Just worth noting that today is the 100th anniversary of the Halifax explosion, where an ammunition ship caught fire and blew up, taking out more than half the town and killing at least 2,000 people. It was the largest man-made explosion ever until the nuclear age began.
It also helped improve relations between Canada and the United States. We tend to think of Canada now as our “great friend and neighbor”, but given the War of 1812, the “54-40 or Fight” attempt at annexing a big chunk of it, and even some US politicians in the 20th century making noises, relations were often…testy.
But the US (especially Boston) contributed much money, volunteers and material aid to help restore and rebuild Halifax, and the Canadians didn’t forget. From tragedy sometimes comes good.
Recommend John Bacon’s ***The Great Halifax Explosion *** if you want to read more deeply about this; otherwise I commend the Wikipedia writeup for your further education: Halifax Explosion - Wikipedia
Among those hurt there were many eye injuries because lots of people had arrived to watch the burning ship in the harbor, unaware of the blast that was about to come. This is the largest mass blinding event in Canadian history.
My understanding was lots of people were looking at the burning ship through their windows; windows that would shatter when the blast happened. In other words, no ‘arrival’ needed. People were blinded in their homes.
Holy freaking crap! I’ve never heard of this, or I had forgotten it. Thanks for the reminder and a great link. You just never know when the reaper’s about to get ya.
One of the individual stories of heroism at extreme cost: Halifax train dispatcher Vince Coleman. When a sailor told him the burning Mont-Blanc was an ammo ship just about to explode, he stayed at his telegraph desk and sent warnings up the line to stop incoming trains. He is acknowledged to have saved at least 300 lives on the St. John overnight express train which would have arrived at Halifax station in time to be obliterated by the blast. He kept sending warnings until the explosion killed him.
The warnings also were the first indication to the rest of the rail system (and to Canada and the US in general) that a disaster was unfolding, allowing rescue and relief efforts to begin organizing even as Halifax was being devastated.
Do we know it was the largest explosion, or was it just the largest explosion in an area that had lots of stuff to break and witnesses to tell?
I assume ammo ships like that were not uncommon during the war, and boiler explosions are not impossible.
I just wonder if there were other ships, possibly with larger cargoes of explosives, that exploded much further from shore where the only witnesses were the sailors who were also the unfortunate casualties.
Probably not something that could be proven, but were there any ships like that that were lost at sea?
The explosion of the boilers on the riverboat Sultana killed 1192 passengers, mostly freed Union Army prisoners returning home from the South at the end of the Civil War.
You’re right; there have been many more wartime incidents that have killed far more people.
It’s not surprising that an exploding ship would kill everyone on board, but with this event, the vast majority of victims were on shore, some quite a distance from the explosion.
Every time I hear someone mention the Halifax Explosion, I think to myself “…including Vince Coleman, dispatcher.” Which you will get if you watched Heritage Minutes. The museum in Halifax has a great display on the event.
I’m not so sure this was the biggest non-nuclear explosion - 2.9Ktons of explosive power is certainly plenty, but I think the RAF Fauld explosion was somewhat larger but it will be another 27 years until the centenary
This image gives an idea of the size of the hole - good job it didn't take the entire ammo dump out or this would have been double the size explosion
It would be tough to measure as far as crater-size or anything, since the explosion occurred on a ship in the harbour, but thousands were killed in the initial explosion in Halifax, and those that had homes and buildings destroyed still had to deal with winter in Halifax until help came.
The claim that the Halifax disaster was “The largest man-made explosion before the nuclear bomb” has generally always been made without any sort of reference to facts. Even a local historian describes it thus:
“Halifax Harbour remains unchallenged in overall magnitude as long as five criteria are considered together: number of casualties, force of blast, radius of devastation, quantity of explosive material, and total value of property destroyed.”
That’s uh, a lot of weird things to combine. Did they call the insurance company, then? It would be difficult to objectively demonstrate that, say, the Berger Harbor explosion of 9144 was definitively less powerful.
It’s POSSIBLE it was the biggest explosion before Trinity, but it’;s not as if these things were carefully measured or that someone set criteria for measuring them and can say “Ah yes, but this explosion was 11% less forceful as measured by X.”
I’d read this previously and was struck by the article’s clearly laying most blame not on the explosives ship, but on the Norwegian vessel involved in the collision - yet the official investigation blamed personnel on both ships.
