The Great Halifax Explosion

by John U. Bacon

  They were instructed to put all the victims’ effects in carefully labeled cloth bags, of which they had plenty left from the batch used for the Titanic victims. They were big enough to hold a pair of shoes and a few other identifying items, with one number assigned for each victim’s effects. They used the extra manila tags to record where the body was found, its approximate age, and any other details that might help someone make an identification. Then they attached the tag to the items, the bag, or one of the victim’s big toes.

  This entry was typical: “Three lots from . . . Veith Street, possible Mrs. . . . and two children.” Another: “Lady at NW corner of basement, Flynn Block. Lying with children.”

  The harder cases required workers to determine how many bodies were present after they’d been burned. “Charred remains” was a common answer to that riddle, attached to a bag of undetermined bodies. One tag read, “Remains of three or possibly six bodies brought in a clothes basket.” Another: “Two or possibly three children.”

  Once the remains arrived at the Chebucto Road School, the junior Barnstead directed his new assistants to strip the bodies and wash them as best they could with water retrieved from nearby homes. (Although the Chebucto Road School had been hastily repaired, it still lacked running water.) They kept the victims’ clothing if possible, though most of it had to be thrown away to avoid disease.

  They tried to assign everything associated with a single victim the same number to help identify them later, but many bodies did not have any clothing or effects, or were impossible to identify, and sometimes the tag identifying it became illegible or fell apart in the blizzard.

  One destroyed home demonstrates just how difficult this work could be. A two-story house near Pier 6 had been partitioned into apartments and rented out by six families. When it had collapsed and burned, it left a pile of charred planks, plaster, and ashes. A team of soldiers dug through the basement and discovered a dead boy lying next to a stack of letters, bills, and receipts, which had rather miraculously escaped damage. They sent the boy and the papers to the Chebucto Road School, where someone from the family’s Catholic church identified the boy and the rest of his family. All were buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery. As there were no close family members left alive, the contents of the mortuary bag were never claimed, and the papers stayed in the child’s cloth bag in the morgue and were buried with him.

  They later determined that the letters had belonged to a woman from Ireland who lived in the same building. Her body and that of her only child, a girl, had probably been near the boy’s body. Her husband had been fighting in France. Four months after the explosion, he was discharged. After two years of risking his life for his country, he returned to find that his home, his wife, and his daughter were all gone. All that remained were his letters to his wife, but those had been buried with the boy.

  Nothing could bring his family back, of course, but his affectionate letters home, clearly valued by his wife, would have given some comfort. She had cut out a poem from a newspaper to keep with his letters, with each verse ending, “The song he sang in the trench that night, / Was the song of a girl back home.”

  He would never see his letters, nor his wife’s favorite poem.

  Barnstead and his temporary staff organized the morgue with admirable alacrity. By the second day, Barnstead and company decided they were ready to receive the record keepers, reporters, and relatives. To handle the throng, they kept their makeshift morgue open for thirteen hours a day, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., long after dark.

  Each day they provided the newspapers a list of victims they had identified and descriptions of others, which brought in more visitors. The Halifax Herald described the morgue as “a place of soft-going feet and lowered voices.”

  Barnstead’s staff handled the visitors with great care. To keep out the gawkers, a volunteer in the lobby interviewed each visitor to determine whom they were looking for, asking enough questions to gauge the sincerity of their search. For female visitors, the interviewer would summon a “sympathetic woman” to accompany her on her short tour of the basement.

  Downstairs, the staff draped sheets over all the bodies and arranged them so a visitor would first see the least-damaged unclaimed bodies, progressing to the most damaged, followed by the bags of effects and file-card descriptions. If a visitor was able to make a positive identification, they still needed a burial permit to release the body. “I think it might be my brother-in-law” would not suffice, lest a distraught, possibly confused mourner bury the relative of another visitor who might come by hours later.

  If you were missing a loved one, you most likely would have visited their home first, then the temporary shelters, then the hospitals, and finally the Chebucto Road School—your last stop. Here, you faced two possibilities, both heartbreaking: you would find your loved one’s remains, and your worst fears would be confirmed: they were gone. As tough as that was, the second option was worse—not finding them. True, their absence from the morgue gave hope that they could be alive, but that meant your search was not over, and was more likely to end in eternal uncertainty. The gift of hope was eventually eclipsed by the pain of not knowing.

  It was with these conflicting emotions that thousands of fearful survivors walked up to the front door of the Chebucto Road School, often escorted there by a soldier or a volunteer. This anguish was captured in thousands of notices posted in the local papers.

  Mr. Huggins, the principal of the Richmond School who let his daughter walk up to the school herself that morning while he talked to a parent, posted the following: “Merle Huggins, aged 11 years, who was at Richmond School at the time of the catastrophe, is missing. The little girl is the daughter of Principal Huggins, who will be deeply grateful for any information regarding her.”

  After the morgue had closed on Friday night, November 7, a young woman was so desperate to search for her brother that she would not take no for an answer from the soldier who told her she would have to come back the next day. She dashed around the school building, banging on each door she passed, pleading for the guard inside, Donald Morrison, to let her in.

  “Help. Help. Please help me.”

  Her voice sounded young and very sincere. Morrison repeated the soldier’s instructions, but the woman continued to plead with him to let her look for her brother, whom she said was only eleven years old. Morrison used his lantern to guide himself. The instant his key unlocked the door, the girl “tumbled into the room,” he recalled.

  She introduced herself as Elizabeth Fraser. “Is my brother here? Please help me. I have looked everywhere and I cannot find him.”

  Morrison lifted his lantern to see her face. “She was sixteen or seventeen,” he recalled. “Her face was dirty and tear-stained and she was wet and cold. She told me she had been looking for her brother for two days.”

  He could not refuse her. He escorted her down the first row. When they reached the first body, he lifted the sheet, shined his lantern on the corpse, and then looked to see if she recognized the deceased.

  “Body after body we checked,” he said. “From time to time I stole a look at my companion but she seemed unaware of anything, working with a fervor that I had to admire. Cold, hunger—everything was forgotten.”

  When they finished the row of teenagers, Morrison’s lamp happened upon a canvas leaning upright against a column. Elizabeth thought she recognized the grungy canvas, so they went to take a look. Once Morrison turned the canvas back, Elizabeth emitted a brief scream, then dropped to her knees to clasp her brother, repeating, “I found you. I found you.”

  “She cried as I have never seen anyone cry before or since,” Morrison said. Once she finished, she straightened her brother out, carefully pulled the canvas back over him, and stood up, gathering herself.

  She thanked Morrison, saying she would return as soon as possible. A few minutes later she did so with two men carrying a stretcher, and they removed her brother from the morgue.

  “Under ordinary cir
cumstances,” Morrison explained, “I would have been court-martialed but my C.O. only reprimanded me. I guess he realized I was only human.”

  Chapter 29

  The Yanks Are Coming

  Saturday, December 8

  Despite an almost complete lack of preparation for such an emergency, after suffering the worst man-made explosion in history, Haligonians got organized, helped each other in every way imaginable, and treated an estimated 90 percent of the wounded within twenty-four hours, in a herculean effort. The majority of victims received attention through the twelve emergency dressing stations, doctors’ offices, and home visits, while 2,500 people packed local hospitals and still others were treated in towns as far out as Truro.

  It was undeniably impressive, but even that high achievement would not have been enough by itself to restore the city. Fortunately for Halifax, native son Sir Robert Borden had won the pivotal election of 1911 and was still in office when the explosion occurred. He cut short his trip to Prince Edward Island to help his hometown, and lent the full power of the entire Dominion of Canada to Halifax’s recovery effort. Haligonians appreciated that, of course, but probably expected it. What they didn’t anticipate was the river of aid that came from the United States.

  “Doctors and nurses arrived from outlying provincial towns and substantial help was on the way from Montreal and Toronto,” wrote explosion survivor Thomas Raddall, “but the first and most valuable assistance came from the ancient foe beyond the Bay of Fundy.”

  That ancient foe, Boston, had taken up arms against the United Empire Loyalists in two wars and almost did so in a third, the American Civil War. Boston, the rebellious soul of a nation that had, just six years earlier, spoken openly on the floor of Congress about annexing its longtime neighbor, was now coming to its rescue, unbidden, in full measure.

  After the grueling train trip through the blizzard, A. C. “Cap” Ratshesky and the Massachusetts contingent rolled into Halifax’s new South End Station at about 6:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. Ratshesky headed straight for the CGR’s temporary headquarters, and got an education along the way.

  On the train to Halifax, Cap Ratshesky had repeatedly ratcheted up his orders for supplies and people to be sent from Boston, but once he traveled through the city he could see that even the most dire reports grossly underestimated the devastation—a misimpression the American journalists who came with him corrected, telling the outside world of the scale of the disaster and the specter of Halifax’s heroes meeting the challenge with grit, teamwork, and integrity. Those dispatches soon inspired city, state, and national governments, businesses, and individuals around the world to give generously to the Halifax relief effort.

  The Boston party’s immediate mission was to find the survivors and help them medically, then materially. When Ratshesky reached Canadian Government Railways headquarters, he met A. Hayes, CGR’s General Manager, and handed him Governor McCall’s letter, in which McCall assured him, “I need hardly say to you that we have the strongest affection for the people of your city, and that we are anxious to do everything possible for their assistance at this time.”

  When Hayes finished reading, Ratshesky recalled, “He was so affected that tears streamed down his cheeks.” Hayes rose to greet Ratshesky, saying simply, “Just like the people of good old Massachusetts.”

  After Hayes collected himself, he offered the Boston group the use of the temporary wires they had just connected to City Hall, which had restored communications with the outside world. He also informed Ratshesky that the private railcar of Sir Robert L. Borden, Premier of Canada, was close to theirs. Hayes then messaged the PM to let him know the Massachusetts relief party had arrived and would be glad to “call upon him in his car as soon as possible.”

  Borden’s “answer came most informally,” Ratshesky wrote. “He joined us in person in a very few minutes, expressing to us in appropriate words his profound appreciation of the quick action on the part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. . . .”

  Because Prime Minister Borden owed his rise to power in 1911 to a tidal wave of anti-American sentiment and fear of annexation—fear he had stoked—his deep expression of gratitude marked a considerable turnabout, and was utterly sincere: he had lost many friends in the explosion himself. The prime minister asked the Bostonians to join him on his way to City Hall so they could present Governor McCall’s letter “and learn what disposition we should make of our party and supplies.”

  At City Hall, Ratshesky’s party met Lieutenant-Colonel McKelvey Bell, the chairman of Halifax’s newly created Medical Relief Committee and head of military hospitals in Halifax, who helped the Bostonians pick a suitable building to convert to a temporary hospital. They settled on the Bellevue Building in the center of the city.

  “The building was turned over to us in very bad condition,” Ratshesky said, “not a door or window remaining whole, and water and ice on the floor of every room” due to exposed pipes bursting from the cold. It says something that this was deemed the best building available. “Apparently, under ordinary circumstances, it would have been impossible to have put into shape for a long time.”

  But these were not ordinary circumstances. About fifty crewmen from a U.S. training ship, a company of Canadian soldiers, and the British Military Stores Depot got Bellevue ready to receive patients by 12:30 that afternoon, a mere five hours after the Boston party had pulled into Halifax. Bellevue had been transformed into one of eight emergency hospitals that opened that weekend, which added a much-needed one thousand beds to the city’s capacity.

  At about the same time Bellevue started receiving patients, the snowstorm stopped for a few minutes, and the sun broke through the clouds. The clouds soon returned with yet more snow, but the sunshine was delicious while it lasted.

  More good news from Boston: the previous day at historic Faneuil Hall, Governor McCall and the Massachusetts Relief Committee had held a follow-up meeting and decided to send Halifax $100,000, or about $2 million today, plus more medical and trades personnel, and two supply ships: Calvin Austin that Saturday night, and Northland on Sunday. When newspapers told their readers where Calvin Austin had docked so they could bring their donations, the docks soon overflowed with Samaritans eager to contribute to the cause, including a “society lady” who was so inspired by the outpouring that she doffed her fur coat and added it to the cargo heading north.

  When Calvin Austin pushed off from the pier under a large Red Cross flag flowing from her masthead to ward off German U-boats, according to one reporter, “a lusty cheer went up from the crowd of workers and spectators who lined the docks.”

  Shortly after Bellevue was up and running, some fifty leaders, including Cap Ratshesky and Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden, met to streamline the relief work, form the Reconstruction Committee, and meet with the city engineer’s office to make plans to hire 500 employees to start working on the future. The level of organization they brought to the task was impressive, one of the great underestimated qualities of any serious undertaking, lightyears away from where the recovery effort had started two days before.

  If Halifax was shattered in one instant, it had begun to recover in the next.

  By Saturday night, thanks to the unexpected infusion of doctors, nurses, volunteers, and medical supplies from Boston and elsewhere, many of the medical personnel who first took up the herculean task of treating 9,000 victims finally got a respite, and some were able to go home for some long-overdue rest.

  After Percy McGrath was relieved following his third day at Camp Aldershot, he spent a few days making home visits around Halifax by sleigh before returning to camp.

  Ernest Barss and his mentor, Dr. Elliott, had finished their third full day with almost no sleep when they finally turned things over to the next wave of volunteers and headed to the train station on Saturday afternoon. Just getting through the blizzard required commandeering a sled and a pair of horses, then waiting in a signal box for a couple of hours. The ride was painfully slow, w
ith the snow-covered tracks adding several hours to their journey before they got home at 10:30 that night.

  But the long ride gave Barss time to reflect on all that he had just seen and done. In addition to the horrific scenes of destruction and disfigurement, Barss recalled the quiet heroism of so many victims and responders. He also had a changed view of Canada’s neighbors. He had been highly critical of the Americans before the explosion, as you’d expect from Joseph Barss Jr.’s great-grandson, but he now felt compelled to say something in his letter to his uncle about the Boston contingent.

  “I tell you we’ll never be able to say enough about the wonderful help the States have sent,” he wrote. “The response was so spontaneous and everything done even before it was asked for. It brought tears to all our eyes when they came and told us a little of what had been done by the U.S.

  “You know we have always been a trifle contemptuous of the U.S. on account of their prolonged delay in entering the war. But never again! They can have anything I’ve got. And I don’t think I feel any differently from anyone down here either.”

  1911 felt like a century ago.

  Chapter 30

  A Working Sabbath

  Sunday, December 9

  Three days after the explosion, the weather made another surprising turn, switching from winter to spring.

  This was initially a very welcome change, providing some relief from the bitter cold and snow flying through broken windows and busted doors. But on the whole it created more problems than it solved for the beleaguered town. The warm spell that began on Sunday, December 9, melted twenty inches of snow into slush, creating new rivers running down already muddy roads and into open basements and soaking the boots of everyone trying to rescue or recover the victims and their belongings. In the days before weatherproof outerwear, their coats, hats, pants, and boots became as waterlogged as the streets their owners were trying to clear.