Final Voyage by Jonathan Eyers Read Free Book Online Page B

way.
    And there probably would have been, had the pilot on the
Imo
not then made a fateful decision. He had ordered the engines cut, but the
Imo
had been going so fast that inertia continued to carry her towards the
Mont Blanc
. When the pilot saw the
Mont Blanc
start to turn slowly to port, he believed she would never be able to complete the evasive manoeuvre in time. The
Imo
signalled with three blasts of the horn – she was reversing her engines. The captain and the helmsman of the
Imo
knew their vessel’s idiosyncratic ways, but neither of them was in charge. As the
Imo
slowed, her reversing engines swung her bow to the right.
    The
Imo
struck the
Mont Blanc
on her starboard side with such force that the
Imo
’s bow was buried nearly 9ft (2.7m) into the
Mont Blanc
’s hull.
    Had just the
Mont Blanc
steered to port, or had just the
Imo
reversed its engines, then the collision may have been avoided. Instead, both actions combined to make collision inevitable. The
Imo
struck the
Mont Blanc
on her starboard side with such force that the
Imo
’s bow was buried nearly 9ft (2.7m) into the
Mont Blanc
’s hull.
    Inside the
Mont Blanc
’s forward hold, drums of benzol were crushed and burst open, spilling the liquid fuel over the other cargo.
The Halifax Explosion
    The
Imo
had struck above the waterline, and whilst the
Mont Blanc
was no longer seaworthy, the damage to her hull was still repairable. In the pilothouse and on deck, the
Mont Blanc
’s officers and crew could only be gratefulthat the collision had not detonated the ship’s cargo instantly.
    Then someone on board the
Imo
– perhaps the pilot, perhaps the captain, neither survived to testify – made the second fateful decision of the morning. As those on the
Mont Blanc
surveyed the damage to their vessel, the
Imo
’s engines were restarted. Slowly, she began to reverse. The two interlocked ships started to disengage. In the
Mont Blanc
’s forward hold, unseen by anyone, metal grinded against metal as the
Imo
’s bow retracted from the gash it had torn in the
Mont Blanc
’s hull. It is now believed this generated the sparks that ignited the benzol.
    Once the
Imo
had withdrawn completely from the
Mont Blanc
, about ten minutes after the collision, smoke began to pour out of the hole in the
Mont Blanc
’s side. Mackey and Le Medec knew immediately that the benzol in the hold had caught alight. As a thick black cloud of smoke blanketed the ship and towered into the air above her, both the pilot and the captain ordered everyone on board to evacuate.
    A thick black cloud of smoke blanketed the ship and towered into the air above her.
    They would later claim that they thought the
Mont Blanc
could explode at any second. Even as they fled they were not hopeful of making it to safety in time. Thus they defended their decision not to make any attempt to fight the fire before they abandoned ship. The fire being oil-based and having already spread as far as it had, they may not have been able to put the fire out anyway. It’s possible that nothing short of scuttling the ship and flooding the hold would have extinguished the flames, and doing that quickly wasbeyond their means. They might only have had time to move the
Mont Blanc
further away from residential areas. Instead they launched the lifeboats and paddled for the nearest shore, at Dartmouth, as fast as they could.
    The
Mont Blanc
, meanwhile, drifted in the other direction, toward the Richmond shore. Seeing all the smoke, Horatio Brennan, the captain of the tug
Stella Maris
, swiftly anchored the two barges he had been towing, turned around and sped back towards the stricken steamer to help. The
Stella Maris
passed at least one of the
Mont Blanc
’s lifeboats as she approached. The fleeing crew in the lifeboat tried to shout warnings about the explosive cargo to the tug, but either nobody on board the
Stella Maris
understood their French, or they chose to