"The morning of 16 April 1947 dawned clear and crisp, cooled by a brisk north wind. Just before 8:00 A.M., longshoremen removed the hatch covers on Hold 4 of the French Liberty ship Grandcamp as they prepared to load the remainder of a consignment of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Some 2,300 tons were already onboard, 880 of which were in the lower part of Hold 4. The remainder of the ship's cargo consisted of large balls of sisal twine, peanuts, drilling equipment, tobacco, cotton, and a few cases of small ammunition. No special safety precautions were in focus at the time.
Several longshoremen descended into the hold and waited for the first pallets holding the 100-pound packages to be hoisted from dockside. Soon thereafter, someone smelled smoke. A plume was observed rising between the cargo holds and the ships hull, apparently about seven or eight layers of sacks down. Neither a gallon jug of drinking water nor the contents of two fire extinguishers supplied by crew members seemed to do much good. As the fire continued to grow, someone lowered a fire hose, but the water was not turned on. Since the area was filling fast with smoke, the longshoremen were ordered out of the hold.
While Leonard Boswell, the gang foreman, and Peter Suderman, superintendent of stevedores, discussed what action to take, the master, or captain, of the Grandcamp appeared and stated in intelligible English that he did not want to put out the fire with water because it would ruin the cargo. Instead, he elected to suppress the flames by having the hatches battened and covered with tarpaulins, the ventilators closed, and the steam system turned on. At the masters request, stevedores started removing cases of small arms ammunition from Hold 5 as a precautionary measure. As the fire grew, the increased heat forced the stevedores and some crew members to leave the ship. The Grandcamp's whistle sounded an alarm that was quickly echoed by the siren of the Texas City Terminal Railway Company. despite a strike by the telephone workers, Suderman, seriously concerned by now, managed to reach the Fire Department and then called Galveston for a fire boat." -
The Texas City Disaster is generally considered the worst industrial accident in American history. Witnesses compared the scene to the fairly recent images of the 1943 German bombing of ammunition ships in the harbor at Bari and the much larger devastation at Nagasaki. The official death toll was 581. Of the dead, 405 were identified and 63 were never identified. The remaining 113 people were classified as missing, for no identifiable parts were ever found. This figure includes all 28 firefighters who were aboard Grandchamp when it exploded. There is some speculation that there may have been hundreds more killed but uncounted, including visiting seamen, non-census laborers and their families, and an untold numbers of travelers. However, there were some survivors as close as 70 feet (21 m) from the dock. The victims' bodies quickly filled the local morgue, and several bodies were laid out in the local high school's gymnasium for identification by loved ones.
More than 5,000 people were injured, of whom 1,784 were admitted to twenty-one area hospitals. More than 500 homes were destroyed and hundreds of others damaged, leaving 2,000 homeless. The seaport was destroyed and many businesses were flattened by the blast or consumed in the fires. Over 1,100 vehicles were damaged or destroyed, 362 freight cars obliterated — the initial property damage was estimated in hundreds of millions of dollars.
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My grandfather is a survivor. He had just returned 2 years earlier from World War 2. This happened, and his father was sadly killed. My grandfather still has a twisted piece of metal from the ship Grandcamp.
regrothenberger 3 years ago
I grew up in Texas City. Moved there in 1962 on 2nd Ave. I had heard about what had happened when I was younger but when I read the book last year about the disaster, I couldn't believe my father had moved us there. What they went through was horrific.
renafyi 4 years ago
US military knew full well the capabilities of Ammomia Nitrate before this happened
delinq69 4 years ago