Halifax Explosion, The [Laws G28]

DESCRIPTION: In Halifax harbor, a ship loaded with explosives is rammed by another vessel. The explosion and fire which follow cause terrible damage to the city and its population -- 1200 killed and 2000 wounded
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1933
KEYWORDS: fire death disaster ship
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Dec 6, 1917, 9:05 a.m. - The Halifax Explosion
FOUND IN: Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Laws G28, "The Halifax Explosion"
Creighton-MaritimeFolkSongs, pp. 208-209, "The Halifax Explosion" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT 676, HALIFAXX
ADDITIONAL: Ernest Fraser Robinson, _The Halifax Disaster, December 6, 1917_, Vanwell Publishing Ltd., 1987, 1997, pp. 58-60, "The Halifax Disaster" (1 text, said to be from the 1917 Halifax Mail-Star; it appears to have been tidied up somewhat)
Roud #2724
NOTES [7027 words]: I am not entirely sure this song belongs in Laws's catalog; he knew of only one collection, and that one collection is not very good, implying that tradition has not had the chance to work on it. But there can be no question that the event was worthy of commemoration in song. But a few versions have been found since, so it does seem to have been traditional.
The Halifax explosion has been called "the second most devastating blast in history" (behind Hiroshima; it actually did more damage than Nagasaki). As a survivor said, "Halifax was gone." Not surprisingly, it inspired several books. The most recent as of this writing are Bacon and Cuthbertson (both released at the time of the explosion's centenary), but both actually came out after the first draft of this entry was written. So the outline is based on the next-most-recent book, MacDonald, written by a resident of Halifax (or, rather, by a resident of Dartmouth, the city on the other side of Halifax Harbour; apparently Dartmouth residents don't like being treated as part of Halifax). The core of what follows is still based on MacDonald, although I have tried to tell the story in a more linear fashion (if I hadn't read the outline in Paine, I would have found her account very difficult to understand. As it is, reading MacDonald felt like I was watching a television drama where she took a commercial break every few pages). I have supplemented this with other references where I could.
To briefly sum up, the Halifax Explosion took place when the French munitions freighter Mont Blanc and the Norwegian Imo collided in Halifax harbor. The Mont Blanc was scheduled to make a run to Britain with a large load of explosives when the Imo, also bound to sea and sloppily steered, collided with it. The impact was not particularly damaging in itself, but it struck sparks, starting a fire on the French ship. The captain, rather than fight the fires, ordered the crew to abandon ship. Twenty minutes later, burning and floating aimlessly, the Mont Blanc ran up against a pier. The ship exploded, causing much damage and also starting a great wave which added to the damage.
"The chain of events that put the Imo and the Mont-Blanc on a collision course was as improbable as it was bizarre. It defied logic. The weather was clear and mild. The sea was calm. Veteran harbour pilots were guiding each ship. The two captains involved were experienced mariners" (Cuthbertson, p. 9).
If it weren't so tragic, the story of the Mont Blanc would be almost comic. Why in the world was such a lousy ship used for such an important purpose? The cargo consisted mostly of explosives, along with a large amount of gasoline-related fuels (MacDonald, p. 16).
The Mont Blanc was not in great shape, either. Built in 1899 (Paine, p. 344), she was already pretty tired by 1906 (Cuthbertson, p. 18); she had a "long history of bare-minimum maintenance" (Bacon, p 6; cf. p. 108). She was about 320 feet long, 47 feet wide (Bacon, p. 5). The French Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (in effect, the French government's freight arm) had bought her in 1915 and done some repair work in 1917 (as well as fitting her with two lightweight guns for submarine defense), but she was still a worn-out ship (Cuthbertson, p. 19).
All this in a ship with an inexperienced crew and a captain who was new to his ship; Aimé Le Médec he had only reached the rank of captain in 1916 (Glasner, p. 15; Bacon, p. 109, calls it a "wartime promotion," perhaps implying that he only became a captain because the war increased the demand for officers). He had only been given the Mont Blanc two months earlier (Cuthbertson, p. 35), and had little English (MacDonald, pp. 15-16; Cuthbertson, p. 21). Before he took the Mont Blanc from New York to Halifax, he had been asked about his ship's abilities, and had said frankly that he didn't know! (Cuthbertson, p. 22). In a crisis, he would not know how to deal with his ship. It probably didn't help that he had never been to Halifax before (Glasner, p. 26). And he was apparently a very private, very reserved, and somewhat peculiar man (Cuthbertson, pp. 22-23), who believed in doing things "by the book" and enforcing strict discipline (Cuthbertson, p. 35). He not the master who could inspire a crew in a crisis.
To top it all off, he was a smoker, and the ship's explosive cargo forced a smoking ban (Bacon, pp. 8-9), so he was probably constantly cranky.
The Monc Blanc clearly was not a good choice to haul high explosives, but no one involved had much choice. The French government just told the freighters what to do, and they had to obey. The existing crew didn't even know in advance what they would be carrying (Cuthbertson, p. 21).
The Mont Blanc had been refitted to hold her touchy cargo (e.g. the nails in her hold had been replaced by copper to avoid striking sparks; MacDonald, p. 17). The port authorities even had police guards watching her while the refitting was going on (Bacon, p. 109). This was apparently the first any of her crew heard that she would be carrying explosives (Cuthbertson, p. 25). It doesn't sound as if anyone in the crew was trained to deal with them, either.
All those things were bad, but her biggest problem was her speed. Although originally designed to make 11 knots (Cuthbertson, p. 18), by 1917, the best the Mont Blanc could manage was about eight knots, and over a long stretch, she would probably not be able to exceed seven and a half. In fact, Glasner, p. 14, says that with the loading she had on her final trip she could barely make seven knots. By 1917, submarines were doing great damage, and the British were convoying their ships. The Mont Blanc was too slow to sail with the fast convoys that went direct from New York to Britain. She would have to go to Halifax to join one of the slow convoys there -- and even being part of a slow convoy might be beyond her abilities (MacDonald, p. 18). The later description "Large Slow Target" would have been a brilliant description of the Mont Blanc.
Halifax was by this time the major shipment point from Canada to Britain. Fears of submarines had caused the harbor to be made more secure. There were anti-submarine nets at the entrance which were closed at sunset. When the Mont Blanc arrived, the gates were still open, but by the time the naval examining officer had cleared her for entry, they were shut for the day (Cuthbertson, pp. 78-81); she had to spend the night outside (Glasner, pp. 14, 16; MacDonald, p. 16), and then join what we might call the morning rush hour.
The other ship involved in the disaster was also trapped by the submarine precautions. The Imo had been launched as the White Star Lines ship Runic, but had been sold in 1895 and was now a Norwegian tramp steamer used among other things to ferry food to civilians in Belgium. She was older (built 1889) and larger (430 feet long; 5043 gross register tons) but was probably in better shape than the Mont Blanc. She was faster, too, although not very fast (12 knots). Her captain Haakon From had been with her since 1914 (Cuthbertson, p. 46), and had an explosive temper (Cuthbertson, pp. 47-48). Her crew had recently spent a lot more time sitting around than sailing, and were probably very disappointed when they failed to make past the submarine barriers before they closed for the day (MacDonald, p. 20); they had had to wait for a shipment of coal (Glasner, p. 27).
Many ports had regulations about explosives. Halifax did not; the ship was allowed into harbor without restrictions (Cuthbertson, pp. 80-81).. It was also standard practice for ships with explosives to fly a red flag -- but Le Médec did not do so while at sea, to avoid becoming a target (Cuthbertson, p. 80; Glasner, p. 35), and when he entered Halifax Harbor, he told his officers that it was not necessary (Bacon, p. 125; Cuthbertson, p. 107), so no one except those on the Mont Blanc knew she was carrying explosives. Most of the mistakes that led to the tragedy were the Imo's, but this one was the Mont Blanc's.
The shape of the bay contributed to the problem. Halifax is an excellent port, with a large inner bay (the Bedford Basin) capable of holding many ships. But the basin is reached by "the Narrows," a long channel only about a third of a mile wide -- good for security, since it's easy to guard and control (Glasner, pp. 16-17) but a definite traffic bottleneck. Two ships can pass each other in the Narrows, but only if they stay on their proper courses. Ships going in and out have to be steered by pilots experienced in entering the channel. (Many harbors of course require such pilots, but few need them as much as Halifax. And Halifax, notably, had just fourteen pilots, and even when traffic exploded during World War I, they refused to allow more to be trained; Bacon, p. 73).
The Imo, in its haste, broke the rules. As she left the Bedford Basin, she encountered the Clara. The standard for ships at Halifax was to pass "port to port" -- that is, as we might say it, to "keep on the right side of the road." But, because of where the ships were located, it was quicker to pass "starboard to starboard" -- and the Imo was in a hurry. The Imo ended up on the wrong side of the channel (Cuthbertson, pp. 116-117; MacDonald, p. 30). And she then noticed another ship, the Stella Maris, pulling two scows near the south bank (MacDonald, p. 32-34; Bacon, p. 132). And there was some haze over the Narrows (MacDonald, p. 31). Despite this, the Imo did not slow down; a witness reported, "She is going as fast as any ship I ever saw in the harbor" (MacDonald, p. 33). According to Glasner, p. 27, she was moving at seven knots, two knots faster than the harbor speed limit, though it's not clear how this was determined; Cuthbertson, p. 112, says she was doing six knots, which still exceeded the speed limit. Captain From was letting his impatience get control of him.
Bacon, p. 124, calls what followed "A Game of Chicken." That's not quite true; the Mont Blanc was not misbehaving. But it looked like a game of chicken.
The pilot of the Mont Blanc, Francis Mackey, apparently spotted the Imo first, though all he could see in the fog was her masts. He realized that the Imo was far out of her lane, having moved around the Clara and dodged rather than yielding to the Stella Maris. Mackay ordered the Mont Blanc to edge toward the starboard (northeast) bank. He sent whistle signals to the Imo to explain his actions (MacDonald, p. 38).
Unfortunately, the communication by whistles did not prevent disaster. The Mont Blanc whistled once, to say that she would stay to the right, where she belonged. The Imo, rather than sounding the whistle once to say she was going back into her lane, sounded it twice! (Cuthbertson, p. 124; Bacon, pp. 134-135). Mackey gathered that the Imo, already far out of her lane, intended to stay there -- and if she stayed, the two would collide. He couldn't head closer to the shore on the starboard side without running her aground; he was as close as he dared to take the heavily-laden ship. He steered Mont Blanc to port and let the ship, already moving slowly, drift to a stop (MacDonald, pp. 39-40). The Mont Blanc repeated its signal; the Imo again signalled that it would not yield even though it was in the wrong lane (Bacon, p. 135). At this point, a collision was all but inevitable; the Mont Blanc desperately tried to do what the Imo had wanted her to do and steer to port (Bacon, p. 136), but there wasn't much time left.
The Imo once again reacted improperly. Instead of steering around the Mont Blanc, she ordered her engines to reverse. It didn't help. There were two possible problems with the move. Because she had no cargo, her screw was too high in the water to have much power, and she was slow to answer the helm (MacDonald, p. 40). Plus, putting the ship in reverse caused the screw to reverse, and that causes the stern of the ship to shift position and the ship to change direction -- in this case, straight toward the Mont Blanc (Bacon, p. 137; Cuthbertson, p. 126). With nothing else to do, the captain and pilot on the Mont Blanc tried to put their ship in reverse (Bacon, p. 137). It was too late. The Imo crashed into her starboard side (MacDonald, p. 41).
The Imo, as is often true in these cases, suffered only slightly -- a small hole above the waterline and other minor damage. But the Mont Blanc was badly sliced open -- at the deck level, the hole was about five or six feet wide, tapering as it went down toward the waterline (Bacon, p. 145)..
You would think that was the worst possible outcome. It wasn't. Only then, far too late, did the Imo manage to actually start moving backward. She backed out of the Mont Blanc, causing further damage. And, in the process, she did something which started a spark (Glasner, p. 29, thinks the grinding of metal on metal did it; Cuthbertson, p. 128, specifically mentions the Imo's anchor getting hooked inside the other ship). Whatever it was, it was the caused the benzol on the Mont Blanc's deck to catch fire.
At that point, disaster was guaranteed. It was oil fire, the kind that cannot be put out just with water -- even if the Mont Blanc had had hoses able to reach the spot, which it didn't (MacDonald, p. 43; Bacon, p. 142, says they were in the forward part of the ship where the fire was already raging). The collision also broke many barrels lose, breaking them open and making them even more dangerous (Bacon, p. 141). Within minutes, flames were shooting high in the air (Cuthbertson, p. 133). It appeared there was nothing the crew could do. The ship couldn't even be scuttled; the seacocks were rusted shut (Glasner, p. 30; MacDonald, p. 48), and apparently Captain Le Médec didn't know where they were anyway! (Cuthbertson, p. 134).
Pilot Mackay had the best idea: Head out to sea (Bacon, p. 143). The flow of water might help control the fire (Cuthbertson, p. 135), and even if it didn't, it would get the ship out of the Narrows where it would do less harm. Captain Le Médec didn't think that feasible, or ignored or didn't understand the suggestion. At his order, the crew of the Mont Blanc abandoned ship (Bacon, p. `143) -- and headed for the Dartmouth shore, so they didn't even give the Halifax city authorities a warning. They did call out some warnings on the Dartmouth side -- but in French, which was pretty useless in Halifax. One crewman managed to save a woman, Aggie March, and her baby. They "would be the only people the Mont-Blanc's captain, crew, or harbor pilot would save that day" (Bacon, p. 149).
It's not quite certain what they did before abandoning. Did they change course? Start up the engines? The witnesses disagree. Whatever they did, the ship for some reason drifted across the Narrows to bump into a pier on the Halifax shore (MacDonald, p. 42; Cuthbertson, p. 138, says the drift was the result of the outgoining tide).
Various ships came around to try to pull the ship back into mid-channel, or put out her fires (Glasner, pp. 32-39, and Bacon, p. 144, list some of the attempts). None of them knew there were explosives aboard, because the authorities had kept it silent, and Le Médec had not put up a red flag -- and although the fleeing crew could have told the rescuers, they just kept fleeing (Bacon, p. 145). Le Médec, who had apparently wanted to go down to his ship (he had to be pushed to leave; Bacon, p. 146), until that time had been more sinned against than sinning, but was now actively contributing to the disaster.
Without the knowledge to deal with the Mont Blanc, the other ships couldn't do much. She was too big to move and burning too hard to control the conflagration (MacDonald, pp. 50-51) -- pouring in water just pushed the oil about and made it burn harder! Indeed, she was burning so hot that she ignited the pier she was drifting toward (Cuthbertson, p. 140).
Only one officer in the harbor, other than the men of the Mont Blanc, knew what she carried. When he saw her ablaze, he sent a man ashore to warn the people of Halifax, and headed back to his office to try to spread the word (Cuthbertson, pp. 143-144). But there was no time, and he apparently had no radio; this man, Officer Murray, was killed as he tried to reach his office (Cuthbertson, pp. 162-163). Probably the only man to get out word in a useful was was a telegrapher named Vincent Coleman, who heard of what was happened and at 8:49 sent out a message to the railroads: "Hold the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbour making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye, boys" (Bacon, p. 164). Coleman was indeed killed but became a Canadian hero. Not that running would likely have helped him; the man who was with him when he prepared to send the message fled without waiting -- but was killed also (Cuthbertson, p. 175).
Gradually the barrels of benzol and monochlorobenzol cooked off. Eventually, they set off the high explosive in the hold (at 9:04:35 a.m., according to later seismic measurements; MacDonald, p. 181, etc.).
It was quite a haul -- the value was estimated at three million dollars (Cuthbertson, p. 27), which surely exceeded the value of the ship. 200 tons of TNT. Ten tons of guncotton (nitrocellulose: cotton fibers treated with nitric acid. Horribly touchy when dry. Safe enough when wet, but how could it stay wet when surrounded by benzol fires?) Worst of all, 2300 tons of picric acid, some wet (which made it less touchy), some dry.
Picric Acid -- (NO₂)₃C₆H₂OH -- is a "very poisonous, yellow, crystalline, intensely bitter acid used in explosives, in dyeing, and in medicine" (AHDictSci, p. 496). It isn't just a munition; its first major use, from the 1840s to the 1860s, was as a yellow dye (Ball, p. 208). But it wasn't color-fast (Ball, p. 209), and its manufacture might have almost stopped -- except that it had such a useful ability to destroy things. It was the primary component of lyddite ("picric acid... mixed with 10% nitrobenzene and 3% Vaseline," PengDictSci, p. 254). It consists of a benzene ring with a hydroxyl (OH) group and no fewer than three NO₂ groups, meaning that it can release tremendous amounts of chemical energy -- the only difference between picric acid and TNT is that TNT has a methyl group (CH₃) where picric acid has its hydroxyl group (Le Couteur/Burreston, p. 98). Lyddite was used by the British as a shell burster (i.e. it's what made shells blow up when they hit something), and picric acid was the active ingredient; when dry, it explodes upon being subjected to pressure (e.g. being hit by a hammer, or of course colliding with an enemy ship or trench). It would also burn explosively if heated.
Although less familiar than TNT, because it is so much touchier, picric acid actually releases more energy when it explodes.
Picric acid was dangerous on other grounds. According to Darrow, p. 250, it also could be made into poison gas: "Chloropicrin, made from picric acid by the action of chlorine, was another [gas used in World War I]. It was mixed in a shell or bomb with tin chloride, which forms dense white clouds of vapor capable of penetrating the gas masks and carrying with it the volatile chloropicrin. Highly poisonous in itself, chloropicrin induces nausea and vomiting, thereby causing the victim to remove his mask and rendering him an easy prey to other lethal gases."
(If you're wondering why, given its dangers, picric acid was being made in Canada and shipped to Britain, rather than manufacturing in Britain, the basic answer is "nitrates." Picric acid, like every other major explosive used in the early twentieth century, required saltpeter or an equivalent nitrate source -- and the main source of nitrates was the west coast of Latin America. It was much easier to get them to Canada than to Britain in the days of submarine warfare. For more on this history of nitrates, see the notes to "Chamber Lye" and "Tommy's Gone to Hilo.")
The explosives did not quite fill the ship, so -- just to add to the fun -- at the last minute, a load of benzol was added. Benzol is a petrochemical, used as a fuel and a basis for other fuels. And, unlike the explosives, it was not carefully packed and stowed; it was in barrels that were just lashed together on deck and below decks. And the barrels were leaky; the smell was everywhere (Bacon, p. 112). Cuthbertson, p. 115, and Bacon, p. 133, reports that the loading was so sloppy and the leaks so large that an officer on another ship was able to see and smell it!
MacDonald, p. 61, says that there were 2925 tons of explosives, total, on the Mont Blanc. The temperature of the explosion is thought to have been in the 5000C/9000F range (MacDonald, p. 62). In the era of conventional bombs, the largest ever used was about 10 tons. 2925 tons of mostly picric acid is in the nuclear weapons range -- at the very low end of the range (less than Hiroshima or Nagasaki by an order of about five), but unlike anything the world had ever seen in 1917, except for volcanic eruptions and meteor strikes.
The explosion was heard over 200 miles away, on Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island (Glasner, p. 81; MacDonald, p. 63). The Mont Blanc's anchor was thrown more than two miles, and other parts of the ship went three miles (MacDonald, p. 67).
All buildings within half a mile of the blast were destroyed (MacDonald, p. 64). The blast was so strong that it spawned secondary tornadoes (MacDonald, p. 66). It also caused a 20-foot-high wave to scour the Halifax basin, at some places reaching six blocks inland (MacDonald, map in frontispiece; similarly Cuthbertson's frontispiece); three ships apart from the Mont Blanc were destroyed, and 27 damaged, including the Imo; the latter included a couple of naval vessels. And it produced perhaps the world's first artificial mushroom cloud (Bacon, p. 168; photo on p. 169 of Cuthbertson and in Bacon's photo inset). Supposedly it was heard more than 150 miles away and broke windows more than fifty miles away (Cuthbertson, p. 169). Locally, there was enough debris in the air to make it look as if it were dusk rather than full daylight (Bacon, p. 168). Later, much of that oil and coal particles and such fell as a black rain (Bacon, p. 169) that can't have been safe to breathe.
There were secondary effects -- fires, even the collapse of a magazine at a military base. It didn't explode, but it did burn a bit, putting out enough smoke to cause a secondary panic (Glasner, pp. 61-65; Bacon, p. 205, says that an officer at the magazine used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire, and the smoke of that was what caused the panic).
People died in many ways. Possibly as many as 150 were simply vaporized and never found. More were killed by the pressure wave -- pulverized to death. Others died by being thrown into walls or other objections. Flying glass killed and maimed many more.
Relief efforts were at first quite disorganized. The mayor of Halifax was away, leaving the Deputy Mayor in charge (Glasner, p. 55; MacDonald, p. 93, Bacon, p. 229, says that he was thrown off his feet by the blast as he walked to his real job, leading Bacon to quip that, instead of a leader and an emergency plan, "Halifax had a glorified clothes salesman who didn't realize he was in charge until the explosion bounced him on his backside." And when he reached City Hall to try to do something, he found only two people there. Halifax was in the charge of a man who hadn't wanted the job and had no staff to support him. Plus the building's windows had been blown out, so there was no head; Cuthbertson, p. 221. The only good news was that one of the two was the city's police chief).
In addition to the mayor being out of town, the fire chief had been killed (MacDonald, p. 94), as had many of the firefighters, and the city's one motorized fire engine ruined (Glasner, p. 120). Many doctors were killed or hurt and unable to treat patients (MacDonald, p. 112). The hospitals ranged from damaged to almost completely unusable (MacDonald, p. 113). And there weren't enough hospital beds anyway -- Bacon, p. 236, says Halifax and Dartmouth together had four public hospitals with a few hundred beds, most already full, and various military hospitals with 500-odd additional beds; in all, enough for about a tenth of the wounded. Medical supplies soon ran low, and the only way to sterilize equipment was to put it in boiling water (MacDonald, p. 118). Doctors operated on patients without anesthesia, and sewed up their wounds with ordinary cotton thread (Glasner, p. 94).
The deputy mayor and city council soon put the city under martial law. Fortunately, there were plenty of soldiers and sailors available to help -- men who otherwise would have been on their way to the war (Bacon, p. 234). They even asked help from the American naval ships in the harbor, who supplied some 250 men (Bacon, p. 235).
It was hard to bring in help from outside. The railroads had been damaged, or were blocked by ruined trains, and many telegraph lines were down (for a while, the city had to send messages to Havana for retransmission to North America! -- Bacon, p. 232). Only one rail line, in fact, was fully serviceable, and it was a new line, not yet up and running (MacDonald, p. 111). Plus much rail stock had been damaged, and the facilities in Halifax were out of commission (Cuthbertson, p. 224). Even access by sea was a bit difficult, since the Narrows was for the moment largely blocked by debris (Cuthbertson, p. 224). Reportedly 102 doctors eventually came from other parts of Canada, and 120 from the United States (Bacon, p. 331), but that took some time.
The temperature the night after the blast was well below freezing (MacDonald, p. 143), and there followed a fierce blizzard, causing additional deaths (MacDonald, p. 145), adding to the strain on the survivors, and making it that much harder to bring in help. It also, e.g., knocked out many of the restored telephone lines and other repaired facilities, making it much harder to conduct rescue work until they could be re-repaired (Bacon, p. 259).
The casualties could never be perfectly counted. Cuthbertson, p. 175, says that almost 2000 were killed. Ritchie's round numbers (p. 95) are 1600 killed, 8000 wounded, 2000 missing. MacDonald's Appendix D, p. 291, lists 1611 official dead as of 1918; p. 293 lists 1201 bodies as buried, with 242 of them unidentified and 410 bodies missing -- but she reckons the known dead as of 2004 as 1952. She lists (p. 66) 6000 people as injured and 9000 as homeless. Others reverse those figures. Glasner, p. 41, says 1900 were dead and 9000 wounded, while on p. 118 she says 2000 were dead, 9000 injured, and 20,000 homeless -- which, if correct, means that more than half the city's population of roughly 50,000 was dead, wounded, or homeless. Very many of the injured lost their eyes to flying glass; 16 people lost both eyes, 249 lost one eye, and over 5500 had some sort of eye injury; 41 ended up totally blind (MacDonald, pp. 159, 234). The number of bodies was so large that, even when identifications had been made in the field, the information was often lost (MacDonald, p. 162). Bacon, p. 334, says that the official figure was 1953 dead, but adds that the total must be larger -- and points out that that is more casualties than the entire province of Nova Scotia suffered during the Great War. On 335 he cites an estimate the 1600 were killed at once, between 400 and 800 more died later, 9000 were wounded, and 25000 homeless. He also notes that many had "trademark scars, tinged with black and blue from the soot and TNT," which Haligonians grew used to seeing.
Because the task was so great and the clues so few, very many bodies had to be buried before they were identified. Many of these, and some of the identified bodies from poor households, were buried in the same graveyard as the bodies brought in after the Titanic disaster (MacDonald, pp. 244-245). Coffins were improvised in all sizes, with parts of bodies in some and multiple corpses in others (MacDonald, p. 248). Because of the inability to identify bodies, some families never would accept that their loved ones were gone (Cuthbertson, p. 267).
There were hundreds of orphans: some 70 children who lost both parents, and 200 who lost one or the other parent. Of the latter, about 110 had lost their mothers and had no father at home (usually because he was serving in the war); MacDonald, p. 232.
One estimate suggests that 2,000 buildings were destroyed and 10,000 damaged, leaving 25,000 people with damaged homes. Cuthbertson, p. 175, says more than 1,500 were destroyed and 12,000 more were damaged. Bacon, p. 255, says 1,630 buildings were destroyed and 12,000 damaged, and agrees with the estimate of 25,000 people with destroyed or damaged homes.
Also damaged was the cable between Halifax and Dartmouth, and most of the phone system, and the telegraphs. Halifax was almost cut off, and didn't even have internal communications to coordinate relief (Bacon, p. 206). And officials for some reason told the survivors to head for higher ground. This kept them safe from the secondary explosions that didn't happen, but meant that people trapped in the rubble were not rescued, that the fires burned unchecked, that nothing was done to stop further damage (Bacon, pp. 206-207
In one way, recovery was surprisingly swift. The explosion took place on Thursday, December 6. By the following Monday, December 10, the authorities were saying they did not need more medical people (a number of temporary hospitals were up and running), and most mail and gas service was restored (MacDonald, pp. 219-220; Cuthbertson, p. 280). The naval station was back in action even more quickly, on December 8 (Cuthbertson, p. 280). But it took several weeks to end food rationing, and families were given a food allowance even after that (MacDonald, p. 229). And rebuilding took far longer -- indeed, most permanent rebuilding could not begin until spring when the ground thawed (MacDonald, p. 237). Even today, anyone digging near the harbor will soon find many artifacts of the explosion (MacDonald, p. 276).
The damage was estimated at $35 million -- Canadian dollars, by most accounts (Bacon, p. 346, says it's U. S. dollars), but 1917 Canadian dollars. MacDonald, p. 68, applied conversion factors to make this $420 million in 2004 U. S. dollars. Bacon comes up with $728 million 2017 U. S.dollars. I suspect even that is low. That's strict inflation, but buildings were proportionally cheaper back then (e.g. a house could be had for $4000). I suspect that it would cost several billion to build replacements in today's world. And insurance companies were unwilling to cover the costs, arguing that their policies did not cover city-leveling explosions. (Which I suppose is true, and it's likely that they didn't have enough in the bank to cover all the destruction anyway!) Eventually they were pressured to pay between 20 and 35 cents on the dollar of the face value of their policies (Cuthbertson, pp. 289-290).
Even as the burials were going on, an investigation was underway -- Ottawa had ordered an investigation as soon as it heard what was going on (Cuthbertson, p. 244). In the end, there would be four different investigations and court cases, not finishing until 1920 (Bacon, p. 315). But the first inquiry -- which was supposed to be just an investigation into the cause of the disaster -- set the tone. It was not supposed to be a criminal proceeding, but the man in charge was a judge, Arthur Drysdale, and a witness said, "The setting was almost Dickensian" (MacDonald, p. 252). It was a difficult situation, with the public howling for blood. It was also a ticklish diplomatic problem, with a French ship that was carrying cargo exploding in a Canadian harbor while under the direction of British authorities (Cuthbertson, pp. 248-249). And the whole thing was supposed to start just six days after the disaster! (Cuthbertson, p. 248).
It appears members of the commission were biased -- e.g. one was the second in command of the Port of Halifax, so he wasn't going argue that the authorities did anything wrong! (Cuthbertson, p. 314). Plus the company that owned the Imo had come up with a much more aggressive lawyer than any of the other parties (Cuthbertson, pp. 310-312; Bacon, p. 316, says that Charles Burchell "was widely regarded as a first-rate attorney but a bit of a brawler"; adding on p. 317 another author's testimony that Burchell "browbeat and misled witnesses, disregarded all the rules of courtroom behavior and, on a number of occasions, violated the standards of legal ethics" -- but he generally convinced Judge Drysdale to go along).
There was also the problem that, while the pilot and master of the Mont Blanc had survived, those on the Imo were both dead (Glasner, p. 43, and Cuthbertson, p. 256, have a photo of the ship blown ashore; her masts survived but her upper works were "demolished"). Imo's first officer had also been killed (Cuthbertson, p. 258). It was difficult to reconstruct what the crew of the Imo was thinking. MacDonald speculates that perhaps they failed to hear some of the whistle signals, but this seems insufficient.
MacDonald gives a detailed account of the proceedings (pp. 252-272), which ended with the blame being assigned almost entirely to pilot Mackay and master Le Médec of the Mont Blanc, plus the harbor Chief Examining Officer Frederick Evans Wyatt. (Wyatt was the man in charge of shipping in the harbor, but he had almost no information on what was going on -- once he found out, shortly before the explosion, he got busy, but it was too late. Wyatt didn't help his cause by being combative -- Cuthbertson, pp. 320-325 -- although he bore no direct blame, it's likely that he bears some indirect guilt because people were afraid to argue with him about ideas.) They were available to be scapegoats, they were not well-spoken, and they didn't have fancy lawyers. And they weren't cronies of people in power; it looks as if some people were let off the hook because higher-ups protected them (Cuthbertson, pp. 324-325).
The conclusions were abrupt and brutal: "the judgment was but a single page of text that took him only a few minutes to read. Drysdale concluded that the Mont-Blanc was entirely to blame for the collision. With that in mind, he recommended some corrective measures, four of which were key. Drysdale opined (1) that Francis Mackey should face criminal charges and lose his pilotage license; (2) that the French government should cancel Captain Aimé Le Médec's master's ticket, (3) that RCN senior officials should discipline Commander Evan Wyatt; and (4) that they should censure pilot Edward Renner (who had guided the tramp steamer that preceded the Mont-Blanc through the Narrows on December 6), as ell as the Halifax harbour pilots in general" (Cuthbertson, p. 328; compare Bacon, p. 318). Apparently he took the idea of "pour encourager les autres" to heart and decided it was wasn't tough enough....
It's evident that the inquiry was unfair. Reading MacDonald, Bacon, and Cuthbertson, it's pretty clear, at least to me that there were many mistakes that led to the disaster, and the Imo made all of them but the final one, when Mackay turned the Mont Blanc hard to port to try to escape the coming collision and thereby caused it. Even there, Mackay seems to have thought that was what the Imo was calling for. It is clear that MacDonald and Cuthbertson consider Mackay a scapegoat, and Paine too is open to the possibility (p. 345). Ritchie, p. 95, assigns no direct blame but mentions only the mistakes made by the Imo. Glasner, p. 121, makes it explicit: "A scapegoat was required, but Captain Haakon From [commander of the Imo] and [pilot] William Hayes were both dead. As a result, blame was placed squarely on the shoulders of the captain and pilot of the Mont Blanc and Commander Wyatt.... Wyatt, Le Médec, and Francis Mackay were all placed under arrest and charged with manslaughter. Eventually, however, all charges were dropped." *For the deaths of From and Hayes, see also Bacon, p. 179, who has a folkloric bit about rescuers having to shoot From's dog because it wouldn't let them near the body.)
That first trial before Drysdale was just Wreck Commission inquiry. Later, it became a true court case -- which, incredibly, was allowed to go before Drysdale again, and it was clear that he wasn't going to listen to any new information; he actually said "So far as I'm concerned, I have been over [my notes and have my mind made up" (Bacon, p. 338).
Fortunately, when the case was referred to a real judge, Benjamin Russell, he took testimony from witnesses who had seen what had happened, and he dismissed the cases against Mackay and Le Médec (Bacon, p. 330). This led to protests which forced them to leave the area, but at least they were free! (Bacon, pp. 330-331). Wyatt went on to a career outside the Navy (Cuthbertson, p. 332); Le Médec went back to his career in France (Cuthbertson, pp. 330-331); Mackay stayed in Halifax to try to clear his name and get his job back. He managed the latter despite strong prejudice against him in the town, but he never managed to get his back pay, and his first wife died young, her demise probably helped by all the stress (Cuthbertson, pp. 332-333).
The companies that owned the Imo and the Mont Blanc ended up in court over who was to blame -- and originally got stuck with Judge Drysdale again, who again let the Imo off the hook. Appeals courts lifted the blame from the Mont Blanc but simply left a null judgment; neither company was given damages (Cuthberton, pp. 333-335. The legal twists here were extreme; Bacon, pp. 340-343, says that the appeals court vote was 3-2, with the minority wanting to uphold Drysdale, but the swing judge was neutral on the Monc Blanc's actions, adding that while the crew's behavior afterward, in not warning people, was reprehensible, it was not a crime. This produced a strange situation in which the two French-speaking justices had to also vote for a "no fault" verdict, lest Drysdale's lower court verdict be upheld because the appeals court had no majority -- it would have been split 2-2-1. The French justices knew the Mont Blanc was innocent, but only by concurring with the swing justice and declaring equal fault could they avoid placing all the blame on the Mont Blanc! Pp. 344-345 describe the final appeal, in Britain, which again ignored Drysdale and again ruled that both ships were at fault; it felt they both should have stopped, and neither did so until too lat).
The Imo, amazingly, was salvaged after the explosion, renamed, and put back in service -- but managed to wreck itself in the Falklands in 1921 (MacDonald, p. 282).
A fund was set up to pay pensions to survivors. Amazingly, three were still alive in 2004, though all are of course gone now (Cuthbertson, p. 343). Eventually there were plans made for a memorial cite; in 1948 a park was set aside, although it wasn't until 1983 that the current memorial bell tower went up (Cuthbertson, p. 344).
This song has all the features of a broadside prepared shortly after the explosion; I wouldn't be surprised if the author intended it to help the people raising money for relief. It includes the following accurate details:
"It was on the sixth of December, nineteen hundred and seventeen,
That Halifax suffered disaster, the worst she'd ever seen;
It was five minutes after nine, those still alive can tell"
The time of the explosion was December 6, 1917, 9:05 [a.m.].
"She carried a deck load of benzoil and shells for overseas,
In her hold a new explosive, they call it TNT."
Benzoil, or benzol, is the liquid fuel that caused the initial fire. The cargo was not shells, but shell bursters; close enough. The TNT, as we see above, was a relatively small part of the cargo (and not a new explosive; trinitrotoluene had been around for decades. However, the Germans had used it first; it was a newer product to the British). But TNT was more famous than picric acid, even though less dangerous.
"Children were gone to their lessons, their mothers were busy at home,
While fathers worked on at the factories little dreaming they'd soon be alone."
Most of MacDonald's and Glasner's books are devoted to documenting where people were -- and, yes, it was an ordinary work day.
"The relief ship had rammed the monster tearing a hole in her side,
And eased out in the stream again and drifted on with the tide."
Obviously accurate from the account given above.
"Houses were crushed like paper, people were killed like flies,
The coroner's record tells us the toll was twelve hundred lives."
This would seem to imply the song was written very soon after the explosion, before the various missing could be tallied; 1200 is close to the number of actual bodies, but the death toll is usually considered to be closer to 2000.
"Two thousand were mAiméd and wounded, hundreds more lost their sight
And God knows how many children were alone in the world that night."
This again implies composition soon after the event, since the number of wounded is low and the number of blinded slightly higher than the total who in the end were completely blinded.
"And then the following morning as if to hurt them twice
There came a storm from the ocean, a blizzard of snow and ice."
This obviously refers to the snowstorm that so hampered the relief efforts.
The major Canadian author Hugh MacLennan, who was a boy in Halifax at the time of the explosion, went on to make it the subject of his noteworthy first novel, Barometer Rising, published in 1941 (Brown, p. 417). It also became the subject of a "Heritage Minute," a series of Canadian historical segments for television; the "Minute" told the story of telegraph operator Vincent Coleman, who stayed at is work to warn trains not to come into the town and was killed at his station (Cuthbertson, p. 11). - RBW
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