How One Burning Ship Flattened Halifax's North End (1917)

On the morning of December 6, 1917, two ships collided in the Narrows of Halifax harbour. One of them was a French freighter carrying TNT, picric acid, guncotton and drums of benzol. About twenty minutes later, it exploded: one of the largest man-made explosions in history before the atomic bomb. This is the full story of the collision, the railway dispatcher who stayed at his telegraph key, the blast, the blizzard that followed, the inquiry, and what Halifax built afterward. Chapters 0:00 The Ship on Fire 0:27 A City at War 1:09 Two Ships 2:01 Collision 3:09 Vince Coleman 4:05 The Explosion 4:48 The Toll 5:34 The Blizzard 6:17 Who Was to Blame? 7:04 What Remains Sources The Canadian Encyclopedia, "Halifax Explosion": https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.c... Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, "Vincent Coleman and the Halifax Explosion": https://maritimemuseum.novascotia.ca/... Nova Scotia Archives, Halifax Explosion Remembrance Book: https://archives.novascotia.ca/rememb... Wikipedia, "Halifax Explosion" (for details cited to Kitz, Mac Donald, Flemming and other published works) Images Archival photographs, maps and documents from Wikimedia Commons, Nova Scotia Archives, Library and Archives Canada, the Library of Congress and the Nationaal Archief (public domain, CC0 or no known restrictions unless listed below). Images are cropped, colour-graded and slowly panned. Aftermath photos are illustrative. Credits for Creative Commons images: "An account of an anonymous author’s experience in Halifax before and after the explosion" by Library and Archives Canada, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Plan of the City of Halifax, Nova Scotia, showing the radius of the blast from the explosion" by Library and Archives Canada, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Halifax Explosion Artifacts, Maritime Museum" by Paulo O from Halifax, Canada, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Soldiers engaged in rescue work after the Halifax Explosion" by Library and Archives Canada, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "St. Mary's Hospital after Halifax explosion" by William James, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Temporary hospital after Halifax explosion" by William James, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "View of Halifax, Nova Scotia, from Pier 8, after the disaster" by Library and Archives Canada, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "View of Halifax, Nova Scotia, from Pier 8, after the disaster of December 6, 1917" by Library and Archives Canada, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "View of Halifax, Nova Scotia, from the waterfront, after the explosion on December 6, 1917" by Library and Archives Canada, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "5520 Hennessey Pl" by Properpostman, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "A Town Crier and Santa Claus welcome the Boston Christmas Tree" by Briancua, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... "Halifax Explosion Memorial Bell Tower" by Dennis G. Jarvis, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Music and sound effects are original