Final Voyage (6 page)

The
Mont Blanc
faced the same problem, but coming from the other direction. Delayed in New York whilst her dangerous cargo was carefully loaded and stored in her hold, she reached Halifax too late in the evening of 5th December and the submarine nets were already up. Aime Le Medec and his crew spent a tense night sitting at anchor outside the harbour, fully aware that, were there actually any submarines in the vicinity, then the
Mont Blanc
was a sitting duck. As soon as the submarine nets were opened again the next morning at 7am, the harbourmasters gave the
Mont Blanc
clearance to enter, but Le Medec was delayed one last time by ferries crossing between Halifax and Dartmouth, the town on the opposite side of the channel.

Though cleared to leave at 7.30am, the
Imo
was also delayed by traffic for over an hour, by which time Haakon From was eager to get moving. The
Imo
entered the Narrows, the most restricted stretch of the channel between Halifax and Dartmouth, just after 8.30am, going 7 knots. The speed limit within the harbour was 5 knots, but it's possible that the harbour pilot instructing From and his helmsman wasn't fully aware that the ship had picked up speed so rapidly.

With an empty hold and a narrow beam of 45ft (13.7m) – a length to width ratio unusual for vessels of her size – the
Imo
cut through the water with ease. Without any cargo weighing her down, she rode high in the water. Her rudder and propeller were not even fully submerged below the waterline, making her more difficult to manoeuvre. However, this was nothing new to the
Imo
's helmsman, who was used to the ship often doing her own thing. She had three propellers, two of which revolved to the left, leaving only one which revolved to the right. This meant that when going forwards the
Imo
always veered to the left, and when going backwards always veered to the right. Her helmsman had to compensate for these idiosyncrasies at all times.

The
Imo
cut through the water with ease. Without any cargo weighing her down, she rode high in the water.

Due to another ship blocking her way, the
Imo
entered the Narrows on the left hand side, despite harbour regulations insisting all vessels keep to starboard. Once in the channel the
Imo
's helmsman may have struggled to veer back to the right. In 1917, not least because of how busy the harbour was, ships were still allowed to travel through the Narrows in both directions at the same time, which made it especially important that vessels entering or departing stayed to the correct side. The 125ft (38m) tug
Stella Maris
was towing two barges into harbour as
Imo
started coming out on the wrong side, and the two vessels only narrowly avoided collision. Had the
Imo
hit the
Stella Maris
then the Halifax Explosion would probably never have occurred.

The
Mont Blanc
, now under the command of experienced harbour pilot Francis Mackey, entered the Narrows about
a mile behind the
Stella Maris
, going 4 knots. When Mackey spotted the
Imo
at the other end of the channel, and on the wrong side of it, she was still going 7 knots. At their combined speeds, the two steamers would reach each other in only a matter of minutes. Mackey immediately signalled with a blast of the
Mont Blanc
's horn that the
Imo
should change course. The
Imo
responded with a double blast of her own horn, which signalled that she would not change course.

Sailors on other ships in the harbour gathered on their decks to watch what they assumed was now an imminent collision.

With the two ships getting ever closer, Mackey veered to starboard and then cut the
Mont Blanc
's engines, hoping the
Imo
's pilot and helmsman would get the message and follow suit. Again, the
Imo
responded with a double blast of her horn to negate the
Mont Blanc
's pilot's instructions. Drawn by this increasingly urgent dialogue between the two vessels' horns, sailors on other ships in the harbour gathered on their decks to watch what they assumed was now an imminent collision.

But collision wasn't inevitable just yet. If he had been piloting any other ship – or rather had this one been carrying any other cargo – Mackey could have run the ship aground in the shallows. However, Mackey had supervised the inspection of the
Mont Blanc
before she was allowed into harbour, and he knew how volatile her cargo was. The ship might survive the impact, but the shock could set off the explosives in her hold. Re-engaging the
Mont Blanc
's engines, Mackey took the only other option left to him – he ordered the helmsman to steer hard to port. Though the
Imo
was bearing down on the
Mont Blanc
fast, perhaps there was still time for the
Mont Blanc
to get out of her way.

And there probably would have been, had the pilot on the
Imo
not then made a fateful decision. He had ordered the engines cut, but the
Imo
had been going so fast that inertia continued to carry her towards the
Mont Blanc
. When the pilot saw the
Mont Blanc
start to turn slowly to port, he believed she would never be able to complete the evasive manoeuvre in time. The
Imo
signalled with three blasts of the horn – she was reversing her engines. The captain and the helmsman of the
Imo
knew their vessel's idiosyncratic ways, but neither of them was in charge. As the
Imo
slowed, her reversing engines swung her bow to the right.

The
Imo
struck the
Mont Blanc
on her starboard side with such force that the
Imo
's bow was buried nearly 9ft (2.7m) into the
Mont Blanc
's hull.

Had just the
Mont Blanc
steered to port, or had just the
Imo
reversed its engines, then the collision may have been avoided. Instead, both actions combined to make collision inevitable. The
Imo
struck the
Mont Blanc
on her starboard side with such force that the
Imo
's bow was buried nearly 9ft (2.7m) into the
Mont Blanc
's hull.

Inside the
Mont Blanc
's forward hold, drums of benzol were crushed and burst open, spilling the liquid fuel over the other cargo.

The
Imo
had struck above the waterline, and whilst the
Mont Blanc
was no longer seaworthy, the damage to her hull was still repairable. In the pilothouse and on deck, the
Mont Blanc
's officers and crew could only be grateful
that the collision had not detonated the ship's cargo instantly.

Then someone on board the
Imo
– perhaps the pilot, perhaps the captain, neither survived to testify – made the second fateful decision of the morning. As those on the
Mont Blanc
surveyed the damage to their vessel, the
Imo
's engines were restarted. Slowly, she began to reverse. The two interlocked ships started to disengage. In the
Mont Blanc
's forward hold, unseen by anyone, metal grinded against metal as the
Imo
's bow retracted from the gash it had torn in the
Mont Blanc
's hull. It is now believed this generated the sparks that ignited the benzol.

Once the
Imo
had withdrawn completely from the
Mont Blanc
, about ten minutes after the collision, smoke began to pour out of the hole in the
Mont Blanc
's side. Mackey and Le Medec knew immediately that the benzol in the hold had caught alight. As a thick black cloud of smoke blanketed the ship and towered into the air above her, both the pilot and the captain ordered everyone on board to evacuate.

A thick black cloud of smoke blanketed the ship and towered into the air above her.

They would later claim that they thought the
Mont Blanc
could explode at any second. Even as they fled they were not hopeful of making it to safety in time. Thus they defended their decision not to make any attempt to fight the fire before they abandoned ship. The fire being oil-based and having already spread as far as it had, they may not have been able to put the fire out anyway. It's possible that nothing short of scuttling the ship and flooding the hold would have extinguished the flames, and doing that quickly was
beyond their means. They might only have had time to move the
Mont Blanc
further away from residential areas. Instead they launched the lifeboats and paddled for the nearest shore, at Dartmouth, as fast as they could.

The
Mont Blanc
, meanwhile, drifted in the other direction, toward the Richmond shore. Seeing all the smoke, Horatio Brennan, the captain of the tug
Stella Maris
, swiftly anchored the two barges he had been towing, turned around and sped back towards the stricken steamer to help. The
Stella Maris
passed at least one of the
Mont Blanc
's lifeboats as she approached. The fleeing crew in the lifeboat tried to shout warnings about the explosive cargo to the tug, but either nobody on board the
Stella Maris
understood their French, or they chose to ignore the dangers. The
Mont Blanc
's lifeboats continued toward Dartmouth. The
Stella Maris
continued toward the
Mont Blanc
.

Crowds of spectators all along the shoreline started to gather and watch.

A shopkeeper whose Richmond premises faced the harbour saw the burning ship crash into the nearby Pier 6. As flames spread to the wooden pilings he raised the alarm, and within minutes dozens of firemen arrived at the dockside and began to unroll their fire hoses. Meanwhile, crowds of spectators all along the shoreline started to gather and watch. Husbands were on their way to work, wives on their way to the shops, children on their way to school. In houses and on balconies overlooking the harbour more people stopped what they were doing to view the excitement.

The crew of the
Stella Maris
began spraying the
Mont Blanc
with their fire hose. Other boats also came to help.
Left unchallenged this long (almost 20 minutes), the fire had consumed the top deck of the
Mont Blanc
and now raged furiously, flames leaping into the air through the thick black smoke. The heat was so intense that none of those fighting the flames, both from the
Stella Maris
and from the shore, could look directly at the inferno.

What Captain Brennan did next suggests that he and his crew had indeed understood the warnings the
Mont Blanc
's crew shouted from their lifeboats, and had then decided to try and fight the fire regardless. When their attempts at dousing the flames proved ineffective, Brennan ordered his men to stop and prepare the hawsers instead. The
Stella Maris
was not designed to fight ship fires; she was designed to tow other, bigger vessels in and – more importantly now – out of harbour. That is what they would try to do, if there was still time.

To a limited degree, word had also spread on shore about the nature of the
Mont Blanc
's cargo. Naval officers who knew the ship sent sailors ashore to warn as many people as they could about the risk of an explosion. One ran into Richmond Station, based at the freight yards less than 750ft (229m) from Pier 6, and told everyone about the munitions ship burning out of control in the harbour. When the sailor ran out again, everyone in the station followed.

But then one stopped. Vincent Coleman, a 45-year-old dispatcher who lived only five streets away with his wife and two-year-old daughter, remembered that a passenger train from St John, New Brunswick, was due any minute. It would stop at North Street Station, which was even closer to Pier 6 than Richmond Station. Coleman turned
round and hurried back to his telegraph machine. As quickly as he could he tapped out a message in Morse Code, warning of the
Mont Blanc
and demanding the St John train stop immediately. He then signalled a farewell to the other telegraphers. Whether he expected to lose his life, or whether he simply expected his workplace – let alone his job – to be obliterated, will never be known.

By not running, Vincent Coleman saved over 300 lives. Some 4 miles (6.4km) from downtown Halifax the St John train came to a halt, and behind it all the other incoming trains also stopped. Before the disaster even occurred, word was spreading across Canada that something terrible might be about to happen in Halifax. When all contact with the city suddenly ceased, the telegraph cables having been severed, it didn't take long for the outside world to work out why.

The crew of the
Stella Maris
were still trying to attach the hawsers to the burning ship. The firemen on shore were still trying to douse the flames. The crowds were still continuing to gather all around the harbour. Meanwhile Aime Le Medec, Francis Mackey and the rest of the
Mont Blanc
's crew had reached the Dartmouth shore. They ran up into the woods and took shelter. All but one of them survived.

The fireball rose over 6,000ft (1,800m) into the air. A dense mushroom cloud of white smoke towered up to 20,000ft (6,000m).

At 9.04am, less than 25 minutes after the collision, the largest man-made explosion in history ripped through Halifax. The fireball rose over 6,000ft (1,800m) into the air. A dense mushroom cloud of white smoke towered up to 20,000ft (6,000m). The
Mont Blanc
's cargo detonated
with a force equivalent to 3 kilotons of TNT, a record the explosion retained until 1945. People felt the shock of the explosion as far away as Cape Breton Island, at the eastern tip of Nova Scotia, some 130 miles (200km) distant. In the town of New Glasgow, 80 miles (130km) from Halifax, homes and other buildings shook like the town had been struck by an earthquake. Ten miles (16km) away, windows in Sackville and Windsor Junction shattered.