December 2, 2017 • 25 mins
Today, we're revisiting an episode from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina. 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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, it is Saturday, which means it is time once
again for us to share one of our past episodes
from our podcast archive. And this is one of our
most requested episodes that we already have. It's on the
Halifax explosion. We are coming up on the hundredth anniversary
of this event, which will take place on December six.
Previous hosts of the show, Sarah and Bablina, tell this story.
(00:25):
One note that comes up from time to time when
we talk about this piece of history. Every year, the
city of Halifax sends the city of Boston a Christmas
tree as thanks for the assistance at the city rendered
in the aftermath of the explosion. There's a lot of
fanfare on both sides of the tree's journey, with its
lighting in Boston taking place as part of a huge
(00:46):
holiday celebration at Boston Common, and there's a bit of
controversy about it too. There is a whole lot of
marketing and publicity and fanfare involved for Halifax, which makes
it a pretty expensive gift on Halifax's part. So with
that in mind, here we go Welcome to Stuff You
(01:08):
Missed in History Class from stuff works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast I'm Debilian chalkerate boarding and
I and every year on December seven, Americans remember the
bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in which was an attack
(01:30):
that killed thousands and launched the U. S 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 called one
(01:50):
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 I or two 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,
(02:13):
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
(02:33):
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 going to set the stage
(02:54):
a 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 it 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
(03:16):
needed kind of 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. Almost 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 from the main battlefields in
(03:39):
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 also supporting the war, and since it was Canada's
Since Halifax was Canada's may in port on the East Coast,
(04:02):
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's harbor, and because
of its stance in the war and the type of
cargo that was passing through the port, they did have
(04:23):
to take some precautions. According to a History magazine article
by Andrew hynd And, nightly blackout was in 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 going to be pretty crucial to
(04:44):
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,
so one stuck on the outside, one stuck on the inside.
One was a French freighter called the mont Blanc, and
there was also a Norwegian freighter called the Emo. And
(05:07):
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 according to an article by Jesse
Bradley and Military History, the coal he had ordered for
(05:29):
three pm delivery didn't show up until five thirty, when
the harbor exit was already blocked off. On the other hand,
the mont Blanc, 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 was too late to make it into
the harbor, but they went ahead and they picked up
(05:50):
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 entry and are leaving the harbor. And so
they picked up this pilot, and they had undergone an
inspection by Canadian naval officer so that they would be
good to go into the harbor first thing into in
the morning get on with business. So there's another important
(06:13):
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 acid in the holds, two tons
(06:34):
of t n T and ten tons of gun cotton
between the main and spar decks. And then just just
add to things, because that doesn't sound like enough, thirty
five tons of volatile benzine and drums on the upper deck.
And this combined, of course, made them basically a huge
floating explosive, and according to that History magazine article, to
(06:55):
Blana mentioned having those drums of bensall on the ship's
deck against regulations in the first place. So the ship
was defying regulations by having those kinds 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
they didn't do it. It was because they were on
(07:16):
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. He thought it could turn
them into a target. So the two ships are stuck
where they are for the night, on either end of
(07:36):
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
(07:57):
Blanc was connecting these two anchorage area is is what's
called the Narrows, and that's a passage that's about a
mile long and only about half a mile wide, so
you really need to follow the rules while traveling it.
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
(08:18):
than the 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
(08:39):
anxious to 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 moll Blank 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
(09:01):
the north end of the Narrows, heading southward at about
seven knots, even though you weren't supposed to go faster
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 suggest 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
(09:23):
were still a mile apart at this point when they're
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 EMO on the wrong side,
but the ship signaled to each other. They worked out
(09:44):
how they were going to approach this and they were
able to make the pass safely. However, this past 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 all the email change course,
and at first he wasn't too worried, you know, they
had enough time to to correct it to be safe,
(10:06):
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 it was really just
(10:26):
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 after eight thirty am,
(10:49):
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
ship drifted apart, sparks from that grinding steel of the
ships started a fire, so Captain Limadeck saw the riding
on the wall immediately and ordered his crew to abandon ship.
(11:11):
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
telltale red flag, a lot of people who weren't part
of the crew didn't realize how severe the situation was,
(11:31):
that it didn't just 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
(11:52):
out the situation 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
(12:12):
mont Blanc trying to fight the fire as the boat,
as the ship 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, and you just feel
(12:33):
like it's so bad, like don't watch, just take cover.
It's like one of those moments. But a few people
did have an idea of what was going on, and
they took action. For example, a train dispatcher at Richmond
Station who had been warned by a sailor stayed at
his post to stop a passenger train from coming into
the area. He sent a telegraph that said, quote stop trains, munition,
(12:54):
ship on fire making for Pier six, goodbye. So all
of this was going down, all of this gawking and
trying to get a look at at the disaster, the wreck,
and trying to help and trying to help too. Of course,
when at nine oh six am, the mont Blanc blew
(13:19):
up and the ship was shattered into bits. The blasts scent,
smoke and debrise somewhere from three to five miles into
the sky, and of course, soon enough all of those
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
(13:40):
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
when the sea rushed back to fill in that hole
in the harbor bed, it's sent a huge tidal wave
of inland, which affected people who were st ending there
(14:00):
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
was filling back in. Other ships in the harbor were
destroyed or severely damaged. Of course, the Imo, for example,
was blown ashore and its captain, the pilot Haze, and
five crewmen were all killed. A split second after that explosion,
(14:22):
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 that withstood that wave lost their windows,
and some of those buildings still fell when that wreckage
that we mentioned came raining down from the sky. Yeah,
(14:43):
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 on slot, which were fires that sprang
up everywhere as results of damaged gas manes and overturned
wood OBEs and kindling in homes. We talked about that
effect of earthquakes and things like that a little bit
(15:05):
in our fire episode of San Francisco Fire. But basically,
this entire district of Halifax called Richmond and some areas
beyond that were completely decimated in just a matter of minutes.
About two thousand people were dead, nine thousand more were
injured and needed medical treatment, and about two thousand buildings
(15:26):
were really badly damaged, 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 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
(15:49):
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 we mentioned and 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 Limedeck and Mackie,
(16:11):
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
rescue efforts started almost immediately to to deal with this
um this explosion and the after effects. About thirty minutes
(16:31):
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
blizzard started later in the day and I think it
was like with the worst blizzard in the last twenty
perfect timing right. So that was of course bad news
(16:53):
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 were quickly heading for the powder magazine
at the Wellington Military barracks. This caused quite a bit
(17:14):
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 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
(17:35):
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 two thirty that day, the U. S.
Navy ships the Tacoma and the Von Steuben, on their
(17:57):
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 the U. S. Navy
Docks running it along with some Canadian nurses, and over
the next few days trains full of surgeons, doctors and
nurses and more medical supplies came in from New England again,
(18:20):
though facilities were packed so during this time doctors were
forced to treat people in 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, making do with what they could.
The injuries, too, were really horrific, not the kind of
(18:42):
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 most prevalent. And I mean,
if you if you think about what we mentioned earlier,
(19:03):
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 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 of the explosion, the Halifax Relief Committee,
(19:24):
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 started to manage the donations that came in
(19:45):
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 in that
brutal cold weather. So on December thirteenth, nineteen seventeen, the
(20:16):
RAT Commissioners started to investigate the explosion, and according 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 seem like they were going to be held responsible
(20:37):
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.
(20:58):
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 a zeppelin
(21:21):
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, some harbor
(21:43):
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, So,
(22:04):
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,
(22:28):
I've sometimes pointed them to that resource 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
(22:50):
movie that that's so disturbing too, because this 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
(23:11):
o'clock was just getting up shaving felt the house shake
and felt that something terrible had happened. 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
(23:32):
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.
(23:55):
After waiting for some time for more, Dr B came
upstairs when 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
(24:18):
and we're much worse hurt one child had a 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
(24:39):
having 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 up
(25:00):
episode 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, thank you
so much for joining us for this Saturday Classic. Since
this is out of the archive, if you heard an
(25:21):
email address or a Facebook U r L or something
similar during the course of the show, that may be obsolete. Now,
so here's our current contact information. We are at History
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. And then we're
at missed in the history all over social media that
is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, and Instagram.
(25:41):
Thanks again for listening for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com
Hey, it is Saturday, which means it is time once
again for us to share one of our past episodes
from our podcast archive. And this is one of our
most requested episodes that we already have. It's on the
Halifax explosion. We are coming up on the hundredth anniversary
of this event, which will take place on December six.
Previous hosts of the show, Sarah and Bablina, tell this story.
(00:25):
One note that comes up from time to time when
we talk about this piece of history. Every year, the
city of Halifax sends the city of Boston a Christmas
tree as thanks for the assistance at the city rendered
in the aftermath of the explosion. There's a lot of
fanfare on both sides of the tree's journey, with its
lighting in Boston taking place as part of a huge
(00:46):
holiday celebration at Boston Common, and there's a bit of
controversy about it too. There is a whole lot of
marketing and publicity and fanfare involved for Halifax, which makes
it a pretty expensive gift on Halifax's part. So with
that in mind, here we go Welcome to Stuff You
(01:08):
Missed in History Class from stuff works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast I'm Debilian chalkerate boarding and
I and every year on December seven, Americans remember the
bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in which was an attack
(01:30):
that killed thousands and launched the U. S 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 called one
(01:50):
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 I or two 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,
(02:13):
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
(02:33):
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 going to set the stage
(02:54):
a 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 it 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
(03:16):
needed kind of 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. Almost 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 from the main battlefields in
(03:39):
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 also supporting the war, and since it was Canada's
Since Halifax was Canada's may in port on the East Coast,
(04:02):
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's harbor, and because
of its stance in the war and the type of
cargo that was passing through the port, they did have
(04:23):
to take some precautions. According to a History magazine article
by Andrew hynd And, nightly blackout was in 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 going to be pretty crucial to
(04:44):
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,
so one stuck on the outside, one stuck on the inside.
One was a French freighter called the mont Blanc, and
there was also a Norwegian freighter called the Emo. And
(05:07):
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 according to an article by Jesse
Bradley and Military History, the coal he had ordered for
(05:29):
three pm delivery didn't show up until five thirty, when
the harbor exit was already blocked off. On the other hand,
the mont Blanc, 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 was too late to make it into
the harbor, but they went ahead and they picked up
(05:50):
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 entry and are leaving the harbor. And so
they picked up this pilot, and they had undergone an
inspection by Canadian naval officer so that they would be
good to go into the harbor first thing into in
the morning get on with business. So there's another important
(06:13):
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 acid in the holds, two tons
(06:34):
of t n T and ten tons of gun cotton
between the main and spar decks. And then just just
add to things, because that doesn't sound like enough, thirty
five tons of volatile benzine and drums on the upper deck.
And this combined, of course, made them basically a huge
floating explosive, and according to that History magazine article, to
(06:55):
Blana mentioned having those drums of bensall on the ship's
deck against regulations in the first place. So the ship
was defying regulations by having those kinds 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
they didn't do it. It was because they were on
(07:16):
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. He thought it could turn
them into a target. So the two ships are stuck
where they are for the night, on either end of
(07:36):
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
(07:57):
Blanc was connecting these two anchorage area is is what's
called the Narrows, and that's a passage that's about a
mile long and only about half a mile wide, so
you really need to follow the rules while traveling it.
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
(08:18):
than the 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
(08:39):
anxious to 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 moll Blank 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
(09:01):
the north end of the Narrows, heading southward at about
seven knots, even though you weren't supposed to go faster
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 suggest 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
(09:23):
were still a mile apart at this point when they're
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 EMO on the wrong side,
but the ship signaled to each other. They worked out
(09:44):
how they were going to approach this and they were
able to make the pass safely. However, this past 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 all the email change course,
and at first he wasn't too worried, you know, they
had enough time to to correct it to be safe,
(10:06):
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 it was really just
(10:26):
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 after eight thirty am,
(10:49):
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
ship drifted apart, sparks from that grinding steel of the
ships started a fire, so Captain Limadeck saw the riding
on the wall immediately and ordered his crew to abandon ship.
(11:11):
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
telltale red flag, a lot of people who weren't part
of the crew didn't realize how severe the situation was,
(11:31):
that it didn't just 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
(11:52):
out the situation 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
(12:12):
mont Blanc trying to fight the fire as the boat,
as the ship 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, and you just feel
(12:33):
like it's so bad, like don't watch, just take cover.
It's like one of those moments. But a few people
did have an idea of what was going on, and
they took action. For example, a train dispatcher at Richmond
Station who had been warned by a sailor stayed at
his post to stop a passenger train from coming into
the area. He sent a telegraph that said, quote stop trains, munition,
(12:54):
ship on fire making for Pier six, goodbye. So all
of this was going down, all of this gawking and
trying to get a look at at the disaster, the wreck,
and trying to help and trying to help too. Of course,
when at nine oh six am, the mont Blanc blew
(13:19):
up and the ship was shattered into bits. The blasts scent,
smoke and debrise somewhere from three to five miles into
the sky, and of course, soon enough all of those
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
(13:40):
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
when the sea rushed back to fill in that hole
in the harbor bed, it's sent a huge tidal wave
of inland, which affected people who were st ending there
(14:00):
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
was filling back in. Other ships in the harbor were
destroyed or severely damaged. Of course, the Imo, for example,
was blown ashore and its captain, the pilot Haze, and
five crewmen were all killed. A split second after that explosion,
(14:22):
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 that withstood that wave lost their windows,
and some of those buildings still fell when that wreckage
that we mentioned came raining down from the sky. Yeah,
(14:43):
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 on slot, which were fires that sprang
up everywhere as results of damaged gas manes and overturned
wood OBEs and kindling in homes. We talked about that
effect of earthquakes and things like that a little bit
(15:05):
in our fire episode of San Francisco Fire. But basically,
this entire district of Halifax called Richmond and some areas
beyond that were completely decimated in just a matter of minutes.
About two thousand people were dead, nine thousand more were
injured and needed medical treatment, and about two thousand buildings
(15:26):
were really badly damaged, 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 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
(15:49):
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 we mentioned and 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 Limedeck and Mackie,
(16:11):
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
rescue efforts started almost immediately to to deal with this
um this explosion and the after effects. About thirty minutes
(16:31):
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
blizzard started later in the day and I think it
was like with the worst blizzard in the last twenty
perfect timing right. So that was of course bad news
(16:53):
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 were quickly heading for the powder magazine
at the Wellington Military barracks. This caused quite a bit
(17:14):
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 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
(17:35):
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 two thirty that day, the U. S.
Navy ships the Tacoma and the Von Steuben, on their
(17:57):
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 the U. S. Navy
Docks running it along with some Canadian nurses, and over
the next few days trains full of surgeons, doctors and
nurses and more medical supplies came in from New England again,
(18:20):
though facilities were packed so during this time doctors were
forced to treat people in 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, making do with what they could.
The injuries, too, were really horrific, not the kind of
(18:42):
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 most prevalent. And I mean,
if you if you think about what we mentioned earlier,
(19:03):
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 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 of the explosion, the Halifax Relief Committee,
(19:24):
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 started to manage the donations that came in
(19:45):
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 in that
brutal cold weather. So on December thirteenth, nineteen seventeen, the
(20:16):
RAT Commissioners started to investigate the explosion, and according 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 seem like they were going to be held responsible
(20:37):
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.
(20:58):
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 a zeppelin
(21:21):
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, some harbor
(21:43):
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, So,
(22:04):
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,
(22:28):
I've sometimes pointed them to that resource 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
(22:50):
movie that that's so disturbing too, because this 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
(23:11):
o'clock was just getting up shaving felt the house shake
and felt that something terrible had happened. 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
(23:32):
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.
(23:55):
After waiting for some time for more, Dr B came
upstairs when 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
(24:18):
and we're much worse hurt one child had a 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
(24:39):
having 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 up
(25:00):
episode 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, thank you
so much for joining us for this Saturday Classic. Since
this is out of the archive, if you heard an
(25:21):
email address or a Facebook U r L or something
similar during the course of the show, that may be obsolete. Now,
so here's our current contact information. We are at History
Podcast at how stuff works dot com. And then we're
at missed in the history all over social media that
is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest, and Instagram.
(25:41):
Thanks again for listening for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com
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