The Great Halifax Explosion

by John U. Bacon

  He enlisted the help of his brother and surviving son, Archie, and together they dug through ashes, cinders, and pieces of wood, brick, glass, and metal.

  “All we found of my mother, two sisters, and brother we put in a shoe box,” Archie recalled, “just a few bones. They were buried in Fairview in that shoe box, but by then it was nearly summer.”

  The Uphams lost thirty-three close relatives.

  Millicent had clung to the ring her mother had given her, her last tangible connection, but when her father was digging through the burnt remains of the family home, he found a few more: the tiny dishes from Millicent’s tea set, which she had been playing with that morning when the ship exploded. Rather amazingly, in a site filled with shattered chairs, beds, and couches, the tiny tea set had survived intact. Charles recognized it immediately, and carefully removed the little cups from the rubbish one by one. Not far away, he found the contents of Millicent’s piggybank. The pennies had fused together from the heat.

  Two years after the accident, when doctors were taking out the metal plate in Archie’s head, they found yet another piece of glass.

  The loss of possessions seemed of minor importance at first, but their value rose over the years, especially those keepsakes that could not be replaced.

  Because cameras were rare in 1917, families usually had professionally taken photographs of special events such as weddings, but little else. Not one photograph of the Orr family survived, leaving Barbara with nothing but memories of her entire family.

  Horatio Brennan, the captain of the Stella Maris who was working valiantly to pull Mont-Blanc out to sea when it blew up, a week earlier had taken an expensive studio photo of himself in full uniform, proud and dignified, to be framed and presented as a gift to his wife at Christmas. When no one came to the studio to claim the photograph, the studio found Brennan’s wife and presented her with an unexpected memory of her noble husband.

  Chapter 39

  The Trials

  1918–20

  The Wreck Commissioner’s Inquiry started December 13 and ended in a ruling from Judge Drysdale on February 4. But it marked the beginning of legal proceedings, not the end. Mont-Blanc’s owners sued Imo’s owners for $2 million in damages (about US $40 million today), and Imo’s owners returned the favor for the exact same amount.

  The trial started on April 6, 1918, exactly four months after the explosion, while crews were still digging through ruins now covered in mud. Mont-Blanc’s owners replaced the highly ineffective Humphrey Mellish with Hector McInnes. Imo’s owners retained Charles J. Burchell, which seemed a smart move when it was announced that the judge picked to handle the case would be Justice Arthur Drysdale, who had presided over the Inquiry. Five minutes into the trial, Drysdale made a rather incredible comment for a jurist: “So far as I’m concerned, I have been over [my notes] and have my mind made up.” Perhaps realizing his faux pas, he added, “Although other witnesses may vary it.”

  Because Humphrey Mellish had inexplicably stipulated at the Inquiry that the original forty-eight witnesses’ testimony could carry over to the trial, there would be only one new witness this time: John L. Makiny, master of the naval tug Nerid, which had been in the Narrows the morning of the collision. Makiny had seen the entire accident unfold, he was a respected man in uniform, and he had no connection to either ship—an ideal witness. He testified that Imo had been on the wrong side of the channel until the last few seconds, and that Mont-Blanc had been on the correct side until its last, desperate turn to port, which was made in the “agony of collision” in an attempt to avoid contact.

  But Judge Drysdale had already decided at the Inquiry that the two ships had collided on the Halifax side of the imaginary centerline, when many reliable witnesses saw them hit on the Dartmouth side, resulting in the following exchange:

  Burchell: “Where do you think the collision occurred?”

  Makiny: “I don’t think at all. I am positive,” he said, stating that it had happened two-thirds of the way across the Narrows on the Dartmouth side.

  Judge: “You are all wrong. I am satisfied about that.”

  When Burchell later asked Makiny why his testimony didn’t agree with anyone else’s, a statement Burchell himself knew to be false, since a number of witnesses had already described the point of collision as being on the Dartmouth side, Makiny responded, “If you let me explain what I know, I can give it, but I must confess I don’t understand [the way you put the question]. I want to tell the truth.”

  Judge Drysdale interjected: “Quit talking and listen to the questions.”

  The trial was over in an hour. Drysdale had the last word, stating that Makiny was “all wrong about the place of the collision. It was caused by the improper starboarding of the helm of the Mont-Blanc. I will file a memorandum.”

  Three weeks later, on April 27, Judge Drysdale entered his decision, which again ran only one page long. In it, he said of Makiny, “His manner was bad and his matter worse. In short, I did not believe him.” Drysdale went on to suggest Makiny had been coached by Mont-Blanc’s new attorney, Hector McInnes, to provide false testimony, “the result of instruction, and that on behalf of the French ship. I do not believe him.”

  Drysdale therefore felt justified in disregarding testimony from all previous witnesses who had stated Imo had been on the wrong side, Mont-Blanc on the correct side, and they had collided on the Dartmouth side of the Narrows. For Drysdale, these claims were not worthy of review.

  Hector McInnes knew his clients, Mont Blanc’s owners, captain, and crew, didn’t have much of a chance with Judge Drysdale, but he hoped for a fairer shake from the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa. His appeal was heard a year later, in March of 1919, by the five Supreme Court justices. Not insignificantly, three of them were English, two French.

  MacInnes and his now all too familiar foe, Charles J. Burchell, spent three full days arguing the case for their clients. While the five Supreme Court justices conducted themselves during the trial far more professionally than Judge Drysdale had, and McInnes was more assertive than Mellish had been, those were low standards indeed, especially with Charles J. Burchell up to his usual antics. But when the decision came down two months later in May of 1919, it was still a surprise.

  The Chief Justice, Sir Louis Davies, one of the English-Canadians, acknowledged that Imo had been on the wrong side of the Narrows at one point, but agreed with Drysdale’s conclusion that it had returned to its proper side of the Narrows “in good time,” so “the fault lay entirely in the fatal port manoeuvre of the Mont Blanc.” The second English-Canadian Justice agreed, and joined Justice Davies in moving to dismiss the appeal.

  If the third English-Canadian justice, Francis Alexander Anglin, went with his two peers and decided for Imo, it wouldn’t matter how the French-Canadian justices voted.

  Justice Anglin stated that Mont-Blanc’s desperate final move across Imo’s bow was not made in the “agony of collision,” the nautical standard for such a drastic move. Yet “the study of the whole record has left on my mind an uncomfortable impression that the case of the Mont Blanc . . . was, unconsciously no doubt, prejudiced in the minds of those present at the investigation and the trial”—not because they were French but because the Mont-Blanc’s captain and crew had abandoned ship, letting their vessel drift into the Halifax docks and “imperiling the lives of thousands of people, while seeking their own safety in hasty flight to the Dartmouth shore without taking any . . . adequate steps . . . to give warning of the imminent danger even to those in the immediate vicinity.”

  With this, Justice Anglin finally gave voice to what other justices had only hinted at: the sins of Mont-Blanc’s captain, crew, and pilot had not violated nautical laws, codes, or conventions in the Mont-Blanc’s dance with Imo. The defendants were guilty of bailing on a burning ship and rowing the long way across the Narrows to save themselves instead of warning people in Richmond of the impending disaster, compounded by their utter inactivity after the explo
sion. While thousands of people with no connection to the explosion were rushing to help strangers who were desperately in need, the captain, crew, and pilot never expressed the slightest concern for them—all during a week when the outpouring of compassion was everywhere. The crew’s failure to warn Richmond or to help survivors, not to mention their lack of remorse and compassion, had created a deep antipathy toward them. Even if ethnicity fueled that feeling, the crew’s behavior alone sparked it. But insofar as none of those actions were illegal, they were irrelevant to the laws the court was charged with judging.

  Justice Anglin added that this prejudice was emphasized by Imo attorney Burchell, and “the license allowed [Burchell] in other respects” by Judge Drysdale “is indicative of the prevalent sentiment against the Mont-Blanc.”

  Justice Anglin added that Imo had “inexcusably” stayed on the wrong side of the channel until just before the collision, thereby making Anglin the first English-Canadian jurist to acknowledge this basic, crucial fact. He then concluded, “While I’m inclined to think that the Imo was the more blame-worthy of the two, I am not sufficiently satisfied of this to do otherwise than apportion the responsibility equally.”

  Based on this reasoning, Anglin would render a split decision.

  With the first two justices finding for Imo and against Mont-Blanc and the swing vote splitting equally for both sides, even if the two French-Canadian justices ruled in favor of Mont-Blanc, the verdict would still be deadlocked at 2.5 each. According to Canadian laws, the appeal would then be dismissed, and Judge Drysdale’s decision for Mont-Blanc would hold. This seemed to put the two French-Canadian judges in an impossible position. How to respond without dooming Mont-Blanc to a clearly unjust verdict?

  The two French-Canadian judges, Louis-Phillipe Brodeur and Pierre-Basile Mignault, easily recognized the anti-French prejudice evident in Judge Drysdale’s initial opinion and called out by Justice Anglin. With careful and copious reasoning, they concluded the fault for the collision lay wholly with Imo.

  But if they stopped there, the court would still be deadlocked, deferring the decision back to Drysdale’s ruling. So they sought to go deeper than the question before them about who was right and who was wrong and to dissect the odd legal proceedings that had occurred back in Judge Drysdale’s gloomy Halifax courtroom that had led them to this juncture. While appeals courts are usually bound by the facts given to them from the lower court rulings and have to rule strictly on how the law was applied to those facts, in this unusual case, Drysdale had failed to establish what the facts of the case actually were.

  This gave the Supreme Court justices the opportunity to find the facts for themselves, essentially re-trying the entire case as if they were sitting in Judge Drysdale’s seat in Nova Scotia. Brodeur and Mignault recognized the opportunity Drysdale’s odd conduct offered them, and they seized it.

  So they dived back into the evidence itself. Both decided that whether the two ships finally collided on the Dartmouth or Halifax side of the Narrows was far less important than how the ships got there in the first place. To determine that, they needed to rewind the tape to the ships’ starting points. In tracking the paths of the two ships, they concluded that Imo had been on the wrong side at every relevant moment, and tried to get back to the correct side of the channel only after it was too late. As for Mont-Blanc’s last-second swing to the left, they acknowledged that it was unwise and ultimately unhelpful, but under the circumstances understandable and excusable. Taking all this in, they concluded Imo was solely to blame.

  With the advantage of a century of hindsight, their reasoning seems sound. But that alone would still produce a deadlock, which would once again revert to Judge Drysdale’s complete victory for Imo. They knew they had to go another step. If Justice Brodeur’s and Justice Mignault’s navigation through the case to that point had been impressive, it was eclipsed by their last move.

  In the last paragraph of their decision, in which they found Imo entirely at fault, they added that they were open to adopting the reasoning of the swing vote, Justice Anglin, and find both ships equally at fault. Given the choice between a whitewash for Imo and a fifty-fifty split, the French-Canadian judges took what they could get for Mont-Blanc.

  It worked. The final verdict: 3–2 for equal blame—a great outcome for Mont-Blanc, given the start of legal proceedings—with a wink to future readers about what the two justices really thought of the case. These judges passed away decades ago, yet we hear them clearly today.

  If the French-Canadian justices’ reasoning seems sound to us, it struck Imo’s animated attorney Charles J. Burchell much less so. As soon as the ruling came down from Canada’s Supreme Court, Burchell filed an appeal with the court of last resort, the Privy Council in London, a trio of three Law Lords who would have the final say.

  The fourth and final hearing of the case commenced almost a year later in January 1920, at great expense of time, effort, and money for both sides. The Mont-Blanc owners, who had grown progressively savvier about their defense, retained experienced English counsel for this trial, while the Imo team stuck with the bombastic Burchell. Five days of arguments covered the same ground all over again, without the histrionics of the Halifax hearings, after which the Lords came down with their decision a month later, on March 22, 1920.

  Their ruling was also unusual, but less for the outcomes than the process employed to reach them. In assessing the work of their predecessors, the Lords clearly agreed with the two French-Canadian Supreme Court justices that Justice Drysdale had made a mess of the fact-finding process. Thus, the Lords determined that they needed to start from scratch, adjudicating not only on the law but on the facts themselves, a decision that vindicated the French-Canadian justices.

  The Lords also made it clear that Burchell’s shtick played a lot better in front of Judge Drysdale in Halifax, with its Anglo-French antipathies, than in the capital of the British Empire. The Lords discounted much of the testimony generated by Burchell’s leading questions. The game was starting over, on a new field with new rules.

  And, again like the French-Canadian judges, the Lords felt it necessary to back up the action in Halifax Harbour to the ships’ starting points on the morning of December 6, 1917. They underscored the simplicity of the “collision rule,” which holds that each ship, when faced with a possible collision, had only two choices: stop or reverse. Both ships, the Lords argued, should have gone full speed astern “long before they were allowed to approach so close to each other as 500 feet. Both Masters were to blame for not having prevented their respective ships from getting into it.”

  The Lords concluded: “It is clear that the navigators [of both ships] allowed them to approach within 400 feet of each other on practically opposite courses, thus incurring the risk of collision, and indeed practically bringing about the collision, instead of reversing their engines and going astern, as our Assessors advise us they, as a matter of good seamanship, could and should have done, long before the ships came so close together. This actually led to the collision.”

  In short, they ruled, Imo was going too fast, and Mont-Blanc should have known better than to come anywhere near another ship. Common sense seemed to be making a comeback.

  “The manoeuvre of the Mont-Blanc in the agony of the collision may not have been the best manoeuvre to adopt, and yet be in the circumstances excusable. But their Lordships are clearly of the opinion that both ships are to blame for their reciprocal neglect above mentioned to have reversed and gone astern earlier than they did.”

  Thus, after two and a half years of litigation and enormous legal fees, the two sides came out even—a rough justice, perhaps.

  Imo had committed far more violations of basic nautical conventions than did Mont-Blanc, but the men on Mont-Blanc knew they were sitting on 6 million pounds of explosives, while the men on Imo did not. Imo’s leaders paid with their lives, while Mont-Blanc’s ran for theirs—without giving a thought to mitigating the pain suffered by so many, or even expr
essing sympathy. While those omissions don’t constitute crimes, they certainly colored how Haligonians regarded the captain and crew.

  In the cosmic scheme of things, splitting the blame might be as close as anyone could get to justice. By the time the final decision came down, most Haligonians had already moved on to rebuilding their lives and their city.

  Chapter 40

  The Wholesome Discord of a Thousand Saws

  After the fires had been extinguished and the wounded tended to, Colonel Robert S. Low assembled an army of carpenters, masons, plumbers, and electricians to rebuild the city, which had incurred more than $35 million in damages in 1917 U.S. dollars, or $728 million today. Reconstructing Halifax would be an enormous project under the best of circumstances, but it was made far more difficult by the simple fact that the Great War was approaching its climax in 1918, and still received priority for most resources.

  Lumber was hard to get, and glass almost impossible. If you could somehow get your hands on the scarce materials you needed to repair your home, finding someone to do the work was even harder. The tradesmen—carpenters, masons, and glaziers—had already been working at full capacity on the war effort before the explosion.

  “For months the people of the North End lived like cavemen,” Raddall recalled, “with black tarpaper in place of windows, with patched-up doors, with the heat of their stoves escaping through cracks and slashes in the walls and roofs.”

  But given the immense demand, more workers found their way to Halifax, and those already in town showed mercy and found time to help the needy homeowners. Some 4,000 workers completed repairs throughout the winter and spring to make homes warm and wind- and water-proof again, and repaired windows so the survivors could enjoy some much-needed sunlight.