The Great Halifax Explosion

by John U. Bacon

  Just as soon as the wind started, it stopped, leaving Orr on a nice field of grass. But it wasn’t Mulgrave Park. It was Fort Needham, a third of a mile up the hill.

  She laid on the ground, half conscious, trying to make sense of what had just happened. A sharp pain in her foot and ankle snapped her out of it. She slid her fingers down her leg to check, and bolted upright when she felt that her knee-high, lace-up leather boot was gone. The blast must have pulled it off.

  She then noticed that she was soaking wet and covered in oil and soot. Although she couldn’t remember it, after being blown off her feet by the shock wave, Orr almost certainly was swept up by the wave going up the hill, the same one that had sent firefighter Billy Wells up the bank.

  When Barbara got up to walk home, her ankle could not bear her weight, and she collapsed on the ground. She looked down to see that she’d been burned, and her foot and ankle were banged up. After sitting there for a few minutes, wondering what to do, she decided that perhaps she could gather her strength in a few minutes and make it home.

  She saw people who had been launched up the hill like her, by the air wave or the tsunami or both. Most were more injured than she, but all were coated in the same black, oily grime that now covered her.

  “People were all crying,” she recalled, “and saying, ‘The Germans are here! The Germans are here!’ ”

  She knew better, because she’d seen the munitions ship burning before it blew up. She tried to tell them, “It isn’t the Germans! A boat exploded!” but her voice failed her, turning as silent as a dog whistle. “Nobody would have paid any attention, anyway,” she said. “But everybody thought it was the Germans.”

  When Barbara Orr looked down the hill toward her home, all she could see was a thick, dark wall of smoke and fire. She forced herself to start moving, walking as far as she could before she had to crawl for a bit, then go back to walking. But when she was close enough to her street to realize the fire was devouring everything made of wood, she stopped, knowing there was no point in walking closer. Her family’s new home was gone.

  Her aunt Edna and uncle William Orr lived on Gottingen Street, not too far away, but far enough from the growing fire that Barbara thought they might be safe. But with each few feet she became more aware of her injuries, including sharp cuts on her face and arms, which stung when the salt water and oily grime seeped into them. She wiped her brow repeatedly to keep the acidic goop from getting in her eyes.

  She was surrounded by other disoriented survivors, but she did not seek help. She needed all her focus to get down the hill and find her aunt and uncle’s home. She relied more on instinct than evidence, since every house she passed had collapsed or disappeared, leaving only a foundation in flames.

  When she got to Gottingen Street, she was relieved to see that her aunt’s house was still standing. The windows had been knocked in and some of the ceilings had collapsed, but the walls were still standing, qualifying it as one of the best houses left in Richmond.

  As Barbara approached, she saw her aunt and her aunt’s two children, Gladys and Bill—Barbara’s cousins—standing outside, looking around. They all appeared to be unharmed but muddled, worried about their husband and father, a partner at the Richmond Printing Company with Barbara’s father. They expected to see him walking the few blocks back to check on them.

  When Barbara’s aunt saw her, she did not recognize the strange figure. “Who are you?”

  “It’s me, Barbara!” she cried, surprised that her aunt did not run to her immediately.

  “But you can’t be Barbara,” Aunt Edna said, looking at Barbara’s now tangled black locks. “Barbara has red hair.”

  When Barbara finally convinced her she was her niece, Aunt Edna asked her, “Where are your mother and the other children?”

  Barbara had not been back to her home, nor to the Richmond Printing Works, and she hadn’t yet talked to anyone other than her aunt. But she still replied, with complete conviction, “They’re all gone. There isn’t anybody left.”

  “Oh, that’s not true,” her aunt said, with no more information than Barbara had.

  Aunt Edna wanted to help Barbara, but she couldn’t offer much. Yes, their home was still standing, but it was filled with broken glass, some fallen beams, and piles of plaster. She needed to find her husband and children, and was reluctant to leave their home before they returned. She could do only so much for her niece, unable to find so much as a decent coat in the house for Barbara to stave off the coming cold, or a decent hand towel to clean her cuts. But looking at Barbara, she decided they had to go to Mrs. Moir’s house for help.

  “Come along,” Aunt Edna said. “It may not be so bad there.”

  Aunt Edna helped Barbara make the painstakingly slow trek to see Mrs. Moir, whom they found standing in her doorway, gazing at all the destroyed homes.

  “Come in,” she said. “Isn’t this dreadful?”

  Mrs. Moir listened to their story but could not come up with anything to say to comfort Barbara. She tried to clean up Barbara’s skin and cuts, but the greasy filth seemed to be embedded in Barbara’s skin, and scrubbing harder risked aggravating the cuts. Mrs. Moir’s gentle approach didn’t finish the job.

  Mrs. Moir then gave Barbara a cup of hot tea and sent her upstairs to lie down. But Barbara could not sleep, endlessly rolling over the day’s traumatic events in her mind, feeling helpless and alone.

  On Noble Driscoll’s walk to school, he’d taken a detour toward Pier 6. When he passed Creighton’s Store, the owner’s son, Cam, warned him not to go any closer. The two were chatting, and then Noble was flying through the air.

  The force sent him backward about a quarter of a mile. Like his friend Barbara Orr, whose pigtails he’d once dunked in ink, he thought he’d been dreaming. When he landed, he looked up to see smoke and flames and a thick haze everywhere, blurring what he thought was a full moon—but it was actually the sun, behind the black cloud of oil, gas, and debris.

  He looked down to see that he was sitting on a pile of roof shingles and rubble, which had probably been someone’s house, or maybe several houses. His cap was long gone, and so was his coat, which the blast had picked off clean, but Noble’s body seemed to be in good shape.

  When he surveyed the bleak terrain, with no people in sight and no sound, he wondered if he was the last person on earth. How would he live? What would he eat? For a thirteen-year-old boy who loved to eat, that was more than a question of survival.

  Driscoll started walking. As his bearings returned, he realized that he must have been carried all the way to Duffus Street, right behind Richmond School, which had been converted into the biggest pile of rubble on the block.

  When he recognized a workman from the crew that had been putting the addition on the school to accommodate the growing population, Driscoll knew he was not alone.

  The man asked, “Was it the Germans?”

  “I don’t know,” Noble said, and that was the end of the conversation—one of many oddly brief exchanges that occurred that morning. Noble set off for his home, hoping to find his family safe and sound. But when he got to where he thought their home had been, he saw that only one wall was standing, so Noble kept walking.

  He soon saw his classmate Bill Swindells, in tattered clothes, covered in soot, with blood oozing down his neck. Still, Noble was glad to see that someone his age was still alive. There could be others.

  “I saw your brother Lou,” Swindells told Driscoll. “Look, here he comes now.”

  When Noble turned to look, he thought Swindells must have been mistaken. Noble thought it was someone from Africville. But when the kid smiled, revealing his big buckteeth like white pearls on a black canvas, Noble knew it was his brother Lou.

  The Driscoll brothers walked back to their address in silence. Noble held on to the slim hope that he had gone to the wrong address the first time, but they soon came upon the same scene: one wall standing, the rest gone. They were about to leave when they heard some fa
int sounds. They followed the murmurs behind the only remaining wall, where they found their mother, their father, and some of their siblings all huddled around the kitchen stove, trying to stay warm.

  Incredibly, only Noble’s little brother Gordon was still missing. They hoped he had found refuge at a friend’s house and would return home soon.

  A little after 9:00 a.m., Gordon, James, and Alan Pattison had been running across Barrington Street, taking a considerable deviation from their normal route to Richmond School. When they finally got a glimpse of the burning ship, the vessel exploded.

  The blast hurled them all. Like Barbara Orr and Noble Driscoll, James could not comprehend how he got from where he was—standing near the Acadia Sugar Refinery with his brothers—to where he ended up: lying on Barrington Street, trapped under heavy trolley cables, which were no longer live. James struggled to free himself but lost consciousness again. When he woke up the second time, Barrington Street was awash in water, and he was soaked, thanks to the tsunami, and covered in a thick, black soup.

  After rising to his knees, James collapsed again, smashing his face on the pavement. He fought to get his feet underneath him once more, but they were still wobbly. He noticed he had a bloody nose and a shingle nail stuck in one of his hands. When he pulled it out, blood spurted, but that was easily stanched, the least of his worries.

  It was stranger than any nightmare he’d ever had. Was it real? To find out, James climbed a high pile of stones nearby to get a better look at his surroundings. When he reached the peak, he saw the playing field of the Protestant Orphanage, but no orphanage. It had been flattened. But in that field, he saw a boy on the ground covered in black goo, as dark as a chimney sweep. When the boy started stirring, James noticed something flash on his wrist: a silver watch.

  James and Gordon Pattison were too stunned to give each other more than a brief acknowledgment. Both boys had lost their jackets, blown away without a trace. The blast yanked off one of Gordon’s laced leather boots, too, damaging his foot in the process. They were banged up and bloody, but they could both still walk without too much pain. They started searching the rubble for their little brother Alan, but they couldn’t find any clues.

  After the cloud dissipated, the artificial fog lifted, and the sun returned, they looked around and saw a world unlike any they had seen before. The Acadia Sugar Refinery, the tallest building in Richmond, was now a heap of concrete blocks covered in thick steel rods that looked like cheap netting. Their father worked there, so they had to wonder how he could have gotten out alive.

  They decided to see if Alan had gone home, but it was impossible to tell where their neighborhood streets had been. Along the way they came across something that looked like a huge beaver dam, which they soon realized had been someone’s house. On top was a man with a horrible gash on his face, tearing at his home’s broken wooden beams with his hands. Underneath, somebody was screaming. A house nearby had just caught fire, and the man knew time was running out.

  When they went to help him, a soldier told them, “Get away from here. The magazine in Wellington Barracks might go up next. Go up to open ground, up that way,” he said, pointing to Fort Needham on the hill. “You’ll be safer.”

  James knew the magazine at nearby Wellington Barracks was filled with explosives. If it caught fire, the scene they had just survived could be repeated, though it was hard to imagine what additional damage was left to be done.

  With Gordon limping on his bare foot, they made their way up the hill. All around them, people were walking silently over the bleak terrain, seeing but not understanding. They were too stunned to speak and vaguely nervous about a second explosion, be it from the magazine at Wellington Barracks or the Germans.

  This was the moment when the instinct of human decency, which appeared to have survived the explosion, slowly broke through the fog of the survivors’ uncomprehending shock. Strangers started helping strangers. On the Pattison boys’ slow walk to Fort Needham Park, someone gave James a coat and a hat, and Gordon found a boot on the ground. When he stuck his foot inside, it fit well enough, but he wondered what had happened to its original owner.

  Thousands of children in Halifax and Dartmouth returned to similar scenes.

  Eileen Ryan, eleven, had been trapped under the wreckage at St. Joseph’s School but managed to climb through the boards and plaster and walk to her home on Macara Street. She was relieved to see it still standing, but as she walked closer she could see that the windows, sashes, and frames had all been smashed to bits. Inside, her mother and younger brother huddled, laboring under the illusion that only their home had been attacked. When Eileen’s three brothers returned, Mrs. Ryan looked at them tearfully and said, “Boys, our home is gone.”

  But the boys and Eileen had already seen far worse on their way home.

  “Mother,” the oldest answered, “you’re lucky to have your life.”

  Eileen’s friend and classmate Helena Duggan, also eleven, left school and went straight to her home on Russell and Barrington. Her mother had been recovering from delivering another baby girl, while still struggling to absorb the death of her two-year-old daughter, Alma, months before. When Helena saw her mother, she had a large sliver of a mirror stuck in the side of her head. A soldier tried to remove it but couldn’t, which was fortunate, because doing so might have caused Mrs. Duggan to bleed to death.

  The soldiers urged the Duggans to leave their home before it burned, and led them down Russell Street. But Mrs. Duggan, still muddled, forgot that she had left her newborn daughter in the house. While walking down the street, she was having an imaginary conversation with the daughter she’d lost only months earlier. It was not until they stopped to rest on a curb that they realized they had left the newborn in the house. Someone ran back to retrieve her, only to find the house in flames. It was too late. Mrs. Duggan had lost her second daughter that year.

  Across the harbor in Dartmouth, Ethel Mitchell accepted her mother’s invitation to skip her usual 8:00 a.m. piano practice to sleep in after her big night with a few of the Highflyer’s officers.

  After Mrs. Mitchell wished her daughter more sweet dreams, she walked downstairs, but got only halfway when the floor beneath them collapsed, dropping Mrs. Mitchell about twenty feet into the basement. The roar of destruction woke Ethel. All the windows in her room had been smashed in, but her lazy start to the day had likely saved her life. Tucked snugly into her bed under a thick winter blanket, she was largely protected from the flying glass shards. Her pink dress, hanging just a few feet away, was shredded, and her cat Buttons, sleeping at the foot of her bed, had been killed.

  When she got out of bed to look around, glass shards stuck into her bare feet. She ignored the pain to hurry to the staircase, but it was gone, and so was the floor beneath it. Recounting her journey later, Ethel could not remember how she had gotten down from the second floor to the ground, one of many unsolved mysteries that day. For Ethel that included the identity of her rescuer, which she never learned.

  About an hour later, someone found her with a man’s coat over her shoulders and large boots on her bleeding feet, sitting on a biscuit box outside a neighborhood store, and took her to her grandmother’s house nearby. There she found her mother, alive and looking for help.

  Jack Tappen, who had been shot through the narrow hallway of the Middleham Castle onto a pile of dead bodies, made it back to shore with his two fellow apprentices.

  On Barrington Street, the Tappen trio came across a house that had one side blown in and was beginning to burn. Then they heard cries for help from a man and a woman at a second-floor window. When they looked closer, they saw that the woman was holding a baby, and then they heard some young men standing underneath the window, urging the couple to toss their child to them first and then jump themselves. Tappen’s trio joined them.

  The mother refused to let go of her child until it became clear that she had no choice. When her husband tossed the child gingerly to the young men, one of t
he boys caught it safely.

  The woman then urged her husband to jump next. Tappen was puzzled by this reversal of chivalry, until he saw why: she was visibly pregnant, and by jumping she risked losing this child, too.

  The encroaching fire provided the motivation she needed. She jumped.

  The boys softened her landing. Her husband, her baby, and her unborn child were safe.

  Chapter 22

  The Panic

  At 10:00 a.m., a young lieutenant named C. A. McLennan noticed red-hot coals scattered near Wellington Barracks, which sat on the southern edge of Richmond near the docks. The Barracks had been badly damaged by the blast and suffered plenty of casualties, but that hardly made it unique—destruction was the rule in Richmond that morning. The problem was that Wellington Barracks contained a large, well-stocked magazine, which sat perilously close to a furnace room.

  McLennan grabbed a fire extinguisher and doused the embers, potentially saving thousands of lives. But the quenched coals sent great clouds of steam and smoke spiraling upward, visible for miles, prompting onlookers to assume the worst and run and for the hills, yelling at people they passed to do the same.

  Lieutenant McLennan had acted wisely to avert a potential disaster, but in the process he inadvertently set off a panic among already panicked people. Soon, firemen, policemen, and soldiers were patrolling the surrounding area with megaphones to warn everyone that Wellington Barracks was going to blow up at any moment and ordering them to get to the nearest open ground, posthaste.

  An hour after Mont-Blanc exploded, people were as obedient as they had been nonchalant an hour earlier. This time their curiosity didn’t compel them to wander down to take a closer look. They immediately dropped everything—their homes, their possessions, rare photos, family heirlooms, and sometimes family members trapped under beams, bricks, and boulders—to head to the safe, open spaces of Citadel Hill and the North Commons just behind it, and as far away as Point Pleasant Park at the southern tip of Halifax.