Final Voyage (7 page)

The
Mont Blanc
was completely obliterated within a fraction of a second. The explosion tore her hull and superstructure into superheated iron shards of varying size, which were thrown almost 1,000ft (over 300m) into the air before they started raining down, still white hot, all over Halifax and Dartmouth. Cowering in the woods on the Dartmouth side, one of the
Mont Blanc
's crew was killed by such falling debris. Later, people would find twisted shrapnel identified as once being part of the ship over 2.5 miles (4km) away. The
Mont Blanc
's anchor, which weighed 1,140lb (more than half a ton), landed 2 miles (3.2km) away. The barrel of one of her deck cannons was carried even further, eventually crashing back to earth 3.5 miles (5.6km) from where the ship had exploded.

The blast hit them so fast they wouldn't have had time to realise what was happening.

By the time the
Mont Blanc
's cargo detonated, hundreds of people – including dozens of firemen – were standing along the shoreline. The blast hit them so fast they wouldn't have had time to realise what was happening. Up to 1,500 people within a mile radius of the explosion died instantly.
Hundreds more, further from the
Mont Blanc
, were blinded, some by the flash of the explosion, others because they had been watching the burning ship from behind glass windows, and the explosion smashed all of the windows in Halifax, spraying those behind them with flying shards.

The shockwave from the explosion travelled at 23 times the speed of sound – over 25,000ft (almost 8,000m) per second. It created a wall of highly compressed hot air that smashed through everything in its path, just like after a nuclear blast. The pressure wave destroyed (or left on the verge of collapse) every building across 500 acres adjacent to Pier 6. Nearly 1,630 homes were demolished in a moment, and another 12,000 beyond them severely damaged. The blast made stone churches crumble as if they were built of children's building blocks. It snapped centuries-old trees like twigs, bent iron railings like pipe cleaners and hurled vehicles through the air like toys.

The blast made stone churches crumble as if they were built of children's building blocks.

The explosion generated so much heat that it flash-boiled all the water beneath and around the
Mont Blanc
, leaving the harbour floor momentarily exposed. The shockwave pushed a wall of water away from the destroyed ship with such force that when the water reached the shore the wave could have been up to 60ft (18m) above the high water mark. By comparison, the tsunami that hit the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the Japanese earthquake in April 2011 was about 49ft (15m) high. The wave swept several streets inland, finishing off any houses that had survived the initial explosion, washing away debris, and carrying away the dead and dying. The wave
swamped Richmond Station, wrecking the building and killing Vincent Coleman. On the shore, firemen who had had their clothes ripped off their bodies by the force of the blast, and the flesh burnt off their arms by the searing heat, now disappeared under a mountain of water. When the flood finally receded back into the harbour basin, it took with it many of the spoils of its devastation.

Both the explosion and the resultant tsunami caused immense damage to many other ships in Halifax harbour. The vessels nearest the
Mont Blanc
were either themselves blown up or swept away by the wave. The tsunami grounded the
Stella Maris
on the Richmond shore after the explosion killed 19 of her crew, including Captain Brennan. Miraculously, five of her crew survived. The other ship that had been involved in the collision, the
Imo
, had been further away when the
Mont Blanc
's cargo detonated. Everyone on deck or on the bridge at the time of the explosion died. The force of the water carried the ship up onto the Dartmouth shore.

The
St Bernard
, a South American schooner docked at Pier 6, had caught fire when the
Mont Blanc
crashed into the dock. It was completely destroyed by the explosion. Another schooner, the
Lola R
, was also obliterated. The Canadian tug
Sambro
sank. The British cargo ship
Curaca
, docked at Pier 8, was carried across the harbour to sink at Tuft's Cove, north of Dartmouth, with 45 lives lost. The
Ragus
, a Canadian work boat, capsized, whilst the tug
Hilford
was blown clear of the water and ended up on Pier 9, where it had been heading before the explosion to warn of the danger.

Other ships severely damaged but not destroyed included the British cargo ships
Middleham Castle, Calonne
and
Picton
. The
Middleham Castle
lost her funnel, the
Calonne
lost 36 crew, and the
Picton
was set on fire. The
Picton
also carried an explosive cargo, and had been only 100ft (31m) from the
Mont Blanc
when the French steamer first caught alight. The foreman supervising the
Picton
's loading ordered all her hatches closed, and he thereby prevented a secondary explosion. However, he, along with over 60 dockers and most of the
Picton
's crew, did not survive.

Entangled in telegraph wires, hanging out of the windows of houses, some decapitated by flying wreckage, the dead lay undisturbed amongst the ruins of the burning city.

The Canadian minesweeper
Musquash
was also set on fire, and set adrift, as was the Royal Navy escort ship HMS
Knight Templar
. Several submarines moored at Pier 1 broke loose, but their crews suffered only minor injuries.

The disaster had reduced much of Halifax, Richmond and Dartmouth to a devastated wasteland. Entangled in telegraph wires, hanging out of the windows of houses, some decapitated by flying wreckage, the dead lay undisturbed amongst the ruins of the burning city. The 2,000 final death toll for the Halifax Explosion is an estimate. Because of the mass movement of troops, and the unknowable number of sailors and other transient workers in the harbour at the time of the disaster, the true number of fatal casualties will never be known. What is known is that 600 of the dead were under the age of 15. Many of those who gathered along the shore had been children, to whom the spectacle of the burning ship was obviously more exciting than the prospect of school.

The USS
von Steuben
, a captured German passenger liner now serving as a troop transport for the US Army, was heading home to New York after taking 1,223 soldiers to France. She needed to restock her coal supplies at Halifax and was 40 miles (64km) away just after 9am when suddenly buffeted by a strong concussion. Those on board immediately feared the worst, that they were under torpedo attack from a U-boat, or that the ship had hit a mine. But on the bridge her officers saw a column of fire climb into the sky in the distance, followed by an immense plume of white smoke. Realising something catastrophic had happened in Halifax, the
von Steuben
made best speed to the port. The captain of another ship, the cruiser USS
Tacoma
, also saw the explosion and rushed to help.

With untold numbers trapped under the rubble of thousands of ruined buildings, rescuers faced a race against time.

For those who had survived the explosion, the immediate aftermath provided no relief from disaster. With untold numbers trapped under the rubble of thousands of ruined buildings, rescuers faced a race against time, not only because many were grievously injured and would die without urgent assistance, but also because fires threatened to burn out of control across the wreckage of so many wooden houses. The explosion had set fire to hundreds of buildings, but the pressure wave had also caused furnaces, stoves and lamps to break, burst or spill. Winter had only just begun to set in, so everyone's coal cellars were full, stocked up to last through the cold months ahead. The sporadic fires found these sources of fuel and grew and spread, combining into much larger conflagrations.

In Richmond entire streets burned whilst would-be rescuers fought to contain the flames. It didn't help that so many firemen had been killed in the explosion. Firemen from nearby districts struggled to fight fires in unfamiliar areas rendered even more unrecognisable by the devastation, in which fire-fighting equipment and a reliable water supply was no longer available.

Plenty of able-bodied civilians volunteered to help too, but it was only when the military took charge that rescue efforts became co-ordinated and more effective. Halifax looked like a warzone, and thousands of soldiers were trained to maintain calm in the face of such danger and chaos. Medical staff from three Royal Navy ships, HMS
Highflyer
, HMS
Calgarian
and HMS
Knight Templar
(which had been cast adrift by the tsunami), hurried ashore to start treating the injured wherever they found them.

But an hour after the
Mont Blanc
exploded, most rescue efforts came to an abrupt stop. Soldiers clearing rubble and looking for buried survivors in the area around the Wellington Barracks, at the southern end of the Narrows, saw what they thought was smoke rising from the armoury there. Rumours and then panic spread as rapidly as the fire had – a second explosion was imminent. The military commanders who had taken charge of the rescue operation ordered an immediate evacuation. Some ignored the order and kept working, but most fled. At this point, few knew the facts of what had happened aboard the
Mont Blanc
. Many believed the Germans had launched a massive attack in the harbour, and expected a second attack against the weakened city.

The smoke the soldiers saw actually turned out to be just steam. Barracks personnel were pouring water on the
hot coals in the furnace as a precaution. The truth took far longer to spread than the panic, and it was noon before the rescue efforts resumed in earnest. At about this time, trains from other parts of Nova Scotia began to arrive at stations that hadn't been destroyed by the explosion. Thanks to Vincent Coleman's message, people outside Halifax knew more about what had happened than those picking their way through the ruins. Doctors and nurses brought supplies with them on the trains, and when the trains left again, they took wounded survivors with them.

Anaesthetic quickly ran low and bandages ran out completely.

Over 9,000 people had been injured as a result of the explosion, 6,000 of them seriously. The hospitals in Halifax overflowed with casualties. They were understaffed and lacked the resources to handle a disaster on this scale. Anaesthetic quickly ran low and bandages ran out completely. Some people had their wounds wrapped with ripped clothing. Once the morgues were full a makeshift mortuary was set up in the basement of a local school. That too quickly filled up.

As the number of stretchers lined up on the streets outside the hospitals mounted, and hospital staff adopted a triage system to prioritise who to help, medical staff from ships in harbour began setting up aid stations all around the city to take on some of the slack. Meanwhile, some doctors even performed emergency operations on their own kitchen tables. Amputations and eye removals became almost routine. Surgeons ended up working around the clock for several days. When volunteers from the Red Cross and St John's Ambulance arrived to treat
the less seriously injured, they helped take some of the burden off the shoulders of Halifax's exhausted doctors and nurses.

That night, to compound a situation that would have been almost unimaginable that morning, a blizzard descended on Halifax. Almost 16 inches (40cm) of snow blanketed the city, which extinguished all the fires, but which seriously hampered the rescue efforts. Whilst some rescuers continued to work through the blizzard, 6,000 people had been left homeless by the explosion, and another 25,000 lacked adequate housing – this constituted roughly half of everyone who lived in Halifax. The homeless looked for somewhere sheltered to spend the night (some huddled inside a damaged train) as those whose houses remained standing used whatever they could (from carpets to paper) to seal their broken windows against the weather.

Temperatures plunged overnight. Many of those trapped who might otherwise have survived had they been found in time succumbed to hypothermia. The next morning, however, a soldier trekking through the snow to search ruined houses found the unlikeliest of survivors. Only 23 months old, Anne Welsh had lost her mother and brother when the force of the explosion destroyed their home. The blast threw Anne under the stove, where she landed in the container of ash beneath it. Still warm, the ashes kept her alive through the freezing night. She was later nicknamed Ashpan Annie, and her survival became one of few good news stories that made it out of Halifax over the coming days.

Despite major developments in Europe – most notably mid-revolutionary Russia signing an armistice with Germany and withdrawing from the war – events in Halifax became a major news story around the world. From as far away as China and New Zealand, relief agencies sent aid. Even in Germany the story was reported with shock and sympathy.

That contrasted with how Halifax's main local newspaper reported it, stoking nationalist tensions by promoting the theory that the explosion had been a secret German attack deliberately designed to target a civilian population. Public outrage and paranoia led to most people of German descent in the city being arrested and imprisoned. The police even arrested the helmsman of the
Imo
on suspicion of being involved, even though he was Norwegian. However, the over-zealousness of the police probably helped sate the public appetite for revenge, and by being imprisoned (and all ultimately released without charge) Germans in Halifax were at least protected from vigilante mobs.