The Halifax Explosion

On the morning of 6 December 1917 the munitions ship Mont-Blanc, carrying wartime explosives, was inbound through the Narrows of Halifax Harbour. The Imo was outbound. The two ships collided. Fire broke out on Mont-Blanc, her crew abandoned her, and she drifted toward Pier 6. The fire burned for less than twenty minutes; sources give 17 and about 20. At 9:04:35 a.m. she exploded.

The Richmond district and the Mi'kmaw community at Turtle Grove were devastated. Both shores took damage and a surge of water. Many people had gone to their windows to watch the fire. Historians argue that this, and the double-paned storm windows of a northern city, explains why so many of the injured lost their sight. Railway dispatcher Vincent Coleman sent a telegraph warning about the burning ship, and died at his post.

The first care was local. Ninety physicians in Halifax and Dartmouth treated the wounded across ten hospitals and improvised sites. At 166 North Street, Dr. Clement Ligoure, Nova Scotia's first Black physician, who had been denied hospital privileges, filled his office with the injured and charged no one. Doctors and nurses came in by train from across the Maritimes. Dr. George Cox reached Camp Hill Hospital that evening and began removing glass from eyes.

A snowstorm hit a city with no windows. Relief trains were delayed. American medical units arrived from 9 to 12 December, after local and Maritime responders had carried the first days.

By June 1918, forty people were totally blind, eight of them children. A surgeon who had worked through those weeks publicly asked whether too many eyes had been removed. The episode ends on his question.

Glass. People watching the fire through their windows took the glass in their faces. Doctors removed glass, pottery, brick, mortar and nails from eye sockets.

Hospitals past capacity. Victoria General held 575 patients in 200 beds. Camp Hill had more than 1,500 people lining the corridors of a 250-bed hospital. People turned away went wherever there was a doctor.

Weather. A snowstorm on 7 December slowed relief and recovery in a city where thousands of windows were gone. The Nova Scotia Archives record of Dr. Ligoure's work describes a blizzard "which turned to rain" in the early hours of 9 December, with his horse "up to his knees in the drifts". The two accounts of the weather have not been reconciled.

Infection. Days after the explosion, a Montreal surgeon wrote that "practically every face wound was septic".

Triage without a system. At Camp Hill, Dr. George Cox walked the rows marking who needed surgery first, then tied linen tags to patients recording name, address, injury, treatment and what they would need next. There were no standard triage tags in 1917; this was improvised.

The eyes. 592 people had eye injuries. 249 eyes were removed, and 16 people lost both. Roughly 42% of injured eyes were removed. Most enucleations were done under chloroform. Local hospitals, for comparison, repaired 223 fractures and performed 25 amputations.

Why so many eyes came out. Surgeons feared sympathetic ophthalmia: an injury to one eye can trigger inflammation that destroys the other. Removing the damaged eye was meant to save the healthy one. Capt. Frederick Tooke later asked in print whether too many had been removed.

The long tail. By June 1918, 145 glass artificial eyes made in Boston had been supplied. In 1954, 21 survivors were still drawing pensions for blindness caused by the explosion.

The Narrows between Halifax and Dartmouth, Bedford Basin, Pier 6, the Richmond waterfront, Turtle Grove and Africville. In the city: 166 North Street, the Cotton Factory and Willow Park district, Camp Hill Hospital, Victoria General. Beyond: New Glasgow, Truro, Montreal and Boston, where help and supplies came from. A period blast-radius plan survives at Library and Archives Canada (item 165552).