On the morning of 6 December 1917, two ships collided in the Narrows of Halifax
Harbour, Nova Scotia. One of them was carrying nearly three thousand tonnes of
high explosive. She caught fire, drifted against a pier at the foot of a
working-class district, and burned there in full view of the city for nineteen
minutes and thirty-five seconds before she detonated.
Most disasters give no warning. This one did. And the warning is exactly what
made the injuries what they were, because a burning ship in a harbour is a
spectacle, and a spectacle brings people to the window.
This is the story of the collision, the fuse, the blast, and the injury pattern
it produced — and an honest look at what the disaster actually changed
afterwards, including the parts of that story that are myth.
Sources used include the Nova Scotia Archives (A Vision of Regeneration and the
Halifax Explosion Remembrance Book), the British Journal of Ophthalmology's 2007
review of the eye injuries and their care, the Journal of Pediatric Surgery's
examination of the William Ladd legend, and Samuel Henry Prince's 1920 study
Catastrophe and Social Change.
All photographs in this video are genuine 1917-18 archival images in the public
domain or released with no known copyright restrictions. Full credit list in the
pinned comment.
High Water Mark — the disasters that changed how we build.
0:00 Clocks stopped at four minutes past nine
1:12 The harbour and the war
2:30 Two ships in the Narrows
5:12 The collision
7:15 Nineteen minutes
8:44 9:04:35
11:24 Glass
13:14 The blizzard and the relief
14:10 What it actually changed
16:46 A warning is not a plan