WI no 1917 Halifax Explosion?



The above photo was taken of a video monitor at the Toronto Railway Museum [URL='https://abitmoredetail.wordpress.com/2016/06/01/photo-photos-from-roundhouse-park-and-the-toronto-railway-museum/']during my Doors Open visit
, poised on a display in front of the Nova Scotia Pullman car. It preserves a scene from 0:23 of Historica Canada's Halifax Explosion Heritage Minute, when train dispatcher Vince Coleman</u></a> realized the imminence of the Halifax Explosion and opted to warn an incoming train to stop short of the danger zone. All it took him was his life.


"What do you think you're doing?" shouted chief clerk William Lovett as train dispatcher Vince Coleman turned back towards the office. "We've only got a minute or two left! Anyone in the office won't stand a chance, and you're a married man with a family to think of!" But Vince Coleman was thinking about the passenger trains speeding towards the threatened harbour. He had to stop them.

In that moment of pure and selfless action, Coleman telegraphed his urgent warning. At precisely 9:06 on December 6, 1917, the worst man-made explosion ever [before the atomic bomb on Hiroshima] tore through Halifax, claiming 2,000 lives, including the life of Vince Coleman.

The Great War had brought prosperity to Halifax. The harbour bustled with convoys of men and materials bound for Europe. But on the evening of December 5, two ships' captains anxiously awaited departure. Aboard the Imo, a Belgian relief ship at anchor in the harbour, Captain From was annoyed that a late inspection had forced him to delay departure until morning.

Outside the harbour sat the French steamship Mont Blanc, its captain Aimé Le Medec awaiting morning access to the harbour and official clearance. Captain Le Medec had good reason to feel uneasy. Four days earlier his freighter had been loaded with tons of picric acid, TNT, gun cotton and benzol. The Mont Blanc was a floating bomb.

At 7:30 a.m., on December 6, the Mont Blanc began its slow entry into the harbour just as the Imo pulled up anchor. Forced to the wrong side of the channel by a steamer and tugboat, the Imo continued its improper course in direct line with the incoming Mont Blanc. The two ships sighted each other. There was a confusion of whistle blasts, misunderstood signals and, at 8:45 a.m., a disastrous collision.

As black smoke and flames rose from the Mont Blanc, crowds gathered on the Pier to watch the excitement. Factory workers, stevedores, mothers and children rushed to the best vantage points. Few people had any idea of the danger.

But one sailor who knew about the imminent explosion ran past the railway freight yards, warning Coleman and Lovett to clear out. Vince Coleman knew what was at stake when he ran back to tap out his crucial message. In the worst catastrophe in Canadian history, one man sacrificed his life to save 700 others.


This is rightly recognized as one of the top Heritage Minutes aired on Canadian television in the 1990s, happily preserved for posterity on YouTube.

The Halifax Explosion dominated one of the chapters of my Honours English essay, through Hugh MacLennan's novel Barometer Rising. I had argued that this disaster was used by MacLennan to draw a thick line between the traditional past of Nova Scotia and the modern world that its people had to join.

It is not enough, as Murray drunkenly suggests, to “[m]ake everyone live in the country [so] there won’t be any more of these goddam wars” (137). Nova Scotians must shed their parochialisms and enthusiastically embrace the wider world, just as they did before the explosion as foreign crews and ships arrived incessantly in Halifax harbour. Like Big Alec MacKenzie, Nova Scotians must “bridge the gap out of the pioneering era and save [their] children from becoming anachronisms” (208) at the relatively cost of being lost to their native regions. They must, like Penelope Wain and Neil Macrae, become people “who could seem at home almost anywhere” (208) even while preserving what remnants of Nova Scotian identity they could.

Before the Halifax Explosion was a symbol, it was a catastrophe. Thousands of people had been killed and thousands more maimed in the devastation of the chief metropolis of the Maritimes by one of the largest explosions to occur before the nuclear era. The tragedy is that this is an event that was highly contingent: If only the Mont Blanc had been better piloted, had received greater care from the authorities of Halifax harbour, this never would have happened. What if? I can't help but imagine this possibility, this imagined glimpse of a world spared, could have been as much a torment as a relief.

What would happen if Halifax was spared catastrophe in December 1917? Thousands of Haligonians would still be alive, and entire districts of the city left intact. These would be good things, but I do not know if these would necessarily have much of an impact on the wider world. Perhaps there would the lack of experience of one of the world's largest non-nuclear explosions in an urban area would do something, as might less advanced care for the blind?[/url]
 

Archibald

Banned
There would others, similar disaster. As usual Wikipedia has a page on that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppau_explosion

I wonder about possible military use of Halifax-like floating bombs. Would it be possible to take a big cargo, load it to the brim with explosives, then send it straight to a harbour to devastate it ? Kind of modern-day "Brulot" (can't find the english translation of that word) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brûlot_(navire)

Germany could sent such a floating bomb from its coast in the drection of a British port. Even if the Grand Fleet intercepted it and gunned it, the blast would be of (small) atomic proportions and might damage ships around.

Largest bulk carrier of WWI era https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Milazzo

As designed, Milazzo could carry up to 14,000 long tons (14,200 t) of bulk coal or other cargo

14200 tons of explosives should make one hell of a big explosion. 1 kt is 1000 tons of TNT, so that would be a 14 kt explosion - not too far from Hiroshima / Nagasaki / Crossroads in scale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Crossroads#Test_Baker

- crap, I had forgotten the Olympic-class liners. Should be able to load 30 000 tons of TNT if scrapped of their guts minus the propulsive machinery. And they could sail at 21 knots, as fast as that era battleships. How about that ?

Anybody willing to develop on that idea ? Do I start a separate thread ?
 
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You run into the problem of asking someone to be a kamikaze. Plus actually finding 10,000 tonnes of TNT would be a challenge - TNT production in USA in 1918 was running at around 7000 tonnes per month so that's six weeks total production.

Could you use a submarine as a huge mine and escape to surface - thinking more of a German attack on Scapa than anything else
 
You run into the problem of asking someone to be a kamikaze. Plus actually finding 10,000 tonnes of TNT would be a challenge - TNT production in USA in 1918 was running at around 7000 tonnes per month so that's six weeks total production.

Could you use a submarine as a huge mine and escape to surface - thinking more of a German attack on Scapa than anything else
10,000 tonnes of fertiliser and fuel oil (coal dust works too, apparently) would work almost as well. Escape was always tricky with fireships, best way might be a skeleton crew provided with a fast motor launch to get them clear and rendezvous with a submarine.
 
Well, without the explosion and subsequent flow of emergency aid from New England than my home town of Boston would not get a huge Christmas Tree from Nova Scotia each year as a thank you...a great tradition would be lost!!
 
Unless you have a stupid decision to mix load fertiliser and diesel on a ship their is very little chance of any explosion like the Halifax one . I originally thought the LNG tankers could do the same however the information out their suggests a bad fire but very little chance of an actual explosion due to improper fuel air mix for the speed of combustion to meet the requirements of an explosion .
 
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