December 19, 2011 • 24 mins
The Halifax Explosion was one of history's worst man-made, non-nuclear explosions. The disaster killed about 2,000 people, and part of the city was completely leveled. So how and when did Halifax begin to rebuild? Tune in to find out.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Debilian Choker Boarding and I'm fair. And every year
on December seven, Americans remember the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii,
(00:20):
in which was an attack that killed thousands and launched
the US into World War Two. But what many Americans
might not know is that our neighbor to the north, Canada,
commemorates a sad historical moment of its own just one
day before, and that's the Halifax explosion. And the Halifax explosion,
which took place on December six, nine seventeen, has been
(00:42):
called one of the worst disasters in Canada's history, one
of the largest man made non nuclear explosions in history ever,
and the largest man made explosion prior to Hiroshima. So
it's not going to be our most uplifting episode ever,
as you can tell, but it is one of our
most requested and I would say especially in the past year,
I've noticed a huge uptick in request for this topic,
(01:06):
and um certainly as we've approached the anniversary date of
December six as well. But the story of this disaster
starts with two ships which weren't even supposed to be
in Halifax at the same time in the first place,
trying to pass each other in the harbor. And so
we're going to tell you about what happened, what caused
(01:26):
the explosion, of course, the toll that it took on Halifax,
and the rescue effort that followed too, and then, of course,
because this is World War One, some suspicions kind of
an alternate history that people have thought up um and
assumed had to be the cause of a disaster of
this magnitude. But first we're gonna set the stage a
(01:47):
little bit to help people understand a little bit about
Halifax at this time during World War One. Some basic background.
Halifax was established as a fortified settlement by the British
in seventeen forty nine and had become the capital of
Nova Scotia by nineteen hundred. It had served as a
garrison city to the British Empire armies, but after British
forces left in nineteen oh six, it needed kind of
(02:10):
a new purpose, so the city's port facilities grew and
new factories were developed, turning Halifax into Nova Scotia's commercial center.
Portly makeover so because of its port facilities, Halifax became
a key player in the Allied war effort during World
War One, even though it was obviously pretty far removed
(02:30):
from the main battlefields in the war. But when the
war started in nineteen fourteen, Canada had gotten involved, had
pledged its support to Great Britain to resist German aggression,
and so the country's factory started to produce munitions and
other supplies as a way of all their supporting the war,
and since it was Canada's Since Halifax was Canada's main
(02:53):
port on the East Coast, it handled tons of shipping
during the war, like thousands of Allied cargo ships that
would go through its harbor before heading on over to Europe.
Everything from soldiers to munitions to food would pass through
halifax It's harbor, and because of its stance in the
war and the type of cargo that was passing through
(03:14):
the port, they did have to take some precautions. According
to a History magazine article by Andrew hynd And, nightly
blackout was an effect, for example, to protect the port
from German submarines. There was also an anti submarine boom,
or a kind of net that was also spread across
the entrance of the harbor from dusk to dawn to
restrict access to the harbor during the night, and that's
(03:36):
going to be pretty crucial to the story. So the
night of December five, nineteen seventeen, when our story begins,
there were two ships that were unwillingly stuck on either
side of this anti submarine boom, the one stuck on
the outside, one stuck on the inside. One was a
French freighter called the mont Blanc, and there was also
(03:57):
a Norwegian freighter called them And the fact that these
two ships were even there at the same time was
kind of a coincidence, wasn't it. It was the Emo,
under the command of Captain Hawk and Frome was supposed
to be on its way to New York to pick
up a cargo of food for the Belgian people. He
had wanted to sail that afternoon. The captain did, but
(04:17):
according to an article by Jesse Bradley and Military History,
the coal he'd ordered for three pm delivery didn't show
up until five thirty, when the harbor exit was already
blocked off. On the other hand, the mont block which
was commanded by Captain a may Limedic, was supposed to
arrive on the following day, December six, but it showed
up late in the afternoon of December five instead, which
(04:40):
was too late to make it into the harbor. But
they went ahead and they picked up a pilot named
Francis Mackie Halifax. Just to explain the pilot thing, it
was a compulsory port, which meant that a pilot had
to be in charge of any ship that was entring
or leaving the harbor. And so they picked up this pilot,
and they had undergone an inspection by a Canadian naval
officer so that they would be good to go into
(05:01):
the harbor first thing into in the morning get on
with business. So there's another important thing to note about
the mont Blanc. Though the ship's cargo might have made
some of the crew pretty nervous, seeing how they were
on the wrong side the the unprotected side of that
submarine boom. They had two thousand three tons of picric
(05:24):
acid in the holds, two tons of t n T
and ten tons of gun cotton between the main and
spar decks. And then just just to add to things,
because that doesn't sound like enough, thirty five tons of
volatile Benzene and drums on the upper deck, and this
combined of course made them basically a huge floating explosive.
(05:46):
And according to that History magazine article, to Plana mentioned,
having those drums of Bensall on the ship's deck was
against regulations in the first place, So the ship was
defying regulations by having those kind of explosives on deck,
but also by not flying a red flag to signal
that they had munitions on board. There's a reason why
(06:07):
they didn't do it. It was because they were on
the wrong side of that submarine net and the captain
didn't want to let every German ship in the area
or any potential Germans in the area know that he
was carrying all these munitions and was out there in
the open um for attack. Yeah, he thought it could
turn them into a target. So the two ships are
(06:27):
stuck where they are for the night, on either end
of the harbor. Just to explain the harbor a little bit,
because it can be kind of confusing if you can't
see a picture of it. It's this long inlet. There's
Bedford Basin where the EMO was for the night, and
that's kind of at the top, and then there was
Halifax Harbor, which opens up into the Atlantic, and that's
kind of at the bottom, and that's where the mont
(06:50):
Blanc was. Connecting these two anchorage areas is what's called
the Narrows, and that's a passage that's about a mile
long and only about half a mile y. So you
really need to follow the rules while traveling. And I'm
imagining it kind of like an hour glass. Is that correct?
I haven't actually seen the map. I mean I guess
that you could sort of related like an hour glass
with one side that's clearly a lot smaller than the
(07:12):
other generally, but a narrow part in between, a narrow
part in between them. Yeah, that's the key part to
remember here is it's kind of like two areas where
you could anchor your ship and then a long, narrow
part in between that you need to travel to get
a pilot to navigate. And so the captain of the Emo,
he was not at all happy about the situation about
being stuck for the night. He was really anxious to
(07:32):
get going, but his pilot, William Hayes, had agreed to
spend the night on board so that they could get
going first thing in the morning. The guys on the
monk kind of had the same idea. A little after
seven thirty am, they raised their anchor and they started
traveling northward towards the Narrows and an inbound lane, traveling
at a speed of about four knots. And then a
little after eight am, the EMO entered the north end
(07:55):
of the Narrows, heading southward at about seven knots, even
though you weren't supposed to go fast sster than five
knots in the harbor, So they're speeding along, I guess
trying to make up for lost time, And I mean
the captain of the EMO was just in a real hurry.
Some sources suggests that the ship didn't even have official
permission to depart when it took off. They were just
going to get going. But the ships were still a
(08:17):
mile apart at this point when their first entering the channel,
traveling toward each other, and while it was barreling down
the narrows, though, the EMO ran into some unexpected traffic changes.
There was an American freighter that wanted to pass the
Email on the wrong side, but the ship signaled to
each other. They worked out how they were going to
(08:38):
approach this and they were able to make the pass safely. However,
this pass put the EMO in the wrong lane and
on a collision course therefore with the mont Block. So Mackie,
who was the pilot of the mont Blanc, saw the
email change course and at first he wasn't too worried,
you know, they had enough time to to correct it
(08:58):
to be safe, and he founded one siren signal to
indicate that his ship would stay to the starboard side,
but the EMO answered with two sirens to say that
it was going to steer to port, which would cause
the ships to collide. So kind of mixed signals here
and no agreement about how to proceed, and after that
(09:18):
it was really just mass confusion. They signaled to each
other again, but they couldn't work it out. Mackie tried
to stop the engine, but of course slowing down and
certainly stopping a big ship like that isn't very easy.
And then finally Mackie tried to pull the ship to
the left to just give the EMO room to pass by,
but it was too late at that point. A little
(09:40):
after eight thirty am, the EMO slammed into the mont
Blanc and opened up a wedge of about three meters deep.
Containers of benzine and picric acid smashed upon impact, and
then as the ships drifted apart, sparks from that grinding
steel of the ships started a fire. So Captain Limedeck
saw the riding on the wall immediately and ordered his
(10:02):
crew to abandon ship. They all jumped into lifeboats and
road just as fast as they could over to the
shore and took cover in the nearby woods. But they
were basically the only ones who knew how dangerous the
contents of the ship were. So of course, because the
ship was not flying that tell tale red flag, a
lot of people who weren't part of the crew didn't
realize how severe the situation was, that it didn't just
(10:25):
involve the two ships involved in the men on board.
So hundreds of people had stopped what they were doing,
and we're just gawking at this ship on fire with
a huge column of smoke above it, And the docks
started to fill up with spectators, and trams started to
slow down and allow passengers to check out the situation.
(10:46):
Rubber Neck a little bit, and people were gathered even
at the windows of their homes and office buildings and
um watching from far off factory roofs to just see
what disaster was occurring down in the harbor. The fire
department was alerted and so they sent people over, and
a lot of small boats were approaching the Mont Blanc
trying to fight the fire as the boat as the ship,
(11:09):
i should say, was drifting across the channel and eventually
stopped at Pier six. And this all just reminds me
of what goes on kind of you know, have you
ever been one of those tornado warning situations where people
all of a sudden want to like run out of
their houses or stand at the windows and look at
what's about to happen. You just feel like it's so bad,
like don't watch, just take cover. It's like one of
(11:31):
those moments. But a few people did have an idea
of what was going on and they took action. For example,
a trained dispatcher at Richmond Station who had been warned
by a sailor state at his post to stop a
passenger train from coming into the area. He sent a
telegraph that said, quote stop trains, ammunition ship on fire
making for Pier six, goodbye. So all of this was
(11:53):
going down, all of this gawking and trying to get
a look at at the disaster the wreck and try
and help, and try to help too, of course, when
at nine oh six am the mont Blanc blew up
and the ship was shattered into bits. The blast sent
smoke and debrise somewhere from three to five miles into
the sky, and of course soon enough all of those
(12:16):
ship fragments came raining down on the north end of
the city, hitting people, hitting buildings. The ship's gun, for example,
landed five point five kilometers away, and it said that
the shock from the explosion was felt as far as
three kilometers away. The harbor bed was split and laid bare,
and the rocks from it were also thrown around. And
(12:38):
when the sea rushed back to fill in that hole
in the harbor bed, it's sent a huge tidal wave inland,
which affected people who were standing there on the piers watching.
I think that's the most striking image for me to
try to imagine, to the harbor bed just cleared of water,
this empty pit and then wosh filling back in. Other
ships in the harbor were destroyed or severely d imaged.
(13:00):
Of course. The Emo, for example, was blown ashore and
its captain, the pilot Haze, and five crewmen were all killed.
A split second after that explosion, there was also this
huge air concussion, a kind of shock wave that instantly
destroyed everything in its path. Buildings and bridges collapsed, vehicles
were thrown around, roads were cracked, tree snapped. Even buildings
(13:22):
that withstood that wave lost their windows, and some of
those buildings still fell when that wreckage that we mentioned
came raining down face sky. Yeah, and that wave also
killed hundreds of people instantly when they were hit by
the shock wave, and many more were trapped in the
ruins of buildings and became victims of the third onslot,
which were fires that sprang up everywhere as results of
(13:44):
damaged gas manes and overturned wood stoves and kindling in homes.
We talked about that effect of earthquakes and things like
that a little bit in our fire episodes San Francisco Fire.
But basically, this entire district of Halifax called Richmond and
some areas beyond that were completely decimated in just a
(14:04):
matter of minutes. About two thousand people were dead, nine
thousand more were injured and needed medical treatment, and about
two thousand buildings were really badly damage, which meant that
approximately fifteen thousand people were now homeless, and that's really
a low estimate because it only counts those people who
were found. Yeah, the death tolls considered by a lot
(14:25):
of people to be too low. Among the dead were
the city's fire chief and the deputy fire chief who
had gotten to Pier six right before the explosion. Two
hundred children and the staff of the city's orphanage, about
one hundred students at Richmond School, sixty nine employees of
the Canadian Government Railway, including the heroic Vince Coleman that
(14:46):
we mentioned who sent that telegraph out, and many many others. However,
though it kind of defies logic, because they were so
close to the situation to start with, Captain Limaedeck and Mackie,
who had taken shelter in the woods they survived. Who
would figure that the guys who had been on the
ship with the explosives, who jumped overboard and swam to
the woods would make it. It's really surprising, but the
(15:10):
rescue effort started almost immediately to to deal with this
um this explosion and the after effects. About thirty minutes
after the explosion is when things started to happen. People
began to dig out the dead and look for survivors.
But remember this is December and it is Nova Scotia,
so their works soon got a lot tougher because a
(15:31):
blizzard started later in the day and it was like
the worst blizzard in the last twenty perfect timing, right,
So that was of course bad news for all those
people who were now homeless, who didn't have any shelter,
and there was also concern about another potential explosion. All
of those fires that had started and spread since the
first explosion were still a very major threat because they
(15:53):
were quickly heading for the powder magazine at the Wellington
Military Barracks. The caused quite a bit of panic. People,
even the injured ones, started heading for higher ground and
they were encouraged to by authority, so they were being
sent up. But soldiers were able to flood the munitions
dump and keep the fire away from it, so there
wasn't a second explosion after all, so it wasn't quite
(16:16):
as bad as they thought it could be, and that
was a really good thing too, because there were already
so many people who were really badly in need of doctors,
medical supplies, and just places to care for the injured.
Doctors nurses and supplies started to come in from other
Nova Scotia towns that day, and by the next day
help was coming in from other Canadian provinces too, and
the international response here was really significant as well. By
(16:39):
two thirty that day, the U. S. Navy ships the
Tacoma and the von Stoeben, on their way back from Europe,
came into the harbor and met up with the U. S.
S Colony and the U S. Coast Guard Cutter Moral.
They offered up soldiers and marines to help patrol the area,
and they turned the old Colony into a hospital ship
with U. S. Navy docks running it along with some
Canadian nurses, and over the next few days trains full
(17:02):
of surgeons, doctors and nurses and more medical supplies came
in from New England again, though facilities were packed so
during this time doctors were forced to treat people and
pretty much every room of any available hospital, including the kitchens,
the corridors, and the closets. Some treated people on trains
or in homes, in doctor's offices, or even drug stores,
(17:24):
making do with what they could. The injuries, too, were
really horrific, not the kind of thing that you would
want to be treating on a train or in somebody's home.
And um, one of the reasons why the injuries were
so bad was because of all of that glass and
the debris that had been flying around and hitting people.
And will spare you some of the truly gory details,
but eye injuries are often said to have been the
(17:46):
most prevalent. And I mean, if you if you think
about what we mentioned earlier, all those people running up
to their windows to see the ship on fire and
watching and and then getting faced with that explosion and
h A lot of people ultimately needed to have one
or both eyes removed. But besides medical care, there were
other types of relief that were needed. By the afternoon
(18:08):
of the explosion, the Halifax Relief Committee, which was a
volunteer organization, was organized to help find ways to shelter
the homeless, and identify the dead and the injured, and
construct some sort of temporary housing for people to live
through this blizzard. I mean, how bad would it be
to survive the explosion and then freeze? Kidding? They also
(18:29):
started to manage the donations that came in from around
the world. Millions of dollars came in from several countries,
including Britain, of course, and as far away as Australia.
The US also started to send in supplies like food, clothing,
and building materials including glass and the people who could
install it. In the meantime, though, a lot of the
homeless had to stay intense and that brutal cold weather.
(18:51):
So on December thirteenth, nineteen seventeen, the ret commissioners started
to investigate the explosion and the court. In to the
military history article that we mentioned earlier, the chairman of
this commission, Judge Arthur Drysdale, was really anti French and
he felt that the pilot and the captain of the
mont Blanc were quote wholly responsible and um it did
(19:14):
seem like they were going to be held responsible for
at least a small aspect of it. Initially, Captain Limeduck
and Francis Mackie were arrested and charged with manslaughter for
causing the death of William Hayes, who was the pilot
of the EMO as we as we mentioned earlier, and
the charges were eventually dropped and it was ruled that
both the EMO and the mont Blanc were at fault.
(19:38):
That didn't stop people from having other theories about what
really happened. Oh yeah, we've always got some other theories,
don't so. Some people for some time actually believed that
Germany was behind the explosion. After all, it was during
the war, and if you hadn't witnessed the explosion yourself,
that you can imagine that might be the first thing
that comes to your mind. Some people thought it was
(20:00):
a zeppelin attack or a bombardment from a battle fleet.
Still others later on thought that sabotage was behind this.
These people think that the emo's captain and co pilot
were both murdered by a crew member just before the explosion,
allowing a German spy to come on board and orchestrate
the accident, but witnesses have said that they saw the
captain giving all the commands. Later though, during an inquiry,
(20:22):
some harbor officers said that they had received calls inquiring
about the movements of the ships, and rumors started again
around when Dr Samuel Prince, who authored a study about
the explosion a sociological study, said that it could be sabotage.
There's been no definitive proof of this, though. These are
just ideas that people had around this time, especially Yeah,
(20:43):
so moving away from conspiracy theory and to rehabilitation and
the reconstruction of Halifax. It obviously took years to rehabilitate
the city and to identify the dead and to help
survivors find their families. And if you visit the website
of the Nova Scotia Archives, they have a whole section
on the Halifax explosion. Actually, since people started recommending this topic,
(21:08):
I've sometimes pointed them to that resoarch because it is
so great, and we follow the Nova Scotia Archives on Twitter.
They're really really nice about any research questions you might have,
so yeah, it's a it's a great place to go
to learn more about the disaster and to see how
Halifax was rebuilt. They have photos of the explosions aftermath
and a film clip that's kind of like a silent
(21:29):
movie that so disturbing too, because it is silent. Yes,
it's a very eerie And there's also a list of
those who died. And what I found to be really
interesting was the first hand accounts from some of the survivors.
So we have part of an example here of a
personal narrative given by a doctor M. J. Burris to
the director of the Halifax disaster Record office at nine o'clock.
(21:51):
Was just getting up shaving, felt the house shake and
felt that something terrible had happened. I thought that there
was a bombardment of some kind. The explosion was low,
not so loud as the noonday gun, and he thought
that it was a shell from a submarine. His little
daughter downstairs screamed. A second explosion was louder, but still
(22:11):
there was no breaking of glass. He was sure now
that it was a bombardment. Ran downstairs, caught up his
little girl and called to his wife and the maid
to come to the cellar. Put the little girl in
the cellar, then ran back for his wife, who would
not come, met her at the door and pushed her
down the cellar stairs, following her. They were all in
the cellar when the quote big explosion came. Everything smashed.
(22:35):
After waiting for some time for more, Doctor B came upstairs,
went into office. A man was there with his face
cut on, a Doctor B to dress it. Soon many
people were there to be quote fixed up. Only small
hurts came first, as Dr B lives near the ferry
and people were not so badly injured in that part
of Dartmouth. Later people from the north end came and
(22:58):
were much worse hurt. One child had his skull fractured,
broken like an eggshell. The brain substance was oozing down
over the side of his face. He lived about three weeks,
So that definitely puts um puts the explosion into perspective. UM,
But I do like having a resource like that and
(23:19):
having um having archives where you can look up all
sorts of letters and pictures and get a better sense
because I mean, so often we talk about things in
kind of a big scale, but when you have letters,
when you have quotes, it makes it so much more personal. Yeah,
it makes it real. So I definitely recommend checking that out.
And sorry if we have had another down or episode
(23:39):
for you here, but I think it's an important story
and you guys wanted to hear it, and you guys
wanted to hear it, and um, so I'm glad that
we got to cover this one finally. And so you
know for sure now that we do do listener requests,
So if you have any, please email them to us.
We're a history podcast at how Stuff Works dot com
or you can hit us up on Facebook and we're
on Twitter and Street and you can always find lots
(24:02):
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and ships on our website at www dot how stuff
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(24:23):
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Welcome to Stuff you missed in History class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Debilian Choker Boarding and I'm fair. And every year
on December seven, Americans remember the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii,
(00:20):
in which was an attack that killed thousands and launched
the US into World War Two. But what many Americans
might not know is that our neighbor to the north, Canada,
commemorates a sad historical moment of its own just one
day before, and that's the Halifax explosion. And the Halifax explosion,
which took place on December six, nine seventeen, has been
(00:42):
called one of the worst disasters in Canada's history, one
of the largest man made non nuclear explosions in history ever,
and the largest man made explosion prior to Hiroshima. So
it's not going to be our most uplifting episode ever,
as you can tell, but it is one of our
most requested and I would say especially in the past year,
I've noticed a huge uptick in request for this topic,
(01:06):
and um certainly as we've approached the anniversary date of
December six as well. But the story of this disaster
starts with two ships which weren't even supposed to be
in Halifax at the same time in the first place,
trying to pass each other in the harbor. And so
we're going to tell you about what happened, what caused
(01:26):
the explosion, of course, the toll that it took on Halifax,
and the rescue effort that followed too, and then, of course,
because this is World War One, some suspicions kind of
an alternate history that people have thought up um and
assumed had to be the cause of a disaster of
this magnitude. But first we're gonna set the stage a
(01:47):
little bit to help people understand a little bit about
Halifax at this time during World War One. Some basic background.
Halifax was established as a fortified settlement by the British
in seventeen forty nine and had become the capital of
Nova Scotia by nineteen hundred. It had served as a
garrison city to the British Empire armies, but after British
forces left in nineteen oh six, it needed kind of
(02:10):
a new purpose, so the city's port facilities grew and
new factories were developed, turning Halifax into Nova Scotia's commercial center.
Portly makeover so because of its port facilities, Halifax became
a key player in the Allied war effort during World
War One, even though it was obviously pretty far removed
(02:30):
from the main battlefields in the war. But when the
war started in nineteen fourteen, Canada had gotten involved, had
pledged its support to Great Britain to resist German aggression,
and so the country's factory started to produce munitions and
other supplies as a way of all their supporting the war,
and since it was Canada's Since Halifax was Canada's main
(02:53):
port on the East Coast, it handled tons of shipping
during the war, like thousands of Allied cargo ships that
would go through its harbor before heading on over to Europe.
Everything from soldiers to munitions to food would pass through
halifax It's harbor, and because of its stance in the
war and the type of cargo that was passing through
(03:14):
the port, they did have to take some precautions. According
to a History magazine article by Andrew hynd And, nightly
blackout was an effect, for example, to protect the port
from German submarines. There was also an anti submarine boom,
or a kind of net that was also spread across
the entrance of the harbor from dusk to dawn to
restrict access to the harbor during the night, and that's
(03:36):
going to be pretty crucial to the story. So the
night of December five, nineteen seventeen, when our story begins,
there were two ships that were unwillingly stuck on either
side of this anti submarine boom, the one stuck on
the outside, one stuck on the inside. One was a
French freighter called the mont Blanc, and there was also
(03:57):
a Norwegian freighter called them And the fact that these
two ships were even there at the same time was
kind of a coincidence, wasn't it. It was the Emo,
under the command of Captain Hawk and Frome was supposed
to be on its way to New York to pick
up a cargo of food for the Belgian people. He
had wanted to sail that afternoon. The captain did, but
(04:17):
according to an article by Jesse Bradley and Military History,
the coal he'd ordered for three pm delivery didn't show
up until five thirty, when the harbor exit was already
blocked off. On the other hand, the mont block which
was commanded by Captain a may Limedic, was supposed to
arrive on the following day, December six, but it showed
up late in the afternoon of December five instead, which
(04:40):
was too late to make it into the harbor. But
they went ahead and they picked up a pilot named
Francis Mackie Halifax. Just to explain the pilot thing, it
was a compulsory port, which meant that a pilot had
to be in charge of any ship that was entring
or leaving the harbor. And so they picked up this pilot,
and they had undergone an inspection by a Canadian naval
officer so that they would be good to go into
(05:01):
the harbor first thing into in the morning get on
with business. So there's another important thing to note about
the mont Blanc. Though the ship's cargo might have made
some of the crew pretty nervous, seeing how they were
on the wrong side the the unprotected side of that
submarine boom. They had two thousand three tons of picric
(05:24):
acid in the holds, two tons of t n T
and ten tons of gun cotton between the main and
spar decks. And then just just to add to things,
because that doesn't sound like enough, thirty five tons of
volatile Benzene and drums on the upper deck, and this
combined of course made them basically a huge floating explosive.
(05:46):
And according to that History magazine article, to Plana mentioned,
having those drums of Bensall on the ship's deck was
against regulations in the first place, So the ship was
defying regulations by having those kind of explosives on deck,
but also by not flying a red flag to signal
that they had munitions on board. There's a reason why
(06:07):
they didn't do it. It was because they were on
the wrong side of that submarine net and the captain
didn't want to let every German ship in the area
or any potential Germans in the area know that he
was carrying all these munitions and was out there in
the open um for attack. Yeah, he thought it could
turn them into a target. So the two ships are
(06:27):
stuck where they are for the night, on either end
of the harbor. Just to explain the harbor a little bit,
because it can be kind of confusing if you can't
see a picture of it. It's this long inlet. There's
Bedford Basin where the EMO was for the night, and
that's kind of at the top, and then there was
Halifax Harbor, which opens up into the Atlantic, and that's
kind of at the bottom, and that's where the mont
(06:50):
Blanc was. Connecting these two anchorage areas is what's called
the Narrows, and that's a passage that's about a mile
long and only about half a mile y. So you
really need to follow the rules while traveling. And I'm
imagining it kind of like an hour glass. Is that correct?
I haven't actually seen the map. I mean I guess
that you could sort of related like an hour glass
with one side that's clearly a lot smaller than the
(07:12):
other generally, but a narrow part in between, a narrow
part in between them. Yeah, that's the key part to
remember here is it's kind of like two areas where
you could anchor your ship and then a long, narrow
part in between that you need to travel to get
a pilot to navigate. And so the captain of the Emo,
he was not at all happy about the situation about
being stuck for the night. He was really anxious to
(07:32):
get going, but his pilot, William Hayes, had agreed to
spend the night on board so that they could get
going first thing in the morning. The guys on the
monk kind of had the same idea. A little after
seven thirty am, they raised their anchor and they started
traveling northward towards the Narrows and an inbound lane, traveling
at a speed of about four knots. And then a
little after eight am, the EMO entered the north end
(07:55):
of the Narrows, heading southward at about seven knots, even
though you weren't supposed to go fast sster than five
knots in the harbor, So they're speeding along, I guess
trying to make up for lost time, And I mean
the captain of the EMO was just in a real hurry.
Some sources suggests that the ship didn't even have official
permission to depart when it took off. They were just
going to get going. But the ships were still a
(08:17):
mile apart at this point when their first entering the channel,
traveling toward each other, and while it was barreling down
the narrows, though, the EMO ran into some unexpected traffic changes.
There was an American freighter that wanted to pass the
Email on the wrong side, but the ship signaled to
each other. They worked out how they were going to
(08:38):
approach this and they were able to make the pass safely. However,
this pass put the EMO in the wrong lane and
on a collision course therefore with the mont Block. So Mackie,
who was the pilot of the mont Blanc, saw the
email change course and at first he wasn't too worried,
you know, they had enough time to to correct it
(08:58):
to be safe, and he founded one siren signal to
indicate that his ship would stay to the starboard side,
but the EMO answered with two sirens to say that
it was going to steer to port, which would cause
the ships to collide. So kind of mixed signals here
and no agreement about how to proceed, and after that
(09:18):
it was really just mass confusion. They signaled to each
other again, but they couldn't work it out. Mackie tried
to stop the engine, but of course slowing down and
certainly stopping a big ship like that isn't very easy.
And then finally Mackie tried to pull the ship to
the left to just give the EMO room to pass by,
but it was too late at that point. A little
(09:40):
after eight thirty am, the EMO slammed into the mont
Blanc and opened up a wedge of about three meters deep.
Containers of benzine and picric acid smashed upon impact, and
then as the ships drifted apart, sparks from that grinding
steel of the ships started a fire. So Captain Limedeck
saw the riding on the wall immediately and ordered his
(10:02):
crew to abandon ship. They all jumped into lifeboats and
road just as fast as they could over to the
shore and took cover in the nearby woods. But they
were basically the only ones who knew how dangerous the
contents of the ship were. So of course, because the
ship was not flying that tell tale red flag, a
lot of people who weren't part of the crew didn't
realize how severe the situation was, that it didn't just
(10:25):
involve the two ships involved in the men on board.
So hundreds of people had stopped what they were doing,
and we're just gawking at this ship on fire with
a huge column of smoke above it, And the docks
started to fill up with spectators, and trams started to
slow down and allow passengers to check out the situation.
(10:46):
Rubber Neck a little bit, and people were gathered even
at the windows of their homes and office buildings and
um watching from far off factory roofs to just see
what disaster was occurring down in the harbor. The fire
department was alerted and so they sent people over, and
a lot of small boats were approaching the Mont Blanc
trying to fight the fire as the boat as the ship,
(11:09):
i should say, was drifting across the channel and eventually
stopped at Pier six. And this all just reminds me
of what goes on kind of you know, have you
ever been one of those tornado warning situations where people
all of a sudden want to like run out of
their houses or stand at the windows and look at
what's about to happen. You just feel like it's so bad,
like don't watch, just take cover. It's like one of
(11:31):
those moments. But a few people did have an idea
of what was going on and they took action. For example,
a trained dispatcher at Richmond Station who had been warned
by a sailor state at his post to stop a
passenger train from coming into the area. He sent a
telegraph that said, quote stop trains, ammunition ship on fire
making for Pier six, goodbye. So all of this was
(11:53):
going down, all of this gawking and trying to get
a look at at the disaster the wreck and try
and help, and try to help too, of course, when
at nine oh six am the mont Blanc blew up
and the ship was shattered into bits. The blast sent
smoke and debrise somewhere from three to five miles into
the sky, and of course soon enough all of those
(12:16):
ship fragments came raining down on the north end of
the city, hitting people, hitting buildings. The ship's gun, for example,
landed five point five kilometers away, and it said that
the shock from the explosion was felt as far as
three kilometers away. The harbor bed was split and laid bare,
and the rocks from it were also thrown around. And
(12:38):
when the sea rushed back to fill in that hole
in the harbor bed, it's sent a huge tidal wave inland,
which affected people who were standing there on the piers watching.
I think that's the most striking image for me to
try to imagine, to the harbor bed just cleared of water,
this empty pit and then wosh filling back in. Other
ships in the harbor were destroyed or severely d imaged.
(13:00):
Of course. The Emo, for example, was blown ashore and
its captain, the pilot Haze, and five crewmen were all killed.
A split second after that explosion, there was also this
huge air concussion, a kind of shock wave that instantly
destroyed everything in its path. Buildings and bridges collapsed, vehicles
were thrown around, roads were cracked, tree snapped. Even buildings
(13:22):
that withstood that wave lost their windows, and some of
those buildings still fell when that wreckage that we mentioned
came raining down face sky. Yeah, and that wave also
killed hundreds of people instantly when they were hit by
the shock wave, and many more were trapped in the
ruins of buildings and became victims of the third onslot,
which were fires that sprang up everywhere as results of
(13:44):
damaged gas manes and overturned wood stoves and kindling in homes.
We talked about that effect of earthquakes and things like
that a little bit in our fire episodes San Francisco Fire.
But basically, this entire district of Halifax called Richmond and
some areas beyond that were completely decimated in just a
(14:04):
matter of minutes. About two thousand people were dead, nine
thousand more were injured and needed medical treatment, and about
two thousand buildings were really badly damage, which meant that
approximately fifteen thousand people were now homeless, and that's really
a low estimate because it only counts those people who
were found. Yeah, the death tolls considered by a lot
(14:25):
of people to be too low. Among the dead were
the city's fire chief and the deputy fire chief who
had gotten to Pier six right before the explosion. Two
hundred children and the staff of the city's orphanage, about
one hundred students at Richmond School, sixty nine employees of
the Canadian Government Railway, including the heroic Vince Coleman that
(14:46):
we mentioned who sent that telegraph out, and many many others. However,
though it kind of defies logic, because they were so
close to the situation to start with, Captain Limaedeck and Mackie,
who had taken shelter in the woods they survived. Who
would figure that the guys who had been on the
ship with the explosives, who jumped overboard and swam to
the woods would make it. It's really surprising, but the
(15:10):
rescue effort started almost immediately to to deal with this
um this explosion and the after effects. About thirty minutes
after the explosion is when things started to happen. People
began to dig out the dead and look for survivors.
But remember this is December and it is Nova Scotia,
so their works soon got a lot tougher because a
(15:31):
blizzard started later in the day and it was like
the worst blizzard in the last twenty perfect timing, right,
So that was of course bad news for all those
people who were now homeless, who didn't have any shelter,
and there was also concern about another potential explosion. All
of those fires that had started and spread since the
first explosion were still a very major threat because they
(15:53):
were quickly heading for the powder magazine at the Wellington
Military Barracks. The caused quite a bit of panic. People,
even the injured ones, started heading for higher ground and
they were encouraged to by authority, so they were being
sent up. But soldiers were able to flood the munitions
dump and keep the fire away from it, so there
wasn't a second explosion after all, so it wasn't quite
(16:16):
as bad as they thought it could be, and that
was a really good thing too, because there were already
so many people who were really badly in need of doctors,
medical supplies, and just places to care for the injured.
Doctors nurses and supplies started to come in from other
Nova Scotia towns that day, and by the next day
help was coming in from other Canadian provinces too, and
the international response here was really significant as well. By
(16:39):
two thirty that day, the U. S. Navy ships the
Tacoma and the von Stoeben, on their way back from Europe,
came into the harbor and met up with the U. S.
S Colony and the U S. Coast Guard Cutter Moral.
They offered up soldiers and marines to help patrol the area,
and they turned the old Colony into a hospital ship
with U. S. Navy docks running it along with some
Canadian nurses, and over the next few days trains full
(17:02):
of surgeons, doctors and nurses and more medical supplies came
in from New England again, though facilities were packed so
during this time doctors were forced to treat people and
pretty much every room of any available hospital, including the kitchens,
the corridors, and the closets. Some treated people on trains
or in homes, in doctor's offices, or even drug stores,
(17:24):
making do with what they could. The injuries, too, were
really horrific, not the kind of thing that you would
want to be treating on a train or in somebody's home.
And um, one of the reasons why the injuries were
so bad was because of all of that glass and
the debris that had been flying around and hitting people.
And will spare you some of the truly gory details,
but eye injuries are often said to have been the
(17:46):
most prevalent. And I mean, if you if you think
about what we mentioned earlier, all those people running up
to their windows to see the ship on fire and
watching and and then getting faced with that explosion and
h A lot of people ultimately needed to have one
or both eyes removed. But besides medical care, there were
other types of relief that were needed. By the afternoon
(18:08):
of the explosion, the Halifax Relief Committee, which was a
volunteer organization, was organized to help find ways to shelter
the homeless, and identify the dead and the injured, and
construct some sort of temporary housing for people to live
through this blizzard. I mean, how bad would it be
to survive the explosion and then freeze? Kidding? They also
(18:29):
started to manage the donations that came in from around
the world. Millions of dollars came in from several countries,
including Britain, of course, and as far away as Australia.
The US also started to send in supplies like food, clothing,
and building materials including glass and the people who could
install it. In the meantime, though, a lot of the
homeless had to stay intense and that brutal cold weather.
(18:51):
So on December thirteenth, nineteen seventeen, the ret commissioners started
to investigate the explosion and the court. In to the
military history article that we mentioned earlier, the chairman of
this commission, Judge Arthur Drysdale, was really anti French and
he felt that the pilot and the captain of the
mont Blanc were quote wholly responsible and um it did
(19:14):
seem like they were going to be held responsible for
at least a small aspect of it. Initially, Captain Limeduck
and Francis Mackie were arrested and charged with manslaughter for
causing the death of William Hayes, who was the pilot
of the EMO as we as we mentioned earlier, and
the charges were eventually dropped and it was ruled that
both the EMO and the mont Blanc were at fault.
(19:38):
That didn't stop people from having other theories about what
really happened. Oh yeah, we've always got some other theories,
don't so. Some people for some time actually believed that
Germany was behind the explosion. After all, it was during
the war, and if you hadn't witnessed the explosion yourself,
that you can imagine that might be the first thing
that comes to your mind. Some people thought it was
(20:00):
a zeppelin attack or a bombardment from a battle fleet.
Still others later on thought that sabotage was behind this.
These people think that the emo's captain and co pilot
were both murdered by a crew member just before the explosion,
allowing a German spy to come on board and orchestrate
the accident, but witnesses have said that they saw the
captain giving all the commands. Later though, during an inquiry,
(20:22):
some harbor officers said that they had received calls inquiring
about the movements of the ships, and rumors started again
around when Dr Samuel Prince, who authored a study about
the explosion a sociological study, said that it could be sabotage.
There's been no definitive proof of this, though. These are
just ideas that people had around this time, especially Yeah,
(20:43):
so moving away from conspiracy theory and to rehabilitation and
the reconstruction of Halifax. It obviously took years to rehabilitate
the city and to identify the dead and to help
survivors find their families. And if you visit the website
of the Nova Scotia Archives, they have a whole section
on the Halifax explosion. Actually, since people started recommending this topic,
(21:08):
I've sometimes pointed them to that resoarch because it is
so great, and we follow the Nova Scotia Archives on Twitter.
They're really really nice about any research questions you might have,
so yeah, it's a it's a great place to go
to learn more about the disaster and to see how
Halifax was rebuilt. They have photos of the explosions aftermath
and a film clip that's kind of like a silent
(21:29):
movie that so disturbing too, because it is silent. Yes,
it's a very eerie And there's also a list of
those who died. And what I found to be really
interesting was the first hand accounts from some of the survivors.
So we have part of an example here of a
personal narrative given by a doctor M. J. Burris to
the director of the Halifax disaster Record office at nine o'clock.
(21:51):
Was just getting up shaving, felt the house shake and
felt that something terrible had happened. I thought that there
was a bombardment of some kind. The explosion was low,
not so loud as the noonday gun, and he thought
that it was a shell from a submarine. His little
daughter downstairs screamed. A second explosion was louder, but still
(22:11):
there was no breaking of glass. He was sure now
that it was a bombardment. Ran downstairs, caught up his
little girl and called to his wife and the maid
to come to the cellar. Put the little girl in
the cellar, then ran back for his wife, who would
not come, met her at the door and pushed her
down the cellar stairs, following her. They were all in
the cellar when the quote big explosion came. Everything smashed.
(22:35):
After waiting for some time for more, Doctor B came upstairs,
went into office. A man was there with his face
cut on, a Doctor B to dress it. Soon many
people were there to be quote fixed up. Only small
hurts came first, as Dr B lives near the ferry
and people were not so badly injured in that part
of Dartmouth. Later people from the north end came and
(22:58):
were much worse hurt. One child had his skull fractured,
broken like an eggshell. The brain substance was oozing down
over the side of his face. He lived about three weeks,
So that definitely puts um puts the explosion into perspective. UM,
But I do like having a resource like that and
(23:19):
having um having archives where you can look up all
sorts of letters and pictures and get a better sense
because I mean, so often we talk about things in
kind of a big scale, but when you have letters,
when you have quotes, it makes it so much more personal. Yeah,
it makes it real. So I definitely recommend checking that out.
And sorry if we have had another down or episode
(23:39):
for you here, but I think it's an important story
and you guys wanted to hear it, and you guys
wanted to hear it, and um, so I'm glad that
we got to cover this one finally. And so you
know for sure now that we do do listener requests,
So if you have any, please email them to us.
We're a history podcast at how Stuff Works dot com
or you can hit us up on Facebook and we're
on Twitter and Street and you can always find lots
(24:02):
of articles about all sorts of topics, including probably explosives
and ships on our website at www dot how stuff
works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how stupp works
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
(24:23):
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