Posted on 12/06/2017 5:48:01 AM PST by billorites
On the bright, freezing morning of Dec. 6, 1917, a French captain steered his ship, the SS Mont Blanc, up the channel leading to the piers of Halifax, Canada’s major Atlantic port. Just after 8:30, as the ship steamed into the bottleneck between the ocean and the inner harbor, he looked up to see something that shouldn’t have been there: the SS Imo, a Norwegian freighter, heading straight toward him on his side of the skinny narrows.
The two massive ships blasted their whistles, attempted a few evasive maneuvers and then collided, bow to bow. It was not a fatal blow.
“In marine terms, what happened was a fender bender,” said historian Roger Marsters. “It was only the character of the cargo that made it what it was.”
What the Imo had rammed was a 3,000-ton floating bomb. The Mont Blanc was crammed with munitions, bound for the war raging in Europe. Its holds were crammed with 2,500-tons of TNT and picric acid. The decks were crowded with barrels of high-octane benzole.
The resulting blast was the biggest man-made explosion of the pre-atomic age, according to analysts. It devastated the busy port city, leveling more than a square mile of the waterfront, killing more than 2,000 people and injuring 5,000 more, almost 12 percent of Halifax’s population. The massive iron hull disappeared, blown into shrapnel that tore through neighborhoods miles from the harbor. A half-ton chunk of its anchor still lies where it landed 2.5 miles away. “Halifax” became the standard of blast comparisons for decades, unsurpassed as an explosive disaster until Hiroshima replaced it in 1945.
The horror of crushed schools and victims stumbling bloodied and blown naked through the rubble has stamped the city to this day, said Marsters, curator of marine history at the Nova Scotia Museum.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Issac Asimov wrote a Sci-fi short story, The Dead Past, based on that thought................The 'past' started 1 picosecond ago........ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Past
The dead past, Araman says, is only a synonym for “the living present”...
WOW. Mind blowing synopsis.
A machine like that would be looking at a “past” so remarkably close to the present that it would be more like looking through a telescope.
Wow.
Interesting, thanks!
Wow, Ping for later.
Surprised the US Navy wasn’t involved.
Excellent pictures here:
In the story, it was like watching live television in HD..........................IT’s inherent limitation was it could see only back about 125 years or so, and very fuzzy the farther back it was. 1 second ago was crystal clear..........................
Boom.
The Japanese used it as the primary charge in their WW2 knee mortar round. They had to line the case with ceramic, to prevent the reaction during storage. They stopped using the ceramic, late in the war, to cut costs and speed up production. It's why, if you see the juice can sized shells while wreck diving, you don't touch, or you may vanish, in between blinks...
Galveston Hurricane: Read Isaac’s Storm, great book on the subject by Erik Larson.
The Canadian Maritime provinces, New Brunswick, PEI, and Nova Scotia had many of their citizenry in that era migrate to Massachusetts, RI and CT for factory jobs. They were not illegals, but encouraged by companies in the New England area looking for workers. Many stayed, others returned, my point, there was a great deal of cross border activity. The Maritime provinces of Canada related more closely to New England than they did to the rest of Canada.
re: Galveston; early global warming effect, no doubt.
All so true...my best friend’s family all came from that area right around those times.
SS GRANDCAMP - Texas City , across bay from Galveston
2500 tons Ammonium nitrate fertilizer in hold destined for
France
Fire started in cargo hold, captain not wanting to ruin cargo by pouring water in hold sealed hatches and flooded
hold with live steam from engine room to smother fire
Bad Move - ammonium bitrate is oxidizer, has own oxygen
also nitrate has been treated with wax and rosin for water
resistance - equally bad move as sensitized it and converted
it to high explosive
By sealing hatches and injecting steam raised temperature and pressure to detonation point
SS GRANCAMP exploded just after 9 am - wiping out entire Fire department on dock
Set fire to Monsanto petro chemical works nearby
Another freighter loaded with fertilizer SS HIGHFYER was set on fire and disabled by initial blast - attempts to tow it clear failed and exploded at 1am following morning adding
to carnage.
Death toll estimated at 547, considered low
Still a cap gun compared to what the Norks have detonated.
I first learned about this explosion when I spent some time in Halifax back in the early 1990’s. It’s devastation was hard to believe, even standing on the shore of the bay.
I knew Halifax was a great place when I arrived, they gave me a map for a walking tour of all the bars in Halifax. Their “Busker Days” were fantastic, where the best street performers all do their acts. Friday afternoon was not complete without a visit to the Molsen/Moosehead/Alpine/Labatt’s ... Brewery with open bar all afternoon. I understand Coors now owns the brewery.???
For an ideal vacation, start at the lobster festival in Rockland, Maine, drive up to Bar Harbor and take the ferry to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, drive the Light House route up the Atlantic coast, visiting the Lunenberg Fisheries Museum on the way to Halifax/Dartmouth.
Then drive down the Annapolis basis and see the huge reversing tides and the following weekend was the scallop festival in Digby. From there take the ferry over to St. John and drive back into Maine, stopping in Bangor....
There are lobster’s cooked in wood fired cooker tanks along the ocean in Maine that you can eat at picnic tables.....
What about the Texas City disaster ?
https://www.bing.com/search?q=texas+city+explosion+1947&form=APIPH1&PC=APPL
So I’m going to guess this isn’t really news or current events......
>> BTW, anyone know why just hitting it would cause the munitions to go off? <<
2,500-tons of TNT and picric acid is a lot of explosives.
The TNT could probably take the jolt but the picric acid is almost as touchy a nitroglycerine. Bump it and it will detonate.
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