After they watched the Mont-Blanc’s crew dash to Dartmouth, they returned their attention to the far more interesting sight of the unmanned boat blazing in the harbor. The Mont-Blanc’s plume of thick, black smoke could now be seen for miles, luring more passersby going to work or school from Richmond, Africville, and downtown Halifax.
Crewmen from nearby ships, unaware of Mont-Blanc’s contents, rushed to secure her to Pier 6 so they could douse what they assumed was a conventional fire.
Captain Horatio Brannen’s tugboat, Stella Maris, which had been towing the two scows filled with ash when it narrowly avoided the speeding Imo, was now cruising along the Dartmouth shore, just where it was supposed to be. When Captain Brennan realized the conflagration on Mont-Blanc was no common coal fire, however, he immediately gave orders to the first mate—his son Walter—and other crewmen to get the tugboat’s hose ready while they anchored the scows so they could leave them behind to rescue Mont-Blanc.
Stella Maris made it over to Mont-Blanc at 8:53, just a minute after Mont-Blanc had settled into Pier 6. The Stella Maris crew trained their hose on the fire, but it had no effect on the flames, which were growing as quickly as the crowd around them.
Tom K. Triggs, the acting commander of the HMS Highflyer, picked six crewmen to join him in one of the Highflyer’s rowboats. At 8:55, they pulled alongside Stella Maris to see if they could help. Commander Triggs boarded Stella Maris to discuss the situation with Horatio Brannen, and they were soon joined by a Niobe officer and some of his sailors. After spending a few minutes deliberating the merits of this approach or that, the Niobe officer recommended that Captain Brannen attach a cable to Mont-Blanc and tow her away from Pier 6.
By 8:58, the fire on Mont-Blanc had gotten out of control, spreading to the wharf and threatening the other ships and buildings around it. If they couldn’t extract Mont-Blanc from the dockyards soon, the entire town, built mainly of brick and wood, with mature trees lining every block, could burn down.
Brannen agreed with Commander Triggs and ordered a Stella Maris crewman to fetch a five-inch-thick hawser—a cable used for towing ships—but Triggs recommended something stronger. Brannen then sent Second Mate William Nickerson and a deckhand below to fetch a ten-inch cable, with Brannen’s son, First Mate Walter Brannen, holding open the entrance to the hold.
From the woods across the Narrows, Mont-Blanc’s crew watched the expanding conflagration, astonished. Perhaps the shipwrights in Brooklyn had built the custom-made holds so well that the high explosives really were hermetically sealed, the benzol was not leaking into the other compartments, and the explosives wouldn’t detonate. The ship was still burning at 9:00 a.m., after all, fourteen minutes after the collision had started the fire on deck. Anything seemed possible.
About this time the barrels of benzol started putting on a show for the folks walking up to Pier 6. From Halifax’s first battle with Louisbourg in 1758 through the American Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the American Civil War, and into the first three years of the Great War, Halifax had never been attacked, and nothing had ever gone seriously wrong in the protective arms of the harbor. They had little reason to suspect anything would be different this time, especially with the professionals working around the ship to put out the fire appearing so calm. Hundreds of people watched from the harbor’s brand-new pedestrian bridge, made of concrete and steel, which spanned the railyard to allow people to walk over the rows of tracks safely.
On the Curaca, an American ship docked nearby at Pier 8 to load wheat and horses to ship overseas, a Scottish crewman named Edward McCrossen joined the entire crew of his ship standing at the stern to watch the fire. He counted at least seven small explosions, each followed by a missile firing into the air and bursting. After one of the explosions, the Curaca’s chief engineer said, “That’s gone a couple thousand feet at least.”
The spectacle seemed sufficiently routine for McCrossan to decide he could spare a few minutes to go belowdecks and roll a cigarette.
After the fireworks show had been running for a few minutes, word of the ghost ship spread beyond the docks. By nine o’clock, workers at just about every factory and office within sight of the plume of smoke had stopped what they were doing to go to the windows and gaze at the blooming black cloud and wonder aloud what was happening down by the docks.
The Burfords had emigrated from England to Halifax, where the senior Burford now operated the engine room at Hillis & Sons. His son, fifteen-year-old Frank, was the firm’s youngest and newest employee; he had taken a temporary position at his father’s company until he could enroll in a plumbing apprenticeship. When the workers clustered around the window, Frank squeezed past some of the older, bigger men to sneak a peek. But while he watched Mont-Blanc burn not far from the home the Burfords rented on the Flynn block, just up the hill from North Street Station, he heard the company telephone ring and his boss answer.
“Frank’s not here to run errands,” his boss barked. “He’s not going . . . Oh, well, in that case. Just this once, then.”
His boss summoned Frank from his post at the window and told him he needed to deliver a package to the dry dock a few blocks away. “You won’t need your coat,” he told Frank. “It’s not cold, and you’ll run faster without it. When you come back, we’ll find a good place [at the window] for you again.”
In the harbor, sailors climbed on decks to watch Mont-Blanc burn. In Africville and Turtle Grove, the black and native Haligonians, respectively, paused to watch the smoke climb skyward. At Camp Hill Hospital, some 200 Canadian casualties used their crutches and wheelchairs to move closer to the big windows. In the Protestant Orphanage the children went to the windows to watch, but the orphanage was so close to Pier 6 that the windows grew too hot to touch.
In the blue-blood blocks of Gottingen Street, where the more elegant homes featured horsehair couches, waxed floors, and varnish on almost every wooden surface—all of which burn voraciously—anyone who had not already gone to work climbed the exterior staircases to their upper floors to watch the spectacle. Their homes had electricity, but many still used oil lamps, and plenty were heated with gas.
The collision and the fire that followed were perfectly timed to draw Haligonian fathers on their way to offices, factories, railyards, and dockyards; to lure children on their way to school down to the docks; and to attract the attention of their mothers, who’d just finished cleaning up after breakfast, with their kitchen stoves still burning, to watch from their bay windows. The longer the boat burned, the more people dropped their work to watch, or left their homes and workplaces to see it for themselves.
The onlookers were not disappointed, as rockets of flame climbed through clouds of smoke whenever a drum of benzol caught fire or grew hot enough to erupt on its own. One woman compared the pyrotechnics to the fireworks held at the Exhibition Grounds nearby, while an artist riding the Dartmouth Ferry counted four distinct sheets of flame—a beautiful effect.
When someone pulled the fire alarm labeled Box 83, located just south of Pier 6 near the dry docks, it made a familiar sound back at the West Street Fire Station, the outpost closest to the alarm. The ten-man crew answered the call every time a ship’s boilers dumped coals on the wooden docks and started a small fire. Whenever they heard the alarm they would run to their brand-new fire engine—which they had christened the Patricia—the city’s first completely motorized, chemical fire engine, the pride of the Halifax Fire Department and one of the first of its kind in the Maritimes.
Billy Wells, a clean-shaven, round-faced, and cheerful-looking thirty-six-year-old, would jump into the driver’s seat and take the wheel. He liked to race to the sites against the other station’s horse-drawn trucks and his brother Claude Wells, who would take off from the Brunswick Street Fire Station, near the Citadel, in Fire Chief Edward Condon’s Buick Roadster. Racing through the city streets made of brick, cobblestone, wood, and dirt to get to a small fire and put it out was all good fun. Billy Wells couldn’t imagine
a better way to pay for his pints.
On this day, however, Constant Upham, who owned a general store on the North End, could see that the growing blaze on Mont-Blanc was no longer a routine fire, and he wanted to make sure the firemen knew it. Fortunately, Upham’s store featured a new invention: a telephone. Upham placed calls, which still required operators to complete them, to four fire stations in the area to tell them the situation on Pier 6 should not be taken lightly.
Billy Wells and his crewmates at the West Street Fire Station had already heard the alarm from Box 83 when Constant Upham called to say that it was serious. They hopped into the Patricia while someone banged on the bathroom door to get one of their crewmen, who had come to the station in spite of a bad flu, or possibly a hangover. Unwilling to wait any longer, Billy Wells pulled out of the station, started the sirens, and left their crewmate behind.
Wells looked forward to racing his brother to the docks, until he remembered Claude had the day off. He then recalled that he needed to pick up part-time firefighter Albert Brunt on the way. When Brunt heard Box 83, followed by the Patricia’s sirens, he pushed his paint cart out of the way and rushed to the corner of Gottingen Street, where he knew the Patricia would be passing. As the Patricia slowed to turn onto Gottingen, Brunt reached to grab the rail on the back of the truck, but his hand slipped and he fell back onto the street, scraping his hands and knees. His friends on the truck hooted and hollered at Brunt, picking himself off the street while Wells kept speeding toward Pier 6.
Down the road, fifteen-year-old Frank Burford had just picked up the parcel at the dry dock, as his boss had ordered, then run as fast as he could to Middleham Castle to watch Mont-Blanc burn. He passed Constant Upham’s store on the way, while a shiny new motorized fire engine flew by at top speed: 30 miles per hour.
By the time the Patricia stopped near Pier 6, the fire on Mont-Blanc’s deck had already become so big and hot that the firefighters could not look straight at it, averting their eyes and shielding their faces. Chief Condon could see that Constant Upham was right: this was no ordinary dock fire. He pulled Box 83 again to roust all the help they could get.
A retired fireman named John Spruin heard the call, pulled on his fire suit, got into his old horse-drawn pumper, and headed down Brunswick Street to Box 83.
Chapter 17
“Oh, Something Awful Is Going to Happen”
Because so many families in Richmond had a passel of kids, with three on the low side and a dozen not uncommon, each weekday morning the neighborhood homes buzzed with everyone hustling to get off to school and work on time.
In the Pattisons’ home that morning, their daughter Catherine, ten, had a bad cold, and would be staying in bed. Gordon, fourteen, and James, thirteen, had packed their leather school bags with their books and their homework for Principal Huggins. Their little brother, Alan, eight, would tag along on their way to Richmond School.
A few days earlier, the Pattisons’ parents had taken the two older boys to a jewelers’ shop to pick out timepieces, in recognition of their status as growing young men. Gordon had selected a handsome silver wristwatch with a face designed like the spokes of a wheel, while James had opted for a classic pocket watch. He quickly developed the habit of pulling it out of his pocket and flipping it open to check the time, even when no one asked.
But on this morning, when James dug into his pocket for the watch, he remembered he had lent it to his father, the mechanical superintendent at the Acadia Sugar Refinery just a block from their home, because his father’s watch was in for repairs. It was Gordon, therefore, who had the pleasure of checking his wristwatch and telling his brothers it was time to go. School started a half hour later that week, at 9:30, due to “winter schedule,” which schools implemented to save money on heating and lighting during the winter, and make it safe to walk to school in daylight.
James and Gordon Pattison might have been on the cusp of manhood, but their mother still insisted they wear their thick sweaters and button up their jackets. The sun was out, but she knew the winter cold was coming. A few minutes before 9:00 a.m., they kissed their mother good-bye, grabbed Alan, and walked out the door. As soon as they stepped outside they heard the fire alarm from Box 83, then saw the Patricia race by, siren blaring, with the firemen hanging on to the side while Billy Wells careened through the streets.
The Pattison boys looked at each other, wide-eyed, and quickly forgot about school to chase after the Patricia. They could hear the roaring fire and see the black smoke billow, but they couldn’t see either ship until they stepped into the gap between the graving dock and the Acadia Sugar Refinery. Out in the middle of the Narrows they spotted a big ship with BELGIAN RELIEF on her side. When they walked past the Protestant Orphanage, all sound suddenly stopped.
At the other end of Richmond, Noble Driscoll played with his little brother, Gordon, in their backyard where the family kept their milking cow. They had not yet adjusted to Richmond School’s “winter schedule,” so they were ready to go to school by 8:30, giving them half an hour to kill.
More than three years into the Great War, Noble and his brother had watched hundreds of ships from the family’s backyard, which faced the harbor. When they heard whistles being sent between two ships that morning, they ran to the corner of the yard just in time to see the bigger boat cut into the smaller one.
“I’m going to get Pop,” Noble told Gordon, who was less impressed.
Noble found his father sitting next to a window, eating his breakfast before walking down to the Richmond railyards, where he worked as a car inspector. He had heard his son race into the house to deliver big news from the harbor many times, so he listened patiently to Noble’s latest story. When Noble finished, his father said, “I’ll just finish my breakfast first, and then get my things together for work. I’ll come and see what’s up as soon as I’ve done that.”
When Noble returned to the backyard, Gordon was gone. Noble assumed he must have seen one of his friends and headed off to school, so Noble figured it must be time for him to go, too. But instead of walking to Albert Street and then going four blocks south to Richmond School, he decided to take a detour along Campbell Road to get a better look.
When he got closer, he saw Mont-Blanc burning ferociously and “two small boats, crammed with men, heading quickly away from the ship.” When he heard the West Street Station’s Patricia racing through the streets with Billy Wells at the wheel, he couldn’t contain his excitement any longer and ditched school to follow the Patricia.
Along the way, Noble walked up to Mr. Creighton’s store, where his older brother, Al, delivered groceries with a horse and wagon. The people there knew Noble well, so when the owner’s son, Cam, saw Noble, he warned him, “Don’t go any closer, Nob. There’s bullets exploding, and you might get one in your leg.”
The fire was so close and so loud by then that Noble could barely hear Cam’s warning, but he did as instructed.
“Just at that moment,” he recalled, “an unnatural silence fell.”
Mr. Huggins, the principal at Richmond School, arrived on the train from Rockingham, just a couple of miles around the bend, with his daughter, Merle, just as they did every school day. They ignored the commotion by the docks on their way up the hill a couple of blocks to the school, because Mr. Huggins liked to get there a solid half hour before his students. But when he ran into the father of one of his Junior Cadets, he stopped to chat, telling his daughter, “You run along, Merle. I’ll catch up.”
She was only too happy to, because that meant she could play with her friends on the playground before school. While her father wasn’t terribly worried about the burning ship, he figured the school would be safe.
“That’s quite a fire down there,” Mr. Huggins said to his friend. “I hope those students of mine are not getting too close and making nuisances of themselves.”
The owner of Richmond’s general store, Constant Upham, had a brother, Charles, who worked the night shift as the yardmaster
of the Richmond railway. Shortly after dawn broke, Charles finished his shift and walked two blocks up the hill to his home. Tired as he was, he always looked forward to digging into the big, hot breakfast his wife would have waiting for him. Then he’d stoke their furnace and stove with coal from the cellar before trudging upstairs to his bed for some much-needed rest.
His oldest children, Ellen, Archie, and Millicent, were not going to their classes at Richmond School that day because they would be attending their grandfather’s funeral that afternoon at their cousin’s house up the hill, where their grandfather’s body lay in state in their parlor. When Charles Upham lumbered to the top of the stairs, he was not surprised to see Archie, a feisty, happy-looking kid, and Millicent, her hair in curls, playing in one of the bedrooms.
“Don’t make too much noise,” he said. “I’m going to sleep.”
Charles went into his bedroom, shut the door, swapped his work clothes for his nightshirt, and climbed into bed, pulling the blankets over his head to keep the daylight from stirring him.
In the room next door, Archie grabbed a book from the shelf, hopped onto the bed, and started to read. Millicent played near him with her dolls’ tiny tea set, a favorite of hers. On top of her bureau she kept a piggybank in which she saved her pennies for Christmas, just two and a half weeks away. Unlike Archie, who couldn’t keep a penny in his pocket, Millicent was a good saver.
They were quiet as could be, but they soon heard the tumult coming from the docks.
“Daddy will be angry about all that noise,” Millicent told Archie.
“He’ll never hear it,” Archie laughed. “He always pulls the blankets right up over his head. You can’t even see his nose. I don’t know how he breathes.”
The two sat on the bed, reading and playing, Archie with his back to the window, Millicent facing it.
The Orr children remained engrossed by the drama unfolding out their window. When they asked their mother if the burning ship might explode, she saw the dockworkers and sailors nonchalantly watching the action, some laughing, and reasoned that they would know if there was any real danger, and no one seemed too worried. She replied calmly, “Oh, I don’t think so.”
The Great Halifax Explosion Page 15