have been—another breach of long-established protocol.

  The tramp steamer SS Clara was running in front of Mont-Blanc. When Clara entered the Narrows, Captain Renner saw the Imo for the first time—and he was surprised to see her on his side of the channel, heading straight toward him. Despite the sun rising behind Clara, Captain From and Harbour Pilot Hayes saw the Clara clearly, and right behind the Clara, a tugboat.

  To avoid any problems, Captain From pulled the cord to emit one short whistle blast to indicate his intention to keep to his right—the correct channel
—which would have the Imo veering back toward the Halifax side, where it should be. Given Imo’s current line toward Dartmouth and Clara’s position, however, Captain Renner decided that it would be simpler and safer, under the circumstances, for him to keep Clara on her current course and pass the oncoming Imo on the left, not the right. Although it was not the ideal maneuver, according to the Collision Regulations, so long as both ships agreed and had room, it was entirely acceptable.

  Captain Renner gave two blasts on the whistle to tell the Imo he planned to keep to the left. Captain From could have insisted on the conventional course, but since his ship had plenty of time and space, he replied with two whistles, indicating he understood the request and agreed to it. The problem seemed solved.

  “It was far easier to let him keep the side he was on,” Clara’s Captain Renner said later. “We were both on the wrong side.”

  Captain Renner’s decision would normally amount to nothing, but as the breaks with convention compounded, so did the odds of a disaster. At this early stage, however, no one seemed alarmed. When Clara passed Imo, Captain Renner used a megaphone to send salutations to her captain and crew and let Harbour Pilot William Hayes know that another ship was close behind. That ship was Mont-Blanc.

  When Hayes replied, “What did you say?” Captain Renner immediately recognized the voice of his colleague. Renner repeated his message.

  After Imo passed the SS Clara on the port side, Captain From decided not to return to starboard, back toward the Halifax shore, but to continue on the left side, through it was the wrong lane, past Turtle Grove, where Jerry Lone Cloud and the Mi’kmaq lived, and then Dartmouth. Captain From made this decision at the start of the Narrows, the neck of the wine bottle, which spans a mere 1,000 feet across, affording little room for ships passing through if the need should arise.