My Mate Trevor Tasker has come up with another corker. Having strong links with Canada he has come up with an article on an event that will very shortly be 80 years old. Trevor lives in Swansea and having just successfully completed his Degree will be embarking on a life as a Researcher and Writer. He can be contacted via me if anyone has information etc

THE HALIFAX EXPLOSION: 6TH DECEMBER 1917.

    At 9:05 on the 6th December 1917, a munition ship exploded in Halifax harbour, (Nova Scotia, Canada). This explosion was so vast that it killed over 2,000 people and completely flattened two square kilometres of northern Halifax. This was the greatest explosion of the Great war, and the largest man-made explosion until the dropping of the bomb at Hiroshima in 1945.

   The war in Europe demanded and consumed vast amounts of people and materials from the new world. Halifax is a deep natural harbour, which was ice-free. Since the 1812 War, the harbour was defended by a series of forts, Halifax was now a garrison town, as well as a naval dockyard and harbour. In early 1917 the admiralty officially introduced the convoy system to help reduce the losses from u-boats. The inner harbour, known as the BEDFORD BASIN, (See illustration page), was ideal for an anchorage to asssemble the convoys, and was used in both world wars.

    In December 1917, the Bedford basin was full of merchant ships. The naval escort were in the outer harbour; opposite the naval intallations, One of these was HMS HIGHFLYER; a Hermes class Cruiser. In August 1914 the Highflyer had caught the German ex-liner turned Armed Merchant Raider; Kaiser Wilhelm Der Grosse, refuelling at sea, and sunk her off the West African coast at Rio del Oro, (Halpern 1994).

     The harbour was also open to neutral ships, (though their crews were not allowed ashore for security reasons). One of these was a Norweigian ship the SS IMO, she was steaming alone, and had 'Belgium Relief' written on her sides to emphasise her 'neutrality' to u-boats, she was on her way to New York to load relief supplies for Belgium. The IMO was behind schedule by having to wait for coal, with this and being empty, she may have been travelling at a faster speed than normal, when she left the Bedford Basin.

    The French Ship SS MONT BLANC came from New York where she was loaded with a cocktail of explosives and volatile material. The ship had her holds lined with wood, using non sparking copper nails, but too many volatile cargos had been mixed together. The Mont Blanc entered Halifax with 2,300 tons of wet and dry picric acid; (used for making lyddite foir artillery shells), 200 tons of trinitrotoluene, (TNT), 10 tons of gun cotton, with drums of Bezol; (High Octane fuel) stacked on her decks. The Mont Blanc was on her way to the Bedford Basin, but arrived too late to be let through the anti submarine nets, and had to wait until the next day to enter the harbour.

     On the morning of the 6th December 1917, the IMO weighed anchor and headed for the sea, while the Mont BLanc entered the harbour; the collided in the bottleneck known as 'the Narrows'. Some of the Benzol dums broke loose, spilling on the deck, and soon caught fire. The intensity of the fire, and it's volatile cargo, Captain Le Medec ordered all hands to abandon ship. TheMont Blanc on fire, drifted towards Halifax where she rested against pier 6; (star [*] on the illustration page).

    At around 9.05 am the Mont Blanc blew up, the whole ship disintergrated. The pressure blast flattened the immediate area for two square kilometers, and devastated an area of 325 acres, most of the windows in Halifax were blown out, (Kitz,1989). About 1,600 people were killed by the blast., eight crew of HMS Highflyer were splattered against the ship's superstructure, (Monnon, 1977). A mushroom-shaped cloud rose kilometres high, and 3,000 tons of the splattered ship rained down on the area. The ship's gun landed near Alboro Lake (2km away), and the stock of one of her anchor's landed in a wood 5km away (See illustration page). The Narrows were boiling with the slashes of shrapnel, also falling were rocks;believed to had been sucked up from the harbour bed.

        Next came the pressure wave which washed up the shore line and rocked the ships nearby, some from their moorings, some smaller vessels (e.g. Tugs) were overwhelmed and sunk. This man-made 'tsunami' travelled across to the shores of Dartmouth, it was funnelled up Tufts cove, (due north of the explosion) where there was a settlement of the Micmac; (native American tribe of the area). The whole encampment was washed away by the gigantic wave.

      The Halifax area opposite the