The crew of the Stella Maris began spraying the Mont Blanc with their fire hose. Other boats also came to help. Left unchallenged this long (almost 20 minutes), the fire had consumed the top deck of the Mont Blanc and now raged furiously, flames leaping into the air through the thick black smoke. The heat was so intense that none of those fighting the flames, both from the Stella Maris and from the shore, could look directly at the inferno.
What Captain Brennan did next suggests that he and his crew had indeed understood the warnings the Mont Blanc’s crew shouted from their lifeboats, and had then decided to try and fight the fire regardless. When their attempts at dousing the flames proved ineffective, Brennan ordered his men to stop and prepare the hawsers instead. The Stella Maris was not designed to fight ship fires; she was designed to tow other, bigger vessels in and – more importantly now – out of harbour. That is what they would try to do, if there was still time.
To a limited degree, word had also spread on shore about the nature of the Mont Blanc’s cargo. Naval officers who knew the ship sent sailors ashore to warn as many people as they could about the risk of an explosion. One ran into Richmond Station, based at the freight yards less than 750ft (229m) from Pier 6, and told everyone about the munitions ship burning out of control in the harbour. When the sailor ran out again, everyone in the station followed.
But then one stopped. Vincent Coleman, a 45-year-old dispatcher who lived only five streets away with his wife and two-year-old daughter, remembered that a passenger train from St John, New Brunswick, was due any minute. It would stop at North Street Station, which was even closer to Pier 6 than Richmond Station. Coleman turned round and hurried back to his telegraph machine. As quickly as he could he tapped out a message in Morse Code, warning of the Mont Blanc and demanding the St John train stop immediately. He then signalled a farewell to the other telegraphers. Whether he expected to lose his life, or whether he simply expected his workplace – let alone his job – to be obliterated, will never be known.
By not running, Vincent Coleman saved over 300 lives. Some 4 miles (6.4km) from downtown Halifax the St John train came to a halt, and behind it all the other incoming trains also stopped. Before the disaster even occurred, word was spreading across Canada that something terrible might be about to happen in Halifax. When all contact with the city suddenly ceased, the telegraph cables having been severed, it didn’t take long for the outside world to work out why.
The crew of the Stella Maris were still trying to attach the hawsers to the burning ship. The firemen on shore were still trying to douse the flames. The crowds were still continuing to gather all around the harbour. Meanwhile Aime Le Medec, Francis Mackey and the rest of the Mont Blanc’s crew had reached the Dartmouth shore. They ran up into the woods and took shelter. All but one of them survived.
The fireball rose over 6,000ft (1,800m) into the air. A dense mushroom cloud of white smoke towered up to 20,000ft (6,000m).
At 9.04am, less than 25 minutes after the collision, the largest man-made explosion in history ripped through Halifax. The fireball rose over 6,000ft (1,800m) into the air. A dense mushroom cloud of white smoke towered up to 20,000ft (6,000m). The Mont Blanc’s cargo detonated with a force equivalent to 3 kilotons of TNT, a record the explosion retained until 1945. People felt the shock of the explosion as far away as Cape Breton Island, at the eastern tip of Nova Scotia, some 130 miles (200km) distant. In the town of New Glasgow, 80 miles (130km) from Halifax, homes and other buildings shook like the town had been struck by an earthquake. Ten miles (16km) away, windows in Sackville and Windsor Junction shattered.
A city in ruins
The Mont Blanc was completely obliterated within a fraction of a second. The explosion tore her hull and superstructure into superheated iron shards of varying size, which were thrown almost 1,000ft (over 300m) into the air before they started raining down, still white hot, all over Halifax and Dartmouth. Cowering in the woods on the Dartmouth side, one of the Mont Blanc’s crew was killed by such falling debris. Later, people would find twisted shrapnel identified as once being part of the ship over 2.5 miles (4km) away. The Mont Blanc’s anchor, which weighed 1,140lb (more than half a ton), landed 2 miles (3.2km) away. The barrel of one of her deck cannons was carried even further, eventually crashing back to earth 3.5 miles (5.6km) from where the ship had exploded.
The blast hit them so fast they wouldn’t have had time to realise what was happening.
By the time the Mont Blanc’s cargo detonated, hundreds of people – including dozens of firemen – were standing along the shoreline. The blast hit them so fast they wouldn’t have had time to realise what was happening. Up to 1,500 people within a mile radius of the explosion died instantly. Hundreds more, further from the Mont Blanc, were blinded, some by the flash of the explosion, others because they had been watching the burning ship from behind glass windows, and the explosion smashed all of the windows in Halifax, spraying those behind them with flying shards.
The shockwave from the explosion travelled at 23 times the speed of sound – over 25,000ft (almost 8,000m) per second. It created a wall of highly compressed hot air that smashed through everything in its path, just like after a nuclear blast. The pressure wave destroyed (or left on the verge of collapse) every building across 500 acres adjacent to Pier 6. Nearly 1,630 homes were demolished in a moment, and another 12,000 beyond them severely damaged. The blast made stone churches crumble as if they were built of children’s building blocks. It snapped centuries-old trees like twigs, bent iron railings like pipe cleaners and hurled vehicles through the air like toys.
The blast made stone churches crumble as if they were built of children’s building blocks.
The explosion generated so much heat that it flash-boiled all the water beneath and around the Mont Blanc, leaving the harbour floor momentarily exposed. The shockwave pushed a wall of water away from the destroyed ship with such force that when the water reached the shore the wave could have been up to 60ft (18m) above the high water mark. By comparison, the tsunami that hit the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the Japanese earthquake in April 2011 was about 49ft (15m) high. The wave swept several streets inland, finishing off any houses that had survived the initial explosion, washing away debris, and carrying away the dead and dying. The wave swamped Richmond Station, wrecking the building and killing Vincent Coleman. On the shore, firemen who had had their clothes ripped off their bodies by the force of the blast, and the flesh burnt off their arms by the searing heat, now disappeared under a mountain of water. When the flood finally receded back into the harbour basin, it took with it many of the spoils of its devastation.
Both the explosion and the resultant tsunami caused immense damage to many other ships in Halifax harbour. The vessels nearest the Mont Blanc were either themselves blown up or swept away by the wave. The tsunami grounded the Stella Maris on the Richmond shore after the explosion killed 19 of her crew, including Captain Brennan. Miraculously, five of her crew survived. The other ship that had been involved in the collision, the Imo, had been further away when the Mont Blanc’s cargo detonated. Everyone on deck or on the bridge at the time of the explosion died. The force of the water carried the ship up onto the Dartmouth shore.
The St Bernard, a South American schooner docked at Pier 6, had caught fire when the Mont Blanc crashed into the dock. It was completely destroyed by the explosion. Another schooner, the Lola R, was also obliterated. The Canadian tug Sambro sank. The British cargo ship Curaca, docked at Pier 8, was carried across the harbour to sink at Tuft’s Cove, north of Dartmouth, with 45 lives lost. The Ragus, a Canadian work boat, capsized, whilst the tug Hilford was blown clear of the water and ended up on Pier 9, where it had been heading before the explosion to warn of the danger.
Other ships severely damaged but not destroyed included the British cargo ships Middleham Castle, Calonne and Picton. The Middleham Castle lost her funnel, the Calonne lost 36 crew, and the Picton was set on fire. The Picton also carried an explosive cargo,
and had been only 100ft (31m) from the Mont Blanc when the French steamer first caught alight. The foreman supervising the Picton’s loading ordered all her hatches closed, and he thereby prevented a secondary explosion. However, he, along with over 60 dockers and most of the Picton’s crew, did not survive.
Entangled in telegraph wires, hanging out of the windows of houses, some decapitated by flying wreckage, the dead lay undisturbed amongst the ruins of the burning city.
The Canadian minesweeper Musquash was also set on fire, and set adrift, as was the Royal Navy escort ship HMS Knight Templar. Several submarines moored at Pier 1 broke loose, but their crews suffered only minor injuries.
The disaster had reduced much of Halifax, Richmond and Dartmouth to a devastated wasteland. Entangled in telegraph wires, hanging out of the windows of houses, some decapitated by flying wreckage, the dead lay undisturbed amongst the ruins of the burning city. The 2,000 final death toll for the Halifax Explosion is an estimate. Because of the mass movement of troops, and the unknowable number of sailors and other transient workers in the harbour at the time of the disaster, the true number of fatal casualties will never be known. What is known is that 600 of the dead were under the age of 15. Many of those who gathered along the shore had been children, to whom the spectacle of the burning ship was obviously more exciting than the prospect of school.
The aftermath
The USS von Steuben, a captured German passenger liner now serving as a troop transport for the US Army, was heading home to New York after taking 1,223 soldiers to France. She needed to restock her coal supplies at Halifax and was 40 miles (64km) away just after 9am when suddenly buffeted by a strong concussion. Those on board immediately feared the worst, that they were under torpedo attack from a U-boat, or that the ship had hit a mine. But on the bridge her officers saw a column of fire climb into the sky in the distance, followed by an immense plume of white smoke. Realising something catastrophic had happened in Halifax, the von Steuben made best speed to the port. The captain of another ship, the cruiser USS Tacoma, also saw the explosion and rushed to help.
With untold numbers trapped under the rubble of thousands of ruined buildings, rescuers faced a race against time.
For those who had survived the explosion, the immediate aftermath provided no relief from disaster. With untold numbers trapped under the rubble of thousands of ruined buildings, rescuers faced a race against time, not only because many were grievously injured and would die without urgent assistance, but also because fires threatened to burn out of control across the wreckage of so many wooden houses. The explosion had set fire to hundreds of buildings, but the pressure wave had also caused furnaces, stoves and lamps to break, burst or spill. Winter had only just begun to set in, so everyone’s coal cellars were full, stocked up to last through the cold months ahead. The sporadic fires found these sources of fuel and grew and spread, combining into much larger conflagrations.
In Richmond entire streets burned whilst would-be rescuers fought to contain the flames. It didn’t help that so many firemen had been killed in the explosion. Firemen from nearby districts struggled to fight fires in unfamiliar areas rendered even more unrecognisable by the devastation, in which fire-fighting equipment and a reliable water supply was no longer available.
Plenty of able-bodied civilians volunteered to help too, but it was only when the military took charge that rescue efforts became co-ordinated and more effective. Halifax looked like a warzone, and thousands of soldiers were trained to maintain calm in the face of such danger and chaos. Medical staff from three Royal Navy ships, HMS Highflyer, HMS Calgarian and HMS Knight Templar (which had been cast adrift by the tsunami), hurried ashore to start treating the injured wherever they found them.
But an hour after the Mont Blanc exploded, most rescue efforts came to an abrupt stop. Soldiers clearing rubble and looking for buried survivors in the area around the Wellington Barracks, at the southern end of the Narrows, saw what they thought was smoke rising from the armoury there. Rumours and then panic spread as rapidly as the fire had – a second explosion was imminent. The military commanders who had taken charge of the rescue operation ordered an immediate evacuation. Some ignored the order and kept working, but most fled. At this point, few knew the facts of what had happened aboard the Mont Blanc. Many believed the Germans had launched a massive attack in the harbour, and expected a second attack against the weakened city.
The smoke the soldiers saw actually turned out to be just steam. Barracks personnel were pouring water on the hot coals in the furnace as a precaution. The truth took far longer to spread than the panic, and it was noon before the rescue efforts resumed in earnest. At about this time, trains from other parts of Nova Scotia began to arrive at stations that hadn’t been destroyed by the explosion. Thanks to Vincent Coleman’s message, people outside Halifax knew more about what had happened than those picking their way through the ruins. Doctors and nurses brought supplies with them on the trains, and when the trains left again, they took wounded survivors with them.
Anaesthetic quickly ran low and bandages ran out completely.
Over 9,000 people had been injured as a result of the explosion, 6,000 of them seriously. The hospitals in Halifax overflowed with casualties. They were understaffed and lacked the resources to handle a disaster on this scale. Anaesthetic quickly ran low and bandages ran out completely. Some people had their wounds wrapped with ripped clothing. Once the morgues were full a makeshift mortuary was set up in the basement of a local school. That too quickly filled up.
As the number of stretchers lined up on the streets outside the hospitals mounted, and hospital staff adopted a triage system to prioritise who to help, medical staff from ships in harbour began setting up aid stations all around the city to take on some of the slack. Meanwhile, some doctors even performed emergency operations on their own kitchen tables. Amputations and eye removals became almost routine. Surgeons ended up working around the clock for several days. When volunteers from the Red Cross and St John’s Ambulance arrived to treat the less seriously injured, they helped take some of the burden off the shoulders of Halifax’s exhausted doctors and nurses.
That night, to compound a situation that would have been almost unimaginable that morning, a blizzard descended on Halifax. Almost 16 inches (40cm) of snow blanketed the city, which extinguished all the fires, but which seriously hampered the rescue efforts. Whilst some rescuers continued to work through the blizzard, 6,000 people had been left homeless by the explosion, and another 25,000 lacked adequate housing – this constituted roughly half of everyone who lived in Halifax. The homeless looked for somewhere sheltered to spend the night (some huddled inside a damaged train) as those whose houses remained standing used whatever they could (from carpets to paper) to seal their broken windows against the weather.
Temperatures plunged overnight. Many of those trapped who might otherwise have survived had they been found in time succumbed to hypothermia. The next morning, however, a soldier trekking through the snow to search ruined houses found the unlikeliest of survivors. Only 23 months old, Anne Welsh had lost her mother and brother when the force of the explosion destroyed their home. The blast threw Anne under the stove, where she landed in the container of ash beneath it. Still warm, the ashes kept her alive through the freezing night. She was later nicknamed Ashpan Annie, and her survival became one of few good news stories that made it out of Halifax over the coming days.
A new Halifax
Despite major developments in Europe – most notably mid-revolutionary Russia signing an armistice with Germany and withdrawing from the war – events in Halifax became a major news story around the world. From as far away as China and New Zealand, relief agencies sent aid. Even in Germany the story was reported with shock and sympathy.
That contrasted with how Halifax’s main local newspaper reported it, stoking nationalist tensions by promoting the theory that the explosion had been a secret German attack deliberately designed to target a civilian po
pulation. Public outrage and paranoia led to most people of German descent in the city being arrested and imprisoned. The police even arrested the helmsman of the Imo on suspicion of being involved, even though he was Norwegian. However, the over-zealousness of the police probably helped sate the public appetite for revenge, and by being imprisoned (and all ultimately released without charge) Germans in Halifax were at least protected from vigilante mobs.
The rebuilding of Halifax brought much needed regeneration to a city that had lost its industrial heart.
Aime Le Medec, the Mont Blanc’s captain, and Francis Mackey, the harbour pilot in charge of the ship at the time of the collision, both strenuously denied any responsibility, and maintained there had been nothing they could have done to prevent the explosion once the Imo had struck the Mont Blanc. Both of them were charged with manslaughter, but charges were quickly dropped. In 1919 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that both the Mont Blanc and the Imo were equally responsible for the mistakes that led to the explosion.
The Halifax Relief Commission, formed immediately after the disaster, saw the disaster as an opportunity to improve and modernise what had been an ageing city struggling to keep up with the times. In poorer parts of Richmond, for example, there was a lot of densely packed and overcrowded housing, and some of the roads weren’t even paved. The rebuilding of Halifax brought much needed regeneration to a city that had lost its industrial heart – and many of those who worked there – in the explosion. Housing, hospitals and harbour regulations all improved after the disaster. Modern plumbing and access to electricity was brought to all parts of the city.
Final Voyage Page 5
