The Halifax Explosion: The Shattering Story of the Greatest Man-Made Blast Before the Atomic Age (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798188290634)

December 6, 1917. Two ships in a narrow harbor channel. One of them is a floating bomb.

On a clear wartime morning, the French freighter Mont-Blanc - loaded with over 2,500 tons of high explosives - collided with the Norwegian steamer Imo in the Narrows of Halifax Harbour. Twenty minutes later came the largest man-made explosion before the atomic age. Inside you'll find:

• The wartime port at full strain, and the chain of small decisions that put a bomb in its busiest channel
• The twenty minutes of fire - the crowds at their windows, and the telegraph operator who stayed at his key
• The blast, the tsunami, and the square mile of the city that vanished in a single second
• The blizzard that buried the ruins the next morning, and the Boston relief train that fought through it
• The inquiries and trials that ended with both ships at fault and no one punished - and the Christmas tree Nova Scotia still sends Boston every December

Drawn from archives, the Remembrance Book, and a century of scholarship, The Halifax Explosion tells Canada's forgotten catastrophe hour by documented hour.

Author: Nathan W. Cole
ISBN-13: 9798188290634
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 07/21/2026
Pages: 82
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.24lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.21d