%20(1).jpg "The Halifax Explosion | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror")
The collision sparked a fire on board one of the vessels a repurposed tramp steamer packed with a cargo of explosives bound for the European theatre of war.
At exactly 35 seconds after 9:04am this cargo detonated, bringing about one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever to take place.
Halifax Harbour is a large, natural harbour on the Atlantic coast of Canada.
It consists of a huge enclosed bay, known as the Bedford Basin, as well as a slender strait known as The Narrows, which leads out towards open ocean, passing a few small islands on the way.
On one side of Halifax Harbour, in 1917, was the town of Halifax.
On the other side stood Dartmouth.
Between them the two towns had a combined population of around 65,000 people.
This population had recently grown.
The ongoing First World War made the harbour of great strategic importance.
It was a key departure point for convoys of ships bound for Europe.
It was an incredibly important port and was thus busier during the war than it ever had been before.
A few days before the disaster the Norwegian Ship the SS Imo arrived at Halifax Harbour and docked in the Bedford Basin, where it sat for several days awaiting supplies.
Some of these, namely the ship's required load of coal, were delayed.
Although cleared to leave on the 5th of December, the Imo didn't complete loading until too late in the day to depart.
Submarine nets, designed to protect the ships at anchor in the Bedford Basin from attack by German U-boats, had been raised for the night, and therefore no ship could pass in or out.
Although anxious to get underway, the crew of the Imo would have to wait until the next morning.
Meanwhile the French cargo ship the SS Mont Blanc was in a similar predicament outside the harbour.
It had arrived too late in the day to be allowed to enter the Bedford Basin, and so was forced to wait outside the harbour until the submarine nets were lowered again the next morning.
The crew of the Mont Blanc would no doubt have preferred to spend the night with the ship moored safely inside the harbour, especially considering the cargo it carried.
On board was a staggering amount of explosive materials including TNT, guncotton, picric acid, and barrel upon barrel of tar-like benzol.
Whatever fears the crew of the Mont Blanc might have had, the night passed uneventfully.
At 7:30am on the morning of the 6th of December the submarine nets were lowered and both ships started moving once more, the Imo heading out of Halifax Harbour and the Mont Blanc heading inwards.
Normally, ships passing through The Narrows were expected to stay on the right, and to adhere to a speed limit of just five knots...about the pace of a swift jog.
On this particular day, though, the captain of the Imo was so keen to get moving that he ignored the speed limit and surged into The Narrows at a much faster speed.
At this point the Imo encountered two other vessels, one after the other.
First was the SS Clara, an American tramp steamer coming into the harbour on the wrong side of The Narrows.
The two boats signaled to one another and the Imo ultimately moved towards the middle of The Narrows to avoid a collision.
Moments later the Imo encountered the tugboat Stella Maris, which was travelling down the center of the strait.
Again, the Imo moved aside, this time going from a position near the middle of The Narrows to completely the wrong side.
That was how the Imo came to be on a collision course with the inbound Mont Blanc.
The two ships sighted one another when they were still more than 1.
2 kilometers (around three-quarters of a mile) apart, and began a series of frantic signals.
The Mont Blanc had right of way, but the crew of the Imo - for whatever reason - indicated that they would not yield.
When it became clear that the end result of this game of chicken would be a catastrophic collision, both ships cut their engines.
The Mont Blanc tried to steer around the drifting Imo...and might have made it, had the Imo not reversed its engines at exactly the wrong moment.
The effect of this was to cause the nose of the Imo to swing into the hull of the Mont Blanc.
The collision took place at a relatively low speed, and although quite damaging did not immediately scuttle either boat.
However several barrels of the Mont Blanc's flammable cargo were ruptured in the smash, resulting in a huge spill of highly flammable material.
Even at this point, though, a disaster was not yet assured.
Without a spark even the most explosive materials would not catch fire.
For a moment the boats drifted...then the Imo's engines kicked in once again and the two damaged vessels parted ways.
As they did so metals scraped upon metal, sparks flew, and a fire began onboard the Mont Blanc.
Recognising the danger, the captain of the Mont Blanc - Aimé Le Medec - ordered his crew to abandon ship.
They needed no further encouragement to do so.
Piling into lifeboats, they rowed for the shore, shouting desperate warnings to anyone they could see.
Alas, such was the noise and confusion out on the water that very few people on nearby boats or watching from the shore actually heard or understood these warnings.
The Mont Blanc itself drifted, blazing, towards the Halifax side of The Narrows, eventually beaching itself beside Pier 6 of the harbour.
A huge plume of smoke rose into the air above it and people on both sides of the water were drawn to their windows or to the waterfront in order to watch the drama unfold.
At 9:04am and 35 seconds the cargo onboard the Mont Blanc detonated.
The explosion was a huge one.
The blast destroyed everything within 2.6 kilometers (or 1.6 miles) of the grounded ship.
Beyond that severe damage was done to thousands of buildings, and hot fragments of metal rained down across the city.
A gun from the deck of the Mont Blanc was launched into the air and touched down again 5.6 kilometers (or 3.5 miles) away.
The shock wave traveled at many times the speed of sound and was felt across the whole of Nova Scotia.
Buildings disintegrated, trees were flattened, cars tumbled, and ships lifted completely from the harbour and dumped onto land.
In the space of a moment around 1,600 people were instantly killed and many more were seriously injured.
Victims were buried beneath rubble, hit by flying debris, and in many cases received serious eye injuries as the windows they had been looking through exploded into shards of glass.
As well as the destructive force of the blast the explosion created a tsunami; a crashing six-storey wall of water that surged into the leveled city, crushing and drowning many of those who had survived the initial blast.
The Imo was one of many ships swept up by this tsunami.
As it was thrown from the harbour almost everyone on board was killed.
Worse yet, as the water receded fires began to burn in the wreckage.
The explosion had destroyed boilers collapsed factories and knocked over domestic stoves.
Now the rubble caught fire, turning the rescue effort into a race against time.
Time was not on the side of the rescuers.
Since the explosion had taken place in the context of the First World War the natural assumption of many was that it had been due to enemy action.
Rather than immediately focusing on rescue, soldiers ran to their posts to defend against further attack.
It was only after some hours had passed that the true source of the explosion was widely understood.
Rescue work was grim and lengthy.
Firefighters from across the province were joined by police and military, as well as hundreds of shell-shocked volunteers.
They dug through the wreckage, pulling out any survivors they could find.
These were sent to the city's remaining medical facilities; a deluge of thousands of seriously injured casualties arrived at every available hospital in a matter of hours.
Several military vessels that had been close at the time of the explosion diverted to offer assistance and were promptly converted into makeshift hospital ships.
Although injured and shocked by what had happened, everyone present did whatever they could to help.
There are even reports of children volunteering to carry messages across the town.
This rescue effort was, however, soon complicated by worsening weather.
The day after the explosion, when hundreds of people were still injured, homeless, and trapped beneath rubble, a blizzard descended on the city, bringing below-freezing temperatures and 1.2 meters (or four feet) of snow.
Not only did these horrendous conditions present a challenge for rescuers, but they also stopped relief from reaching the city.
Trains carrying medical supplies and food were forced to stop in place in zero visibility even though their supplies were desperately needed within the blast zone.
The Halifax Explosion, then, was a disaster of many dimensions.
As such the number of dead is difficult to estimate, but stands at around 2,000 in total, with a further 9,000 people suffering serious injury.
As soon as the situation on the ground was under control an inquiry was launched to establish who had been to blame for the incident.
It might seem logical that the captain of the Imo was to blame for the disaster.
After all the Imo had been speeding through The Narrows just before the collision.
It had been on the wrong side of the strait and had refused to yield even when signaled by the Mont Blanc.
However the presiding judge - Mr Justice Arthur Drysdale - had little hesitation in blaming the crew of the Mont Blanc who, he alleged, had failed to follow the rules concerning the movement of ships.
There were likely several reasons behind this rather one-sided judgment, not least of which was a great deal of public anger.
Given that the crew of the Imo had almost all been killed in the explosion, this anger was focused largely on the surviving crew of the Mont Blanc who had, after all, abandoned ship in order to save their own lives when the fire began.
Three men were charged with manslaughter.
They included Aimé Le Medec (the captain of the Mont Blanc), Francis Mackey (the harbour pilot), and Frederick Evans Wyatt (the chief examining officer of Halifax Harbour).
However, none of these men were ever brought to trial, as there simply wasn't enough evidence to do so.
In any event, the ruling that the Mont Blanc alone had been at fault was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1919, and it was established that both ships had made errors which contributed to the disaster.
Despite the devastation of Halifax some positive outcomes did arise from the disaster.
The rules concerning harbor navigation and the storage of hazardous materials were changed to make a repeat of the explosion unlikely.
Beyond this, the huge rescue efforts serve to inform and bolster charitable organizations within Canada.
The massive number of eye injuries caused by flying glass for example led directly to the founding of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind a few years later, while the extensive rescue effort underlined the importance of the Red Cross, and helped them to grow into the humanitarian organization they are today.
In the aftermath of the disaster there was a huge need for housing, and this led to the construction of one of the first public housing projects in Canada, known as the Hydrostone.
Some of the dwellings constructed during this time are still in place today, providing a home to Halifax's modern citizens.
One of the most enduring legacies from the disaster is one of civic friendship.
Boston was one of the first cities to send aid to Halifax, and this aid arrived at a crucial time: just as the blizzard was setting in.
The help provided by Boston was vital in saving lives and relieving medical staff and rescuers.
As a thank you for this vital support at the most difficult time in its history Nova Scotia donated a christmas tree to the city of Boston.
Many years later this became a tradition, and to this day Nova Scotia provides Boston with a tree.
Though devastated by the explosion that rocked the harbour on the 6th of December, 1917, Halifax has risen from the ruins.
Today it is a thriving maritime city, home to more than 400,000 people.
The Halifax Explosion remains a painful but vital part of its history, and reminders of the suffering, the loss, and the heroism of rescuers are everywhere.
Though the city has recovered, the Halifax Explosion will never be forgotten.
There is one final, and at least somewhat positive, coda to the story of the Halifax Explosion - that of Patrick Vincent Coleman.
Now here's the story of Patrick Vince Coleman - a man whose actions on the 6th of December, 1917, saved an untold number of lives.
Vince Coleman was a train dispatcher for Canadian Government Railways.
On the day of the disaster he was working at Richmond Station, not far from Pier 6 where the burning Mont Blanc ran aground.
He would have had a clear view of the plumes of smoke rising from the burning vessel, and would no doubt have been deeply alarmed when a sailor dashed up to him and his colleagues to inform them that they must evacuate, as the burning boat was laden with explosives.
Coleman and his colleagues, quite understandably, ran for their lives.
Before getting very far, however, Coleman turned around and sprinted back to the telegraph office at Richmond Station.
From there he started sending out one final, desperate message.
Halifax Harbour is a large, natural harbour on the Atlantic coast of Canada.
It consists of a huge enclosed bay, known as the Bedford Basin, as well as a slender strait known as The Narrows, which leads out towards open ocean, passing a few small islands on the way.
On one side of Halifax Harbour, in 1917, was the town of Halifax.
On the other side stood Dartmouth.
Between them the two towns had a combined population of around 65,000 people.
This population had recently grown.
The ongoing First World War made the harbour of great strategic importance.
It was a key departure point for convoys of ships bound for Europe.
It was an incredibly important port and was thus busier during the war than it ever had been before.
A few days before the disaster the Norwegian Ship the SS Imo arrived at Halifax Harbour and docked in the Bedford Basin, where it sat for several days awaiting supplies.
Some of these, namely the ship's required load of coal, were delayed.
Although cleared to leave on the 5th of December, the Imo didn't complete loading until too late in the day to depart.
Submarine nets, designed to protect the ships at anchor in the Bedford Basin from attack by German U-boats, had been raised for the night, and therefore no ship could pass in or out.
Although anxious to get underway, the crew of the Imo would have to wait until the next morning.
Meanwhile the French cargo ship the SS Mont Blanc was in a similar predicament outside the harbour.
It had arrived too late in the day to be allowed to enter the Bedford Basin, and so was forced to wait outside the harbour until the submarine nets were lowered again the next morning.
The crew of the Mont Blanc would no doubt have preferred to spend the night with the ship moored safely inside the harbour, especially considering the cargo it carried.
On board was a staggering amount of explosive materials including TNT, guncotton, picric acid, and barrel upon barrel of tar-like benzol.
Whatever fears the crew of the Mont Blanc might have had, the night passed uneventfully.
At 7:30am on the morning of the 6th of December the submarine nets were lowered and both ships started moving once more, the Imo heading out of Halifax Harbour and the Mont Blanc heading inwards.
Normally, ships passing through The Narrows were expected to stay on the right, and to adhere to a speed limit of just five knots...about the pace of a swift jog.
On this particular day, though, the captain of the Imo was so keen to get moving that he ignored the speed limit and surged into The Narrows at a much faster speed.
At this point the Imo encountered two other vessels, one after the other.
First was the SS Clara, an American tramp steamer coming into the harbour on the wrong side of The Narrows.
The two boats signaled to one another and the Imo ultimately moved towards the middle of The Narrows to avoid a collision.
Moments later the Imo encountered the tugboat Stella Maris, which was travelling down the center of the strait.
Again, the Imo moved aside, this time going from a position near the middle of The Narrows to completely the wrong side.
That was how the Imo came to be on a collision course with the inbound Mont Blanc.
The two ships sighted one another when they were still more than 1.
2 kilometers (around three-quarters of a mile) apart, and began a series of frantic signals.
The Mont Blanc had right of way, but the crew of the Imo - for whatever reason - indicated that they would not yield.
When it became clear that the end result of this game of chicken would be a catastrophic collision, both ships cut their engines.
The Mont Blanc tried to steer around the drifting Imo...and might have made it, had the Imo not reversed its engines at exactly the wrong moment.
The effect of this was to cause the nose of the Imo to swing into the hull of the Mont Blanc.
The collision took place at a relatively low speed, and although quite damaging did not immediately scuttle either boat.
However several barrels of the Mont Blanc's flammable cargo were ruptured in the smash, resulting in a huge spill of highly flammable material.
Even at this point, though, a disaster was not yet assured.
Without a spark even the most explosive materials would not catch fire.
For a moment the boats drifted...then the Imo's engines kicked in once again and the two damaged vessels parted ways.
As they did so metals scraped upon metal, sparks flew, and a fire began onboard the Mont Blanc.
Recognising the danger, the captain of the Mont Blanc - Aimé Le Medec - ordered his crew to abandon ship.
They needed no further encouragement to do so.
Piling into lifeboats, they rowed for the shore, shouting desperate warnings to anyone they could see.
Alas, such was the noise and confusion out on the water that very few people on nearby boats or watching from the shore actually heard or understood these warnings.
The Mont Blanc itself drifted, blazing, towards the Halifax side of The Narrows, eventually beaching itself beside Pier 6 of the harbour.
A huge plume of smoke rose into the air above it and people on both sides of the water were drawn to their windows or to the waterfront in order to watch the drama unfold.
At 9:04am and 35 seconds the cargo onboard the Mont Blanc detonated.
The explosion was a huge one.
The blast destroyed everything within 2.6 kilometers (or 1.6 miles) of the grounded ship.
Beyond that severe damage was done to thousands of buildings, and hot fragments of metal rained down across the city.
A gun from the deck of the Mont Blanc was launched into the air and touched down again 5.6 kilometers (or 3.5 miles) away.
The shock wave traveled at many times the speed of sound and was felt across the whole of Nova Scotia.
Buildings disintegrated, trees were flattened, cars tumbled, and ships lifted completely from the harbour and dumped onto land.
In the space of a moment around 1,600 people were instantly killed and many more were seriously injured.
Victims were buried beneath rubble, hit by flying debris, and in many cases received serious eye injuries as the windows they had been looking through exploded into shards of glass.
As well as the destructive force of the blast the explosion created a tsunami; a crashing six-storey wall of water that surged into the leveled city, crushing and drowning many of those who had survived the initial blast.
The Imo was one of many ships swept up by this tsunami.
As it was thrown from the harbour almost everyone on board was killed.
Worse yet, as the water receded fires began to burn in the wreckage.
The explosion had destroyed boilers collapsed factories and knocked over domestic stoves.
Now the rubble caught fire, turning the rescue effort into a race against time.
Time was not on the side of the rescuers.
Since the explosion had taken place in the context of the First World War the natural assumption of many was that it had been due to enemy action.
Rather than immediately focusing on rescue, soldiers ran to their posts to defend against further attack.
It was only after some hours had passed that the true source of the explosion was widely understood.
Rescue work was grim and lengthy.
Firefighters from across the province were joined by police and military, as well as hundreds of shell-shocked volunteers.
They dug through the wreckage, pulling out any survivors they could find.
These were sent to the city's remaining medical facilities; a deluge of thousands of seriously injured casualties arrived at every available hospital in a matter of hours.
Several military vessels that had been close at the time of the explosion diverted to offer assistance and were promptly converted into makeshift hospital ships.
Although injured and shocked by what had happened, everyone present did whatever they could to help.
There are even reports of children volunteering to carry messages across the town.
This rescue effort was, however, soon complicated by worsening weather.
The day after the explosion, when hundreds of people were still injured, homeless, and trapped beneath rubble, a blizzard descended on the city, bringing below-freezing temperatures and 1.2 meters (or four feet) of snow.
Not only did these horrendous conditions present a challenge for rescuers, but they also stopped relief from reaching the city.
Trains carrying medical supplies and food were forced to stop in place in zero visibility even though their supplies were desperately needed within the blast zone.
The Halifax Explosion, then, was a disaster of many dimensions.
As such the number of dead is difficult to estimate, but stands at around 2,000 in total, with a further 9,000 people suffering serious injury.
As soon as the situation on the ground was under control an inquiry was launched to establish who had been to blame for the incident.
It might seem logical that the captain of the Imo was to blame for the disaster.
After all the Imo had been speeding through The Narrows just before the collision.
It had been on the wrong side of the strait and had refused to yield even when signaled by the Mont Blanc.
However the presiding judge - Mr Justice Arthur Drysdale - had little hesitation in blaming the crew of the Mont Blanc who, he alleged, had failed to follow the rules concerning the movement of ships.
There were likely several reasons behind this rather one-sided judgment, not least of which was a great deal of public anger.
Given that the crew of the Imo had almost all been killed in the explosion, this anger was focused largely on the surviving crew of the Mont Blanc who had, after all, abandoned ship in order to save their own lives when the fire began.
Three men were charged with manslaughter.
They included Aimé Le Medec (the captain of the Mont Blanc), Francis Mackey (the harbour pilot), and Frederick Evans Wyatt (the chief examining officer of Halifax Harbour).
However, none of these men were ever brought to trial, as there simply wasn't enough evidence to do so.
In any event, the ruling that the Mont Blanc alone had been at fault was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1919, and it was established that both ships had made errors which contributed to the disaster.
Despite the devastation of Halifax some positive outcomes did arise from the disaster.
The rules concerning harbor navigation and the storage of hazardous materials were changed to make a repeat of the explosion unlikely.
Beyond this, the huge rescue efforts serve to inform and bolster charitable organizations within Canada.
The massive number of eye injuries caused by flying glass for example led directly to the founding of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind a few years later, while the extensive rescue effort underlined the importance of the Red Cross, and helped them to grow into the humanitarian organization they are today.
In the aftermath of the disaster there was a huge need for housing, and this led to the construction of one of the first public housing projects in Canada, known as the Hydrostone.
Some of the dwellings constructed during this time are still in place today, providing a home to Halifax's modern citizens.
One of the most enduring legacies from the disaster is one of civic friendship.
Boston was one of the first cities to send aid to Halifax, and this aid arrived at a crucial time: just as the blizzard was setting in.
The help provided by Boston was vital in saving lives and relieving medical staff and rescuers.
As a thank you for this vital support at the most difficult time in its history Nova Scotia donated a christmas tree to the city of Boston.
Many years later this became a tradition, and to this day Nova Scotia provides Boston with a tree.
Though devastated by the explosion that rocked the harbour on the 6th of December, 1917, Halifax has risen from the ruins.
Today it is a thriving maritime city, home to more than 400,000 people.
The Halifax Explosion remains a painful but vital part of its history, and reminders of the suffering, the loss, and the heroism of rescuers are everywhere.
Though the city has recovered, the Halifax Explosion will never be forgotten.
There is one final, and at least somewhat positive, coda to the story of the Halifax Explosion - that of Patrick Vincent Coleman.
Now here's the story of Patrick Vince Coleman - a man whose actions on the 6th of December, 1917, saved an untold number of lives.
Vince Coleman was a train dispatcher for Canadian Government Railways.
On the day of the disaster he was working at Richmond Station, not far from Pier 6 where the burning Mont Blanc ran aground.
He would have had a clear view of the plumes of smoke rising from the burning vessel, and would no doubt have been deeply alarmed when a sailor dashed up to him and his colleagues to inform them that they must evacuate, as the burning boat was laden with explosives.
Coleman and his colleagues, quite understandably, ran for their lives.
Before getting very far, however, Coleman turned around and sprinted back to the telegraph office at Richmond Station.
From there he started sending out one final, desperate message.
"Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Goodbye, boys."
Coleman's message was most likely intended for one particular train: the overnight express from New Brunswick.
This service, carrying around 300 passengers, was due to arrive within just a few minutes, and would have passed directly by the burning Mont Blanc when it did.
Thanks to Coleman's actions, however, it was halted on the other side of the Bedford Basin, and 300 innocent people lived to see another day.
Moreover, his message was relayed to many other stations, instantly halting inbound freight and passenger trains, and also alerting telegraph operators across Nova Scotia and beyond to the impending disaster.
When the Mont Blanc exploded, the wheels were already in motion to begin delivering rescuers, supplies, equipment, and aid to the victims of the disaster.
Coleman, as he had predicted in his final message, did not survive.
The explosion hit him with such force that it blew the hands from his pocket watch.
Death would have been instant.
His legacy, however, lives on - not just in the lives he saved but in his presence as an enduring figure in history, a symbol of the many heroes who sacrificed themselves during the years of the First World War in order to preserve the lives of others.
Today Coleman's telegraph key and damaged pocket watch are preserved in the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Nova Scotia.
Though he has been dead for over 100 years, by virtue of actions taken in the final few seconds of his life Vince Coleman stands to be remembered for centuries to come.
This service, carrying around 300 passengers, was due to arrive within just a few minutes, and would have passed directly by the burning Mont Blanc when it did.
Thanks to Coleman's actions, however, it was halted on the other side of the Bedford Basin, and 300 innocent people lived to see another day.
Moreover, his message was relayed to many other stations, instantly halting inbound freight and passenger trains, and also alerting telegraph operators across Nova Scotia and beyond to the impending disaster.
When the Mont Blanc exploded, the wheels were already in motion to begin delivering rescuers, supplies, equipment, and aid to the victims of the disaster.
Coleman, as he had predicted in his final message, did not survive.
The explosion hit him with such force that it blew the hands from his pocket watch.
Death would have been instant.
His legacy, however, lives on - not just in the lives he saved but in his presence as an enduring figure in history, a symbol of the many heroes who sacrificed themselves during the years of the First World War in order to preserve the lives of others.
Today Coleman's telegraph key and damaged pocket watch are preserved in the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Nova Scotia.
Though he has been dead for over 100 years, by virtue of actions taken in the final few seconds of his life Vince Coleman stands to be remembered for centuries to come.
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