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
I was there as a child in 1947 getting ready for the afternoon session of Danforth Elementary School (there were so many kids, they divided us into morning and afternoon sessions).
I was getting dressed in my bedroom upstairs. The window in my room faced the Texas City harbor and the refineries. We lived about a mile from the Grandcamp. All of a sudden my window, glass, blinds, and all blew straight over my bed and into the opposite wall. I had bent down to get my shoes, so the window didn't hit me. Outside there was a big column of dark smoke rising from the harbor. There was glass all over my bed.
My father worked at a little oil company across the road from the harbor area. He was reported as missing over the radio a day or so later, which, of course, upset my mother no end. She didn't tell my little brother and me, but had some neighbor ladies look after us for a while. Actually, after the explosion my father had been fighting tank fires for more than 24 hours straight and had run from a collapsing burning tank and had passed out or was resting in a fence by a roadway. Some people on the roadway found him and took him home with them. He was OK, but other people didn't know where he was and reported him missing.
My grandfather (my mother's father) and my mother's uncle drove in from Houston in the uncle's Cadillac and had gotten through the police lines around the city by my grandfather claiming to be a doctor. They picked up my mother, my little brother, and me, and drove us to Houston. Mother had left a note at our apartment for my father, in case he was OK, telling him where we had gone.
Before the explosion my father's boss had asked him to go with him to the harbor area to look at the fire. My father was busy up on a tank and didn't go with him. The boss's body washed up a week later.
It was a scary time. Some of the walls at my elementary school collapsed during the explosion because of the shock wave. I don't remember for sure if some kids had been hurt or killed at the school. I ended up eventually staying at my grandmother's house (my father's mother) in Austin and temporarily going to school there for weeks.